I, as often as not, enjoy the day when nothing happens, like a nothing day I spent on a deer stand.
A friend of mine told me that an old wrangler in Montana had expressed it best when he said “the thing that a man hunts when he hunts is himself.” I don’t know when I’ve heard it put better. I know I have to “hunt myself” because I “lose myself” so often. When things get to the point that I don’t like where I am, what I’m doing, or how I’m acting — it’s time to whistle up the dogs and get away. I, as often as not, enjoy the day when nothing happens, like a nothing day I spent on a deer stand. The sun was just warm enough to put me in a slight doze and in the midst of dreaming the great dream I felt aware of some activity involving the bottom of my leather-top rubbers. I peeked down and saw a field mouse nibbling at the sole of my boot. He seemed like a friendly fellow and I felt like having company so I stayed stock still and pleasured in watching him, until a scolding blue jay made me jump and I frightened him away. And somehow, I’m not sure why, but this seemed to put the right perspective on everything for me for a while. Maybe as simple as the realization that a lot of things in life have a tougher row to hoe than I do.
We all have those times when we just plain don’t understand anything about anything. When life seems curiously meaningless, and cruelty and unhappiness have become common companions to us, then the woods can offer us special sanctuary. The sight of a suckling fawn or a hen partridge fussing over her chicks can tell us a lot about love and faith. There is an order, a proper scheme of things in the wild that I find reassuring. The perspective felt by a small, middle-aged man wandering beneath towering trees that have seen centuries is good for me. To be cussed out by a blue jay from above and nibbled at by a mouse from below can do a lot to strip away the silly self-importance we carry for no good reason. I have neither the survival instinct of the mouse, nor the courage of the jay. I can’t burrow very well, and I certainly can’t fly. I am just an object of curiosity that moves in a cumbersome way and whose odor is offensive and frightening to most wild things. I don’t have a good sense of smell, my hearing is nothing to that possessed by the deer and my eyes are almost useless compared to the birds. My hide can’t keep me warm and to defend myself against attack, using only my bare hands, would be pathetic in consequence.
A four-ounce mole is a hundred times stronger for his size than I am and his bravery is monumental. Compared to even the smallest of beings I am some kind of biological oddity who depends for his survival on the complexities of a self-made social order. I don’t mind being ordered about by a jay — after all, it is his house that I’m smelling up and stumbling through. So I’ll go back where I belong, knowing that the absolute truth about me is that my species must function around the fact that compared to most of the living things in the world we are pitiful creatures.
I have “hunted myself” and I have found myself, I must admit, I’d make a damn poor trophy…
Editors Note: Gene Hill died on May 31st of 1997. This delightful yarn, which appeared in Hill ‘s A Hunter’s Fireside Book, is reproduced courtesy of his widow, Cathy Lee Hill.
On these pages is a stellar lineup featuring some of the greatest names in American sporting letters. There’s Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning William Faulkner, the incomparable Robert Ruark in company with his “Old Man,” Archibald Rutledge, perhaps our most prolific teller of whitetail tales, genial Gene Hill, legendary Jack O’Connor, Gordon MacQuarrie and many others. Buy Now
