Tracking Techniques for Ethical Hunting
Several years ago, I was invited by an acquaintance to go deer hunting. Although I had some reservations about the man who was inviting me, I decided to go. He was much older than me, a seasoned hunter with a long lifetime of experience, so I figured he probably had a lot of knowledge and wisdom I could learn from. The idea was that by coming along I could shoot a deer myself or, if he got one, I would give him a hand with any heavy work and could take the hide, fat, and organs and any other parts that he didn’t intend to use home with me.
On the day of our hunt, he picked me up at the road near my home early in the morning. We drove in his pickup truck a couple hours, first along the highway and then veering off into a network of logging roads.
The plan was, according to my hunting partner: drive. We would drive until we saw a buck off in a clear-cut or crossing the dirt road in front of us. We both had rifles resting between our legs, at the ready, and when we spotted our quarry, my partner would stop the truck, open his door, aim and shoot if it was on his side. If the deer was on my side, it was my shot. This really was not what I’d had in mind when I signed on to this excursion. Nonetheless, I quietly went along with it, deciding I was there to passively learn from this man.
We drove and drove and drove. My partner chain-smoked the entire time, with the windows rolled up to keep the cold October air out, and delivered an endless stream of raunchy stories.
For hours and hours this was our hunting campaign: driving through one clear-cut after another, stuck in a little box filled with cigarette smoke and one dirty story after another. At some point during this time,
