How Hunting Can Deepen Your Connection to the Outdoors

I won't pretend hunting is without its controversies, its caught up in our struggles with gun culture and linked to unrespectful trophy hunting. For many of us though, hunting is a way to be involved not only in the process of our food, but to see our connection and important role in preserving nature. 

Hunting encourages you to slow down, to think about your next step, to consider how you'll move with the flow of the forest. 

You can take a trail far but eventually you'll have to forge your own way and leave the structure and signs behind. 

Long conversations with friends are replaced with thoughtful silence and a heightened awareness of the signals around you.

You'll soon find yourself seeing and hearing anew; a bird you never noticed before, the holes of a squirrel storing for winter, the prints of a passing cougar, bark rubbed raw from new antlers.

And even if you ultimately don't come away with anything, you'll rarely regret the time spent outside and appreciate your brief experience in the life cycle modern society has removed us from.