Everything’s different—everything’s the same. Say what?
Remember the wonders of the Holiday season as a child? Out of school for Christmas break, this special time of year afforded the opportunity to spend quality time celebrating with family and friends. The bright colored lights, Christmas carols, highly-anticipated presents under the decorated tree, traditional meals around the family table, all bring back rich memories.
In the same way, time spent hunting with older relatives or family friends produced life-long memories of first deer, or vine-shaking squirrel hunts, or any of an endless variety of other exciting experiences. Cherished photographs often recorded such experiences for posterity.
The Holiday season still presents abundant opportunities to pass our hunting heritage along to younger people. The gift of a first shotgun or rifle certainly results in a cherished heirloom. More importantly, though, the gift of your time and attention devoted to teaching a kid about hunting will result in treasured memories which only grow richer with the passage of time.
Today’s fast-paced world is so very different than when you and I were kids. There are far more activities competing for people’s time—young people and grown folks alike.
Today’s young people are far busier, more sophisticated and worldly than we ever were. As a 9-year-old trapped in a 50-something-year-old body, I sometimes think I understand the mind of a 9-year-old. But I have to remind myself that the 9-year-old I understand—truly understand—is the 9-year-old of 1963. Rest assured he is a far cry from today’s child of 9.
However, thankfully some things never change. There is a part of every human being that lies not very far underneath the surface, that is very primal, to which hunting and fishing appeal. It’s in the head, and the heart, and the gut, I think. It’s the reason that every child, regardless of their upbringing, delights in pulling a fish from the water. For the same reason, you can connect with your son or daughter, or niece or nephew, or grandchild in a special way by taking them hunting.
For those of us who have no young relatives, borrowing a young person from friends, co-workers, or neighbors can enrich their life and yours. Many of my fondest memories of hunting and fishing experiences are of time spent with friends of my parents who borrowed me to take along. The influence of these special people is as strong today as it was the day they helped me catch that first bluegill or took me along on a turkey-roosting excursion.
One of the characteristics of 9-year-olds shared by all generations is the general inability to be still for long. This has not changed; in fact it may have grown worse. In a society with the attention span of a gnat, dominated by sound bites, social media, and many things all competing at once for people’s attention, it is difficult to get anybody to sit still for very long. So don’t insist on forcing a kid to sit in a deer stand or turkey blind or bass boat for half a day, unless you want to make them hate it. Instead, opt for a squirrel hunt combined with deer scouting, or a bank-fishing excursion using simple tackle and live bait for panfish.
And for goodness sake, don’t make them put the fish back. Keeping what they catch is a very important consideration to young anglers. For that matter, it’s important to most of us if we’ll admit it in the face of grossly overblown catch and release propaganda. Catch and release has its place in very specific fisheries management situations, but it is far from a universally-needed practice. More often than not, it is the product of zealots pushing it on the rest of us as “good conservation”.
Thankfully, there is no “kill and release” form of hunting. So keeping a gamebird or squirrel or rabbit or deer or turkey to eat is o.k. It’s an important part of hunting. Consuming what we kill is important to us as hunters, and it’s important in terms of public support for hunting. Public support for hunting is highest when game is taken for the table, and lowest when game is taken purely as a trophy.
For a very incisive, revealing view of the significance of eating what we kill, read Jim Miller’s three-part “A Personal Journey” on the huntingheritagefoundation.com website. Click on Promoting Public Understanding of the Profound Benefits of Hunting … under What the Hunting Heritage Foundation Stands For.
Thankfully, one of the things that has changed is that there are far more abundant game populations now than when you and I were kids. With the exception of quail, every game species is more abundant now than then. Land use practices, especially agricultural practices, are far different now that in the hey-day of the quail, which was in the era of the patch farm, an ephemeral memory for most of our fathers or grandfathers. However, you can even have huntable populations of quail now if you are willing and able to replicate the habitat of the patch-farm era. Fall disking of 3 to 5 acre openings is the key. The resulting weedy cover provides critical brood-rearing habitat for quail and turkeys alike.
The relative abundance of game populations today is a good match for the attention span of today’s people. The likelihood of seeing a deer is 93 times greater now than in 1940. The likelihood of hearing a turkey gobble is 45 times greater now than in 1940. So don’t get sucked into the notion that things were better back when. It just is not so.
As Boyd Kelly so aptly put it, “Thing’s just ain’t the way they used to be, and probably never were.”
Indeed much has changed—some things for the better; some things for the worse, depending on one’s perspective. However, much also remains the same. The innate human fascination with the natural world remains strong, perhaps in a more powerful way. In today’s world of concrete, steel, glass, and asphalt, there is a deep, un-satisfied yearning for a connection to nature and things wild and free. Hunting with family and friends is a great way to establish this connection, a way full of excitement and tradition.
What better time than the Holiday Season to introduce a kid to the unequaled hunting opportunities of today? Sharing our hunting heritage with others makes the experience richer by far.