What is the attraction?

On my last hunting trip, while sitting on a log on a cold November day, waiting for a buck to make an appearance, this question popped into my mind: What is the attraction of driving a camper into the wilderness, parking it in the middle of the bush, and then walking down a narrow trail, carrying a backpack and a heavy rifle? Or sitting in a stand or on a moss-covered log, shivering, and waiting for hours or days for an animal to come by so you can shoot it?

You wear the same outfit for a week, maybe even the same underwear and socks. You don’t brush your teeth, don’t comb your hair, and barely wash, because water is at a premium, especially when the temperature is below zero.

The toilet is a log nailed against two trees in the bush, and when the north wind blows you spend as little time as possible sitting on that log.

At home, when your wife asks you to go for a walk with her, you tell her you’re too tired, but during this week you walk for miles without complaining. You shiver because it is freezing cold; you freeze your toes after they get wet inside your insulated boots from all that walking; your fingers are icicles even inside your gloves and stiff from holding your rifle. Why are you doing that to yourself? What did you do to deserve this punishment?

Some women also love it. Not my wife. “You go out there and have fun,” she says, “but when you come home, don’t complain about the hardship you had to endure. It will fall on deaf ears. Nobody forces you to go. They sell meat in the stores, you know. No sane woman would do what you crazy men do. Always have to be macho and prove something. I’m staying in our warm and comfortable home. I don’t have to cook much when you’re not around. I can get my Christmas baking done with you out of my hair. I might even do some relaxed shopping, alone, without listening to you whining about the waste of your valuable time. And don’t come back early and spoil my plans.”

A hunter will tell you that it is the greatest thrill stalking big game or just a grouse or rabbit. He will also tell you that after a day of either sweating or freezing, coming home to a warm camper, dead tired, is the best feeling in the world. In the evening, you barbeque a steak or eat chilli, drink beer and play cards with you hunting buddies. You brag about the big bucks you’ve shot over the years. All your buddies know you’re the big hunter who never misses, because that’s what you tell them. You have a valid excuse for the ones you did miss. Your buddies tell the same tales. You’ve heard them all before and they get taller with every year, but that’s okay, because so are yours. There is no wife or girlfriend around to give you orders, and you don’t worry about work, or doing chores around the house. What could be better than that?

You don’t care which country dropped bombs on another country, how many politicians got caught with their hands in the taxpayer’s till, which movie stars got married or divorced. You don’t even care if the price of oil has risen or dropped, depending on the whims of the oil companies.

The only thing you worry about is getting that deer or whatever game you are after. In the morning, you get up earlier than you would ever think about getting up at home, just to be at your favourite spot before dawn. One hunter told me after coming back to camp, exhausted, his wet feet making squishing sounds in his insulated boots as he walked, “I don’t know why I do this every year, but I just can’t live without it.” I knew what he meant.

You would never dream about doing any of that without complaining if it were your job, but here you are, of your own free will, telling yourself and everyone you talk to that you enjoy it.

Are you really? Am I?

I always enjoyed camping, even as a kid. I used to chase rabbits with a slingshot, even though I never hit one. I love hunting. Maybe it’s in the genes, programmed into a man’s DNA, left over from when primitive men had to go out with spears, rocks, and clubs to bring home supper. I don’t know.

Now we sleep in a warm trailer; we even have a generator to give us electricity. However, I remember hunts when I slept in a tent without heat, stuffed like a sausage into my sleeping bag wearing all my clothes, even my parka, unable to move. Shivering inside my cocoon, concentrating on my frozen feet, listening to the wind and the coyotes howling outside, I asked myself what I was doing here. Would I survive the night or would they find my frozen body in the Spring after the snow was gone? Things like that pop into your mind when you can’t fall asleep, when you wonder if you will have left the land of the living after the night is over. Should you, by some miracle, still be alive you know you’ll be dead-tired the next day when you have to stomp through two feet of snow for nearly a mile to get to your spot.

And that all for a chance to shoot a deer.

 So I’m asking again: What is the attraction?