New Traditions
In the fall of 2011 I hunted for the first time. The summer prior, my dad and I went through a Hunter’s Safety Course together. Our family had not been a hunting family. It was not something I grew up doing “for as long as I could remember.” We didn’t have the family honey hole that Grandpa had always hunted since he was a kid. We were starting from square one.
Fast forward to today, the fall of 2023, and I am wrapping up my 13th hunting season. My hunting “career” up to this point has been filled with ups and downs, but being a hunter has become a part of my identity. Every spare moment I have is filled with books, podcasts, articles, any information I can consume to make me more informed and more equipped to be successful. I obsess over the details of learning about how animals use the landscape—where to find them at different times of the year and why.
In those 13 years of hunting I have also gone from a Freshman in High School, to a married father of two amazing girls. It’s interesting to me now to think of how my kids are growing up. Even though they might not know how new hunting is to me, they are being raised in a hunting family. The meat we eat is wild game. My oldest daughter talks about how we eat deer, elk, and bear. My first buck is mounted on the wall and my first bull will be joining it soon. My oldest watches hunting shows with me and gets excited when she sees the animals and knows that when they are shot, they are used “for meat.” The reality of us being a hunting family was set in stone this September when I was fortunate enough to kill a whitetail buck with my bow close to home. I was able to give my wife a call and she came out with the girls. Watching my oldest interact with me, with the buck, and see the process was a moment of pride for me. She understood it. It wasn’t alarming to her to see her dad with a dead deer. She knew this was something we did and why we did it.
Even when it was time to skin and quarter the deer, she said she wanted to be around to see it. She never once was afraid, but multiple times would say, “Wow! That’s a lot of meat!”
Having her around made me excited for the future and the adventures we might be able to go on together. Hunting does not seem to be isolated strictly as my passion, my obsession, but instead, is growing into a new tradition for our family.
