This
Saturday I find myself at my parent’s house in West Fort Worth. They live on a
beautiful ridge with about 3 acres of land. This is all surrounded by the
neighbor’s 22-acre ranch, with cows and horses right along our fence line. I
write this while sitting on the back porch with a cup of coffee, watching the
sun slowly descending below the horizon. In the distance I can make out the skyline
of downtown Fort Worth, which is probably still buzzing with activity. I find
that if I need a day of rest and recuperation that going home can really help
me both academically and spiritually. Spiritually it allows me to reconnect
with nature, because of the abundant deer and wild turkey that call both our
property and the surrounding land their home. In the distance I can make out a
brownish gray slowly meandering through the wooded area to the east behind our
house. I reach for the binoculars to take a closer look and find that it is a
white-tail deer, about an 8-point buck to be exact.
Seeing this
deer made me reflect on a time that I killed my first and only deer with a
rifle. I was at my buddy’s ranch in Throckmorton, Texas. I remember the
adrenaline as I squeezed the trigger, but more importantly I remember the
anti-climactic feeling when the deer dropped to the ground. I knew right after
I had that feeling that I would never kill another deer with a rifle again. I
have nothing against hunting and nothing against guns, but I feel that our
technology in regards to weapons has surpassed what being a sportsman is all
about. I hunt, but when I hunt I want to feel challenged. That is why I have
since taken up bow hunting and have come to appreciate the many challenging
aspects that add a natural ability that is missing with rifle hunting.
This
thought makes me think of an Edward Abbey quote on one of our handouts,
“Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am
always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead
animal to the live one.” I love this quote because, in my interpretation, Abbey
is saying that nature will always be more beautiful than people. It also
conveys a commonality in the classic photograph every sportsman is guilty of,
myself included. In the future I will think of this quote and try to be better
both ethically and spiritually than the typical sportsman. This quote leads me
to envision the outdoorsman that I want to be, and that is one that eats what
he kills, wastes none, and fights for the conservation of the species.
As I was in
my thoughts I saw something back to the left of the porch move. Under closer
observation I realized it was a group of wild turkeys slowly grazing away into
the pasture behind our house. Wild turkeys are a fascinating animal in that
they actually do fly, sort of, in contrast to the common belief that they
cannot. I looked through my binoculars to get a closer look as they approached
the fence line. One by one they got a running start and gave a powerful wave of
their wings to propel themselves over the barbed wire fence separating our
neighbor’s ranch. I often utilize their wings when tying flies because of the
unique brown with a fluorescent tint. Trout seem to prefer flies tied with
turkey feathers and I have always thought it was because of this unique
color. When they landed it seemed as if
they would recover all day, only to reuse their energy to come back over the
fence later that evening. I could not get a good picture of any of the animals in my observations because they were too far away, although I did catch a wild "goldendoodle" relaxing in the grass directly beside our porch.
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