Why Do You Hunt?
Written By: Walter Lee
It happens every year. The angle of sun begins to shift in August and despite the head you can nearly hear Fall in the leaves still on the trees and thus begins the draw to be in a stand. Application season is typically a summertime process and, as the results slowly trickle in, I spend the hottest months dissecting my goals and opportunities for the year. Calls among friends with excitement and disappointment slowly shift to a focused effort to make the most of whatever opportunities have been provided and the hard work begins. In a recent episode I found myself defending my goals for the upcoming season and we spent the better part of the following days debating goals, motives, and expectations in our Patreon group. I think that my mindset is a bit different than the mainstream hunting influencer so I am going to outline how I approach the outdoors in hopes you may benefit from it as well. I build a structure of goals that are in order of priority each hunt and as you move down the list the goals become more lofty but, and this is critical, less important to leaving the woods satisfied. Burn out and frustration, I think, are because of goals that are too difficult to achieve with frequency.My first consideration is setting goals that allow me to leave the woods satisfied and with a spirit of gratitude more often than not … I want to be a woodsman. In Turkey season my bare minimum is to hear a turkey make a single turkey noise. If I can hear a bird, Tom or Hen, the day is a success and everything else is gravy. For the deer woods, I want to feel like I went on an adventure and the world around me forgot I was there. This may mean paddling a canoe quietly up a creek to hunt a water oak or slowly creeping through a waist high cutover to hunt on top of a pile of logs overlooking the cut. When game animals around me fail to detect me and I melt into the surroundings I feel that I have done my job and the day was a success. My second consideration when going outdoors is efficiency. I am a data geek so give me a few minutes to explain. As a weekend warrior you get 1-2 days per weekend and use a five month season that gives you 20-40 sits. In the state of Florida, it takes 55 Hunter Days to kill a single deer on Public Lands. Given the high end of 40 hunts that means the average hunter has a statistical opportunity 1 time every 1.375 SEASONS. The numbers get even worse if you want to kill a racked buck, 77 days or 1.925 seasons. Now having looked at that, how long do you think it takes to kill a Registry buck? (For those who don’t know Florida has it’s own trophy system and to enter you have to hit the 100” mark.) My second goal is to find a quantity of deer I want to kill in a season. For this year, that number is 6. I killed four last year and I’d like to try and put more meat in the freezer and improve as a hunter. My third and final consideration is quality. This is the gravy category and is the icing on the cake for the season. Throughout the year I run cameras and attempt to identify the best deer in my area. Best for the area, not for the country. Some areas simply don’t produce trophy bucks and it's ok to adjust your goal here to match what the land provides an opportunity for. As I find them, I try to locate their core area with the help of my deer hunting mentors and try to kill at least 1 a year. Several hunts a season are dedicated to these areas with the aspiration of killing a trophy deer. Sometimes this means that I pass smaller deer and this is a very difficult muscle to develop but I am getting better at it. The good thing is that if I choose to shoot a smaller deer in this situation, goals 1 & 2 are met and there is no disappointment to be had. I hope that this helps as you begin to plan your season and that perhaps this helps prevent burnout, frustration, and hurt feelings as the season progresses. Remember that we are remarkably lucky to have this outdoor pursuit and it’s our job to keep it fun and around for generations to come. Shoot straight and good luck!