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My daughter as an assignment to write a paper on what it is to be what ever hobbie your father has.
Like:
what is it to be a golfer
What is it to be a painter

She comes to me last night and ask me what it is to be a hunter.
Have you ever really sat down and asked yourself that?

I have some of my own thoughts but would like to hear what it is for you to be a hunter.

Tough question, but I will make a stab at it. This is the way I was taught so IMO here are a few of the core ethics of what it is to be a hunter.

1. To be a hunter you have to truley respect the outdoors and everything it stands for.

2. To be a hunter you have to first be a conservationlist (sp) for both the game you hunt and the enviroment in which you hunt.

3. To be a hunter you have to be willing to accept failure to kill game as a successful day in the field.

4. To be a hunter you have to be willing to accept when you are successful in killing game then you are responsible for the death of that animal.

even though you may not make a harvest, just knowing that you out foxed him on his own ground.....now that is success....

judge jb

Hunting is something natural to a man -- as is worshiping a God and protecting our family. We were made to conquer. Our forefathers either farmed or hunted, or did both. They did it to provide food for the family.

Because of the shift in our society, most of us now farm and hunt for the pleasure it brings our soul. That longing deep inside. We still have the same inner drive that God put in us. I grow tomatos not because I have to, but because I want to. The peppers and corn in my garden are grown out of pride and accomplishment, not out of need and necessity.

We hunt because it fulfills that desire that God put inside of us. But it accomplishes much more. Men are not social creatures, but hunting together gives us a way to bond. We bond by going to battle - together and against each other. Whether it is together watching a football game (always rooting for a different team), or in a duck blind challenging each other to see who the best shot / caller / dog trainer / 4-wheeler rider / gun owner is. We enjoy the banter and challenges.

Hunting also gives us time to bond with our kids. The teacher inside of us passing down our 'sword and armor' to the next generation. Teaching our kids that we are a successful warrior, and showing him or her what we know.

It also gives us a time to bond with our Lord. To stop the hectic world we live in, and hear the beauty he surrounded us with. Hunting, we have to stop and listen. To the chipmunk crawling through the leaves. The fox squirrel cracking acorns & dropping them into the water. That soft quack.

Most of the people I hunt with, they feel the same way...

You would have to throw in the survival instinct factor. Hunting is as old as mankind, it didn't start out as a sport. Early mankind hunted to survive. Therefore the art/skill is a natural thing inherited from our ancestry. We can't help it!!!

This is good guys and I thank you for your responce. It helps me to open my vision further to include itmes that I know is there but can't seem to find the words to say.
Keep them coming and I will post her paper when she completes it.
This is God sent for me, It touches me in a way that I have not felt in quite sometime. I have always known why I liked hunting just never quite knew why or what my driving force was that kept me doing it. When you really stop and look deep into why, you begin to understand. After she asked me this last nite I couldn't sleep with all the thoughts banging around in this tiny brain of mine. The answer is there I just can't reach it. I know I have seen it, lived it.

Gentlemen..As always..Well Put!!!

To be a hunter is to pay homage to the instinct as old as our genetics. When most of us hunt, it partly helps us to revert to a much simpler existence and a time when instinct was tantamount to survival. In modern times, we have added to that basic premise with all the acoutrements of comfort and ease. We tend to collect those things that aid us in hunting with more "success" and greater ease or comfort. With time, the collection of the peripheral things become such an intergral part of hunting that they are no longer separable from the "hunting." Those things may include waders, weapons, decoys, calls, cameras, etc. Add to the definition the cultural elements of camp and comraderie, and it makes for a veritable stew of a lifestyle and way of life.

Duckmen, here is one of my favorite lines of all time that speaks to why I spend so much time outdoors hunting, fishing, camping, etc:

"To him who, in the love of Nature, holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language." William Cullen Bryant

My heart and soul are free when I hunt! The "language" that Nature shares with me as I pursue her "visible forms" is so hard to explain, but so important that I cannot ignore it. To do that would make me absolutely incomplete! Just from sharing and listening to you guys over these last few years has shown me that most of you understand it, too. Trying to translate the language to someone who has never heard it is almost impossible.

You know, this would be easier as a dissertation rather than a short essay!

Cant forget just being out there in GODS world the he created enjouyin what HE gave us

Well said indeed. I think I like the way MSB said it best. That is a tough question too answer. I wonder if it is something that is inherited from generation too generation. Ask yourself this: why is it some folks love it and some folks dont. I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters that dont care anything about doing it they all had the same opportunity that I did growing up.HMMMMMM makes u wonder doesnt it. Tell your daughter that MDH said GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!Hope she gets an A+++++ on it.



Ps: its probly genetic, got a bunch of wild critters running around in our molecular structure. Just like a golfers got balls

I would consider you as an Outdoor Sportsman than a hunter. You seem to do so much more than just hunt. The habitat work goes for 9 months and the hunting only last for 3 months.

Hunting is the closest way to get back to our humble beginnings. You become one with nature, your a conservationists, your a steward of the land. Your animal instincts take over when you step away from the pavement, you are the hunter, sometimes the hunted, you make decisions with the click of your safety to send an animal back to its ancestors. I often call the woods and nature God's Church, Your not Catholic, Baptist, Republican, Conservative, Black, White, Rich or Poor. Your are Gods congregation in the greatest Cathedral in the world Nature.

Duckmens comments the last few days reminded me of something I once read pursuant to a college assignment.

Henry David Thorough was an odd cod of the first order (he literally coined the phrase "marching to a different drummer") and has the distinction of being among the most quoted authors of left-wing activists. Even though he was a professed vegetarian, I found it interesting that in reference to "higher laws" he wrote the following in
Walden, his 1845 experiment in living well:

"...I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for (hunting and fishing); and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes—remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education—make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any wilderness—hunters as well as fishers of men.

There is a period in the history of the individual...when the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more human, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as...naturalist, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind."

"We hunt lest we forget how, to use sense's we have forgotten about."
blackdux

Thoreau also said, " I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the esential facts of life: and not to come to the end of life and learn that what I had lived was not life."

from Walden[/u]