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"No."
"Did you even see anything?"
"Not today."
"Wow. Eight hours and you didn't see anything."
I have had many conversations similar to this, usually with a non-hunter, after what some would consider a fruitless day in the field. The point it usually boils down to is--you could have been more productive with your time.
Really?
I have spent a lot of "unproductive" time hunting if I only measure production by what I shoot or what I see. But it is often during those "unproductive" days when I find myself reflecting upon what really matters.
Hunting is a lifestyle. There is no end goal. There is only the journey. There may be small goals like shooting a deer in a place where God reminds you of His infinite beauty, but that goal is never the end. It is only a point along the journey which only ends if you try to extinguish that exploratory fire that lives in the heart of every person. Ultimately, even if we never truly realize it, that need to explore is a search for God. It can never be fully discovered in this life, but it is in the looking that we grow closer to where we were meant to be. Maybe hunting is not the best place to go looking, but it does take us to places that are pure and often places where our own worldly desires and selfish thoughts can be forgotten in the whispers of our loving Creator.
One may argue that doing something like traveling halfway around the world to follow the tracks of a secretive beast on the African savannah is a waste of our God-given time. I have to disagree. The act of hunting forces you to practice so many virtues—patience, perseverance, self-control, sacrifice, and many others. Throw in an international trek into a mysterious and unfamiliar land and you need some courage and trust. And you cannot help but be grateful for the gifts you have been given after seeing how most of the world lives and what little they have.
Hunting also teaches you about life and death in no uncertain terms. You spend hours, days, weeks, months, and lifetimes even, in pursuit of animals you love. That’s right, hunters love the animals they hunt and are much more intimately connected to them. They spend real time with these creatures in places where they can see the beauty in the way God intended it to be.
I know some non-hunters, really good folks whom I love dearly, who think they love animals simply because they could not shoot one. Yet many of these same people never spend any quality time with the animals they think they love. And I wonder if you can love something you do not even know? Maybe.
I know I have spent a lot of my life among wild creatures, and much of that time in pursuit of them. During that kind of commitment, you learn a great deal about them. You walk where they live. You sweat where they hide. You follow them into places where life and death are so intertwined that there is never any question on what you would do if it meant survival. You pursue them into the shadows of God’s handiwork—places where He wanted to inspire His most beloved creation. You pursue them into places where His children can almost taste the paradise of His presence.
I love hunting. I love the animals I hunt. And I love those things because they are anything but a waste of time.
