Even before the film started, my antennae were up. Cath and I had gone to the January 25th screening of Mother Nature’s Child: Growing Outdoors in the Media Age out of general curiosity. The documentary’s message would, I expected, be much like that presented by Richard Louv’s compelling book Last Child in the Woods. In … Read more
Experts have not yet determined whether Adult-Onset Hunting™ (AOH) is an epidemic. What they do know is that thousands of people are afflicted. More than a year ago, it was known—and reported in a widely read New York Times article—that a growing number of U.S. citizens had the condition. According to a recent article in … Read more
A year—in this case, a year of blogging—goes by in a flash. I can hardly believe it’s been that long already. Back at the six-month mark, I realized it was high time to acknowledge the many folks who helped get my blog rolling, and to offer a few reflections on the weirdness of Google searches. … Read more
As I contemplated becoming a hunter, words helped. It was good, for instance, to read Richard Nelson’s introduction to A Hunter’s Heart. There, I caught a glimpse of his journey: from a boyhood of believing that “hunting was entirely evil—no matter who did it, how they did it, or why,” to an adulthood in which … Read more
I disposed of the lead fragment and picked through the rest of the venison carefully. I hoped none of my bullets would ever come apart like that again.
Don’t try too hard, some folks say. Desperation can drive the deer away. The less you expect, the more animals you see. How this philosophy dovetails with the undeniable value of perseverance, I’m not sure. But there may be something to it. In my first few years as a hunter, I dragged home exactly zero … Read more
A few nights ago, coyotes yipped and howled nearby. I was delighted to hear them. Granted, I was in bed at the time. My sentiments would, I suspect, be substantially different if I was, say, deep in the woods with a turned ankle and no flashlight. The next day I got thinking about those wild … Read more