I’ve
been lazy. Okay, so I haven’t been
“really” lazy, but I’ve been doing things that have a higher priority than my
writing projects. First, and most
importantly, my friend Chas (The Southern Rockies Nature Blog, http://natureblog.com/) arrived
on October 2 for four days of duck and grouse hunting. We would have hunted the four days but I had
to go to the VA hospital for my post cardiac therapy on one day and Chas
graciously went along. By the time I was
through and we were back in Finley the day was shot. Other than that one trip to Fargo we were
able to hunt every day.
The
great thing is that this year Chas got to take home a few ducks. Not enough to fill a freezer but enough so he
could know that he shot at, and hit some ducks.
Chas
and I first hunted together in the autumn of 1979 and it was a dove hunt that
morphed into an elaborate dinner that has become a part of the lore of my
personal history with Soldier of Fortune Magazine. How that happened isn’t the point of this
post, what is the point is that from that first dove hunt on to last week’s
hunting Chas and I have hunted together at least one long weekend nearly every
autumn, and will continue to do so as long as we can. Of course, there have been a few hiccups
along the way and several seasons were lost to work, but there have been more
wonderful memories than disappointments, and a few of those memories are the
fodder for some of the stories in my next collection of short stories--with
names changed--of course.
Whenever
Chas and I have hunted together there has never been a competition between
us. We’ve never compared the number of
birds in our game bags or tried to measure tail feathers. We don’t even compare the number of shots
each one of us takes for each bird killed!
Those details are not important to us.
I also
derive a secondary benefit from our hunts--I bounce ideas off Chas. I’ve always been pleased that someone of his
intellect is open to exploring my zany off-the-wall ideas. He is never derogatory or dismissive of what
I propose and often the nudge he provides is enough to push my idea onto firmer
ground where I can develop it more fully.
That’s the power of a true friendship, but more importantly, in this
case, it is indicative of the sort of bonds that are often formed between
people who fish and hunt together. Over
the decades since Chas and I first hunted doves in Colorado I’ve developed
many, many other friendships, but I can honestly say that only one other
friendship has the same strength as the one I have with Chas, that is with Robert
K. Brown, whom I met just a few weeks before meeting Chas. Like Chas, Brown and I met outside the realm
of the hunt but the strong bonds of friendship were sealed while we were
hunting.
Most
of my other strong friendships (though none to the level of Chas and Brown); were
developed because of fishing or hunting. I believe that it is because fishing and hunting
are two basic human activities that were once essential to survival that we
form such strong and long lasting friendships with other anglers and
hunters. Every experience in the
outdoors, shared with a friend, weaves fibers of trust that are not unlike the long
fibers of steel that become the massive cables holding up bridges. But what happens when competition is added to
the experience? Does competition become a
corrosive that erodes the fibers, ultimately weakening them until they pull
apart and the structure collapses under its own weight? Even Hemingway, who thrived on competition,
recognized its dangers and it became one of the foundational elements of Green Hills of Africa, his hunting
masterpiece.
Today,
competitive fishing and hunting dominates much of outdoor television’s
programming. No matter how much “we”
moan and complain about the programming, millions of Americans watch the
programs, some of them as religiously as Americans once tuned in to Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It To Beaver. I am curious as to how many viewers leave
their favorite fishing or hunting program determined to catch as many fish (or
one as big) as the host, or have convinced themselves they can kill a whitetail
buck or other big game animal that will surpass the trophy their much admired
host kills every Saturday morning, and are then discouraged to learn it isn’t
as easy as they thought? Does this
discouragement turn the neophyte trying to glean helpful knowledge into a
non-participant?
The most recent entry
into the competitive world is “Fantasy Hunting,” an online game in which
participants select a team of hunters to score points on the game killed and
win prizes. If one were to ask “What’s
next?” my answer is simple: “I have no idea.”
Somehow we’ve now gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Field
and Stream, Fantasy Hunting)
Without the warm
campfires, muddy bogs, the smell of wet dogs and the coppery smell of the
cooling blood as we dress our game, to remind us how precious each life was
that we took on the hunt or from the water, there cannot be truth in hunting or
fishing. Without truth there is no
fishing or hunting--only consumption.
Think about it. glg
