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Zen Hunting

Confidence is Key to Hunting Success

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Confidence in Hunting

A trophy hunter believes he can do it, and not in some cliché way. He actually believes he possesses all the right skills to find and arrow a giant deer. He trusts his decisions afield. He hunts in a relaxed manner while drawing from years of experience and a deep understanding of his prey. On any given day he expects to locate the biggest buck in the area. Having a couple big mounts on the wall back home certainly helps to boost his confidence.

One tenet in business is that success breeds success. Successful entrepreneurs often share a familiar story:  It takes years of work and many failures to earn their first million dollars, but only a short time to earn their second million. Success in any arena requires confidence.

Newbie bowhunters often struggle with confidence simply because they haven’t arrowed anything big yet. People transitioning to the bow from the gun sometimes lose confidence when they realize just how difficult it is to close the distance on a cagey old buck rather than sniping it from 600 yards across a canyon.

During my first bowhunt, after spooking several bucks out of bow range, I remember looking down at my 80s-model hand-me-down bow and feeling completely helpless. What I didn’t realize was that I was learning a lot about deer behavior with every encounter. The next season I arrowed a little 4×4 buck that had me brimming with confidence.

Hunting Mentors

Without confidence, you’ll continually second guess yourself. Which direction should I travel? Where should I sit in ambush? At this stage it’s helpful to have a mentor. If you don’t have a mentor, don’t despair; there are innumerable books, magazines, and online resources available that teach various hunting skills including locating, stalking, and field judging bucks.

Confidence increases as you learn about your prey and its behavior. Even before the season starts you need to get out there and put in some time scouting, tracking, and observing deer in their natural environment. The woods itself really is the best teacher. Learning how to identify big buck sign and habitat is key. No longer will you waste time in small deer habitat or nursery areas.

Before I ever bagged a real trophy buck I thought I was a decent bowhunter. It wasn’t until I went up against a true 200-incher that I realized how little I knew. Trophy bucks act completely different than smaller bucks; they really are entirely different animals. For two years I played catch up, reading everything I could find on mule deer while simultaneously spending more days afield. It finally paid off and I got my trophy. Now, when I enter the woods I truly believe I can find and harvest a trophy buck with some level of consistency.

Confidence in Archery

Confidence plays an important role in shooting skills too. You’ll be lucky to get one shot in a season, so you need to be intimately familiar with your bow. I recommend shooting your bow year-round in order to maintain your shooting muscles and maintain your effective range. Everything, from loading an arrow to drawing your bow undetected should become automatic.

Finally, confident hunters know when to pull out. What if your honey hole dries up or is overrun with other hunters? This happens all the time, so you need to have the confidence to abandon your traditional hunting area and find a brand new one.

Conclusion

When I set my annual goal to harvest a trophy, I envision a real monster buck with huge mass and wide-sweeping antlers. I am confident that at least one giant, stud-buck lives in every unit of my state. I just have to find it. I can set such lofty goals because I know I will consciously and subconsciously do things every day to reach my goal.

The difficulty inherent in bowhunting may lead you to believe that trophy deer are impossible to hunt. Sometimes we elevate these animals to mystical levels, viewing them as unhuntable specters of the woods. Big bucks might be masters of survival, but they’re still just big, stinky animals. When they bust out and fly away from us with incredible speed and majesty, they still have to go somewhere. As quickly as they disappear, they reappear somewhere else. Go out and find them. You are a good hunter; you can do it!

Uncategorized, Zen Hunting

Ode to My Bow

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Ode to My Bow

My bow is my best friend and woods companion. It goes everywhere that I do, sometimes for weeks at a time. It hangs freely from my fingertips, never strapped to my back. It’s tough being my bow, constantly getting banged up and snagging on brush. Sometimes I break parts off of it, but it never complains or fails.

