As I have eluded to in a few of my other articles, I grew up with hunting and fishing being an everyday part of life. We never saw it as something adventurous, out of the way or new for us. It was simply something to do and it still is. Most of my summer Friday nights, I end up with a text on my phone like, "Wanna go fishing?" This leads us down the road to the lake, where it looks like a redneck family reunion on the bank, with bonfires and shooting the bull until the moon rises. The same goes with hunting. All of my weekends in the fall are explained in two questions: "You going to the game?" and "You hunting tonight?" Believe it or not, hunting and fishing have both taught me countless lessons. You might be wondering, "How can sitting in a tree or reeling in a fish teach you anything?" Let me explain.
In the words of DJ Khaled, patience is the key to success. Both hunting and fishing require something that I have very little of outside of the outdoors. Patience. Often, countless hours are spent to harvest just one animal, especially when whitetail hunting. I may wait all night, motionless, gaze never averted from a deer only to have it catch a whiff of me and take off in the other direction. I have also had hours and hours on the water of bites, and feeding all the fish in the lake with my bait to only reel in one or two. This is why many who do either of these for the first time as an adult give up very quickly. It takes a tremendous amount of patience that must be instilled at a young age to enjoy. It helps me to have patience and faith in all of my endeavors.
Also, it taught me that failure will happen. Just as I said before there have been plenty of tiring hours in a treestand or on a bank that have landed me nothing. It sucks. It sucks to drive home with nothing. It sucks to try so hard, only to be empty handed. On the flip side, the thrill when you do succeed is amazing. Reeling in a bass that you are nervous about breaking the line or slowly letting an arrow fly through the whisker biscuit on my bow and see it land on a deer is an adrenaline rush like no other. It leaves me shaking and breathless. Mom and Dad were right. Some things are worth the wait.
Most importantly, it gave me respect for life. These are animals just like us after all. Granted, they do not have souls like us, but they do feel the pain of the last breaths of life. They feel the terror of being trapped or cornered. They feel the agony of being wounded. This is why I make every effort to make each killing as swift as possible. I do not aim a weapon, whether it be gun to deer or knife to fish, without the full intent to end its life. The same goes with people. I respect life and would never kill unless it was for my country or my family.
I'm not going to say the cliche sentence, "The outdoors is a way of life." Anyone can say that. I will say that I love chasing after the wonderful animals God graced us with and have learned a lot about being human along the way.
