You Better Start Hunting Now

For the record, I've been hunting since I could first form lasting memories. I'm not bragging, but just stating a fact that has caused me some surprise recently. I was out walking the woods with some survivalist friends and was shocked...shocked I tell you! The supposed informed prepping friends were totally clueless about how to move, stalk and hunt in general.

It was obvious that their muscle memory and tactics were honed on video games and imaginary situations. For example, how fun would a video game be if you had to play it to exhaustion days on end in the hopes you will get one clean shot. Not to mention after the kill, the real heavy lifting begins.

The nice folks walking beside me were totally unaware of the greater environment surrounding them. It was clear that they considered a hunting trip just a dirt-covered urban war. Now I don't mean this in a mean way, but fighting a man is not the same as hunting four-legged big game. The prey's senses are different. The camo is different. The movements are different. And the reaction is different.

The amount of noise these guys made walking off-road was astounding. It was as if silence was a completely different planet. Not only could they not move silently, but they were completely unaware of what silence was in the first place. Every stick snap. Every branch brush. Every fabric scratch sounded like a bomb going off, but hardly raised an eyebrow to my friends.

I also could not believe how many game signs they missed, including the game itself. Flashes in the brush. Flicks of whitetail. Shadows that slowly move. And these guy thought they would just take up hunting when the S hit the Fan. No, they will take up starving as their new skill. And they will be very good at it.

So here's some help. In addition to my suggestion that if you want to hunt when the grid goes down, you better start hunting now to learn how. I also suggest you do you homework. If you cannot list a few dozen important traits of good hunting, here is some help:

Outdoor Life's 50 Great Hunting Tips

Read it. Memorize it.

The other major thing I noticed while watching my friends "hunt" was that they expected to be able to stop, get ready, and then the game would magically appear in front of them. Not behind them. Not to the side. And not tomorrow. And even worse, they acted as if the game was on some sort of schedule so if nothing happened within five or ten minutes, not only would they give up, but they would talk loudly about it, and move about.

Now I'm not quite ready to blame Facebook or the iPhone, but these guys could not sit still, let alone quite for a solid 15 minutes in a row. I was hoping for at least a solid hour of perfectly still quite time, but here they were, restless as ever after a number of minutes you could count on your fingers!

In the end, I realized that these guys are normal. They are the new prepper, or Survivalist 2.0. Completely full of imaginary skills, but totally inept in real world experience. Hunting is an art. It takes practice. You must make mistakes, and the better you are, the smaller the mistakes you will continue to make.

Check out this video. Is this the next generation of hunter, let alone gun owner? Imagine this guy walking through the trees totally pissed off that the deer won't show themselves!

But if your belly is empty and you intend on shooting your next meal, just remember, the critters you are chasing have honed their skills and senses over millions of years. And you? 

That's what I thought.

And please be careful where you get your advice about hunting... Not everything you read on the Internet is true.

Carrry on.
-PP®