All posts by Shawn West

I've been tagging along hunting with my family and friends since I was eight years old. Over twenty years later I still hunt waterfowl, wild turkeys, deer, and small game whenever I get a chance. "Get Out & Go Hunting" combines my two passions, hunting and writing about hunting. Hope you enjoy it, and if you like what you read, please subscribe to have posts delivered to you via e-mail or feed reader.
duck calling, duck hunting, goose calling, goose hunting, waterfowl hunting

The Primacy of Waterfowling

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As with most things you’ve read here, what follows is a matter of opinion.  If you and I are similarly-minded, then I imagine we are not going to have too much to debate in the below ramblings.  If we are found to not share such ideals, then I defer to the time-proven axiom of “to each their own” and I can still share the field with you if you’d have me.

I haven’t hunted African plains game, and may never get the chance. 
I am a neophyte by most standards in that I possess less than a decade in the turkey woods, although I am a full convert to that particular aspect of our religion. 
My deer hunting experience is of less than a score of years, which is as much an accident of birth and the public policy at the time of my hunting certification as it is a function of my love of stalking the ghosts of the fall woods. 
Small game was once a deep passion, although a shortage of suitable hounds and a personal disinclination as I grow older to spend time in cold winds and deep snow has dulled my desire to chase grouse and rabbits.  Perhaps the acquisition of a sleek beagle may rekindle those fires, but for now they smolder low.
Moose hunting, while available, has always played second fiddle to deer hunting for me.
Predator hunting, while exciting and raw, often lacks the payoff of promised game meat for the eating.
Elk, bears of all fashions, antelope, and the like are all unavailable to me, for reasons of logistics, time, and finances respectively.
What the list above details are two things.  First, there is a literal glut of riches available to the North American sportsman.  Secondly, at least for me, is that all of the above opportunities finish behind the pursuit of waterfowl as the act that most defines my hunting experience.
My dad is a deer hunter.  He loves the ducks dropping in and the geese turning and cycling down into a set up as much as I do, but if you asked him what he’d rather be doing, he would say deer hunting every time.  I’ve had similar conversations with a couple of my cousins and friends and they all fall on the side of deer hunting, although there are a few that are fast becoming converts to the hallowed tradition of chasing wild turkeys.
Perhaps it is my instinctual desire to dissent from the group, perhaps it is my relative lack of success in killing deer and turkeys, or maybe, like the Grinch, my head isn’t screwed on just right.  Whatever the case may be, hunting ducks and geese tops my list of preferred hunting trips, although that’s a lot like trying to rate pizza versus ice cream versus sex.  I suppose you could prioritize them if you wanted to, but you really would never turn any of them down.  Hunting is like that.
Carrying on.
It is true that I love waterfowling above all else, and frankly, what isn’t there to love?  Sure the weather can be awful, but at the end of the day, you don’t have to go out in it if you don’t really want to.  Yet time and time again, a multitude of duck and goose hunters are out in the most tragically terrible weather, getting frost-nipped, wind-whipped, and generally cold, soaked and miserable.  And why is that, you ask?  Two reasons: first the ducks and geese don’t seem to care; in fact it seems that often the hunting gets better the worse the climate is.  But the secret, untold second reason is that waterfowlers need that lousy weather to make them feel like they are truly ‘hunting’.  Just as deer hunters need the fall colours and the cool in the air, and houndsmen need the bay of a dog to set the atmosphere, so it is with the men and women that chase after webbed feet and billed birds.  I’ve had good shoots on bluebird days, but the best ones that I recall had some pretty drizzly, damp and all around unpleasant weather.  It just made it ‘feel’ right.
Another niche that I fit cozily into when it comes to duck and goose hunting is the calling.  Although a strong argument can be made on behalf of a gobbler, few other animals respond to calling and decoys like waterfowl do.  All my life I have been intrigued by the language of animals (and languages in general, but that’s another story), and the way that hunting allows me to more or less ‘talk’ with ducks and geese is a thrill that I simply cannot get enough of.  Listening to the birds as they work, and watching their body language as they respond positively and negatively to the sounds you are feeding them is both education and exhilaration.  My favourite memory from calling waterfowl came on a breezy, cool, sunny day in late September.  Our camp group was working a small flock of about nine geese, and they were making wide circles as they eyed up our spread.  As they made what turned out to be their second-last pass, I made a low moan on my call, and to my astonishment, one of the geese mimicked it exactly.  Not similarly, not comparably, but precisely the same note, tone, and duration.  Naturally, I made the same call again (which may shock those of my friends who accuse me of never making the same sound twice) and the goose answered back again with the same sound.  So back and forth for five or six more sequences this goose and I made the same sounds.  It would call then I would call the same note back, and as their broad circle tightened and then straightened into a final approach I had a ripple of adrenaline course through me.  I was talking this bird, and the group that was with it, right into where we needed them to be.  And that was the point.  We took home five or six out of the group, and while I scratched down one of them, I can’t say for sure if the bird I got was the one that was communicating with me, or whether that bird was even in the bag at all.  But it didn’t matter of course, because aside from the feeling of accomplishment that comes from tricking a supremely evolved specimen of wildlife into a trap, I knew that for even a few short minutes I was intentionally communicating with a wild animal using their language, which was beyond anything I had done or experienced before.
