We stood in the elevator, he and I, and from a distance one would think we were friends. We both had Filson bags, wore L.L. Bean boots, and Carhartt jackets. The only visible differences were that he sported a moustache and a beard while I was clean shaven, and my gear was beat to heck while his was brand new.
“You work here?” he asked.
“Chiropractor visit,” I said.
“Your bag looks great. It has a nice patina to it.”
“Patina? Isn’t patina the green color that comes when copper is exposed to the weather?”
“Well you know what I mean,” he said. “It looks worn in. What did you do to get it that way?”
“I use it a lot.”
“Can I see the inside? I’m curious about the pocket configuration.”
I didn’t much care, for the bag contained my dog training gear. There were e-collars and beepers, bells and a checkcord, and the other usual stuff. At the top was my medical kit and two containers of tablets. You see one dog was old and has arthritis while the other was young and had diarrhea.
“Wait, what? Are you a drug dealer?”
“Nope.”
“Then what are all of those pills?”
“These are Metronydozal which I just gave to my young dog. He’s got the runs. The others are Ryimdal for my older dog. She’s got arthritis. What’s in your bag?”
“My laptop, a tablet, my smartphone, and some chargers.”
“And your beard wax?” I asked.
“I keep that in my pocket. It stays warm that way. It’s easier to put on. But why do you have all that stuff?”
“I just got done training my bird dogs and didn’t want to leave it in the truck.”
“You’re a hunter?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I’ve always wanted to go hunting.”
“Bro, I am so stoked on this hunting thing.”
A breaking cover story January 11, 2019’s Wall Street Journal says that hipsters are the new hunters who hope to add ballast to our declining numbers. Hipsters are one of several extensions of 21st Century men, but they’re the only ones taking to the woods. The mid-1990’s metrosexuals, city dwellers who focused on self-care, personal grooming, and apparel, did not pursue game.
Lumbersexuals, the group that arrived in the mid-2000’s, wore plaid shirts, and sported various forms of body art (short-handle for they had a lot of tattoos). They liked the rugged appearance of an outdoorsman complete with a bushy beard, but they did not leave the pavement.
But hipsters, the similar-type of urban/suburbanite who wear plaids, sport tats, and are otherwise pacifists, are picking up rifles, shotguns, and crossbows. Because they love our sport and all parts of the process? Nope. They like to know from whence their food comes.
Though they live in highly-populated areas, hipsters like the outdoors. They’re mostly plugged in but sometimes they also like to tune out. For the most part, hipsters unplug through non-consumptive sports like hiking, camping, kayaking and mountain biking. Their picking up a rifle, bow, or shotgun seems to be a natural extension and they’d probably have done it earlier if someone in their family was a hunter. But since most hipsters come from non-hunting homes, those genes skipped one if not more generations.
They don’t like to be classified as a group and pride themselves on individualism. Hipsters are the ones with rarely-seen bird dog breeds imported from a foreign land. They like custom-made firearms particularly if they’re made by a lesser-known guild. They’re somewhat hypocritical, for one minute they’ll drink nothing but craft beer bought from a local brewery and the next minute they’ll pop the top on a PBR pounder. For the most part, local is their style…that is until they broadcast information on a social media outlet from the web.
Hipsters don’t cotton to the words hunt or kill. They prefer to use the word ‘harvest.’ They don’t like store-bought meats and instead favor ‘organic.’ Hunting is a process that isn’t as important to them. Knowing that they are eating ‘wild’ very much is. Fair chase and ethical methods are important as is the proper handling of game. Rack size is of little interest.
It seems as if we’re long past the time when hunters all looked alike. When was the last time you ate sausage, eggs, and toast at 3:00 AM in a diner full of red-and-black plaid-wearing whitetail hunters on opening day? It’s just as unusual to find a post-hunt bar crowded with orange-clad bird-doggers, too. I couldn’t look any more different from a hipster, for my hair is high-and-tight. I have neither moustache nor beard, and there isn’t a tattoo anywhere on my body. But if hipsters are the only new blood coming to our decreasing hunter numbers then I’ll welcome them with open arms. I’ll do what I can to help them along the way. Why? ‘Cause that’s just what we hunters do.
To read the Wall Street Journal piece: https://www.wsj.com/articles/put-down-the-kombucha-and-pick-up-a-crossbow-hipsters-are-the-new-hunters-11547052935