It has been a grueling winter here in the PNW, the wettest on record and the rivers have been blown out not only locally but also on the Eastside where one can usually go fish by March and have great conditions. I had my last pheasant hunting trip at the end of February with friends Mike & Carolina and their dog Penny and we managed to get a few birds but even the pheasants were in a weird mood. I pulled off a cast & blast that day hitting the river after the hunt and managed to catch a couple of trout to go with the two roosters I got, one of them a 17″ rainbow and a decent cutthroat. This was the last day the Yak was in decent barely fishable condition.
I’m ready for fishing season to get rolling for real and had planned to go to Ellensburg this week until Mother Nature had different plans. I’ve tied a bunch of kebari for tenkara all using pheasants I shot and have enough trout flies to get me through the lake season too once it opens up. Now if the weather would start cooperating just a bit.
In the meantime I’m gearing up for turkey hunting in May and deer in the fall. I’m putting a fiber optic sight on my Benelli and need to get it out and patterned for turkey sometime over the next few months. In the meantime I’m reading books on turkey hunting and watching whatever turkey shows I can on the Outdoor and Sportsman Channels I bought a set of First Lite camo, my first camo clothing which I never thought I’d be wearing. I also bought a nice air rifle to start target shooting with to get used to open sights and to get honed up ultimately for deer in the fall. My plan right now is to buy a muzzleloader in the next month or so and then hit the range with it this summer to get good with it so I have a chance at deer. I also plan to hit the trap field and sporting clays quite a bit more this summer since my wingshooting still needs some help. Last year I probably shot 250-300 rounds at clays, this year I want it to be more like 750-1000.
The RWS Diana .177 air rifle is turning out to be a great practice tool. I can go out in the yard and shoot at 10 meters any time I want to. I’m leaving it open sights for now since that is what I’ll be using for turkey and for deer, I’ll put the scope on later. I have been able to consistently hit all the clang targets from the largest to the smallest and when shooting a real target found it to be pretty spot on day one out of the box when shooting at a target. A little tuning and that slightly up and left should go away.
Rifle shooting is a very meditative practice, more so than clays since it is slower and more deliberate. I’m really trying to get my form down with the air gun, I mindfully cock and load it, sight it up, close my eyes and take a few breaths, open my eyes and adjust if needed for my natural aim, exhale and lightly pull the trigger when the breath is out. Of course the air gun makes no real noise and doesn’t hit you like a hard punch in the shoulder, moving to the .50 caliber muzzleloader will be another story but the form is the same and the better I get that down the better I’ll shoot a real rifle.
Just finished reading the book MeatEater by Steven Rinella, a memoir of his adventures growing up hunting and fishing into his adult hunting life. The book was an OK read but near the end one paragraph really stuck with me and now that I’m back to hunting I can relate so I’ll leave the post with that:
While hunting, I’ve cried at the beauty of mountains covered in snow. I’ve learned to own up to my past mistakes, to admit them freely, and then to behave better the next time around. I’ve learned to see the earth as a thing that breathes and writhes and brings forth life. I see these revelations as a form of grace and art, as beautiful as the things we humans attempt to capture through music, dance, and poetry. And as I’ve become more aware of this, it has became increasingly difficult for me to see hunting as altogether outside of human civilization. Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey. While the arts were making us spiritually viable, hunting did the heavy lifting of not only keeping us alive, but inspiring us. To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way.