The Hunting Is Secondary To The Hunting

FIELD NOTE No. 020

Most Field Notes start with something small.

Something seen.

Something heard.

Something that made you stop for a second longer than necessary.

They aren’t destinations.

They aren’t trophies.

They’re observations.

A way of recording the things that would otherwise disappear into an ordinary day.

The outdoors just happens to be where a lot of them are found.

The woods, the water, the weather, the people you meet there and the things they leave behind have a way of revealing something larger if you pay attention long enough.

Sometimes that takes a photograph and a few sentences.

This isn’t one of those.

This one is allowed to wander.

Because that’s how the day happened.

There wasn’t one revelation waiting at the end of the trail. There were dozens of little ones along the way. Some useful. Some funny. Some probably meaningless to anyone who wasn’t there.

That’s kind of the point.

A Field Note doesn’t always need to arrive somewhere.

Sometimes it’s enough to record what was noticed before memory cleans everything up and turns a few hours outside into one convenient story.

So this one gets the points for the points.

The unnecessary details.

The side thoughts.

The things that led somewhere and the things that didn’t.

A long walk through unfamiliar woods with enough familiar things to make them readable.

There is comfort in knowing a place.

Not the kind that comes from a map.

The kind that comes from walking through the same woods enough times that your brain quietly takes over.

Four hours from home, the woods are still the woods.

Maples are still maples.

There’s a deer trail.

There’s the rub line.

Turkey feather. Juvenile.

Red-twig dogwoods make a red carpet transition from hardwoods to field-edge grass and weeds.

Easy.

Then something feels wrong.

Where is the poison ivy?

At home it blankets the forest floor.

You don’t realize how much attention you give it until it isn’t there.

Don’t set that down.

Watch where you step.

Don’t touch your face.

Shower when you get home.

A tiny tax paid for moving through familiar woods.

Here, suddenly, the tax is gone.

Then there it is.

The poison ivy patch.

It’s cute.

Kind of pathetic.

Now that I’ve made fun of you, poison ivy, I know you’re coming for me.

Keep walking.

There are the sticky seeds grabbing onto my clothes.

Glad I wore jeans.

There’s a sick ash.

I know that look.

My ash trees died in clusters ten years ago.

That one probably has two years before gravity finishes the job.

Different woods.

Same language.

Farther in, there it is.

The ash borer made its way through here too.

Trees down like pick-up sticks.

Earlier I saw the sick ash and knew the look.

Now I’m standing in its future.

Keep walking.

Then I found the spot.

A stretch of walnuts beside a swamp.

Nothing else seems able to compete beneath them.

Tall trunks.

Dappled shade.

Open underneath, but somehow not open at all.

It isn’t manicured.

Nobody landscaped it.

Nobody placed a bench.

Nobody hung a sign telling you this was the scenic overlook.

It just works.

Almost stately.

Thirty yards away, August is doing what August does.

Dead grass.

Full sun.

Heat sitting on your shoulders.

Humidity making your shirt part of your body.

Keep moving.

Step back beneath the walnuts and the whole equation changes.

Shade.

Breeze.

Cool ground.

The view is somewhat equivalent.

The physical feeling isn’t even close.

I don’t want to keep walking.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one.

There walks a deer.

A fork horn.

Midday.

Feeding through the exact strip of walnuts I had just decided was the best place in the woods.

I know why he’s here.

A little farther and there are the beds.

Summer bedrooms beneath the walnuts.

Of course they are.

Shade.

Breeze.

Cover.

Food nearby.

A comfortable place to spend an August afternoon.

Turns out deer and people occasionally agree on real estate.

That’s when the purpose of the walk changed a little.

I came here as a deer hunter.

For a moment, I felt much more like an outdoorsman.

Yes, this is scouting.

It’s August.

There are stands to hang before fall.

There is eventually an animal involved in all of this.

But the hike is above the harvest.

Part of scouting is finding the places where memories might happen later.

Finding a tree where, months from now, I’ll climb sixteen feet above the ground and sit.

The leaves will be gone.

The swamp might be frozen.

My breath will hang in front of me.

The woods that made me sweat in August will make my fingers hurt in December.

And for a few hours, I can compartmentalize adulting.

Work is still there.

Bills are still there.

The list of things that need fixed, bought, answered or figured out is still there.

None of it disappeared.

It just doesn’t belong sixteen feet up a tree.

Maybe a deer walks through.

Maybe one doesn’t.

That distinction matters less than people might think.

