It’s funny how you change over the years, and you’re the last to know it.  Someone posted a pic of me on Facebook the other day from 1984.  I turned 25 in ’84.  Yikes! Who is that skinny guy with no beard?

I’ve had something bugging me lately.  It has to do with this post:

Deer Hunting Rituals

Something didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t figure out why, and I’ve been trying to write about it, but it all kind of sounded like I had been staring at my belly button too long.  This morning, I woke up thinking about it, and it came to me:  I’d changed (Duh!).

The change is real simple:  I’ve gone from being a hunter who hunts to be one with Nature to a guy who hunts to be with hunters.  The Nature part of it is still all part of it, but I’m doing that more  on a year ’round basis. Hunting has become much more of a social event for me.  I’m not any less a part of Nature.  I’m just more sociable about it.

Back in 1984,  getting out and away from “The Hole” was a treat.  I was the proprietor of a perpetual party. Some called it a salon, a happening, a . . . well, it was just a lot of people hanging around all the time.   If I wasn’t working, I was immersed in The Black Hole Coffee House, and when the idea of going out and going hunting came up, I was ready for the trip.  Being off by myself or with my hunting buddies for a few days by myself was great. I decompressed form work.  I decompressed from The Hole.  I let myself loose.

Then one day, I realized The Hole was gone,  I was stuck in a bum marriage to Satan, my #1 wife, and hunting was the only way I could get out and have some time to myself, and the part about being alone and out in Nature got to be the thing I lived for.  That went on for years.

But where were the deer in all this?  Frankly, there were not that many deer in all this.  Herds where I was hunting were not as big as they are now.  You could go all season and hardly see one.  It probably didn’t help that I was not all that great a hunter in those days, but I stuck to it. I liked being out, and I liked being out alone.

Fast forward.  Ten years ago.  I got the farm, and I had a new wife that didn’t dig hunting, but liked coming along to camp.  I had two sons that dug hunting in a big way, and pretty soon I was immersed in helping them along. Little by little I found I had to fight to be off by myself.  However, at the same time, I found it was no longer as important.

My friend, Peter, put it this way:  “Sociable?  You call yourself sociable?  You go out every weekend and sit in the middle of 200 acres of woods with a gun in your lap and you call yourself “sociable?”

The deer and turkey cooperated too.   I went from hunting marginal plots near Cincinnati to my own 200 acres of prime deer and turkey territory.  The farm is in Kentucky’s Zone 1. You can take as many doe as you want, but the numbers keep climbing.   The turkeys are plentiful too.  In 1984, I considered it a triumph to be able to see a deer in a weekend.  Now I have a hard time being out where I don’t knock up a bunch of them.  Deer are no longer mystical beings to me.  They’re more like ornery tenants.

The last piece of this transformation was having my shoulder go bad.  Once I stopped bowhunting and became primarily a rifle hunter, I found hunting was not the headache it used to be.  Instead of hours and hours practicing at a target, I’m now able to scout more.  Instead of October being the month of eternal struggle and frustration, I can take quiet walks in the woods and enjoy Nature– knowing full well that in a month or so, I’m going to be back out with a 30-06 and filling the freezer.

So one day I wake up and find myself a changed man.  Solitude is no longer at a premium.  Nature is now crawling up my leg and lying in wait for me in the bushes.    Instead of the lone archer on 200 acres, I’m now the huntmaster of a burgeoning deer camp, and when I pull a rifle down off the rack I know that within a couple of hours, I’ll be eyeing something brown and soft and trying to make up my mind if I want it in my freezer or up on my wall.

So there you have it, a not-so-quick explanation of how I’ve changed as a deer hunter and how deer hunting has changed me.  Maybe this is why I’ve stopped praying over dead deer and thanking God for the Solitude and spend more time thanking God for the chance to be at Camp and to hunt with family and friends.

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