The Birds Become a Number. The Stories Stick Around.

I managed about half a limit on my first dove hunt, which, wasn’t bad. There were plenty of misses and moments where I was reminded that shooting at a moving target is a lot different one that politely stands still.  Every bird gave me another chance to figure out what I was doing wrong, and hopefully get a little better before the next one came flying by. I felt like I had at least started to figure out the rhythm of it. 

The number of birds, though, isn’t what I’ll remember.

I spent the day hunting with a high school friend and his dad, a guy I’ve known for 36 years. That’s a long time. Long enough that you can sit around with someone and start pulling stories out of the archives. Somewhere between the shooting and the birds flying overhead, we started talking about things that happened decades ago. Stories we’d probably told before, but somehow seemed funnier at camp than they ever had sitting around a table. That’s one of the things I love most about hunting. You go out looking for an animal, but you usually come home with something else: stories.

Some are brand new and others are 20 or 30 years old. It becomes better when you’re standing next to the same people who were there when it happened. The hunting gives you a reason to get outside. It gives you a place to go and something to pay attention to. But the older I get, the more I think the real value is everything that happens around it. The stories that wouldn’t have been told if everyone had stayed home.