My bow has seen the most amazing things: Trophy bucks beyond imagination, breathtaking sunrises, the glowing Milky Way galaxy on a moonless night. It once protected me from a man-stalking cougar. Another time it was nearly struck by lightning as it hung from my hand during a freak thunderstorm. And yet another day, me and my bow were caught in a freak wind storm that blew down eleven trees into flying splinters around us with nowhere to run.Over the course of a year my bow gets soaked by rain, covered in dirt, and caked with snow. Despite the elements, my bow is 100% accurate with every shot. Whether it’s 100 degrees, or well below zero, my bow always shoots true. When an arrow misses the bullseye I only have myself to blame.

My bow is absolutely quiet, even when it snaps off an arrow at 300 feet per second. A deer might hear the arrow whiz by, but not the whisper of the bows release.

At first glance my bow looks like any other aluminum-framed, modern compound bow. But it’s not. My bow was designed by a certifiable genius-engineer by the name of Mathew McPherson. Since the 1990s, McPherson has led the charge in bow technology, quite literally reinventing the modern compound bow over and over again.

The name stamped on my bow is Halon 32. Halon is a fire-extinguisher gas and a strange name for a bow. Its actual name—the one I gave it—is “Excalibur III”.

Excalibur III is my third serious hunting bow. But in the end it’s still only a tool, and so I usually just call it, well, “My Bow.”

Since 2017 my bow has killed three P&Y deer, one trophy mountain goat, three javelina and several non-trophy animals. It’s the primary provider of meat for me and my family.

Shortly after returning home from a long hunt, I feel an emptiness by my side, like I’m forgetting something. Then I realize it’s my bow, now tucked snuggly away in its case on the floor behind the couch.

Out of sight, but never out of mind, my bow is a warrior and a friend. With my bow, alone, I share life’s greatest moments; my pain, my success, my tears and my glory.

Zen Hunting

How to Find your Passion in Hunting

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Be Passionate

Hunting with passion will take you farther than anything else. When the mountain is just too big and too steep, it’s not physical strength that pulls me up, but a deep-seated, burning passion that keeps my legs churning. It’s much more mental than physical.

I first noticed this back in 2015 while elk hunting with my wife. In the early light I could hear the elk herd moving farther up the mountain. My legs burned as I huffed and puffed steadily behind them. Still, I didn’t stop or rest as I was compelled with great desire to catch up to them. For a moment I felt as though I’d split in half: my boundless spirit was moving ahead of my faltering body, and then reaching back to pull my body along. It was a weird mental moment, but it got me up the mountain despite the apparent physical impossibility.

That drive comes from the hope of infinite possibilities lying ahead, or some magical opportunity lurking in the near future. Unfortunately, this “drive” is nearly impossible to teach; it has to come from within.

How to Find Your Drive

Learning to be passionately driven will bring more success than anything else, even extreme physical training. If you can learn to fan that initial flame into a burning desire, then you’ll find your passion and use it as a tool.

The best way to kindle you hunting passion is to set realistic goals, and then do whatever it takes to reach them. As you begin to  have small successes, set bigger goals. By continually striving for bigger and better bucks, your love for hunting grows forever.

Throughout this process, try focusing on the whole hunting package, not just the kill. Take time to appreciate the miracle and beauty of nature. Read and learn about the long history of the bow-and-arrow and its precious heritage down through the ages. Feel the power you transfer to the bow from your own body, and then observe the mystical flight of the arrow into the target. It’s a beautiful, artistic craft!

Be sure to immerse yourself completely into the entire hunting process, from preseason preparation to the final harvest. Try processing the animal’s sacred meat by yourself and you’ll attain a greater appreciation for the animal.

This is the recipe for passion that will drive your spirit up the mountain and towards long-term success.

Avoid Pitfalls

If however your intentions are impure; if you just want to kill something with little regard for the sanctity of life; if you’re really hunting for recognition and ego, then your passion will erode and eventually falter. As exciting as the kill might be, most people—hunters and non-hunters alike—don’t really care about your success. That is, unless you shoot a real monster, in which case they’ll just be jealous.

