Hunting New Beginnings - Adult Onset Hunter

To say that the morning was slow would be an injustice to the all too familiar day-long treestand sits with only a gray squirrel or two for company or marathon still hunts that yield nothing more than fresh air and pleasant views. It was a slow hunting morning, nonetheless. We’d been sitting in a roomy deer stand, nestled into the edge of some hardwoods, overlooking a rolling field of winter wheat. The stand, which was a sturdy box set fifteen feet in the air on a framework of pressure treated lumber, had most recently been claimed by a pair of barn owls, whom my grandfather had slowly been losing an eviction battle to. After getting arranged in our station in the predawn hours and waiting for the first leaks of light to spill across the landscape, we settled into a familiar pattern of glassing the empty field, checking our phones, glassing the empty field again, confusing swaying oak leaves with the flick of a doe’s ear, and trying to decipher the mess of owl detritus on the floor. So, when I heard the whistle of wings overhead followed by the telltale splash of birds putting down on the cattle pond behind us, I turned in my chair to watch the interlopers dragging V-shaped scars through the surface of the pond. I mentioned to Brittany that it seemed a little late in the season to still be seeing green-winged teal and wondered if I might have time to bring the dog up and sit the pond one last time before Christmas.

After a few minutes the small dabblers made their way into a pocket of the pond obscured by buck brush and bullrushes. We returned our attention to the field and a single doe grazing broadside at 200 yards. This was the perfect shot - the scenario we’d hoped for. Brittany quickly, and with more self-control than I often exhibit, donned her ears and eyes, shouldered the Model 110, and acquired a sight picture - just in time for the doe to start moving. Over the next few minutes, I walked her through the various scenarios of shot placement and timing as the deer meandered towards us, never halting, or showing us her broadside. When she finally paused long enough, though not in the orientation we’d hoped for, I encouraged her. “Breathe out. Put it on the top of her shoulder blade. Pull slow and steady…” she gave a restrained nod, “Bang!”

Brittany is the wife of one of my business partners and closest friends. Back in March she mentioned to me that she’d like to try hunting. Though she hadn’t grown up around hunting, or really even guns for that matter, she’d been inspired by a survival show she’d been watching while cooped up during the pandemic.  She admired the people pushing themselves beyond the limits of a comfortable present-day life. She had been galvanized as much by challenging herself - of testing her mettle - as by being able to put food on the table. “It’s one thing to think about hunting and try to picture if you could pull the trigger and another to actually KNOW that you can.” I sent her home with a wild game cookbook full of pictures and instructions on how to butcher and cook wild game. I also sent her home with a challenge.

This is where we come to a crux. Let me speak plainly about how I believe we need to introduce others to hunting. It’s important to make the entry into the experience smooth. It is easy to forget the obstacles to starting down this path that we love, especially if, like me, you’ve spent your whole life doing it. What gun do I need? What caliber? Where can I hunt? What do I do if the deer doesn’t die immediately? Will I fit in? Should I process my own animal? How do I prepare the meat? Am I hunting for the right reasons? The barriers to entry can be challenging to say the least. It is also important for new hunters to be invested. It has been my experience that hunting is one of the most rewarding, fulfilling and joy filled pursuits a human can get themselves mixed up with. At the same time, to bring death on another living creature is not trivial. While I believe that it is important for every person to not only have the opportunity to, but to also actively participate in the cycle of consumption that the modern world has so cleanly separated us from, I also believe that it’s not a thing to be entered into lightly. So, I made the offer: “If you get your Hunter’s Safety, I’ll take care of the rest.”

As spring progressed into summer Brittany regularly sent me updates on her progress. It was clear that she was serious. She shared what she was learning about how to safely and ethically take to the field. We talked about articles she’d read or videos and documentaries on hunting or public land we’d consumed. Most telling, though, she also shared a fair amount of honest self-reflection on what it felt like to enter into this new, and simultaneously ancient world. By fall it was apparent that we needed to get something on the books and so we settled on a weekend in early December to try to fill an antlerless whitetail tag.

With all the other questions answered, one big challenge remained: we needed to teach Brittany to shoot. This has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve experienced with new hunters (see the scar on my friend Kyle’s forehead where I learned the importance of asking not just “Have you shot a rifle before?” but “Have you shot a scoped rifle before?”). The issue, I believe, lies not only in the intimidation of mastering a skill that demands care, precision and a clear mind when your heart is racing and all the chemicals in your body seem to be putting up roadblocks, but also in learning a brand-new culture of behaviors and safety protocols surrounding an object that, to the uninitiated, can seem mysterious at best and inexplicably dangerous at worst.

