The Off Season?

My kids love softball and baseball, and we are now entering the heart of those seasons. Seasons which often coincide with fishing and spending time at the lake with family. We often have to choose one over the other. But as I watched my 9-year old pitch in his first game the other day, it struck me that baseball and softball are great sports and that many of the things that make them great have commonalities with hunting and spending time outdoors. 

It seems to me that whether we are trolling along the shores of Lake McConaughy or skirting the turkey woods or tossing a ball in the backyard, we are ultimately spending time together. We are building relationships. We are making memories. We are giving ourselves to each other because that is what love asks of us. 

I suppose I hunt because my father took the time to share one of his passions with me. He sacrificed hunting his own game so he could teach me to sit quietly, to see more clearly, and to listen with more focus. Believe me, that took a great deal of patience and time and I never did get as good at it as he was. Yet, he sacrificed his own success for the mere hope that I may have some of my own simply because love asked that of him.

I continue to hunt and fish and the memories my parents gave to me are as much a part of today as they were when we made them so long ago. I am creating new memories with my children. Memories of watching a first turkey strut toward our blind, of reeling in a late summer walleye, of just sitting quietly in the hopes that a deer may venture into the open, or of teaching them how to throw a ball better.

My kids love softball and baseball and because they do I now love those sports more than I ever have. So during this season, I trade one memory for another. It is a trade I gladly make because my kids want to experience the things that make softball and baseball great sports. And I want to see them experience those things. 

Even if they do not realize it, they are learning many similar lessons they learn in the outdoors. They learn it is okay to fail, and that failure is a great teacher. They make mistakes. They see their teammates make mistakes. They see coaches and umpires make mistakes. And then after those mistakes, they see that the game goes on. They learn the importance of perseverance.  They learn that others rely on them. They learn that they often need help. They learn there are rules, and, more importantly, ethics that must be followed. They get to experience the satisfaction of a game well played and the fruits of extra effort. Most of all, they develop relationships, and I am honored to be a part of that.  

My kids may not become professional ball players, or even play beyond the next few years, but for this brief moment in their lives they get to play the game with joy and passion. I pray they remember the beauty of it. 

And later this summer, when we are fishing on the lake or target shooting in preparation for fall, I will thank God for the children He has entrusted me with. I will thank Him for the opportunity to sacrifice some of the things I want for some of the things they want. And I will thank Him for the greatest sacrifice of all. 

Then I will try to teach my children to the best of my ability because love asks at least that much of me.

A SIMPLE THING

God is a poet. 

He wrote us into his story and allowed us to roam free within its pages. But they are still His pages and He can arrange them and edit them in any way He chooses. He chose to write some of us in as hunters.

I never knew it. I never appreciated it. I never even thought about it much. But I was one of the lucky ones. 

My dad loved me as much as humanly possible and he shared himself with me in ways that eventually brought me closer to the truth. He was a man who loved without words. He was a man who showed us how much he cared by his actions. He was a man who gave everything to his family and his friends and asked nothing in return. 

I was born into a devout Catholic family. My parents never missed Mass on Sundays. My mother said and continues to say the rosary every day. They tried to teach us how to live by what they did. And I wish I could say it took sooner than it did, but some of us are just slow learners. 

Now my dad was not a “bible thumper.” I did not see him reading scriptures all that often, but I saw him participate in the Mass and I saw him participate in life. What was more important and what eventually influenced who I wanted to become was how he participated.

I have heard it said that God has two great books: the inspired words of the Bible and the created world he wrote our lives into. Unfortunately, I ignored the first book for much of my life. But God’s other book, the book he breathed life into and set free because He is the ultimate creator, because He loves it, and because He loves us and wants to speak to us through it, has spoken to me for as long as I can remember. I felt I could always hear Him there, even if, at times, I did not realize it. 

My father introduced me to outdoors by taking me fishing at a local pond. He taught me to hunt in a goose pit. He presented to me the sometimes harsh beauty of life set free. God’s words, whether in the Bible or written into a lonely wildflower are sometimes hard to understand. And sometimes, they are just plain hard.