Conclusion

In the end if you aren’t hunting for yourself, or your family’s dinner table, then you’ll lose your passion for the sport. That’s because the mountain is cruel; it often beats you up and holds out on you. Over time you’ll grow to resent it. Finally, one day, tragically, hunting becomes too much a burden and you don’t return.

Don’t go down this route! Instead foster your passion and you’ll find success afield, whether you harvest something or not.

Zen Hunting

Hunting Pillars vs. Zen Hunting Pillars

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The Pillars of Hunting vs. Pillars of Zen Hunting

A few years ago I was fish-guiding a bright, twenty-something-year-old man named Cliff. He was eager to fish, but just as eager to converse about the wonders of nature. Throughout our impassioned conversation I laid out some personal Zen-like experiences I’d had in nature and how these experiences ultimately led to great success.

Cliff was fascinated with the concept of Zen hunting and asked me what the “pillars” of Zen hunting were exactly. I was a little dumbfounded by his question because, up until then, I’d never thought of Zen hunting in terms of ‘pillars.’ Long story short, I went home wrote down what I considered the pillars of Zen hunting to be.

Before we get all philosophical about hunting, let’s first examine the normal, non-Zen, hunting pillars, and then contrast them with Zen hunting pillars.

Note: The following isn’t an official list of hunting pillars, but rather a compilation of both personal experience and knowledge gleaned from experts in the hunting field.

Traditional Hunting Pillars of Success

  1. The right equipment
  2. Good physical conditioning
  3. Locating/scouting
  4. Stalking close
  5. Shooting accurately

Zen Hunting Pillars of Success

  1. Aloneness (quietness)
  2. Patience
  3. Letting Go
  4. Openness (humility)
  5. Oneness

(There you go Cliff! The pillars are finally written in stone.)

Hunting Pillars Compared

When we compare the pillars of Zen hunting with the pillars of conventional hunting, you can see they are very different; actually I don’t see any similarities at all. That’s because each list is a completely different approach to hunting. The items in the first list are mostly tangible and readily available, while the Zen items are more of a mindset approach to hunting. As we analyze the Zen pillars, you’ll see that each is really a step—one leading to the next—and completed in consecutive order. In other words it’s a path.

Obviously you can’t practice Zen hunting without including some normal hunting pillars, like stalking and shooting. On the other hand, you can practice regular hunting without using any Zen pillars at all—heck, most hunters already do. Either they don’t know what Zen hunting is, or they’re already applying some Zen to their hunting style and just don’t know it.

The concept of Zen hunting (or Zen-anything) is mostly foreign to Westerners because we tend to be results-oriented and gear-minded. We look at nature as a commodity—something to be tamed or dominated. Moreover, today’s society has a decreasing attention span, the byproduct of this hyper-information age and its constant distractions. We get bored easily and lose our focus. All of this leads to an impatient or aggressive approach to hunting, and more often than not, to failure.

The way we combat this is through Zen hunting. Zen hunting is all about using down time afield to focus the mind and reconnect with our natural hunting instincts. This is best done alone since another person often serves as a distraction.

The Zen Process

The first step is to free the mind of distractions and expectations through the natural mediation that comes from just sitting or walking in the woods. This takes time, so be patient. Letting go of expectations is the hardest part because human nature expects instant results. As hunters we expect to kill something. We have a goal in mind and are dead set on reaching it. In Zen hunting, our eyes are open to the bigger picture.

The simple pleasure of communing with nature is satisfaction enough. Our newfound appreciation for the woods softens our kill drive, and when this happens we connect with the energy of nature and the life force of the planet (hopefully you believe in such things). This is what it means to be “one” with nature, or to achieve “oneness.”