I consider waterfowl to be some of the most delicious wild game meat I’ve ever eaten.  And I’m going to go so far as to be on record say something that some may find controversial.  Geese are delicious too.  Now I’ve heard from reputable sources that speckled-belly goose meat is the height of epicurean delights, and I’ve had some of the best roasted ducks out there (although the orgasmically tasty canvasback has long eluded me) but foremost I think Canada geese get a bad reputation when it comes to the plate.  Now before I continue I will say this; I have eaten some absolutely atrocious Canada goose meat, but that particular platter was filled with birds that were primarily “suburban geese”, and I don’t mean geese with mortgages and family sedans.  I was hunting with a friend on a farm that was just barely beyond the city limits of Guelph.  I believe we were legally hunting by about 50 yards.  We were helping out a farmer that my friend knew, and he had often complained of the geese, so we took a trip out to thin the numbers a bit.  Upon scouting we found that the birds were spending most of their day at a local public park about three kilometers away.  We shot three or four and upon consuming them the next day, I can safely say I have never eaten any wild game as unpleasant as those few birds.  Although I think they were eating some grain on this farm, I attribute most of their flavour to them eating chemically fertilized grass and what I can only assume was their own feces for most of their days.  Really “wild” geese, the kind that truly migrate and spend limited time in urban/suburban areas have never troubled me with their flavour.  In fact, a good late season goose with a layer of corn and grain fed fat on them is so darn good roasted and stuffed with apples, lemons, and rosemary that I could never think of skinning them for their breast and leg meat.  Early season geese aren’t as succulent in terms of that, and they usually are still a bit “pinny” as we say, so more often than not that meat goes into the grinder, which isn’t a bad way to enjoy the fruits of a goose hunt either.  Last year we took a pin-feathered mallard drake that was not even two hours expired (talk about fresh organic!) and made a great little appetizer by butterflying the breasts and then pan frying them with the whole, skinned legs.  We rarely go hungry during duck and goose season.
The atmosphere of the goose hunt itself also endears it further to me.  I do enjoy the silent solitude of deer and turkey hunting, but silence is mandated by the nature of the prey.  Deer, and to an even greater extent, wild turkeys have incredibly acute hearing.  I’m not disputing the hearing of a duck or a goose, but I find the waterfowl hunting experience just slightly more gregarious for those doing the hunting.  First off, we almost always do this a pretty large group.  Five or more at a minimum.  It is just too labour intensive with decoys, blinds, guns, ammunition and the assorted paraphernalia to not have many hands to make the work light.  In fact some of us take it much lighter than others.  Secondly this group mentality makes it easy to have a good time.  We often just stand in a ditch or along a well-concealed fencerow and half-shout jokes and barbs at each other.  We tell amusing stories about our spouses, friends of friends, or the hunting companions that have gone before us, some of whom have sadly departed.  We laugh and giggle until we weep, we try out each other’s calls, and we generally have a raucous time, all the while eyeing the horizon and the heavens for birds.  When we miss, we taunt and deride each other’s failures as human-beings, and when we succeed everyone claims the credit simultaneously, particularly if one of the many birds that hit the ground is wearing jewelry.
Since some of us purchased layout blinds, the experience has changed only slightly.  We still do all of the above, we just do it from a reclined position.
I could wax poetic about the time-honoured history of waterfowling in North America, about how it built economies and industries, of how it nearly died as a tradition in the early 1900’s, and how it has staged a comeback.  I could tell the indigenous inhabitants of North America’s legends related to ducks and geese that I have learned.  I could write about the powers of survival possessed by ducks and geese (powers that I have read about, heard about, and witnessed personally).  I could go on at length about the conservation successes originated by Delta Waterfowl and Ducks Unlimited, and I could lecture on our need to be even better conservationists to preserve our privilege to keep hunting ducks and geese.  There is just so much to tell of and to write about.  I’ve had more hunts than I can literally remember, and I’m not even 35 yet.  Think of the stories I have and that everyone else has that go untold; those that hunker in saw grass blinds, corn rows, flooded rice, and sinkboxes.
I haven’t even talked about retrievers yet.
