Hunting Is Fun, And It's Okay To Admit It!

The author on his 2019 Colorado Elk Hunt

Ask a group of hunters why they hunt, and many of the answers you get will include wildlife management, sustenance, conservation/habitat improvement, and any other number of righteous motives. I do not use the word righteous facetiously. I agree with all of the sentiments listed above, but sometimes hunters shy away from one of the most obvious reasons they hunt...it’s fun! When your hunting mentor, whoever that may be, took you on your first hunting trip, did you relish in the fact that you were becoming the next generation’s conservationist? Were you beside yourself with excitement that you’d be able to skip the meat department on your next grocery run? I’d be willing to bet no. You were most likely enthralled with the prospect of bagging your first duck, deer, squirrel, rabbit, or whatever the quarry of the day was. This isn’t limited to hunters, anglers are welcome in this discussion as well. It’s peculiar how many tend to leave anglers out of the mix when berating hunters for harvesting game... is the lament of fish not important as well?

I’ll be the first to admit that at times I find myself forgetting it’s okay for enjoyment to be my primary motivation for hunting. Sometimes I become so concerned with how “outsiders” view the hunting community that I overcompensate on more “honorable” angles. I’m not alone here, and a quick trip down social media lane will confirm. I believe this is a defense mechanism that has been honed as a result of constant attack by anti-hunting groups, and I am in no way condoning we back down from our various stances in defense of hunting. I just think it’s important we don’t withdraw from the enjoyable aspect of the hunting experience when faced with criticism. Personally, when it comes to hunting, the journey is just as important as the goal. I still consider hunting an enjoyable experience even when I come home with an empty ice chest. If the end result was all about putting meat in the freezer and nothing else, I’d go to the grocery store and load up on butchered meat, or pay a hunting guide to secure a guaranteed kill. To illustrate this point let me walk you through a few examples I’ve experienced in the field. The vast majority of these end in failure, yet here I am planning my next hunt the day after Thanksgiving.

Funny enough my first hunting experience perfectly illustrates the point. I was about 8 years old and dad was able to score an invite to a duck hunt. Up to this point my shooting experience was relegated to backyard soda can plinking with my brand new Red Ryder BB gun (I even got it for Christmas and everything! Just like a movie). Leading up to the trip, dad thought it would be a good idea for me to shoot the 20 gauge crack-barrel that he first hunted with as a kid. The gun was in disrepair, with a forearm secured by electrical tape, but it was a real gun and I was going to shoot it! We headed to a local ditch and shot a few shells at garbage floating in the water. Despite this most likely being highly illegal, it was exhilarating! Electrical taped ancient shotgun and all, I was ready for my first hunt. We arrived at camp before sunrise, enjoyed coffee and donuts, then headed out to our blind. The morning was slow, but eventually a duck set down in our decoys and presented the perfect shot for an 8 year old. I brought the gun to my shoulder and drew a bead on the bird just like we practiced, then bam! I pulled the trigger. The kick of the shotgun was drastically different from when we practiced and I found myself stumbling backwards in the marsh, falling to the ground in response to the recoil. Dad and I were both very confused, until he took a quick look at the shells and realized he loaded my gun with magnum rounds! Looking back it’s possible I overreacted, but I’ll be damned if it’s not a story we love telling to this very day. We ended the hunt with a handful of Dos Gris (Scaup) and Poule D’eau (Coot), both of which are considered less than desirable birds to most duck hunters. Based on those results some would consider the trip a failure and file it away as worth forgetting. Yet here I am reminiscing 24 years later about my first hunt and how memorable the experience was. It’s astonishing how vivid my memories are of that morning despite the complete lack of recollection of the days before and after. The experience seemed to etch something into my very being that not even time itself can erase.

Not long after, I found myself on another memorable jaunt in the marsh with dad. South Louisiana isn’t exactly known for duck hunting trips that involve breaking ice to get to your pond, but that’s exactly what we did one winter morning in the late 90’s. Harsh cold fronts brought low water to our hunting grounds, which meant accessing the pond was going to be a challenge. We motored through some shallow waters, but finally we were able to drop our pirogues into the cut and access our ponds. To our surprise the ponds had a thin layer of ice, and our pirogue was cracking through as we paddled. To an imaginative child this experience was reminiscent of what I expected Arctic explorers experienced as they charted courses in our northernmost latitudes. The ice was paper thin, but for a southern boy this was REAL duck hunting! The low water forced us to hunt a pond that we typically did not hunt, and the birds were not cooperating. We picked up a few, but as my long deceased Aunt Thelma would say, “nothing to brag about.” Again, a trip most would consider a failure and here I am recollecting two decades later. The success was not tallied by meat in the chest, but by the cumulative experiences my father and I were able to amass after paddling through low water, ice covered marsh, and hunting an unknown area.

I’ll keep the next example short and sweet, mainly because it spans a multi-year period of my adult life riddled with unsuccessful hunts. When I moved to Florida in my mid 20’s, I decided it was time to focus on deer hunting. The amount of successful hunts compared to failed hunts is not a ratio I want to know. Deer hunting has been a major learning curve for me, but I’ve loved every minute of the experience, both good and bad. Put it this way, I’ve killed 3 deer in the last 5 years of making deer hunting a priority. That’s A LOT of failed hunts, but also a lot of memories and lessons learned. If the experience was not enjoyable, I can assure you I would not accept the multitude of failures each year. One successful hunt can make a whole year of struggles worth it.

I mentioned anglers in the opener, so I can’t leave them out. It’s funny how they (and I count myself among them) seem to get off the hook when hunters are constantly on the defensive, but they absolutely have a spot at the table for this conversation. I think it’s safe to say anglers are attacked far less often than hunters in regard to why they pursue their respective game. Catch and release is another story, but for those anglers eating their catch, I don’t see them facing nearly as mush opposition from the general public. It’s even advertised in grocery stores as a positive attribute to purchase “wild caught” fish. Undoubtedly this is due in major part to the charisma that mammals exude compared to fish, but that’s a topic for another time. The takeaway here is that as with hunters, the majority of anglers are not solely in it for conservation, they also just enjoy the experience. I can’t tell you how many fishing trips I’ve been on that ended in disappointment. “That’s why it’s called fishing and not catching” is an all too familiar idiom.

Pursuing game is a cycle that starts with one generation and has to move on to the next in order to continue. The majority of hunters and anglers got their start alongside a mentor who introduced them to the adventure. I’d be willing to bet many of those initial conversations didn’t involve talks of wildlife preservation, public land access, and individual rights and freedoms. No, it was about having a good time and partaking in traditions passed from one generation to the next. The most vivid memories I have as a child are bookended by the start and end of an outdoor adventure, and if you asked me what I enjoyed most from my childhood, it would undoubtedly be hunting and fishing. The bottom line is the reason we do it is because we enjoy it. I never thought about the political or moral implications of hunting when I was a child. I did it because I loved it and it made sense based on my upbringing. I enjoyed the meat and the experience of sharing it with loved ones, so I partook in the bounty my environment provided. Again, I fully support conservation minded motives for hunting and fishing, but I think it’s crucial we remember what brought us to the table in the first place. Our enjoyment of the resource and the path we travel to obtain it.

-Kevin Johansen, Fall Obsession Pro Staff