Musings on Hunting

“Did you want to help out with a club mission today?  It’s a fun one!”  Read a text from Chad Parent, as I was just about to start into my third cup of coffee mid morning.

Twenty minutes later I had a small bag packed, boots on my feet, binoculars around my neck and my truck slowly driving the block that separates chads house from mine.  I have been a hunter for five years now, but with a lack of mentorship, the journey has been slow.  I grew up in a family that was more or less anti-gun and anti-hunting.  My understanding of the hunting world was a warped image of a Camo clad, gun blasting, beer guzzling, bloodthirsty redneck.  I was thoroughly judgemental of a world that I knew nothing about.

I got older, developed a love for the mountains and maintained my views on hunting.  I also developed a deep love of meat.  I aged through my twenties and began to ask questions about where my meat came from.  I spent a number of years as a vegetarian (and god forbid a short time as a vegan), but my body did not respond well to this and again I found myself enjoying meat.  Working as a backpacking guide one winter, I struck up a conversation with a fellow guide about hunting.  I was older, I was more open minded.  As he talked about his recent journey into hunting as a way to source nutritious and ethical meat, things started to click in my brain.  I was curious.  Over the next two seasons, a group of us that all worked together began hunting under the guidance of a co worker that had been hunting his whole life in the farm country of Alberta.  I had success, I had failure.  I drove down endless gravel roads, I sat for hours at the edge of a farmer's field.  After biting into that first delicious venison steak, I was hooked.

 My move to Golden three years ago came with a heavy price, I was cut off from my hunting buddies.  My wife and I moved here a few weeks after our wedding midway through hunting season.  With pressing renovations needed on our new house, a lack of friends in town that hunted and not understanding the steps needed to register as a hunter in BC, I did not hunt that first season.  That winter I began the steps to register for the following season.  As summer came and went, I didn’t put much thought into hunting and by the time hunting season rolled around I found myself blindly wandering the forests trying to figure out why I couldn’t find any deers.  I began to realize that hunting the edge of a farmers field in Alberta is a whole different game than scouring the thick BC bush that surrounds golden. 

The end of hunting season arrived and my freezer remained empty.  I was frustrated and did something I had never done with hunting.  I began to read.  The more I read, the more I realized there was to read.  I realized there was more to hunting than I had imagined while hunting in Alberta.  As I devoured article after article, podcast after podcast, YouTube videos and TV shows, my simple image of hunting grew.  This was not just a sport, I have been involved with mountain sports  for many years now and know what a sport is.  This was an activity that integrated into all areas of my life, defined my relationship with wild animals with wild spaces and was deep rooted in the very fibres that make me a human.  Skiing was an activity I enjoyed, hunting something fundamentally engrained.

Chad and I hike through the snow and into the forest trying to find a good lookout across the kicking horse river in search of the small herd of  bighorn sheep that calls the canyon their home.  He explains to me the situation with the shrinking population and his passion is contagious.  Conversation changes from the herd to the guns we own, to exciting tales of our previous seasons hunt and to wild meat.  As we hike from spot to spot, glassing the valley across from us, we settle on a topic surrounding family.  My wife and I have a son that out of nowhere has become one years old.  As we chat about children and the future of a disappearing sheep population, I get chills down my back realizing that my son may never know this herd.  A herd that I see often as I drive out of the canyon eastbound.  There are other herds of bighorn sheep in this world, sure, but to lose this local population is a proposition that affects me deep within.  This is hunting.  All of it, the exciting thrill of the hunt, shooting our guns at the range and the relationship we have with the wild spaces surrounding our home...the thing that sustains these animals we pursue. 

I dropped Chad off after a successful (and fun!) mission, sheep found, photos taken.  I feel inspired and excited to learn more about this project that the Golden rod and gun club is spearheading. 

A sense of hope bubbles up within that maybe my son will know this herd of bighorn sheep.  And I feel a giddy excitement being one more day closer to hunting season.

-Chris Volkart