Nature lives and breathes at a slow, rhythmic pace. You can see that rhythm in the way things move: clouds, trees, and animals, and hear it in the wind and bird songs. Zen hunting helps tune us in to that rhythm. No longer do we push our ego-driven “kill energy” ahead of us, but instead, we move with nature. In effect Zen hunting acts as a natural camouflage.

Zen hunting also gives us a heightened sense of awareness. We become more attentive to the infinite supply of subtle clues which will eventually guides us towards our quarry. Simply put, we become better hunters by using Zen afield.

That’s the whole process; easier said than done, but attainable all the same.

Final Thoughts

The goal of Zen hunting is to become a part of nature rather than apart from it. Since humans are nature in the first place, it only makes sense to reconnect with Nature to meet our needs. That is the goal of Zen hunting, and also the mission of this website: To reconnect modern-day hunters with the timeless rhythms of nature and to guide them towards a more successful and fulfilling hunting experience through Zen hunting principles.

Zen Hunting

Trophy Hunting: Good or Bad?

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mule-deer-5

The Ethics of Trophy Hunting

I’m a trophy hunter. On average I spend around 25 days per year beating myself up in the mountains just for a shot at a giant trophy buck. Most years I come home empty-handed, but what can I say; I just love hunting giant bucks! In this article we’ll explore the pros and cons of trophy hunting.

Trophy hunters sometimes get a bad rap, especially from non-hunters who sometimes refer to us as “head hunters.” Their assumption is that we hunt down and kill these majestic critters in cold blood, and then saw their head off and go home. This might be the case for a misguided few, but the hunters I know value the meat as much as the head.

This negative attitude isn’t just held by ignorant anti-hunters, but by other hunters as well. I was conversing with a fellow hunter once about the decline of big bucks over the years. Knowing that I was a trophy hunter he said, “Well, if people wouldn’t shoot all the big ones, there would be more around.” At first I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. I responded, “Isn’t that the point? To take the biggest buck you can?” I don’t remember his ignorant response.

A Case for Trophy Hunting

Aside from the large quantity of meat that trophy bucks provide, I don’t think there is anything more beautiful and majestic as a trophy mule deer buck with a massive rack. And since I only get to hunt one deer each year, why not make it something special?

But the best part of chasing trophy bucks with a bow is the extreme challenge it offers. Nothing tests a hunter’s skills like chasing trophy bucks on public land. The reward is so great that I won’t even think about pulling an arrow until I’ve verified a genuine superbuck. Each year my mantra is “One tag, one year, one superbuck.”

A while back I began pondering the ethics of trophy hunting. What were the pros and cons of trophy hunting? Is it more helpful or harmful to target trophies? As it turns out, trophy hunting is very beneficial, not only to deer herds in general, but to non-trophy hunters as well. Here’s what I discovered.

Trophy hunting does the following:

  • Provides more meat to fill the freezer and feed the family. Trophy heads come with trophy bodies and that means lots of venison. A mature buck weighs twice as much as a yearling.
  • Removes old, declining, and territorial bucks from the herd. This in turn allows more opportunities for young buck to reach maturity.
  • 80% of bucks five years and older will die of old age, not hunter harvest. Since these bucks are essentially unhuntable for the average hunter, then the trophy hunter doesn’t compete directly with non-trophy hunters.
  • Even veteran trophy hunters fail to harvest a trophy buck more often than not. Because trophy hunters aren’t shooting as many deer, it leaves more animals in the field which in turn provides greater opportunities for other hunters.
  • Trophy hunters spend more days afield than the average hunter. This equates to a richer hunting experience, in my opinion. This is probably the best part of being a trophy hunter.
  • Don’t be a “baby killer!” Being a trophy hunter means you’re not killing yearling or two -year-old bucks. Unlike older bucks, young bucks haven’t learned the art of evasion, so killing them isn’t really “fair chase” in my opinion. Several years ago there was a kill-anything mentality around our elk camp. On the last day of the season I had a young elk calf walk by at 20 yards. I drew my bow, but after looking at his cute, fuzzy face I just couldn’t bring myself to release my arrow. I got some razzing back at camp since “calves have better meat,” but shooting babies doesn’t seem fair to me.
  • Let’s not forget the greatest benefit of trophy hunting: A big, beautiful rack displayed on the wall in magnificent glory to serve as a life-long reminder of an unforgettable hunt! Nature really makes the best art.

