Commentary
Now that hunting season has started, it would be a good time to do a tribute to hunters.
Tribute to the Hunter
One of my favorite books is A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. The following is one of my favorite parts.
“There are four categories of outdoors men: deer hunters, duck hunters, bird hunters, and non-hunters. These categories have nothing to do with sex or age, or accoutrements: they represent four diverse habits of the human eye. The deer hunter habitually watches the next bend; the duck hunter watches the skyline; the bird hunter watches the dog; the non-hunter does not watch.
When the deer hunter sits down he sits where he can see ahead, and with his back to something. The duck hunter sits where he can see overhead, and behind something. The non-hunter sits where he is comfortable. The bird hunter watches only the dog, and always knows where the dog is.”
I have hunted all of these and know that this is all true. When my wife and I hike at High Cliff State Park, she marvels at how I can spot the twitch of a doe’s ear at a hundred yards in the brush or the outline of its fawn’s back. Or the small white speck of an Eagle’s head in the trees across the Fox River at Kimberly. I haven’t duck hunted in a dozen years and yet I can spot the wing beat of a Mallard a quarter mile away. And my heart still beats faster. I know that all hunters are like this.
~Jan
