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?
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