Inspired to post from another thread on CWT.com.

[WinMag]

After reading another thread on here tonight about shutting hunts down and or what size rack to shoot or not shoot I thought I would share this. I wrote it a few years ago in response to a friend (Non Hunter) who questioned why I hunt and yet come home without an animal being bagged on every hunt.

 

Please feel free to share your comments and or your own story. I’m not sure I may have already posted this short story on CWT before but I don’t remember if I did.

 

Why do I hunt?

 

I spend my time in the woods with friends that I consider family. From this I find a brotherhood that shares the same interest and respect of a heritage that has been passed down to us over the years.

 

Everything I do on a hunt or before a hunt is intended on getting my animal but that is not my measure of a successful hunt. If it was I would have burned out on hunting years ago. It’s me the outdoors and the animal. This is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t use electronics on my hunt or trail cameras as I don’t consider that ethical hunting. But that is just my opinion only, respectfully to each their own.

 

My measure of success on a hunt comes in many ways. Learning new things or new methods from people with different experience improves a person who is willing to open the mind. Sharing ideas and creating a solution to achieve a goal as a team builds character. This team is not built in the field but rather in the camp and then applied in the field individually by all members with the same shared goal.

 

Of course it is the time in the outdoors finding out who we are and what we are made of. There is nothing like the smell of a cold crisp morning when the chill gets right down to your bones. That’s when you find out what you are made of. Do you have to stay there or can you go back to camp and sit around the nice warm fire with a hot coffee. Sure you can, but then you will know what you’re made of.

 

The feeling you get when you have an animal in your sights sometimes at long range and others when you can smell the animal 5 yards away from you. Your heart beating at rates you can’t achieve by running alone, even uphill over long distance. When it snorts and blows snot all over you but still can’t see you. Realizing depending on what you’re hunting it can turn on you and make you the hunted. Knowing that at any moment even the sound of your breath or a blink of your eyes can scare it away. That is when you realize you’re alive and you have a decision to make. Is this encounter worth the shot to call it a successful hunt? At times yes it’s a no brainer, but the hunt is over and the challenge is gone for that moment.

 

I find my success or reason for hunting in what brought me there. My friends, my family, the camaraderie and an opportunity to know I’m alive with the freedom to live my life on my terms. In all honesty, I really could hunt with a Kodak camera and have a successful hunt.

 

 

Shane Bloomfield

 

Edit: BTW I do hold out for the (my) right animal on every hunt, and as a result I come home to tag soup on a lot of my hunts. But that is ok, my hunts are always a success . But I have no problem with those that shoot the first legal animal they see no matter what size it is. They have their reasons I'm sure and it is not mine to question it.

[cosninocanines]

Well stated, I may not remember everything about every hunt but my time in a blind or sitting in the crease of a rock wall alone with my thoughts and hope's is what it's about for me.