Why do I hunt? Nobody Ever Seems to Ask.
To explain why I hunt would require sharing the stories of a half-dozen people – some alive, some dead, and some I never had the good fortune of meeting. A retired construction worker who spent his spare time tinkering with fishing lures and gunpowder, the first-generation-American son of a stow-away from China who, at 80, still spends his spare time on the tops of mountains, an old man who’d burn a tank of gas each weekend in search of grouse on gravel roads, and another who’d follow a set of elk tracks to the ends of the earth if there was no one there to stop him.
Early on October mornings, starting at the age of two or three, my dad would put me in a jeep or a pickup and drive me 15 or 20 miles away from my home in Ritzville, WA, to the cattle ranch of a close family friend. We would sit in the vehicle looking through glass lenses at mule deer far away – shimmering through the landscape, disappearing behind blonde grass knolls and reappearing in the shadows of dark rocky bluffs. I’m sure I imagined more deer than I actually saw. With no concept of distance and no experience picking out ghosts on the landscape, the occasion where I was the first to see an animal was rare. Often, my first look at an animal was when they were already down or in the bed of a pickup.
As I got just a bit older, I was allowed to tag along on foot. Trying to keep pace with my dad’s giant steps as we wandered through yellow braided grass was no small task. I’d hang onto his belt loop as we crept around rock bluffs, peering into bowls full of tumbleweeds and the occasional deer. I can only assume I failed at every turn to move silently or talk quietly. I learned so much that way. How to move, how to plan, where to go, what to watch for.
I was his unarmed tag-along for a decade. It wasn’t all deer hunting and it wasn’t all rock bluffs and sage brush either. Sometimes we’d travel to Entiat or Ellensburg and go tramping through the Wenatchee National Forest, searching for grouse or more deer, the latter of which I was convinced didn’t live in the woods. At the age of 13, I was finally old enough to tag my first deer.
Hunting is my favorite pastime and a way of challenging myself like no other. It’s a driving force behind my lifestyle, my desire to be physically fit, and my confidence in my own autonomy. This week, a longtime friend and I are going on a pack-in buck hunt in Washington State that I’ve been planning for years! I’ll be out of the office for several days, but I’ll check back once I return to civilization.
– Tyler O’Brien –
PS: Some people don’t like the concept of hunting. That’s a conversation I’m happy to have another time. For now – to those concerned people – yes, we eat all the meat (except the liver and kidneys – not my thing). Making sausage, smoking jerky, and cooking up steaks are hobbies that go hand-in-hand with hunting. You’d be hard-pressed to find hunters who don’t eat what they kill, which is expressly illegal in many states.
