"The greatest gift my father may have ever given me came as a byproduct of a wish — he wanted me to be a hunter. Scratch that; he wanted us to hunt together as father and son. Which we did for many years, until puberty and interests such as girls, tennis, guitar and my peer group drew me from his world into another. I was fishing with
him as early as age 3; at 7 carrying a BB gun as we skirted a cornfield for doves; by 9 crouching in a duck blind with my pint-sized 410 shotgun at the ready; and at 11 sitting next to him up high in a tree blind as we hunted deer.
"People who have issues with hunting do not understand hunting as I
experienced it. For our family it was nothing out of the ordinary that at 3 I could be quiet and still in a boat, understanding if I dropped my soda or banged my rod, the boat’s metal hull would conduct the sound through the water and send the fish scurrying. By first grade I knew how to scan a trail for snakes, for copperheads and rattlers. I was never afraid of them because my father taught me how to see them, but also because I knew he would see them first.
"In the third grade I was carrying a firearm that could kill my father. I remember the weight of that knowledge as I followed him down a path, realizing if I made a mistake, followed a dove’s arc toward him, I could pull the trigger at the worst possible moment. Picture me, tiny for my age, in camouflaged hunter’s gear and hunting
boots, stepping after him down some tracing of a path, already skilled in walking softly and freezing at the sight of incoming birds.
"But the biggest test of my skills as a hunter — which more than anything is really the skill of being still, of blending in, of waiting — was deer
hunting."
Read the rest of WriteByNight's own Steve Adams' essay in Notre Dame Magazine here. It's about writing, we promise!