In the end though what I say is likely just things that have been said before and known of for ages.  For my part I don’t need convincing.  As someone who loves and studied history, there is just far too much tradition, both personal and in the preceding years for me to ignore.
For those that do need convincing though, think about those histories while you are making your own.  And going forward, when you watch them lock up and drop in, as you thumb off the safety, rise and shout “Take ‘em!” or “Now!” or “Cut ‘em!” or whatever it is that you’ve made your war-cry, make sure that you commit those ones to your memory too.
Because when the hunt is over, that’s all we get to hang on to.  Until the next day out duck hunting that is.
2013 turkey odyssey, hunting, turkey and turkey hunting

Hunting for Therapy

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When the phone rang at 4:15 in the morning, I knew it was bad news.  Those phone calls mean someone either passed away or that someone had just had a baby.  I didn’t know anyone who was pregnant.
What I did know, however, was that my mother was approaching the inevitable end of a four-year battle with bone cancer.  With recovery not an option and treatments being more than she could endure, she had recently chosen to cease treatment and had been admitted into a local hospice center, where things were certainly not looking good.  When I heard my father’s voice on the other end of the phone, I knew to expect the next words.  Mom had gone in the night, peacefully and with Dad at her bedside.  We talked briefly about the plans for the day, and agreed to meet later in the morning as a family.  I presume Dad then called my brother and anyone else he was going to relay the news to while my wife and I shared a quiet cry.
Later that day, after collecting all of Mom’s personal items from her hospice room and thanking the staff at Hospice Simcoe (an organization that by the way should be top priority for any and all charitable donations going forward…they are simply amazing) we gathered back at the house as a family and just reflected on the past and future.  I can’t recall if it was me or Dad that broached the issue, but somewhere along the line we agreed that a turkey hunt the next morning would be therapeutic; if for no other reason than to have some solitude in the woods to reflect on everything we had been through both individually and as a family.  Mom had been adamant in her final days that life should go on, and like most in her situation I presume, she only wanted the lives of the people she loved to be full of joy and the things they loved.  She was a miracle that way.  Although she never hunted, she made it a top priority that her husband and her kids had every chance to partake in the tradition, primarily because (as she said) she saw that we loved it and she saw how close it made the family.
So with that it was settled and I pulled into my parent’s driveway at 4:45am the next day.  Dad was already outside waiting with his gear and we hustled down the road to where we going to hunt.  The faintest sliver of dim daylight was starting to creep across the eastern horizon, but it was as dank as possible under the canopy of hardwoods and evergreens.  I had heard some gobblers in this chunk of woods twice before in the season, and I had laid eyes on the two long-bearded culprits the week before when they appeared out a misty, drizzly morning and skirted my decoy and calling at 100 yards.  They had been with two hens, and even though I pleaded with them at first and then subsequently tried to start a fight with the boss hen, they weren’t having anything to do with me that day.  Now I was back, and although in a completely different frame of mind, I was still hoping to take one of those tom gobblers back to my oven.
In the pre-dawn I set up facing north and with a gentle breeze blowing across my face I watched the field and forest edges in front of me turn from grey to silver to gold as the sun crept up to my right.  It was a calm, still morning and even though there was a slight breeze, there was nary a leaf to rustle: much of the forest was still in the early stages of budding green.  At a quarter to six in the morning, I snapped a nice photo of my setup before starting my tree-calling and fly down sequence.
The whines, purrs, clucks, and yelps from my slate wafted out over the field and the acoustics of my set up were near-perfect.  As I stepped up my calling into fly-down cackles and some plain yelps, I could hear the slightest echo from the trees in front of me, and as though my calling was nature’s alarm clock, the woods around me sprung to life.  Almost on cue the crows hammered in the distance, mallards chatted and gabbled on an unseen pond, red-winged blackbirds serenaded me, a pair of geese circled low in front, and then to the right and far back behind me I heard a gobbler.  Then I heard the other.  I couldn’t stifle the smile: those two longbeards were still in this block.  Ten minutes after that I heard soft steps on the trail twenty steps behind me, and I put both hands on my gun, hoping to shortly be drawing a bead on a red turkey head.  I purred and softly yelped to my unseen quarry and was shocked at the response I received.  Instead of a chorus of gobbling turkeys, a deer began snorting to my left.  This was coincidentally my downwind side.  Seconds later two deer popped out into the field at thirty-five yards and continued to look my way and snort at me for a full two minutes.  At the same time another deer popped up on my right and trotted out to stand broadside in one of my shooting lanes, where the handsome animal stared directly at me and stomped its foot repeatedly.  Eventually the trio of whitetails grew bored of this and moved off down the field, but I was certain that I was ‘made’ to any turkeys in the area.  I cutt hard on my mouth call and did some aggressive yelping.  Not hearing a response, I was sure that the deer had spooked the birds and that I was just pissing in the wind…figuratively that is.
