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I suspect many of them are like myself: hunters who started hunting, whether at an early age or not, with guns.
Then someone persuaded them to take up bowhunting, and in doing so take advantage of early hunting, often before the use of guns is allowed. Here in Florida, we get a little more than four weeks of archery season even before our early muzzleloader season. That's five extra weekends of hunting! Who could turn that down?
The arguments are compelling: More time in the deer woods; more chances to get a deer; it's usually legal to take a doe during archery season; you get to hunt the woods first, before the opening-week invasion of modern-gun hunters. Thus begins a (rather expensive) lesson in pain.
In The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark mentions many words of wisdom from the Old Man (his grandfather). Some of them are as follows: "You got to be a little crazy to be a duck hunter." I've never hunted ducks myself; I never had the opportunity. But I think these words, spoken more than seventy years ago, can be applied to the modern-day bowhunter. The basic premise is sound, anyway.
Decide for yourself: We Florida bowhunters begin our season in late September.
At that time, 90% humidity and high temperatures of 80-90 degrees are routine. This is also hurricane season, and the storms forming in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean almost always spawn additional rain to add to our usual dosage.
Add the clouds of mosquitoes to the formula, and you've got the makings of a masochist's dream. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines masochism, in part, as "pleasure in being abused or dominated : a taste for suffering." How then can we deny that we bowhunters are, indeed, masochists?
Okay, so maybe we don't take much pleasure in being abused, even by deer, but we do gleefully allow ourselves to be dominated by them and the hunting season. And if we didn't have "a taste for suffering," why do we submit to being swarmed and perforated by hordes of mosquitoes, as we sit in a tree, sweat dripping off us, trying vainly not to move? Taste for suffering, indeed. We love the stuff!
No hunting story is complete without some form of suffering involved. You hunters know what I mean, when you hear about the guy who was enjoying his cereal in the morning, spotted a big buck in the back yard, and popped him from the porch, there's something missing. How can he really appreciate something unless he suffered for it? His back yard? Sheesh.
The main question being, is it worth it? I have to say that yes, it is... if for no other reason than I'd have to be insane to go through all this and then claim I didn't really like it. Fact is, there's nothing quite as nice as looking back on the mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks, sweat, thorns, and the rest, and feeling good about that day.
Especially if you're looking back at it from a clear, frosty morning in a tree stand, and you know it's ten months until you have to start the archery season again.
- Russ Chastain
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