A couple of weekends before the hunt, we headed up to the family cabin for an afternoon. We grabbed “The Bucky,” an old ATV that my grandfather keeps at the property and went for a spin around the land before checking out the stand. After discussing the plan and we headed back to the cabin where we set about getting Brittany comfortable, consistent, and confident with the gun. I started her off with a Savage Mark I GY, a rimfire rifle chambered in 22lr, to establish some good safety habits and get her comfortable with the process of how we sight in and shoot a gun. We then moved to the rifle she would use on the hunt, a Savage 110 Storm. Before we started shooting, we shortened the length of pull and adjusted the height of the comb using the AccuFit system, to make sure the gun felt natural, and the sight picture looked good.

After the gun was fit, we started sending three round groups down range, making adjustments, and repeating. She took to it like a duck to water, and by the end of the first box, she was shooting sub-moa groups at 100 yds. All my apprehension about her readiness was dispelled. We celebrated with some mule deer spaghetti and later, around the fire, talked through last minute hopes, questions, and concerns.

When time for the hunt came, we headed up Friday night, made dinner and got gear sorted out before heading to bed early in anticipation of Saturday’s early wake up call. I set my alarm for 5:00am but was wide awake twenty minutes before it sounded. I dressed in the dark and headed downstairs to find Jason had beat me to the coffee while Brittany was finishing getting ready. A cup later, we were ready to hunt and headed out into the dark of the morning.

Before this place found its way into our family’s hands, it had been a small but tidy homestead, populated, at the end of its life, by a woman at the end of her life. As we walked to the stand, we passed the memories of a once functioning farm like leafing through the pages of a family photo album - mundane and forgotten, but now brought to memory by the presence of someone new. The old shed, sheathed in quartersawn lumber and rusty corrugated tin, that once held a late model town car but now holds a 48” decked zero turn mower and a stack of sporting clays. The yard that used to hold an old barn where I once discovered that baby vultures sound like a running faucet when threatened by twelve-year-olds with sticks. The barn is gone and replaced mostly by locust trees but chokeberries but has also been sporting a fresh covey of quail the last few seasons. The cow pond no longer waters or cools cattle but holds more tiny bluegills than a kid could dream of catching on her princess fishing pole in an afternoon. I guess this would be the proper place to make analogies about how there is a beauty in the fact that the end of one thing often brings the birth of something else - how new life can only come from death - and how these bittersweet emotions are just like the feelings you get when you kill an animal, and it provides nourishment for your family. And that this unrivaled cocktail of elation and satisfaction you drink as the reward of a successful hunt is also mixed with gravity of bringing death upon something else. If I was going to make that analogy, this is where I’d make it, but that might be too heavy handed.

The doe lurched, ran ten yards, and ceased all movement. I poured out the remainder of the lukewarm coffee from my thermos as she unloaded her gun. Brittany talked through how she was feeling as we gave the nerves a minute to wear off. She later told me she had wondered if she would cry when she shot a deer. She wondered if she’d be able to hold it together while field dressing an animal that, in the grand scheme of things, is not so far removed from the pets we’ve domesticated and brought into our homes and lives. Brittany was steady as she coolly processed the events that had just unfolded. As we retraced our path from that morning, we discussed things in that nervous way you do when you’re waiting for the adrenaline to subside. She took to field dressing like an old hand, fascinated not only by the process, but also the substance. When we’d finally emptied the chest cavity, she carefully picked through the offal until she found the heart, split through the middle, I kid you not, by her bullet - I guess we got it dialed in.

After a quick breakfast, the rest of the day was spent breaking down the animal. We enjoyed another campfire that night, telling hunting stories and processing this new chapter of her life. Before taking off the next morning, we made plans to get together to make some sausage and some dinner. The reality of the matter is that the hunt itself is only the first of many potential stumbling blocks. How do I best preserve the meat? How do I cook whitetail? Will I be able to do this on my own? Should I try another species? Whatever the questions, I’ll try to be there, not provide the answers, but to support her in finding her own.

I hope it takes, and after what I had the privilege of witnessing, I think it will. I want more people participating in hunting and the outdoors. I want more people to take part in this wonderful system that belongs to all of us. I believe that the best thing we can do for the outdoors is to get more people to care about the outdoors. It’s twice as many people watching out for threats to our public resources, twice as many people putting money directly into conservation, and twice as many people helping break down my deer so I’m not late to dinner. After all many hands make light work.