The Pennsylvania based rock band Halestorm sings about an abusive relationship in their titular song I Miss the Misery. I found it extremely fitting about my love of the outdoors. I try to enjoy things the “regular way” and just go about lazily sauntering through the woods, but I just can’t. I need to know what’s over that next hill even though I’ve already hiked five miles. I need to know what that red berry I’ve seen everywhere is, and whether it’s in a grouse’s crop. I need to know if that 100 acre piece of used-to-be-private land in the State Game Lands now converted to public has old hedgerows to hunt. I can’t sit still when there’s something to be learned, and I sit still too long when I know that there’s deer just waiting to come past me.
Don’t miss you at all
Halestorm – I Miss the Misery
I like the kick in the face
And the things you do to me
I love the way that it hurts
I don’t miss you, I miss the misery
No one remembers the hunts where there are bluebird days and things come easy. While that’s what outdoor writers tend to write about, it’s often times not what we experience. Aldo Leopold famously wrote something to the effect of: that writers don’t often write about the wind, for their books are written near a warm stove. I spend a lot of time in the field during the fall when the air is crisp and the wind blows stiffly, running dogs for a chance to hear a pheasant cackle or a grouse explode from the brush beside me. Those are the days you hear the elder statesmen of hunting write about in Grey’s Sporting Journal. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a fine and poetic publication where I’m likely to be seen as an uncivilized swine, a hunter who has not yet found the romanticism of running my dogs for a few hours on a Saturday, but instead choose to live out of a backpack and eat MREs during deer season.
There’s something to be said about enduring hardship and dealing with wind and weather. It makes the accomplishments all that more notable in the end. I’ve hunted in all manner of weather, from high winds where limbs were breaking all around me to sleet storms where you couldn’t see five feet in front of you. Being wet, wind burnt, and cold lead you to being uncomfortable, something that we’re increasingly as a society not willing to endure. I’m not a masochist by any means, but I’ve learned that in order for me to get the solitude that I desire in the woods that I have to go farther, sit longer, and endure more in order to separate myself from the pack of other hunters in the woods during the popular seasons. The more I research, the more it seems to be true in Colorado elk territory.
This year upon learning that there were ptarmigan in the high mountains I subjected myself to boulder fields, quick elevation changes, and quickly changing weather. I saw a few ptarmigan, or what I believe were likely ptarmigan, but only on the drive up to the Divide. What I got from my experience walking through the boulder fields was sore legs, wisdom of how to properly pick a line down a loose mountain side, and helacious views of the Western and Eastern Slopes of the Rockies by way of some elevation where the wind nearly carried my hat away. I was sore and nearly couch bound for three days after crab walking out of the boulder field that was shifting under every step, but in hindsight I’d absolutely do it again.
That experience took me to new places, and allowed me to see several beautiful sides of the same mountain I’d been hunting for weeks. I encountered several old log cabins, and discovered the lengths of a trail system that had all but faded to a single dotted line on my Forest Service maps.
During a 2016 Pennsylvania mountain hunt we’d walked for miles during the week and had not seen much in the line of deer since the opening day. Now into the second week most of the hunters had gone home. It was myself and one other guy in camp, and the weather was not looking good. The hunts of my youth were very often a snowy affair, blustery winds causing rosy cheeks — hand warmers were treated as if they were diamonds by my father. We were issued perhaps four in a given trip, because my dad purchased them for everyone so they were used sparingly. During this hunt rain was in the forecast and a cold front was coming in, but neither of us had a buck on the ground. Doe tags are increasingly hard to obtain in 2F where my cabin resides, with them being sold to residents, often having only a few hundred left for non-residents — and a highly competitive mail in only application process to narrow the field. So with antler restrictions and no doe tags it was nothing less than a six point for us! To find that we had to cover ground, and had to be out all day.
My friend, a Marine and a new hunter, was used to the misery of tromping around in the mountains in the rain. When rain turned to sleet we sat for several additional hours together, shaking hand warmers like maracas to make sure they had enough oxygen to activate. We’d been impatient and drove for two hours over to the other side of the mountain range in the terrible weather to check out another piece of property when the wait without seeing deer was too much, and the winds had shifted to not be conducive to hunting all the stands I’d scouted the previous years.
My buddy had to leave on a day where it was pouring rain, and I canned the hunt a little early myself so as not to risk getting sick. The rain hung over the Alleghenies like how the rest of the world views Seattle, constantly misting like a greenhouse that was hovering just above freezing. The day after he left I took a deer. In the rain. In the cold. I gutted it while shivering, but it was one of the most rewarding experiences I’d had to date in the woods. Proof that enduring hardship will reap rewards.
In a society that is increasingly uncomfortable being uncomfortable, it’s important for hunters, hikers, and outdoor recreators put themselves in a position where they can grow through suffering, if only a little bit. There’s a safety aspect here, sure, I don’t expect people to go self filming survival shows like Les Stroud, but maybe you don’t need a queen sized air mattress while “camping”. Maybe go on a nature walk with a local biologist and learn some of the wild edibles in your area so that when the huckleberries are in season next to the creek you’re hiking you have a decadent snack while watching the riffles for trout, and for god’s sake, don’t bag your hunt just because it started raining or snowing. My big game season opens in the Keystone state the Monday following Thanksgiving, and all I know is that regardless of the weather I’ll submit myself to a little bit of misery, and I’ll love every second of it.