Feeling busted, I just sat there listening to the wilderness and thinking about Mom.  Life had already changed so much since she had been diagnosed in 2009, and my oldest son who had been born that same year had grown up into a boy that had known a grandmother that couldn’t play with him, couldn’t pick him up, couldn’t even bathe or put him to bed.  That she loved him utterly was obvious, and she spoiled him even more as a way of compensating…which was fine.  For me, I was struck by the unfairness of the whole thing, and not feeling sorry for myself but for the life’s potential that the disease had taken from my mother, I admittedly went rapidly through several stages of grief all at once.  Simultaneously I was sad, angry, and utterly exhausted.  I shed a few soft tears, and tried to make sense of it all, the whole time knowing that at the very least my mother’s suffering, which at times had been intensely difficult, had come to an end.  Life going forward was going to be even more drastically changed; my youngest son, just barely a year old, would not have any impactful memories of my mother at all, and knowing that had torn her up.  She had often in the last weeks of her life ordered me to make sure my youngest son knew how much she loved him, knew what kind of person she was, and knew her story.  Both my wife and I had promised her over and over again that we wouldn’t shirk our duties on that front.
Now I can’t pretend to know how long it was that I sat there like that or where in my mind I was when it happened, but I casually looked to my left and was shocked to see three turkeys running, or more accurately, sprinting across the field at a distance in excess of two-hundred yards.  They were making for the tree line opposite to me, and instinctively I just cackled and yelped as loud as I could on my Woodhaven Copperhead mouth call.  All three stopped like they had hit a wall and two of the three gobbled.  It was those longbeards, and at first glance they seemed to be accompanied by a hen.  I yelped and cutt again and the toms went into strut.  Instantly, all the anger and grief went onto a shelf and all I could think about was drawing those tricksters in to my gun barrel.
But again I was to be outwitted by a bird that is utterly perfect in its wariness.  Despite having a brain the size of two almonds, both of those birds did not like the looks of the setup.  Maybe it was that my decoy wasn’t moving, maybe it was because the calling was emanating from a thicket twenty yards away from the fraudulent hen, or maybe they had just played this game a couple of more times than I had.  Whatever the reason, the two toms strutted and gobbled and spun perpendicular to my shotgun bead at a distance of eighty or ninety yards, and once they reached a hilltop directly opposite me they just stood there hammering double gobbles and looking gorgeous in the rising sun.  They shone like iridescent beacons on top of that knoll and for a few moments I was oblivious to the other turkey that was with them.  But then I caught it moving and with a slow tilt of my head I could see that it was not a hen.  It was a jake that had been running with the two toms, and he was sneaking in closer and closer to my decoy.  Each time the gobblers would hammer out a call the jake would stop and look their way before taking another three or four slow steps my way.  Deciding that the gobblers would soon run this juvenile pretender off, I resolved on the spot to lure the jake in.  Yelping and clucking softly I coaxed him to within sixty yards, at which point he gobbled like a donkey and broke into a half-strut run for my decoy.  I took my eyes off him and looked in anticipation to the two toms…surely they would be making a beeline for my set up now.  Shockingly they hadn’t moved from their spot on the knoll.
The jake meanwhile had made a large circle around my setup and was now approaching from my left at a distance of what I thought was about forty yards.  He was alternating between half-strut and full periscope and I made his stub of a beard out against the background.  Four steps later he entered my shooting lane with his head upright and angled slightly forward.  My 870 barked and I saw his head whip back around behind his left wing as the load of Federal #6 shot carried out its assignment.  He began to flop and shed feathers and as the longbeards made a cackling, hasty exit to stage left I strode out to retrieve and tag him.  It was a longer walk than I had anticipated and at forty-eight steps I had my boot heel on his neck.  My trusted 870 had sent the Federal Mag-Shok #6’s through an HS Undertaker, and that trio had more than done the job.  I counted more than a dozen holes in the bird’s head and wattles, and when he was plucked there were another dozen pellet holes under the feathers in his neck.  I slung the bird over my shoulder, went back to my seat under a tree, and affixed my tag to the turkey’s leg.  I sighed and exhaled a deep breath.  Did I feel better?  Not really.  Killing a turkey doesn’t bring my Mom back.  But the kill is the measure of success that for better or worse all hunters are gauged against, and I was certainly satisfied with the hunt.  To say there was a maelstrom of emotions would be an understatement.  I still don’t understand everything I felt in those moments after tagging that bird.
