I've been a hunter of wild game, both big and small, for over 30 years. Small game hunting, for me, has involved chasing ruffed grouse and ducks. The only big game I've ever hunted is whitetail deer, and only during rifle season. This year, for the first time (other than a lame attempt in high school) I've dabbled in archery hunting for deer. By "dabbled" I mean: A) I'm using a bow that's older than me, B) I've practiced enough to usually hit my target and almost never hit my house, and C) my total hunting time in archery season ended up being less than the total time I hunt in one day of rifle season. In short, I've barely experienced archery hunting. My limited hunting hours, though, made me aware of several great lessons about life.
My dad and I have spent the last two decades creating a hunting paradise on and around my parents' property. We have miles of cleared and mowed trails, acres of varied habitat, water sources, food plots, thousands of planted trees, and wildlife sanctuaries that are off limits to human intrusion. Almost everything we've done has been for the benefit of deer and those who hunt them (Dad and I). For years we've talked about hunting with bows so we could hunt more than the two weeks of rifle season; this year we stopped talking and started bowhunting. Naivety makes a poor guide, however; we quickly discovered our rifle hunting paradise was a bowhunting nightmare.
This past summer I attended a three-day professional development class called Top 20 Training. Among the many topics taught in this powerful class was the concept of The Frame - being able to adjust one's own point of view to not only see differently, but feel differently, too. In preparing to bowhunt I did everything I thought I needed to do to be a successful bowhunter: I took my bow to an archery shop to have it inspected and restrung. I bought new arrows and a target. I practiced, practiced, and practiced shooting. I researched proper shooting postures and techniques. I found camouflage clothing. I determined which of our current rifle stands would make the best archery stands....and that was my error. I looked at archery through the frame of rifle hunting, which didn't reveal itself as error until the minute I climbed into a stand on my first hunting evening.
All of our deer stands....most of our deer stands have railings around them for two purposes - safety and support. It's nice to have something to hang on to for security when standing eight to ten feet above the ground, especially at those times when a hunter might fall asleep standing up. Yes, that does happen. When shooting time finally arrives a sturdy set of railings provides a quality gun rest when taking aim, increasing the likelihood of a clean shot and quick kill. However, when holding a bow in hand those safe, secure railings become nothing more than a straightjacket, constricting the hunter's ability to even lift the bow, let alone draw the arrow back for a shot. Lesson learned: Our supports, when looked at through a different frame, might actually be inhibiting us from growth, success, or joy. Could be friends, could be a relationship, could be a job, could be habits...could be many things. What if what we seek is hidden because of what we have? Hmmmmm......
For my second evening of hunting I chose a different stand, one built for sitting that had lower railings I felt I could shoot over when standing. I also thought this stand offered clearer shooting lanes; the area around the previous night's stand was a little brushy. Got in the stand and stood up to practice drawing back....and promptly stuck my head into balsam branches. Yes, I could "stand up" in this stand, but standing straight enough to shoot was out of the question unless I was carrying a saw in my pocket (I was not). First lesson learned on this night: There is standing up, and there is standing tall. Standing up takes effort, standing tall takes courage. Standing up is done with others, standing tall is done in spite of others. Standing up is relatively risk-free, standing tall occurs amidst a swirling storm of trouble. Standing up is not always good enough....and would not be on this night.
So I couldn't stand like I had hoped, but I still had those clear shooting lanes....except for that single popple branch.....and that sapling......and those ferns.....and that clump of brush. For the north woods rifle hunter this spot is nearly brush free; aside from sitting on the edge of a field you just don't hunt in North Central Minnesota without at least some hazel brush obscuring your sight lines. But as I now looked at this "open" area through the frame of a bowhunter I noticed small obstacles in every spot that, for a rifle hunter, offered a clear shot. One small branch is no match for a bullet, but for an arrow that branch will be a shot altering menace. Another lesson learned: The small stuff matters. We are constantly advised "don't sweat the small stuff", advice that does have its merits for those who are prone to worry and stress. But details matter, usually more than the main idea, and if we don't frame situations correctly to know when to sweat those details...our worry and stress might intensify as we repeatedly fail to achieve our goals.
Evening number three found me in yet another stand, about 200 yards west of the "not-as-clear-as-I-thought" stand. By the way, in two evenings of hunting I had yet to see a deer; all of these lessons learned had not been the result of missed opportunities. In fact, my learned lessons led me to stand location number three. When I put this stand up in April I did it while looking through the frame of a bowhunter. The stand had no railing (stay awake! STAY AWAKE!!) so I easily came to full draw in all directions. I had removed all branches to a height above my head earlier this summer, so standing tall was not a problem. I had good sight lines in three directions with multiple brush-free lanes to shoot through. This was it - I was set! I finally was in a situation that would allow me to hunt the way I wanted to hunt (Why it took me three nights to arrive at the stand I had prepared for bow hunting is no mystery....lesson learned: Being dum makes lif hard.) The evening was beautiful, the excitement palpable, the deer....nonexistent. There wasn't much deer sign here. My trail camera had given me few pictures of anything I wanted to shoot. I never spook deer away from here. Did I mention it was a beautiful evening?
The next day (after another deerless hunt) I pulled the card from my trail camera that hung by stand number two. The entire time I was in stand number three - 200 yards away, remember - there were deer feeding next to stand number two. Lesson learned: Be where the action is. Sure I had created a near-perfect spot for bowhunting, but my scouting and research told me the deer weren't using that spot very much. We do this same thing in life far too often - get stubborn or nearsighted or close-minded about what we think should be so rather than realizing what is so. My quest to be in a stand that I could shoot from led me away from the stand that actually had something to shoot at. Nice work.
My dabbling in archery has all but ended for the year. Rifle season is three days (Three days!) away and I haven't shot my bow in nearly two weeks. I will take it along when I head North to rifle hunt, on the chance a nice evening feels like a bowhunting opportunity. But a final lesson has been eating at me since the first night I hunted: Sometimes what we think we want isn't as good as what we've always had. I've wanted to bowhunt for years. Decades, even. But as soon as I climbed into that first stand I realized I was spending a gorgeous fall evening NOT grouse hunting. And the trails I needed to clean weren't getting cleaned because I wanted to avoid spooking deer prior to an evening hunt. And the annual October four-day weekend that has always been a relaxing getaway from the normal schedule of life had become blocked into chunks of time that would allow me to quickly hunt birds, do a little prep for rifle season, and hunt with my bow - which was exhausting! Life is all about making choices, of course, and I had made mine. But maybe I had chosen....poorly. With choice comes opportunity cost; the cost of bowhunting had been the loss of grouse hunting, thorough preparation for rifle hunting, and my favorite extended weekend of the year. A steep cost for an activity that gave me very little in return. When looking through my hunting frame I had only seen what I wasn't doing; probably should've noticed that my frame was nearly full of activities I truly love.
Thank you, dear reader, for stopping by and reading my thoughts. I hope they make sense once in a while and that you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them. I also hope you're beginning to realize, at least a little bit, that hunting means so much more to me than simply pulling a trigger. I'll be back on Friday evening when I post the first in a series of daily blogs about my opening week of rifle season. I'm eager to hit the woods and to share my adventures with you. Until then....
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