Conclusion

In the end I can’t think of a single disadvantage to trophy hunting, well, aside from frequent failure. But oft-found failure is easily overshadowed by the occasional harvest of true monster-buck.

Happy trophy hunting this year!

Zen Hunting

Finding God in Nature: Part 3 of 3

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Finding God in Nature: Part 3

In this final section, I’d like to examine one last quote by Emerson:

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy.

What Emerson seems to suggest is that the answers to our seemingly infinite questions about life and purpose are accessible through the simple examination of nature. Unlike the previous quotes we’ve examined, this one is an affirmation of what I’ve already learned from nature.

Especially in recent years, I’ve observed a definite clarity achieved only through aloneness and meditation in the woods. Early in the hunt the incessant chattering and inner workings of the mind comes to a crescendo while sitting out the long hours of day. Whether out of boredom or lack of entertainment, the mind delves deeper and deeper into the psyche as it searches for meaning and purpose to all things. After a couple days it begins to quiet down. As the fragmented puzzle congeals and the bigger picture begins taking form. It seems infinitely big, blurring at the edges as you pull back further and further to see it. It surprises you because you so rarely see so much at once. Eventually there are no more questions. All of life makes sense.

clouds

All this transpires while staring blankly at stick or a rock or a leaf or stream. But the answer isn’t written under a rock or in the bark of a tree, but rather inside you already. You have the capacity to comprehend the universe because you are part of it. You are a microcosm of the universe, for to comprehend yourself is to comprehend everything. Nature is only the catalyst. The meditation necessary to achieve clarity and enlightenment is facilitated by nature.

Finding God in Nature: Part 1 of 3

Finding God in Nature: Part 2 of 3

Zen Hunting

Finding God in Nature: Part 2 of 3

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Finding God in Nature: Part 2

Now that we’ve tackled the nature of man, good versus evil, and the entire Universe, I’d like to explore another quote by Emerson:

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.

When I read that ‘nature never wears a mean appearance’, I wondered what it meant exactly. Certainly I’ve seen some ugliness in nature. I’ve seen one animal killing another, and I’ve seen many-a-decaying carcasses. Surely these are ugly things, right? But, if my perceptions of these ‘ugly’ experiences are set upon the rule of nature—the rule that states that nature is neutral and therefore neither good nor bad—then perhaps I simply failed to see the beauty in death–death being a integral part of life–and instead projected my own negative emotions or misunderstanding of death upon nature. Then I remembered a photograph I made in 2010. It is the rotting carcass of a dead pelican washed up on the shore of the Salt Lake and encrusted with salt.

saltybird

When I encountered and photographed this bird, I remember feeling rather neutral about it; it wasn’t sad nor ugly, but not beautiful either. Later on I found myself admiring the beauty and composition of the naturally arranged bones and feathers. Indeed, it was quite beautiful; as beautiful in death as in life perhaps. In a neutral and open mindset, there really isn’t any meanness or ugliness in nature.

Another example is my annual ritual of butchering a deer carcass on my kitchen countertop. Some people may cringe at the thought of cutting up an entire animal in ones house, as I probably cringed long ago. But amidst the blood and guts and bones and sinew, there’s a certain admirable order of things inside that deer. Even Mother Nature, as cunning as she is, surely could not create the miraculous complexity of this animal’s internal structure on her own. From snout to tail, the intricacy of this deer’s inner workings is brilliant beyond comprehension. It continually attests to a higher intelligence.