I have discovered those words hiking through a cornfield, or wading across a warm-water slew, of often walking in my father’s tracks. I have heard them in the lonely call of a goose on cold winter morning or in the promise of a quiet rustling of leaves. By taking me hunting, my father offered me a true taste of freedom. He gave me the opportunity to listen to a whisper from a familiar voice I had never known. 

These moments are so much more than memories. They are the moments that set the cadence of a story not yet finished. They are the sounds of words without end. They are proof that no matter where I have been, I have never been alone. And they are an understanding that everything we do matters. 

What a simple thing for a dad to do - to take his child hunting. The impact on my life cannot be measured.

BEING FOUND

She walked a little slower through the woods without her dad. For the first time, she was on her own. She knew how to get to the turkey blind he had set up the week before. She knew it was right through the next tree line, over a mostly dry creek, and then a straight shot across an open field. She knew all she had to do once she got there was to set up the decoy, cluck a bit on the box call her father had taught her to use, and wait. Her dad would come an hour later to check on her. He would hopefully find her standing over her first self-guided turkey.

Her fingers trembled a bit and her stomach turned with nervousness. The woods were different without her dad. They seemed to hold secrets she had not noticed before and some of those secrets felt dark and creepy. She had waved to her father and smiled when he went to the other side of the hill. Now, a part of her wished he was with her. She had thought she was ready to be on her own. Fear tried to convince her otherwise.

She began to walk with a more determined speed, with the single purpose of reaching the blind. She would be safe in the blind. She would be hunting and the unknown and unseen fears lurking in shadows she had never noticed before would not matter anymore. She remembered hearing coyotes howl while walking out at night with her father. It was a sound she would never forget. Did coyotes attack people, she wondered.

A branch snapped and something crashed through the woods to her right. Was it coming at her? Panic ripped at her back and she ran. She could see the light of the field ahead of her and it looked like freedom. Still running, she turned back to see if she was being chased. It felt as if she were. Just then, she tripped and tumbled into the creek bed. A stab of pain pierced her ankle.

She thought she cried out loud, but could not remember. And then, lying there, dirty and in pain she realized how deep the crevice was which she had fallen into. It’s walls were steep so steep on either side of her that even if she could have stood without intense pain shooting through her ankle she would not have been about to climb out.

She screamed. “Daddy! Daddy! I need you!”

He did not answer her. He would not come to look for her for at least an hour and then he would go to the blind first. A slithering chill began to creep down her back.

Unable to do anything else, she sobbed. Her fear of not being found battled with the shame of failing on her first hunt alone. Before long, the sobbing and the fear and the shame overtook her emotions and despair tickled the edge of her thoughts. What if her dad did not find her? What if he could not get her out before the temperatures of the night began to shock her system into hypothermia? She began to shiver as she waited and continued to whimper.

As the hour passed and she could no longer see the sun, fatigue overcame her and she could not fight the urge to sleep.

Then she heard a voice calling her name. It seemed like a distant memory. It was familiar, yet so distant it could not be real. She wanted to believe in it. She wanted to call back to it. She longed for it to come closer. Then she fell asleep once again.

She awoke sweating and unsure of where she was or how she got there. However, she knew she wanted out and she knew she could not get out alone.

A turkey gobbled and she remembered what had happened and realized it was almost dark. Then, she heard her father’s voice. His voice was clear and he was close and he was calling her name.

She called out. “Daddy! Help me.”

He ran over to the edge of the crevice, jumped into it and held his daughter in a warm embrace.

She had been found and her tears were no longer from shame or fear or despair, but of joy.

LEGACY

My father died a year ago on this date.

I am not even sure where that year went. I did go hunting a few times. I even took my kids hunting. I will never forget the first time my daughter shot at a turkey with her bow. That happened this past year. But I did not get to share that story with my dad. What I do get to do is carry on something he shared with me. He shared his favorite things with me. He loved hunting, fishing and the outdoors and he understood that sharing those things with his family would teach them that the memories we create stay with us for eternity. He was a man determined to create good memories—not necessarily for himself, but for those he loved most. I realize now that by pursuing that for others, he gained so much for himself.

