"I'm a Hunter!"

In case you live in a hole, or have been out of the country for the last month, let me bring you up to speed. It was "Deer Huntin'" season in Utah!

I myself was actually a former hunter in another life, before I got too busy with work and school. But I plan to return at some point... Maybe.

When you are on the outside looking in, this whole fiasco looks quite a bit different. The hunt loses a lot of its glamor once you haven't participated in a while. For instance. I always loved the thrill of the hunt. Which in my case meant driving around for hours on end, or sitting at the edge of a field in sub-zero temps waiting for even a glimpse of a raggedy 2-point that weighed as much a large dog. Really the only thrill was the 4 seconds of intervening time between when I first saw the 2-point and when I shot the two point. But it always seemed worth it.

Now however, when I think of this same scenario, I not only have to take into account all the waiting, driving, soda, BS and the final culmination of the kill, but also the gutting, skinning, butchering, and then eating of this meat that is basically sage-brush flavored and dry as a bone. Is any of this sounding familiar?

So, I guess you can see why I put a maybe on my plans to start hunting again.

I have also noticed another phenomenon that I never caught onto, even when I was a might hunter myself. This would be the tradition of wearing your hunting clothes during the week leading up to the actual hunt.

It was like Tuesday or Wednesday of the opening weekend and I started noticing everybody with the 4-wheelers already packed up, towing their tent trailers around and inexplicably wearing their hunter-orange. I can only assume that all of this was to broadcast to the world "I am a Hunter!" What other explanation could there be? I mean, do football players wear their pads and helmet for days, leading up to a game? Do rock climbers walk around wearing their harness with a rope slung over their shoulder? "What's up dude, I'm going climbing in a few days". And yet, hunters find in necessary to dawn their hideous orange sweaters, their dorky hunting caps with the ear flaps and their giant blood-smeared boots. So here's to you, super excited hunter-man. It looks like your going hunting? Good luck, in 4 days!.

(There is one guy I want to exclude from my mockery. That is the guy wearing the full coverall suit of orange. This guy does not have time to decide between a vest, a coat, a hat, etc. "To heck with it" he says, "I am here to kill dear, not look good"... You wear that bad-boy all year if you need to buddy. I think there are few (too few?) people, even among the hardest of the hard-core hunters, that are willing to step into a pair of blaze orange coveralls, zip it up, and head out the door into public view.)