Now before I go any further, I can hear all sorts of scoffing experts and purists preparing diatribes and emails, but let me pre-empt you by saying the following.  I hunt for meat first and the fact that I have some wild turkey meat to enjoy more than offsets your misgivings that I shot a juvenile, or that maybe I further educated those two cagey longbeards by whacking their pal while they watched on, or that I could have been more patient and perhaps those two strutters would have come in after all.  I don’t hunt for ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybes’…I hunt turkeys.  A legal gobbler is just that, and now he resides comfortably trussed and picked in my freezer.  You go ahead and write your objections down and send them my way…I assure you I’ll give them all the due diligence I afford to the other baseless objections forwarded by the critics in my life.
I met up with Dad and although he said that he had hoped it was a longbeard over my shoulder, he was still smiling and eager to take pictures and hear the story.  Dad has never been above shooting a tasty jake either.  He had heard the gobbling, heard the shot, and had eventually made his way towards me when he was sure that the gobblers were not headed his way.  We took some pictures and in half-whispers recounted the story before heading home.  Dad was still itching to do some more hunting but I was done for the day.  We can only shoot one bird a day in Ontario, and my son’s pre-school fundraiser was less than hour away.  Dad planned to head out to the county forests of Tiny Township, but I needed to get back to a shower.
I dropped Dad off at home and called my wife to let her know the story because like most hunters’ wives she delights in hearing the embellished recounting of my exploits in the wilderness.  Now my wife could be described as more ‘spiritual’ than me, or whatever term you want to use to describe someone who believes in heaven and the after-life, and she is utterly certain that everything that happened that morning was orchestrated by my Mom.  Now I don’t know about that, but then again I don’t know everything either.  Arguably it was one of the best hunts I’ve ever been on.  Everything was essentially perfect from the setting, to the sights and sounds, to the unlikely appearance of my quarry, down to the ultimate pull of the trigger.  All will be etched on my memory so long as I have one.  I suppose the question remains; will it be memorable because Mom made it that way, or will it memorable because I make it that way to honour Mom?  I guess it doesn’t matter because as with all matters of faith and spirituality and like all things associated with life and death there is a mystery in it.  And usually by the time you get to know the secret (if there is one) you’re gone and you are unable to share it.
But for all the moments, both timeless and bittersweet, that lead up to that jake turkey lying at my feet, the most important is that I was there because before Mom died she told me I had to keep doing what I loved above all else.  Because oftentimes doing what you love and honouring the wishes of those who went before you is the only way to get through the hard times.
hunting, random thoughts

The Punk-Rock Parallels and Perils of Hunting in the 21st Century

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There are some things that many of you don’t know about me, and sometimes that is for the best.  I work in a corporate environment and frequently people learn something new about my personality and they say “Well, that’s a surprise…”
And they’re not always saying that just because I don’t look like a ‘typical’ hunter.
I don’t drive a big 4×4.  I don’t have a drawl or a regional accent or even any ‘rural’ affectations.  I’m not politically conservative, and I don’t talk about guns or ammunition at all.  And thus some people are downright shocked when it comes up that I am a hunter.  And I used to think there was something wrong with me…perhaps I wasn’t doing it right?  Maybe I wasn’t as serious a hunter as I thought I was.  Was I a ‘closet hunter?  And I’m not talking about the kind of person who goes to housewares stores looking for cabinetry.  Maybe I wasn’t proud enough? Maybe I needed posters and bumper stickers?
That was when I realized that there wasn’t something wrong with me.  There was something wrong with all the people judging the book by its cover.  I mean  isn’t that just typical urban/suburban nonsense to assume that everyone who hunts has to be some dip-spitting, plaid and camo wearing, foul-talking, beer-swilling, blood-lusting hillbilly?  Just like those insulated city-dwellers to not have a clue about the wilderness and what nature is really all about…not the way us hunters do.  I mean, how hypocritical could you be to have a negative view of hunting and still eat meat from a grocery store?  To weep when someone shoots a deer, but to stomp on earwigs and spiders?  What a load of elitist, liberal, B.S.? Right?
And after thinking that way for a while, I realized that something wasn’t wrong with them and something wasn’t wrong with me.  Something was wrong with all of us.
I went through a similar crisis of identity when I was late in high-school and into my early university days.  You see, you may not believe it (again with the preconceived stereotypes) but I’m really into punk-rock.  I mean really into it.  I have thousands of dollars of CDs, because I still buy hard-format music (that’s right I’m just that much a punk-rock hipster and support those bands accordingly).  I have spent close to equal amounts of money on going to concerts and buying band merchandise in the form of posters, decals, hoodies, and t-shirts because unlike the ‘big’ label artists, most of the bands I follow are two or three bad merchandise weeks away from ceasing to be a band and resuming a transient life of itinerant work and squatting in homeless shelters.  Late in high-school I started to develop the classic identity assertion; dressing strangely, getting drunk at house parties and lying to my parents about it, blaring loud music and generally being an insipid, dopey kid.  In university I went even further, adopting bizarre haircuts (yes I did do the mohawk and ripped jeans look for a while) and going to obscure philosophy classes and workshops in coffee houses where I talked about evil conservative governments, and social activism, and generally became an even more insipid and irritating young adult.