Each hour that I dissect the sacred meat and package it for future use, I feel closer to my maker. I come away from the butcher block glowing with insight and appreciation for the food I harvest. My role as a hunter and predator becomes clearer; it is a necessary and beautiful symbiosis with the planet. It inspires me to be a better conservationist of nature and preserver of our hunting heritage. Without fail, I am inspired to be a better person. In the thoughtful killing and butchering and ingesting this deer, there is never any meanness.

Finding God in Nature: Part 3 of 3

Zen Hunting

Finding God in Nature: Part 1 of 3

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Finding God in Nature Part 1

And so it starts again. Each year around this time, just before springtime, I find myself chomping at the bit, ready to reconnect with nature and the woods. Throughout the spring and summer I will rebuild my mental and physical strength, and come autumn I will be once again focused and ready for the great hunt. But the cycle always begins around this time. Some call it “spring fever,” but for me it’s just a long-awaited reunion. Outside or inside, I’m at home. But too much time inside leaves me quite homesick for what I consider my real home.

The recent cold snap has kept me indoors lately, but like a good student of nature I’m preparing myself by reading some of the great literary masters like Alan Watts and Emerson. I’ve always admired and revered the writings of Thoreau as well. But it is Thoreau’s predecessor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, with whom I feel a kindred spirit. Here’s Emerson’s back story:

Emerson was born in 1803. He was a brilliant man who studied at Harvard College at the age of fourteen. He was also a pious man who attended Harvard Divinity School in 1825 and became a religious pastor in 1830, a year after marrying the seventeen-year-old Ellen Louisa Tucker. In 1831 his young wife died, leaving Emerson and his faith in shambles. Unable to reconcile his conventional faith, he headed off to Europe where he met up with some other naturalists and started the movement known as transcendentalism. Following his newfound enlightenment, he spent the rest of his life writing about individualism and the art of living in harmony with nature. His most famous work is simply entitled Nature.

The basis of transcendentalism is the melding together of nature and God and common sense. It is not a strict “religion” per se, but similar to Eastern Zen in that it is a way to balance yourself. Think of it as a religious parachute. If for whatever reason your religion leaves you feeling a little unfulfilled, don’t despair, you can always find God lurking in nature; nature being the entire universe from the dirt to the trees to the ocean to the clouds to sun to the stars.

Humans are strangely compelled to search for God and meaning all throughout life. Some humans are compelled to enter into a direct relationship with a human-like being who is God, while others only need to find a little objective truth oozing out of their existence. Either way, the path toward God and goodness is a path towards nature, and away from evil and materialism.

In today’s Sunday-school lesson…uh…I mean thoughts on nature, I’d like to end with a quote by Emerson that has stuck with me for some time:

…let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and vulgar things.

This quote sticks with me because of my own personal observance that my annual assimilation into nature rejuvenates my spirit, answers my deepest questions, and makes me a better person. I always come out of the woods with more patience, love, and understanding than when I went in.

As a general rule, evil doesn’t exist in nature. Nature is always neutral. It has no soul or mind; it’s simply an environment and set of physical laws. Evil is a man-made concoction created when we act upon selfish impulses. Now, humans aren’t inherently evil. After all, we are nature ourselves and therefore can’t be inherently evil. But unlike nature, we have a consciousness, and a consciousness allows us to make good or bad decisions. Therefore, we are not neutral. To do good or evil is always a decision that we are responsible for.

Now, the premise of this article isn’t to suggest that people in nature won’t make bad decisions, but only that that a person in harmony with nature will make better decisions. He makes better decisions because nature inspires goodness.

The danger that modern society faces is that he is drifting further away from nature with each generation. And the further mankind gets away from nature–through selfishness, busy-ness,  technology, or other distractions–the further he gets from goodness.

Finding God in Nature:  Part 2 of 3

Zen Hunting

Greatest Outdoor Adventure Quote Ever?!

