PA Rut Report Blog

I believe it was 8th period, if memory serves me correctly, on a typically uneventful day during my senior year of highschool. I was called down to the main office, met there by my father who led me out of school while explaining to me that my grandfather had passed earlier in the day.  I remember vividly the sensation of time seeming to almost stand still as I replayed over and over again in my head what my father had just told me. The brightness of the midday sun, crunch of gravel under foot, the near neon green of the grass and the muffled sobs of my sister who accompanied my father when picking me up, are all as clear to me today as they were back then. A day seared into me. One that I surely will never forget.  He was a pillar, my grandfather, when it comes to who I am today, the character I live by and my relentless passion for the outdoors. Countless hours we spent together, rods in hand, on rivers, lakes and ponds. Studying his meticulous mannerisms which often led t...

Get a lot of folks that don't hunt ask me why I do..... My immediate reply is to ask "When was the last time you sat by yourself for five hours straight without a sound or outside distraction all while immersed in nature influenced only by your enhanced senses?"... Knowing the answer for most would be never without having to even ask the question. They often reply "I don't think I could do that, sit still for that long". To which I reply, in a non-judgmental manner, "That's your problem." ... Life nowadays gets faster and faster. Every thing is immediate. Anxiety and depression go hand in hand with burning out which everyone will experience if you don't willfully slow yourself down sometimes. "Take pride in yourself for that." The woods and its subsequent silence works as a natural filtration system for your mind and body. Couple that with the adrenal boost that comes with hunting and it becomes one of the most efficient me...

I've experienced what in my mind is the most amazing thing in the world.... watching the birth of both my boys takes it. It was a time where absolutely nothing else that ever happened in my life really mattered, just that exact moment.... All else was silent. My second, and it relates, is watching the woods wake up around me on the first day of archery season. The heightened senses gained by sitting in the pitch black of the forest as a twig cracks 60 yds down the hollow yet feels like it's 5 feet away.... The solitude of that exact moment. The seeming dip in temperature right before the sun opens it's eyes coloring the sky. The fullness of the moment when the most and the least are going on all around you simultaneously. And that's all before you even set eyes on the silhouette slinking silently at 35 yds and realize that it will be broadside at 20yds in 40 seconds and its got a rack..... that particular type of solitude runs a close third.

I recall fondly those evenings, breath fogging up the living room windows as the crisp fall wind spread leaves across our property like a painting, awaiting the return of my father from the hunt with fevered anticipation. Adrenaline pumping through my tiny frame. Watching his silhouette exit his vehicle and opening the tailgate to retrieve his gear, hoping that momentary pause he took was one of appreciation and fulfillment as he gazed upon his latest harvest. Living vicariously through him in hopes that one day I would be the one pulling into the driveway with a harvest of my own. The vast majority of the time he simply retrieved his bow and came into the house to relay to me stories of the woods and its bounty, stories that went beyond just filling our freezer with meat. I recall the disappointment at first, building an early assumption that a rack would be protruding from the back of his truck on each return trip -- not knowing, at that time, the benefits I would draw from that i...