Dances with Wolves

It was time.... on of my college brothers had been wanting me to join him in Oklahoma for an outing... "man time" together. We were going hunting in western Oklahoma.

Let me give you a background about me and my love of guns and hunting... as a boy I used to set birds in the "low house" at the Lago Skeet Club on Sundays and used to shoot a round of skeet once a week. The Pan Aruban would show my dad's score as Sr. and mine as Jr. I never was able to outshoot my dad in skeet.

I spent 4 years in the USMC in the late 60s, and that is where really I learned how to shoot well. That time in the Marines was a very powerful time that included a trip to Vietnam and many qualifiying and re-qualifying trips to the range with various types of weapons. I am very comfortable around my guns and will not get into a debate on pro or anti-gun ownership here. Just know that it is part of who I am at this point in my life.

I was heading north up the interstate, seeing the terrain outside change from the overthrust area of the Arbuckle Mountains into the rolling prairie land of northwestern Oklahoma. The CD playing in my truck was the sound track to "Dances With Wolves", and I was thinking back to my ancestors and how they helped to settle this land. I had ancestors come over on the Mayflower, so they helped settle and form the early days of our country. They hunted for game to survive and that was a very necessary part of their lives. I could feel the presence of those who came before... from the Native Americans to the settlers of the Land Rush.

We now hunt for sport but hunting echoes deep into my soul... or my psyche. This trip is for hunting, but mostly it is for the companionship of another... it is a continuation of days spent in classrooms, laboratories, and study sessions decades ago. If I did not even get a shot at a quail, just the experience of being out in the open country with a close friend, escaping the concrete and the rush of daily life in the big city would be worthwhile.. and rejuvenate me once more.

The hunting was good. I scored well on quail, pheasants and chukar partridges. My shooting was as good as it ever had been with a shotgun. These birds were all cleaned and bagged; I have many recipes for them and they are very tasty table fare. I do not shoot to leave things in the field; all these were coming home with me. There is a thrill to a good shot; feeling the recoil of the gun and seeing a bird go down gives me a feeling of accomplishment similar to spearfishing beyond the reef when I was a youth. Those fish were table fare, too.

Hunting is a sport, but for many of us it is a part of who we are and the feelings we get out in the fields is something that I cannot explain to others. You have to be there. It is time spent in the shadows of our ancestors, and with current friends and brothers.