My daughter’s first hunting experience was not like my first goose hunt in any way except that she experienced it with her dad. I hope, some day, when I can no longer go with her into the woods that she will remember fondly a day which means more to me than all my individual hunting pursuits combined. I hope she will understand that there was a man who wanted to take her turkey hunting and who wanted to share his love of the outdoors with her simply because he loved her.

I understand now why my dad took me hunting. I understand why he taught me to push myself. I understand why he sometimes had to discipline me. I understand that it was all because he loved me. I should have given him more credit for that.

I told my father on his death bed that I would honor him by the way I lived my life. A year has passed since I made that pledge and I have failed to live many of those days with the honor his legacy demands. God tells us to honor our parents. I believe we do that best by honoring Him. I believe if we do that best, not by what we say, but by how we live. I believe we do that best by sharing ourselves and our love with others. I pray I can better emulate my dad during the next year.

Aim True.

HUNTING CAMPS

There was a world out there beyond the campfire, but we could not see it. And I am not sure we even cared. We had spent the day climbing hills and glassing across valleys. We had left our sweat on the dewy grass with our deep desire to return the next day. That world out there truly mattered, but as we sat around the fire I began to realize how much its glow revealed. Beneath the laughter and the plans for the next day, I think we all, at least in some small way, understood each other. In my companion's eyes, in the way they stared into the warming embrace of something both comforting and destructive, I could almost see a reflection of myself.

Darkness is not nearly as spooky when pierced by a campfire. And nothing seems to calm unseen shadows the way a campfire does. A campfire is the heart of a hunting camp.

And hunting camps begin to feel like home in short order. You give effort during the days that you often did not know you could give. You form bonds with people that hold tight through time and distance. You grow closer to your loved ones without having to share a word. A hunting camp is a place where relationships flourish. Your relationships with new friends, with old friends, with family, with the outdoors, with yourself, and your relationship with God all tend to reach new levels of intimacy in a hunting camp.

A hunting camp does not promise success or even adventure, but it gives us hope for those things--it give us a chance to experience the quiet satisfaction of simply being in the moment. And isn’t that what keeps us coming back time after time--a chance? A chance to see the sun rise. A chance that a deer may step into the open and stand still just long enough to offer you that shot that will end the hunt. A chance that even if a beast does not fall, we will have the campfire and we will relive the day in our memories and our stories for years to come. Chances like that rarely happen by accident—they must be worked for, reached for, and they require action. It is not easy, but it reminds us that we can find peace in the simple things..

I guess that’s where all of life’s greatest joys can be found—in its simplicities. Relationships, hunting, fishing, campfires, the sound of a river—these are the things that help to give our lives meaning. If we take a moment to stop and reflect during these simple moments, we just might understand how beautiful it all is and if we look back with clear eyes we might just understand that even the hard times, even the low points, turned out to be blessings we could not see at the time.

So when I next have the great pleasure to stare into a campfire at the end of a long day of hunting, I hope I take a moment to reflect on how blessed I have been to have spent time in hunting camps.

WASTE OF TIME?

"Did you get anything?"

"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.

FIRST CHRISTMAS GOOSE

Eight years ago, I started writing Christmas stories in lieu of a letter highlighting the previous year of our lives. I am sharing this year's story below. It is the first Christmas story I have written that has much to do with hunting and the first that is completely true:

The boy spent the previous evening wiping down his Crossman pump-action BB gun until it was perfect. He checked and rechecked his tin can of copper BBs to make sure he would have enough for the morning goose hunt. Then he went to bed, but he could not sleep. He had begged his father for months to take him goose hunting. Christmas Eve morning of his ninth year would be his first goose hunt. What a perfect Christmas gift. How could anyone sleep the night before such an adventure? He had heard all the stories, but it was the way in which the adults relived them that intrigued the boy. It was the way his father spent hours preparing for the hunt and then disappeared for even more hours, always returning with the kind of look on his face that the boy understood as satisfaction and joy.

Now it was his turn. On the Christmas Eve morning of his ninth year he would finally get to join his father. He would finally become a hunter.

