Learning to hunt bass-ackwards

Sometimes it feels that I've gone about learning how to hunt all wrong.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with my hunting. But last week when I was out on my weekly jaunt at the lake, it occurred to me that I'd gone about learning to hunt bass-ackwards.

I was following my deer trails for the third consecutive weekend and everything just started to click. When I crested the hill in my first major climb, there they were: three blacktail does, chewing on something lovely and green as they watched me. I'd been wondering when I'd finally see deer!

When I crested the next hill, I was treated to a comical duet sung by a loquacious hen mallard and a croaking frog, echoing up from the creek 100 feet below. I abandoned my path to stalk them for a while and see if I could figure out what had prompted this performance, but the qua-oaking stopped when I got too close.

No matter! It was a fun diversion anyway.

When I crested the next hill, I made my way through a verdant patch of miner's lettuce I'd remembered seeing on a cool north face, snacking as I went. And then dodged the poison oak that I'd been watching leaf out - I knew exactly where I needed to tread carefully.

I reveled in all of this. Instead of just barging through, I was seeing the land. It was becoming home. And it felt good. If I were allowed to hunt here, it would feel perfect.

That's when it hit me: If I were a proper hunter - and I mean that in an ancient, primal sense - I would've grown up walking these hillsides, and I would've learned every inch of them long before I was allowed to handle a weapon.

But that wasn't how I did it.

For a time during my childhood, I had that experience. I lived in the country, and I knew every square inch of my environs: five acres of our own that we let go wild, and a long network of agricultural irrigation ditches that were havens for all sorts of wild things.

But my family didn't hunt, so I never took the next step of becoming a full participant in that environment. I grew up and went away to college in a big city. I spent a couple decades living a pretty urban lifestyle.

And when Hank finally convinced me it was time to take up hunting, here's how I did it: I signed up for a hunter safety course, bought a shotgun, took a shooting lesson and went on my first hunt - for planted pheasants - in a field I'd never seen before.

(I did all of this, incidentally, based not on a lifetime of preparation, but because of one experience: a pig hunt with Hank in which I was astonished by the magnetic tug of hunting wild animals for your food.)

I took this process for granted, as do many who take up hunting as adults, or who hunt from a home base in a city. But the longer I hunt, the more I crave intimate knowledge of my hunting grounds. And the better I get to know my hunting grounds, the more I recognize that much of my hunting is such a far cry from what it should be.

Now, work with me here - I'm not being judgmental about any particular form of hunting.

What I'm saying is that one of the things that drives us to hunt, that makes us so passionate about what we do, is this profound need to connect with nature on an authentic level, not as a visitor to the zoo, but as a full-fledged member of the living community.

We hunt in part to escape the insane world that humanity has built for itself. Yet our hunting is defined and constrained by that world.

There are ducks in my neighborhood, but I can't hunt in the suburbs, so I drive 90 miles north, wait in line with other hunters, and head out to my spot where we're all sandwiched together as close as - and sometimes closer than - safety permits. I shoot as many ducks as I can because I know the season's days are numbered and I'll miss the hunting when it's over. And I check out when I leave, opening my car to inspection to prove I'm not going over my limit.

There is absolutely nothing natural about this process.

Don't get me wrong - I love duck hunting. I love how beautiful the marsh is. I love how clever and funny and elusive the ducks are. I love it when I make a good shot. I love it when the ducks thwart me and live to fly another day. I love it when the ducks make me laugh at myself, which they do often. And I love eating duck. I mean, eyes-rolling-back-into-my-head love it.

And I understand, accept and support the laws and rules regulating modern hunting, because I know those rules ensure the health of the species we hunt. If only the rules governing agriculture and construction were so considerate of wildlife.

Still, I can't help but feel a little sad that something so profoundly central to our existence for literally millions of years has been reduced to this ... this kabuki.

And this applies to pretty much every form of hunting I do. I drive anywhere from one to three hours to stalk deer. One place I hunt deer is crawling with hunters. Another is bordered by neighbors hostile to hunters, so God help me if a deer I shoot bolts in that direction.

Turkeys? Got 'em in spades five minutes from my house, but there's no hunting allowed on the American River Parkway, so I drive to Amador or Napa county whenever I'm lucky enough to get an invite from someone with land there.

Doubtless, by this point some of you are thinking, "Speak for yourself, girlie!" I'm talking to you incredibly lucky rural hunters who either own a lot of land or have access to a lot of land right outside your back door. Sure, you still have to follow the rules of modern hunting, but you get to develop and nurture your relationship with the land year-round.

Seriously, I envy you so much I could cry.

Not that this will ever stop me from hunting. Having restored my connection to the earth, there's no going back. I will cling tenaciously to anything that allows me to maintain or deepen that connection.

For now, that means taking walks in a park where I can get to know - but never consummate - my relationship with the land. It means driving all over California to hunt deer and pigs and turkeys even though I can find plenty of them closer to home. It means adhering to the elaborate modern rituals of duck hunting.

If I'm lucky, someday it'll mean getting some land in the country where we can walk out our back door and hunt, familiar with the land and what it holds, ever mindful of we can and can't take from it not because the law tells us so, but because we know it.

Is that too much to hope for?

© Holly A. Heyser 2011