But the whole time I was trying to be a hardcore conservative, country-talking, liberal-bashing, chest-slapping hunting stereotype, I was still buying album after album of nihilist, socially progressive, free-thinking punk rock.  Hell, I was even getting into ‘real’ country…not this modern cookie-cutter nonsense, but real dyed-in-the-wool, gritty down home country and rockabilly.  Not because I’m some music snob, but because the message spoke to me.  And those messages were ‘Do it your own way’ and ‘don’t let anyone control or determine who you are’ and ‘The rights of people matter, and no one can take those away’.  These are, coincidentally, the same messages I hear in a lot of the discourse on modern hunting.  Don’t believe me?  Pick up a Petersen’s and tell me that’s not a punk rock publication at heart.  They do it their own way and agree with them or not, they are going to keep doing it that way.  I’m not for all their views, but they write some darn good hunting stories there and ultimately that is what I’m paying for.
And the whole time I was in philosophy and politics seminars trying to come up with a solution to world hunger or disprove the existence of god (or prove the existence of god for that matter, because frankly, you can’t do either), or the hours spent trying to impress people with how I was a hip, progressive, modern intellectual I was wishing I was in a goose blind watching the birds lock-up and drop into the decoys or I was dreaming of leaning against a tree on a steely November morning listening for a deer to come tip-toeing through.  Because that message spoke to me too, and that message is (or at least I think it is) that there are things out there that are well beyond my control and understanding, and wild animals reside in a plane of comprehension so utterly foreign to humanity that the best we can hope for is the thrill of deceiving them enough so that we can pursue them, observe them at close quarters, and if we’re lucky, take one home for the cookstove.
Both of my ‘constructed’ identities were false.  I couldn’t be an abjectly fanatical hunter and fall victim to the patterned entrapments of that culture.  I didn’t want to own a big truck, and I didn’t care about Toby Keith, and I certainly had enough of a conditioned distrust of the institutions of god and country thank you very much.  But I could not likewise be a card-carrying social progressive and dismiss the economic and ecological value of hunting and fishing, or place the rights of animals above even the rights of humans, or deny the importance of the hunting tradition in the way it shaped who I was, because growing up in a family that hunted imprinted a love of both the raw wilderness and the pursuit of game on me that was indelible.
Sometimes I could not relate to a conservative hunting establishment in the same way I couldn’t relate to liberal academic establishment.  Which was when I learned how stupid those labels and paradigms really are.  Because, the funny thing was, when I realized that I didn’t fit into either of those archetypes comfortably, I found exactly where I fit in.
For me that place was here.  It is where I am now.
So what’s the point of this entire oh-so-boring confessional from a man that most of you never have (and probably never will) meet?  Just so much free-thought I guess, spurred recently from an observation I made in our modern era’s ubiquitous social media.
In my ‘following’ of certain people I noticed a dichotomy.  Literally half of the people I followed would be typified as the “hunting community”.  These people (and for some I’m sure it is strictly a PR exercise designed to keep their sponsorships…either that or they are going through the identity construction I went through over a decade and a half ago) spent the last few days spewing hackneyed nonsense about gun control, and the resurrection of their personal savior (even though, sadly, many spelled resurrection or even ‘risen’ incorrectly), and the granfalloon trappings of NCAA rivalries which ultimately mean nothing but are still used as a barometer of relative regional worth.  And I was at first amazed that people cared about stuff like this.  But really, I followed them not for their religious or political or social commentary, but because they loved the outdoors and hunting as much as I did, and that they told good stories, and that they understood what I understood about the importance and value of our shared hunting experiences.
The rest of the people I followed were the comedians, writers, thinkers, social activists, and musicians that spoke to, informed, and appealed to the rest of who I am.  I guess for some this may seem schizophrenic or convoluted, and perhaps you may even think it hypocritical (yes, I buy records from a band of hardcore vegans with semi-Communist political viewpoints…but holy crap can they ever shred a guitar solo and their drummer is simply one of the fastest that I’ve ever seen…after all that is what I’m paying for) but it does not matter what you think.  Just as it does not matter what I think.
Where it gets dangerous is when you or I fall into the easy trap of letting the words, actions, thoughts, and ambitions of others over take our own values and we become nothing more than the mouthpiece of someone else’s agenda.  It is when you stop being who you are and start ‘acting’ like someone you think you should be.  Sometimes it is obvious, but usually it is insidious and slow.  Just because I hunt and my Dad hunts and Ted Nugent hunts and my cousin Dane hunts, we are not all even remotely the same person.  Thinking and behaving otherwise would be ridiculous.
