For some hunters, especially those new to the sport, the only apparent goal is to harvest an animal. Any day spent in the field that doesn’t result in a kill is thought of as a failure. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When one goes to great lengths to set aside a block of time, camo up, de-scent, hike in and then sit for hours on end, never moving a muscle, it would be easy to measure success in terms of meat for the freezer. But the truth of the matter is that the very act of suiting up, hiking in and then observing the natural surroundings for hours on end, without moving at all, means one has to be comfortable with complete stillness.
Sitting for hours without moving any muscle requires a level of discipline, muscle control, concentration and focus unlike any other sport. It is meditative beyond anything most people would ever attempt.
When one sits in the woods for hours completely camouflaged without moving a muscle, one essentially becomes part of the flora. That means that insects, birds, raccoons, lizards, snakes, possums, deer, hogs and every other kind of critter all move in security.
This allows one to truly get a feel for what the forest is like when we are not there. It is remarkably satisfying to blend in so perfectly that a bird lands on your shoulder or a raccoon walks by 20 feet away.
And when your prey suddenly appears, there is a shot of adrenalin the likes of which I have only ever felt when scoring a touchdown in a big football game or winning a sprint in competitive cycling. It is astonishing. I have heard it referred to as “buck fever”; when the adrenaline hits, your heart rate doubles, your breathing rate increases and muscle control becomes much more challenging.
Everything becomes super intense...it is the predator’s response to knowing that a life or death situation is here. As far as I can tell, it is the same for every kind of predator. This is especially true in the kind of close-quarter hunting I practice and teach. Seeing your prey 30 yards away means you see every movement of their muscles and they will see any movement of yours.
On those days when no animal suitable for harvesting appears, you may spend 4, 5 or 6 hours in the field without ever taking aim at anything. Early on in my hunting life, I would get frustrated.
It was only after hunting for a couple of years that I realized every day spent hunting provides learning opportunities and more importantly, spending time in the woods like that provides the chance for one to see remarkable things. It may be a hawk taking a squirrel, a bird landing on your shoulder, a turtle make its way across the forest floor or a weather front coming in.
Every one of those things is a reminder that we are just passing through this world and that there are remarkably beautiful things happening all around us, every day.
When I have one of those moments when I observe a remarkable occurrence in the natural world, I count them as ‘nature points’. Every single time I sit in the woods, I experience one, and usually more.
It may be as small as the way a leaf falls, curling around and around on its way to the ground. It may be an inch-worm contracting and expanding its body to travel to the very end of a tree branch, only to run out of support and have to turn around and go back down the way it came.
Or it has been watching a box turtle navigate its way around a fallen log and realizing that the turtle already knew that log was there and had planned its route accordingly.
No matter what the event, those are the payoffs one gets when committing time to being completely still in nature, for hours on end. Nature points - It may not be food for the freezer but it is definitely sustenance for the soul.
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