Been waiting so long
Posted on October 8, 2007 - Filed Under Outdoors, I AM an animal!!!
I actually—FINALLY!!!—went hunting (for grouse) yesterday. I’ve been hunting before—twice while still in high school. I didn’t get anything back then and had only one occasion on which to fire my borrowed rifle. Since then, the opportunity to go again just hasn’t come up; even if it had, my stupid foolish pride would have kept me from going because of the need to borrow a weapon again. That is, until moving here when I decided I was going to make it happen. An integral part of this has been my co-worker, JC. He has really done a lot to bring me up to speed. Beyond that, he has pretty much made the commitment to go out with me for deer once the season gets going (opening day is this Wednesday). To increase our chances of success and decrease our chances of encountering a hunter-crowded area, we used yesterday not only for the birds but also for scouting locations. Sadly, we didn’t come away with ‘our spots,’ but plan instead to arrive in the forest early (way early) Saturday morning and find locations not already taken by a bunch of others.
Oh yeah, you may be asking yourself if we got any birds. Well, we saw a total of five. JC was able to snag two; I was only able to get a shot off at one. The really cool thing is that JC gave me both of his so now Erin and I will be able to experience the taste wild upland game birds, something neither of us has ever eaten. I also have a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that the meat of that forthcoming meal was something I was involved in the harvesting of. Obviously, that feeling will transform to one of total elation if the coming days bring me a deer.
On another note regarding the birds, I was happy to note my reaction to the cleaning process. Though I have been working toward this hunting thing for a while now, it doesn’t come without its anxieties. One of these is the field dressing process. I used to think that blood and guts were disgusting and wanted nothing to do with anything that involved dissection, bodily fluids, or anatomy. Then Maggie was born. As you may or may not recall, I did a great deal of the ‘catching.’ I was a little concerned about how I would react to that but it quickly became obvious it wasn’t going to be that bad. Well, when we got back Sunday, we needed to strip the birds down to the consumable parts. I won’t go into detail (email or comment if you want to know more) but suffice it to say, it is not without its ‘grossness.’ But, in the end, all of that grossed-out feeling is taught; if I were to let Maggie see and touch the animal being cleaned, she wouldn’t react that way. In fact, she’d probably want to play with all the parts and try to kiss the animal (that’s what she does with all animals).
Anyway, back to the point: I handled cleaning the birds pretty well (granted, it’s not that bad). It was weird. It was almost like I was expecting it to be disgusting, all the while telling myself it’s not that bad, it’s just nature, and keep in mind it’s all part of the process. And then, when it wasn’t that bad, I was surprised and therefore, thrown off. I wasn’t really sure what I was feeling. In the end, I was fine with it. Yeah, it helped a lot to have someone standing there in whose presence I absolutely could not act like a sissy, but it’s also true that, internally, I wasn’t ready to hurl. So, I’m optimistic that, if I do find and shoot that deer/elk, I’ll do okay when it comes to the revulsion part of field dressing.
Lastly, though what I brought home was shot by someone else, the trip was really satisfying as I have not been outside for a while. It felt really good to be out there with no one else (much of the time, JC and I were not talking because we were attempting to surprise the birds and were separated by a couple dozen yards or more) and no unnatural noise. And I think I enjoyed bird hunting enough that I will do my best to pick up a shotgun next year, something I never anticipated doing.
Comments
Leave a Reply