That is the parallel and the peril of the modern world.  Because I can almost fully assure you that Fred Bear, Jack O’Connor, Peter Hathaway Capstick, Tom Kelly, Robert Ruark, and others in the pantheon of modern hunting greats had no time for any of that crap; they were in it for the hunt.
And maybe, in our efforts to define ourselves as hunters, we’ve forgotten that last bit.
hunting, varmint hunting

Nothing Dainty About It

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There wasn’t much that was keeping the moon from being full on the drive up to my cousin Luke’s house with my wife and two kids (one of which decided an appropriate course of action would be to scream for two straight hours from the backseat).  I kept thinking that on that moonlit Friday night in late January plenty of coyotes would be up rambling around straight through the wee hours of the morning.  The plan was to head out early on Saturday and cut some tracks.  Then we’d put the dogs on the coyote’s trail and hope for some shooting.
Mother Nature (if that even is her real name) had other plans.
Sometime in the very early morning, while I was snug abed and dreaming of making a Hail Mary hero shot on a running coyote, it started to snow.  And not those fluffy, pastoral flakes from the Coca Cola commercials you see at Christmas.  No, this was the blinding, wind-driven variety of snow that makes you question your sanity at getting up and heading out hunting in it.  And the wind-chill factors were in the negative teens, so that made it all the better.
On the plus side, most of our coyote hunting is done from nice warm trucks, and for the first two hours that is precisely where my cousin and I staked ourselves out.  Eventually the wind let down and the white-out became nothing more than a snowy morning.  Luke and I hopped out and went to find a couple of likely spots in a block of woods that often held coyotes, and as sure as it was wintertime, the dogs got on one pretty quickly.  In some ways our coyote hunting operation (of which I am but a minor, very occasional participant) is a pretty sophisticated group.  The dogs are GPS tracked, and we are in constant communication via private-channel radios.  When the radio chatter and progress of the dogs made it clear that the coyote had gotten past the blockers and was in an adjacent block we made our way back to the truck.  On the walk (or more accurately the slog through over a foot of snow) back to the truck the sound of gunfire and the radio banter indicated that the coyote had been cornered by the dogs and then killed, we made out for another hunt.  The weather and the sign remained sketchy though so eventually the morning hunt was shut down.  We bought some groceries for a veritable evening feast, and did one last cruise of some likely spots.  Finding nothing we headed home.
After a hearty breakfast and a little family time with our wives and kids, Luke and I saddled up for an afternoon of coyote calling.  If the morning hunt was a bit of a bust, our afternoon foray held promise.  The wind had slackened, and the sun shone through a high ceiling of wispy clouds, and with a FoxPro e-caller we headed first to some old fields in the mixed hardwoods behind Luke’s house.  After a half-hour of intermittent cottontail distress (and anyone who has heard that sound for extended periods knows how my brain was feeling by then) we opted to move on to another spot that had produced previously.  Coyote and fox tracks peppered the fresh snow as we walked our way into the old corral, and as I settled into the leeward side of an old hay bale I was hopeful that this stand was once again going to draw an old coyote out for what he thought was going to be an easy meal.  Minutes in and the wind both picked up the pace and changed direction to make our positions untenable, but we still hung in there, stinging wind and blown snow be damned.  Frustrated, we talked about family and life in general on the walk back to the vehicle before sitting down to commiserate on the next course of action.
We opted for one long drive around a series of concession roads in Dyers Bay, and as we made one of our last runs down a back road we saw three distinct and fresh (we estimated no more than an hour or so old) sets of coyote tracks crossing the road from south to north.  We parked up ahead and walked into a cedar thicket that provided cover from the wind, a natural background to break up our outlines and half dozen good openings to shoot through.  It was our last stand for the afternoon and as good a chance as we’d been presented with all day.  Just under an hour later we walked out cold and frost-nipped (not quite bitten, but not quite comfortable either) with a warm shower, some cold beer and some hot eats on our minds.  Luke hosts a good shin-dig and when a bunch of other friends showed up, the party of chicken wings, French fries, cold beer and good stories lasted deep into the evening.  It almost didn’t matter that all the men (and my three year old son) were relegated to the garage; we ran the deep fryer out of there and leaned against walls, old freezers, and each other as we told shameless lies to one another as our wives likely told unflattering truths about us to themselves.
Luke, his brother Dane, and I all felt no ill effects come the morning alarm, although some others that didn’t go hunting weren’t as lucky, and whereas Saturday had broken with a blizzard, Sunday broke deeply cold but with a high ceiling of thin clouds that exposed the thinnest ribbon of blindingly pink sunrise.  When a person wakes up way too early on a Sunday to chase twenty-five pounds of clever canine, sunrises like that are their reward.
