For me, hunting is about " being there".
I enjoy every part of the hunt, except the waiting. I have learned how to occupy my mind, eyes, and ears, while Waiting, over the years, so I can even look forward to that.
I enjoy scouting before the hunt, as I read tracks and sign to locate the deer, feeding areas, what they are feeding on this week, their bedding areas, where they travel, where they play( does play with their fawns, and older daughters right up to the rut) and how they change their movement when fields they were frequenting are harvested.
I too stopped enjoying the kill after my first deer, and lost interest in hunting wild boar after my first one was so badly handled by the preserve owner that it stunk all the way home, even frozen! But, like climbing back on a horse that throws you, I went boar hunting again more than 10 years later, and it was okay, again. I made that second hunt over New Years, when it was cold even in Tennessee, rather than over Labor Day, as was the first hunt. I work very hard now to make an accurate shot that delivers a quick kill, and I am more willing to pass up " iffy " shots now. I take as much pleasure from hunting as I did all those years ago, however.
My pleasure may differ from Roundballs because I do COOK and eat what I kill, and I get the pleasure of enjoying the memories of the hunt all over again every time I sit down to eat part of the game. I also get to share wild game with people who don't shoot or hunt, and have never eaten wild game before. When they admit the meat is " really good" or "really tender", I can smile, and take added satisfaction.
It takes about 3 days now for my hearing to improve out in the woods, when I hunt. But, as it improves, I hear things I have not heard for months and years. Just forcing myself to shut down from " people time", to mother nature's clock, makes the effort of hunting worthwhile to me. I have watched spiders work down the tree trunk next to my hunt during a sunny after noon when the day began below freezing, wondering where the heck that spider was keeping himself warm over nite. I have sat still enough to have small birds land on limbs inches from my face. I have had squirrels walk up and over my boots. And I have had other hunters walk right past me, close enough to touch, who didn't see me. I have learned to walk so quietly that I have walked passed other hunters, within 6 feet of their heads, and they have not heard or seen me.
Most of all, I have had people ask me If " I got anything " at the end of a day's hunt, and when I tell them, " No!", they are disappointed, and offer their sympathy. That, when I am excited for all the things I did see and " get " other than the game I was hunting. That is when I realize how much more important " Being There " is to hunting, than just bagging game.
I still remember the snowy December Morning, when I went Pheasant hunting with a good friend. I arrived at his home in the dark, and we were parking our cars at the field before first light. As we got out of our cars, there were about a dozen pheasants, many cocks( legal to shoot in another half hour) within feet of our front bumpers. They wandered off, away from our cars, and then flew off across the field as the dawn broke. We tracked on huge old cock across the snow, and through the woods on the other side. A river was on the South side of the woods, and the drainage district had been clearing the trees from the banks of the river, and left a huge pile of logs, and branches to dry, and eventually to be burned in the Spring on the banks of the river. The pheasant we had been tracking flew up and over that pile, leaving a beautiful, and delicate imprint of his wings in the snow where he lifted off. The snow was new, and fluffy, so it captured every detail of those feathers, and the movement of the wing in a rolling motion. You had to to look at the impression from a number of angles to the rising sun to get the full picture.
We hunted the rest of the day- about 10 hours, with the temperature dropping that afternoon- and only raised up hens, which are not legal to shoot. I went home cold, tired, and happy. If you want to see something as beautiful as the feathers of a pheasant taking off in fresh snow, you can't be asleep in that warm bed at home. You have to " Be There ". By the time you get out of the bed, the sun will have risen high enough to start burning away the edges of those impressions, and the winds will have picked up and blown snow into them, destroying all but the roughest of outlines of those wings and tail.