He watched his breath rise in the frigid, starlit morning as they hiked the mile or so from the Suburban to the goose pit beside the river. His father’s and uncle’s feet crunched through the hard top layer of snow ahead of him. At first, he followed those footsteps but the stride proved too difficult so he ventured to the side where he could actually walk on top of the snow without busting through. Before long, his fingers began to burn with cold and the Crossman felt as if it had grown heavier since they began. But he could not complain. This day he was one of the hunters and to be a hunter meant you endured the long, dark, and cold walk to the goose pit.

As he descended into the goose pit, his father told him to take the middle seat. His father and uncle sat on opposite sides of him. They uncased their shotguns and leaned them into the notched shelf ahead of them. The boy did the same with his BB gun. His father lit one of the propane heaters and placed it in front of the boy who was doing his best to hide the shivering he could not control. Then they sat quietly and waited. The boy had to kneel on the swiveling seat in order to see out from under the decoys which hid the holes they had cut into the sliding lid.

It was too early to see anything yet, but he could hear a few geese chattering from the reserve across the river. He pulled his fingers into the palms of his gloves and his legs occasionally shook, but he could hear the geese and the promise of action warmed him from the inside out. When the morning light that preceded the sunrise cast its soft glow over the river, the boy stretched his neck and took a peek. A light mist hung over the small patch of water that had not yet frozen over. Grayness seemed to suspend the distant and leafless cottonwoods in a moment that defied the limitation of time. It held the memories of the past, the hopes of the future and the truth of the present all within the simplicity of the prairie morning.

Soon the chattering rose to a fervor. His father pointed to his ear signaling him to listen then began staring through the small openings with the kind of focus the boy had never known. There was no mistaking when the geese rose from the reserve. The honks and cackles rose up in unison with thousands of birds as they broke into the sky under a massive burst of wings that left the boy in awe. As the geese gained altitude and began to fly toward them, he prayed some of them would turn in to the decoys his father and uncle had set.

His ears began to ring with the fervent honking his father and uncle were imitating with their calls. He stared through small opening as small flocks of Canada geese flew over and circled so low he could actually hear their wings beating against the wind.

After the third time around, the geese set their wings and his dad pulled the call away from his lips. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” Then, “Take em!”

The lid slid back along its rollers and the hunters rose up. The boy jumped to his feet and raised his BB gun. The geese dug their wings against the air, now aware they had been duped and for a moment, time paused.

Then the air filled with shotgun blasts and reeling birds and feathers and the scent of burning powder. Despite it all, instinct took over. The boy was part of the hunt—a part of something natural and pure. He felt alive. He focused on a bird at the edge of the flock and let a single copper BB fly.

Somehow, the goose he was aiming at dropped and landed with a thud on the frozen ground. And then his father and uncle did something that ignited a fire in him that would last the rest of his life. They let him believe. That goose was his. He had shot it. He had become one of them.

Then, to prove they were sure he had shot it, they let him retrieve it and told him he would have to clean it himself. Of course, his mother wanted the Christmas goose to be plucked—and they honored him by letting his be the Christmas goose.

The boy spent an hour digging feathers from the warm breast of that goose and it was then when he started to understand that though hunting was exciting and fun and decent, it was also hard and it was serious. He began to understand that life and death were inseparable and that to deny his part in it would be like denying who he was and where he came from. Most importantly, he began to understand his father. That day he learned something intimate about the man who raised him. He learned there was a fire in his dad’s heart and by simply sharing his passion with his son, by taking him goose hunting, he had passed that fire on.

Thirty-three years later on the Christmas Eve of his forty-second year, the boy now struggling to become just a fraction of the man his father was, stared into an empty chair. It was the first Christmas without him. And like had happened after that first Christmas goose, his life would never be quite the same.

He stared at the empty chair and then at a nearby nativity. He thought about the very first Christmas and about the great sacrifices a Father is willing to endure for His children. He thought about the mystery of suffering. He thought about the strength of faith. He thought about the true meaning of love. He thought about how much he misunderstood the gifts he had been given and he thought about the final lasting gift his father had given him. Hope. And he prayed for the wisdom and the strength to pass the fire of Faith, Hope, and Love on to his own children.