As we cruised the flats, my uncle came on the radio to call in a set of tracks in a likely spot, and just moments later I spotted the coyote trotting along a fence line to the south of our position.  Getting out of the truck I walked into the property and slid a couple of shells into my .243WIN.  The coyote popped out just about 200yards, and the call came over the radio not to shoot; at that point I had the crosshairs on his shoulder and I had to made a very tough decision not to take a crack at the old dog.  Moments later Luke had put the hounds on him, and when he made his way across the road into another block, he eventually met his end at the rifle of another hunter staked out there.  Not long after we had the hounds on a coyote in a cedar filled few acres that sat like a postage stamp on the snowy envelope of snow that had fallen between the local cemetery and a gravel pit.  My cousin and I sat down in the snow next to a mound to the east of the cedar swamp and waited.
For nearly a half hour the wind driven snow needled our faces and did everything it could to break through our coats.  One thing I’ve learned over the years of hunting with dogs (and this is generally true whether you are running coyotes or rabbits) is that when you think the dogs are close, the game is closer.  So it was on that Sunday morning.  As Luke and I stood, we could hear the dogs turn and the melodious cacophony of baying began to circle our way.  Instinctively we both had turned to the sound, and I don’t know about Luke, but I found that without even thinking about it, both hands were on my rifle in anticipation of action.
And action is what we got.
We saw the coyote at over 200 yards and immediately understood that he was heading for the gravel pit just south of our position.  On a sprint, or as much of a sprint as you can put on in deep, boot-sucking snow, Luke and I made to outflank the coyote; either seeing this or thinking better of his gravel-pit escape plan, the coyote began to run broadside to us at a distance that I estimated was initially just under 200 yards from our position.  Luke and I turned and I assumed the position for a kneeling shot.
This is where those who have never tried to shoot a running coyote (that, incidentally, has the added incentive of a few dogs in his slipstream) will chortle at our perceived ineptitude, but Luke and I each put three rounds downrange at the coyote, and he found another gear with every report.  Turning away from us and making tracks for the relative safety of the cedars, the coyote dodged Luke’s third shot as the bullet kicked a puff of snow up behind the now sprinting animal.  I sent my third round out hoping that the hero shot in my dreams was a premonition of glory.  It wasn’t.  The dogs barely paused, and lustily howled and barked as they plunged headlong back into the cedar stand after their prey.
My spent brass was laying in one of earlier footprints, and I took off a glove to retrieve them and reload my rifle.  Luke and I then dissected our failings and told palliative consolations to each other.  Twenty minutes later the dogs had the coyote cornered.  One blast from Tack’s weapon and all was quiet.  The dogs stopped baying, and all there was to hear was the vicious January wind and a crackle over the radio confirming to us that that particular hunt was over.
We helped a fellow hunter pick up a piece of equipment that had fallen from his truck and with a glance at our watches and it became clear that our family duties, and a three hour drive home for me would have to lay low any further chases for us for the day.  I dropped off my radio, and said my goodbyes and obligatory wife jokes to my friends.  It had been a good weekend, and even though I only had a handful of spent brass to show for it, I felt successful.
There is a certain stealthy calm to deer hunting, and a distinct spring rejuvenation to be found in turkey hunting.  Waterfowl hunting can be filled with decrepit weather, but also with the close quarters camaraderie of the blind.  Each has a certain folkloric place in the hunting pantheon, and all are sometimes mythologized in a way that elevates the re-telling of the hunter’s exploits.  But coyote hunting is different.  There is spectacle and brash attitude in chasing the tricksters through the haunts that they know more intimately than a hunter ever could.  There is a brawling, adversarial machismo in the way a dog runs down a coyote and a war-cry fierceness to the frantic baying of a team of dogs as they each try to get to their goal first.  Even calling coyotes is loud, brutal, and impatient.  The screaming and squalls meant to portray the death throes of a rabbit, the yips and chilling howls of challenge, even the simulated struggle of pups is all noise and urgency designed to bring in the reluctant, grey ghosts.  If deer hunting is high church, and if spring turkey hunting is nature shaking off the long winter, chasing a coyote in the snow is a drawn out bar-fight in a freezing cold, snowy parking lot.
The people who do it well are utterly shameless about why they do it, and why they love it.  There’s no rich duck-club snobbery, and no hushed whispers of awe.  If you can follow directions, and are willing to get dirty, cold, and worn out (or all of the above) then you can do it too.  And then you might see why hunters will spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on fuel, guns, calls, and clothes just to chase after a sometimes mangy, but always challenging wild dog.
And if you don’t get it, then at least you can say you tried.