A Change in Sight

In addition to all the other hats I wear, one of them is the hat of a hunter. I live in New England, and while I didn’t grow up in a hunting family, my wife did, and as such, I came into hunting later in life. I don’t hunt for the sport, to see how big of a rack I get off a male deer, or for any other wasteful purpose. No, I hunt to put venison in the freezer to help feed our family throughout the year. In addition to venison being a lean meat, it is almost completely void of the bacteria you might find in cows, pig, chicken, and other farm raised animals. The venison I hunt in Connecticut comes in the form of white tail deer. I got into hunting both for the meat and because my wife’s uncle asked. Since then, I have come to appreciate hunting for more than just the meat and the companionship of my wife’s relatives. There is a whole other side to getting into hunting that no one tells you about, it is just something that must be figure out on your own, for I don’t think everyone gains this extra bit from hunting.

For me, hunting has also honed my senses. I am able to pick up on more minute details in a landscape, be it forest or field, and it carries beyond the times when I am in the woods only hunting for deer. I find that this sensitivity carries forth into my everyday life as well. I notice little things that are bypassed by most other people. It all comes from scanning a landscape and forcing my brain to decipher what is in front of me. Is that the tail of a deer flicking 150 yards in the distance or just a squirrel? Was that spot of brown a deer moving through the brush or just some reeds swaying in the breeze? When I’m driving, walking, working, or just hiking, I notice the little movements more than I used to, the variation of colors and how they shift in the light. These all amplify and add depth to my everyday life, they help me appreciate the little things more now that I am more prone to seeing them. But it is not just eyesight, it is also sound. Sitting in the woods for hours, I’ve learned to tune out certain sounds and pay more attention to others. When I’m hunting I’m listening for the crunch of hooves going through leaves, or a branch breaking off in the distance. Often times its a squirrel, but I can tune out the birds and the chipmunks, and background breeze, and just focus. It took time to develop that skill, but now, background noise doesn’t bother me as much as I have learned how to tune it out, and I cherish silence even more, knowing that silence is never truly silence, there is always some noise in the background that becomes the soundtrack for my life.

As autumn edges closer and my time in the woods sitting for hours, looking and waiting for deer, my senses are already becoming heightened. My eyes are beginning to see more nuances and my hearing is becoming more in tune to the natural world around me. I know I’m not the only hunter to have this reaction, but I don’t know that all do. I think it takes a certain amount of self-awareness and a desire to focus on one’s own senses and how they relate to the world around them that really drives it home. As I wait to head out, I relish the upcoming time in the woods, the time to think while hunting, but also to meditate and clear my head of everything else. It is a unique experience that many don’t get to have. Even if people don’t hunt, many now have earbuds stuffed in their ears while hiking or enjoying the outdoors and so are not fully focused on the world around them. They aren’t in tune with nature, or their surroundings, their attention is pulled elsewhere. To be honest, I don’t even own earbuds, I’d rather hear the sound of the wind in the trees, my heartbeat, or just the ambient car noise on the road far away. But that’s me, the hunter in me, the one who seeks to commune with nature.