Then there are places that make you stop for a different reason.

Look.

A kid spot.

Easy access.

Open enough to see.

A natural funnel created by the geography.

Put a double ladder stand here.

A lounger in the sky.

Comfortable enough that a kid can sit, watch and hopefully make a memory before deciding he’s cold, hungry or both.

Does and yearlings will use it.

Then another thought.

This is too easy.

A mature whitetail may use it too.

Just not while I’m sitting here.

Whitetail own the darkness.

They move freely when we don’t.

We intersect at the edges.

First light.

Last light.

That changes the question.

Where is a mature deer comfortable enough to transition while there is still enough light for me to be there?

Where am I comfortable enough to sit quietly long enough to wait him out?

How do I get in without taking that comfort away?

And maybe more importantly…

How do I leave without him ever knowing I was there?

We make most things overly complex.

We analyze.

We optimize.

Eventually, we monetize.

Hunting is certainly no exception.

There is an entire industry devoted to explaining why that buck will walk through one patch of woods and not another.

Wind.

Pressure.

Thermals.

Moon phase.

Food.

Bedding.

Funnels.

Apps, cameras, maps and enough equipment to make walking into the woods feel like preparing for a small military operation.

All of it can matter.

But maybe sometimes the answer is embarrassingly simple.

Maybe he likes it there.

Maybe that buck needs to feel comfortable in that spot for a few minutes at last light before he goes on with his day under the stars.

That’s it.

Find where he’s comfortable enough to be there.

Be comfortable enough to wait for him.

Get in without ruining it.

Get out without ruining it.

Maybe hunting doesn’t always need to be more complicated than that.

Hunting is easy to reduce to the moment something dies.

That moment is real.

There’s no reason to pretend otherwise.

But it occupies remarkably little of a hunter’s time.

Most of hunting looks nothing like killing.

Most of it looks like walking around in August wondering where all the poison ivy went.

It looks like reading tracks.

Watching weather.

Finding beds.

Moving stands.

Sitting still.

Being cold.

Being hot.

Being wrong.

Going home empty-handed.

And talking about hamburger.

How do you mix your burger?

What ratio of fat do you add?

My butcher started charging for fat.

Well, I just butcher mine myself.

That’s hunting too.

The animal doesn’t disappear from the story after the arrow.

There is tracking.

Recovery.

Dragging.

Butchering.

Grinding.

Freezing.

Cooking.

Feeding people.

The arrow is one moment in a much longer relationship.

Keep walking.

There’s more poison ivy.

Old friend.

Just enough to pucker me back up.

Glad I noticed you.

Then there’s that bug.

The one that sounds like an electric grid humming somewhere in the trees.

You don’t have to know its name.

You know the sound.

Hot, late-summer woods.

Then a donkey calls somewhere in the distance.

Yup.

Don’t want to hear that in the dark.

Maybe that’s part of knowing a place too.

Not everything needs a name.

Some things just become part of its language.

For someone who only sees the killing, maybe this is a small window into what hunters see.

A rub line.

A feather.

A dying ash.

A forest where the ash borer has already finished its work.

A change in vegetation.

A deer bed pressed into cool earth.

A patch of walnut shade thirty yards from an August field.

Spend enough time trying to understand an animal and eventually you start noticing the world the way it might.

Where is the food?

Where is the cover?

Where does the wind move?

Where is it cooler?

Where does darkness make it feel safe?

Where will it move before darkness arrives?

And where can I quietly exist in that same landscape without changing the answer?

Every once in a while, the answers overlap.

Maybe for a few seconds at first light.

Maybe for a few seconds at last light.

Maybe not at all.

Eventually, it’s time to leave.

Pulling out from the property, one last look through the window.

The edge of the woods has a nearly perfect line about five feet off the ground.

Everything beneath it has been browsed.

Deer.

You don’t need to see one.

They’ve written themselves into the landscape.

That’s the funny thing.

I came here looking for deer.

By the end of the day, seeing one was almost unnecessary.

They were everywhere.

In the trails.

In the rubs.

In the beds.

In the browsed edge.

In the places that felt comfortable enough that I wanted to stay too.

Yes, someday the goal may be to let an arrow fly.

But that’s one moment.

The rest is learning the place well enough to understand why something else wants to be there.

And somewhere in that process, finding a place you want to be too.

A good tree.

A little quiet.

No particular reason to leave.

What a wonderful spot in this world.

The hunting is secondary to hunting.

— Esker