Hunting Preparations

So in the last few months I have set the goal to become a hunter.  This was a somewhat new idea and cause some personal challenges.  I have always wanted to be a reliant outdoors man like the men of old west novels.  OK I read to much Louis L'Amour when I was a teenager and that changed my thoughts on what it means to be a person engaged fully in life.  One thing that stands out in life is the disconnect between where our food comes from and how it is manufactured.

As a process engineer I have a small understanding of the amount of death and the inhumane manner in which America process much of its meat products.  While generally I am comfortable with industrial agriculture, it provides the most food in the safest possible manner to the most people it comes with a societal and individual cost.  The societal costs are pretty big ideas of national obesity, institutionalized cruelty, lack of basic nutritional knowledge, and reduction of variety of foods available.  Each individual is somewhat at the mercy of the system in which they live.  That means that all of our meat comes from one nearby factory and that you have no control over the place and process in which animals are raised and cared for.  These are of concern to many as seen by the rise of organic food grocery and farmers markets.  somehow these elements just kinda turned me off since there is no guarantee from the stores that they aren't just marking the price up on food that is the same as it has been.  My actionable ability to control a food source and gain some new skills was to go hunting. 

As an individual and the motivator for going hunting is the lack of outdoors man skills that were common a couple of hundred years ago.  I have been thinking about this stuff for months and the list of things an average hunter deals with in the course of a normal hunting season is quite long.  The things that I have been thinking about are listed below;

• Hunt method (Firearm or Bow) I went with the Bow.
• Where? Public land or pay to hunt on private.
• When? Seasons and time off from work.
• What Species? - Deer or Elk in Colorado are the most readily viable.
• How to do stuff?  This topic is a whole post in itself.
• Equipment?  The list of custom equipment that many hunters use is quite long and somewhat daughnting to an outsider.
• Safety - Had to have my Colorado hunters safety done.

The above list of topics is by no means exhaustive of topics that a new hunter is dealing with, but it is a start.  I have worked quite a bit in the last few months to just figure out what is essential and what is nice to know.  I am ready to go on my first hunting weekend this coming weekend of August 25th for elk hunting.  I am nervous and excited about the anticipation and the opportunity.