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Best Outdoors Quote Ever

I found this awesome quote by Francis Parkman (American historian and outdoor writer, 1823 – 1893). This quote occurs at the end of Parkman’s book, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, and pretty much sums up my whole philosophy on nature, bowhunting, and the outdoor lifestyle:

“. . . To him who has once tasted the reckless independence, the haughty self-reliance, the sense of irresponsible freedom, which the forest life engenders, civilization thenceforth seems flat and stale. Its pleasures are insipid, its pursuits wearisome, its conventionalities, duties, and mutual dependence alike tedious and disgusting. The entrapped wanderer grows fierce and restless, and pants for breathing-room. His path, it is true, was choked with difficulties, but his body and soul were hardened to meet them; it was beset with dangers, but these were the very spice of his life, gladdening his heart with exulting self-confidence, and sending the blood through his veins with a livelier current. The wilderness, rough, harsh, and inexorable, has charms more potent in their seductive influence than all the lures of luxury and sloth. And often he on whom it has cast its magic finds no heart to dissolve the spell, and remains a wanderer and an Ishmaelite to the hour of his death.”

Zen Hunting

Dealing With Failure in Hunting

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Dealing Failure in Hunting

Whenever you fall, pick something up. –Oswald Avery

If you are following this blog, then I apologize for my absence. My last post was over a month ago. Work obligations are somewhat to blame, but more than that, it’s been my lack of inspiration following a long and difficult hunting season.

When the general season ended with no new venison in the freezer, I was somewhat perplexed. What did I do wrong? Going in, I was convinced I’d unlocked the secret to bagging big bucks. But try as I might, I couldn’t do it. Immediately following the hunt, I  felt deflated and uninspired. Five weeks later, I’m just starting to realize that failure is exactly what I needed to keep my ego in check. How can a person ever fully understand big bucks in the first place? It’s impossible. They are brilliant, highly adaptable survivors!

All told, I spent 13 days hunting hard all over my prescribed unit, but never drew my bow on a buck. At the same time, I could have shot at least a dozen small bucks–mostly 2- and 3-points–but I was holding out for a trophy. This is what caused me so much grief. No matter how much ground I covered, and no matter how high I went, I was disappointed by the low numbers of mature bucks. I knew I could find them if they existed, but they were almost non-existent. Of the 50+ bucks I saw, only two were mature bucks in the 170-180″ class range; barely trophies in my book. Long story short, these bucks were either inaccessible or the stalk failed for one reason or another. Either way, the problem is with how few big deer there are anymore.

In observing so many deer in the wild, I was blown away by the sheer brilliance of the modern mule deer and the ways in which it’s adapted to avoid modern hunters.  Their survival tactics seem well thought out and highly effective. For instance, some of the largest bucks would keep does between them and the timberline as a sort of security fence. Basically, a bowhunter would have to get through a string of does to get to the bucks, making it nearly impossible to hunt them. This and many other evasive tactics were documented and will be covered in my next blog-post.

So the hunt was a failure, but only because I failed to provide meat for my family. At the same time, the hunt was a huge success. The countless hours spent sitting alone in nature, watching sunrises and sunsets, creeping through the dark timber, and observing innumerable animals going about their business–all these things stirred my soul and rejuvenated my being. Life’s daily problems  and stresses melted away. I saw the hand of God through all his creations, and all questions about the purpose of life were answered.

Fortunately the hunt isn’t over yet. The extended hunt began where the general season ended. Now, the extended hunt can be extremely difficult due to high hunting pressure, dry and noisy leaves on the ground, and the low numbers of scattered deer. At the same time, the odds go up when the snow flies and pushes big bucks down from the high country and concentrates them on the lower elevation windswept slopes. This occurs in mid-November, and that’s where my hunt will resume.

Yes, I failed to harvest a deer, but the season isn’t over yet. I still have an unused deer tag and an elk tag in my pocket, and I will succeed in providing meat for my family. I have learned humility through failure. I have found my inspiration and I’m full of hope. I still believe in Zen hunting, and through the process of Zen hunting, success is still a decision.