Can You Define "Hunting"?
by Joe Maxwell, Editor and Publisher
The Miriam-Webster Dictionary defines a “sport” as “a source of diversion” or a “physical activity engaged in for pleasure.” Therefore, hunting is a sport. (Pretty swift logic.)
But it’s more than a sport. Hunting is hard to define, but may go something like this: “A chance to connect with God’s creation and to learn life’s lessons in the process (and, yes, to kill some food).”
I borrowed the “creation” part from Mossy Oak founder and CEO Toxey Haas, whose family is the subject of this issue’s cover story on page 14.
Some of the greatest times in my life have been on a cold lake or in the autumn woods. Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned came with a gun and
my dad.
It all started at my birth, when my paternal grandfather—a Drew, Mississippi, quail hunting gentleman—gifted me with an Italian-made 20-gauge Beretta. For the next six years, my dad shot it.
"I’m breaking it in for you,” Dad rationalized. I realized by age six how his logic broke down.
I wanted my Beretta back.
About then it was time for a vital rite of initiation—firing my first gun.
Dad grabbed an old single-shot 12-gauge (crude, hammer-action, unlike my 20-gauge’s nifty firing pin-action). Where was my sleek Beretta? I wondered.
Dad drove me to a remote gravel road and set a can on a tree. He cocked the old gun’s hammer and nestled its stock under my arm. I was too small to hold the gun to my shoulder. He promised, “I’ll brace the gun behind you in case it kicks.”
I leaned over the stock and aimed.
Click… Bang… Darkness.
I opened my eyes and saw Dad, panicked. The gun’s hammer had recoiled up my nose, splitting and breaking it. Dad just knew he had destroyed any hope of me becoming a hunter. On the contrary—it proved to be the opening I needed. I gained back my Beretta (it had no hammer!). And I gained something else—a sense that with my dad at my side, I could handle some pretty tough shots—even nose-splitting ones.
I hope my four sons and my daughter feel the same about me.
A few years later, Dad and I hunted an old river lake. We both fired. I actually shot a duck. Dad waded out to get both mine and his. He returned holding several ducks, one with a tin band clamped to its leg.
Dad already had a massive collection of bands, which I considered to be a hunter’s version of scalps—amazing in their brutish way. I still don’t think I shot the banded duck, but Dad gave that band to me. And he gave me a lot more in the process.
We were in a club that had an ancient duck hole called “Number 1 Blind.” Once fifteen of us—dads and sons—hung off two creaky trees in the early morning like Hatfields and McCoys, guns gripped. Daylight came. Ducks swarmed. Each man was allowed three shots by law. All 45 shots went off, ducks spiraling down.
Then Peyton Pittman fired again … and again.
Everyone looked his way. Peyton was a sturdy, wild young man from Marks, Mississippi, who had moved to Jackson but always remained a rule unto himself; he also was a terrific fullback and friend.
“Peyton,” my dad asked, “how many shots did you just fire?”
“All five,” Peyton replied.
We all laughed. I learned to appreciate simple answers like Peyton’s. (Peyton died a few years back in a car crash. A lot of us miss him.)
About this time, some families rented an old shack in a Delta bean field. Largely unlivable, we called it “The Palace.” I remember one night in The Palace, Mr. Al East of East Ford was sleeping in a room with Dad and me.
Dad snored. Dad’s dog—named Baron—licked.
Through the night, Baron’s licking grew louder like a nightmare—like Edgar Allen Poe’s Tell-Tale heart.
Mr. East began shifting, mumbling and tossing. Dad kept snoring happily.
Finally, Baron rhapsodically licked again.
“Lamar,” Al East bellowed, rising up off his cot. “If you don’t stop that dog, I will—I’m going to kill him.”
Baron was moved outside. Dad, I learned, was no fool.
I grew up—unfortunately—and went off to graduate school; but I returned from Chicago sometimes to hunt.
I once brought some Northern, Ivy League-type friends down here with me. They were dubious of hunting’s merits but agreed to try dove hunting (though they worried we were killing symbols of the Holy Spirit).
Before it was over, they were firing shots and sniffing gun smoke as if it were glue.
They also rode with me in a friend’s five-speed truck. One of them, a Cornell University Magna Cum Laude graduate, noticed the leather grip sewn to my friend’s gear shift.
“This is the softest leather I’ve ever felt!” he exclaimed. “What sort of leather is it?”
My Jackson buddy looked over and smiled. “A deer’s scrotum.”
“Oh.”
Hunting memories are unlike any others. You don’t have to drink or do drugs and you still get crazy results.
On one level, hunting isn’t about what we nab, but about what nabs us—friendships, family and a touch of the eternal.
To be honest with you, hunting’s very hard to define. SS
—joe@thesportingspirit.com
Click here to comment on this article.