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For my first deer hunt, I left behind a blizzard of fresh snow in Salt Lake City to fly to my hometown of St. Louis. Staff writer Laura Lancaster and I were invited by OL senior deputy editor Natalie Krebs to attend the National Deer Association’s mentored, antlerless whitetail hunt. I wasn’t just there to visit family for the holidays and wander the woods for a doe. I wanted to kill a deer, fill a cooler full of venison, and bring home a euro mount.

But first, I had a lot to learn about deer hunting. Having never shot a deer, or hunted big game, I was as eager to learn as I was to harvest. Krebs took Lancaster and I on some practice scouting trips, where we located rubs, scat, prints, and even a scrape and licking branch. We spent time at the range, sighting in our borrowed rifles and firing some practice groups. NDA’s deer school curriculum covered the history, biology, and how to hunt our quarry. We left the course with fresh camo packs full of gear.

By the time we donned our blaze orange, I was giddy. My mentor and NDA deer outreach specialist, Karli Gill, and I climbed into an elevated blind at the edge of a cornfield around 2 p.m. We slowly settled in as a flock of turkeys milled about at the edge of the woods.

After an hour and a half of hushed conversation and birdwatching, I produced a cold slice of pizza from a folded paper towel in my bag. “Do you want a piece of pizza?” I whispered to Gill. She looked at me like I was insane and let out some amused scoffs. But then she shrugged, momentarily shuttering our blind’s windows, and joined the pizza party.

After we were done eating, quietly cackling, and chatting, we opened the windows again and let in the evening chill. Just before dusk, three does appeared on the outskirts of the field. They wandered along a lane of chopped corn stalks, weaving in between each other with their eyes darting everywhere. Stacked and suspicious, they moved steadily closer toward the creaking window where my rifle barrel rested. Just 20 yards away, one doe turned into the perfect position. I inhaled and applied a hint of pressure with my trigger finger, but then my sight was suddenly filled with three fleeing tufts of white fur.

Busted.

I couldn’t help but feel like they knew I was there from the start. Shooting light faded fast and I resigned myself to an early start the following morning. Startling game is a part of hunting, and so is waking up before the sun, so I told myself I was simply getting the full experience.

A Second Chance

Sunrise approached quickly and found us in a new blind on a new field. As the sky’s deep indigo hue faded with the light, distant gunshots rang out from adjacent properties. I started to worry about my chances.

Did I fly home, force my family to celebrate Christmas early, and miss out on two feet of blower pow just to not shoot a deer? I’d like to say I spent the morning silently reflecting on all of the amazing moments I’d already had that weekend, deer or no deer. I had befriended hunters new and old, learned more about deer than I’d ever expected, bonded with previously video-chat confined coworkers, and indulged in hometown delicacies like gooey butter cake, beer over five percent alcohol content, and venison summer sausage.

But, you can’t bite into a quality experience like you can a piece of tender backstrap. So instead of focusing on fond memories, I worried that I might not actually get a deer. I might miss out on a key part of the experience and fail to achieve the hunting I was here for. My desperation grew deeper until I spotted two does peeking out of the trees at 12 o’clock. They were at the far edge of the field at about 50 yards. Gill asked how I felt about the distance. I was content with my accuracy at the gun range days earlier and the slender does deigned to move just a little closer.

So I clicked off the safety and leaned into the 6.5 PRC Nosler M21 I had borrowed from Krebs. Gill’s voice murmured into my ear, “Put it right behind that shoulder when you get the chance.”

The doe scraped under a licking branch for a few seconds. I pulled the trigger. The next thing I saw was her four hooves go skyward.

Enthusiastic giggling ensued. While failure is a part of hunting—and harvesting isn’t everything—man, does a perfect shot feel good. Field dressing, first blood, and tagging out on Missouri’s hunting app all felt like a reward.

Making Meat

After the adrenaline dissipated, we said our goodbyes, and loaded up our harvests, however, I was faced with Bambi, full of blood, hanging upside down in a garage. The smell of dirt and rust started to make me queasy, as I traded my new neon green hunting blade for an electric hand saw.

Cleaning a wild turkey feels like a mix between dissecting an animal in science class and chopping up a bird from the grocery store. Quartering the deer felt more gruesome. But as the deer transitioned from a bloody carcass into cuts of meat, the more comfortable I became. Eventually, I was sitting in the Krebs family kitchen listening to music, drinking beer, and labeling packaged cuts, feeling like a normal person again.

The butchering slumber party lasted well into the night as four of us worked to get a freeze on Lancaster’s deer before her early flight back to the West Coast. While I was hesitant to get my hands dirty again, I was set on a euro mount of my first deer (no, I don’t care that it’s a doe).

So, the following day, I started carving into the head. After all the gross parts were gone, I wrapped it in plastic and brought it to my grandmother’s Christmas dinner. While she didn’t care to see it, the rest of my family couldn’t have been prouder and my uncle took it home to send to his “beetle guy.”

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I got a little taste of failure on this hunt, but not too much of it. I swelled with pride as I set my cooler of venison on the American Airlines’ scale with a satisfying clunk. Thanks to incredible mentors, my hunting journey leapt forward with indispensable knowledge and experience gleaned from a weekend dedicated to deer hunting. The support I had from start to finish on this hunt from new friends, family, and perfect strangers was unbelievable. And while the meat is delicious and my tag photo got a lot of likes, I know that when I see that antlerless skull sitting on my mantle, I’ll think of the amazing people who made it possible.

To obtain this data, the NDA asked each state wildlife agency for a breakdown of private land versus public land deer harvests. Twenty-seven of 37 states in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast collect this information, but no Western states track harvests by land ownership, according to the report. As a result, Western states were not included in this specific survey. If they had been, the percentages would have almost certainly come down a bit.

Even so, as I’ve written before, the vast majority of America’s hunters live and hunt in the eastern half of the country. The obvious takeaway here is that whitetail deer hunting—which is the most important hunting pursuit in America—is largely a private-land game.

“This is not to diminish the importance of public hunting land,” NDA chief conservation officer Kip Adams said in a release. “We need to acquire more public hunting land in the East, and we need to better manage the habitat on existing public land. But for hunter recruitment, herd management, and all the ways we want to protect and improve deer hunting, we need to understand most of those opportunities will be on privately owned acres.”

I think most of us who deer hunt in these regions already knew the most successful hunting happens on private ground, but I’ll admit that I didn’t know the numbers were quite so skewed. I do a lot of hunting in Wisconsin, which has more than 7 million acres of public land, and yet 87 percent of the harvest in 2021 was taken on private land, according to the NDA report. That’s shocking to me, even though I contributed to that 87 percent by harvesting a deer on private land during the 2021 season—and every season before it since I was 12.

Private vs. Public Land Deer Harvest State Breakdown

What It Means for Deer Hunting in America

With those numbers staring us in the face, it’s even more clear to me now that we need to shift how we think and talk about deer hunting and management within our hunting community. Here’s where I think we should start.

We Need to Improve Public Access on Private Ground

It’s unreasonable to expect states to grow their public lands. The best we can hope for is that they keep and maintain what they already have. But deer hunters should push their states to support programs that offer public hunting access on private ground. Such programs are already popular in the West—like Montana’s Block Management Program or Colorado’s Walk-in Access program—but every Midwest state also has a similar program.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the Northeast. Only three of 13 states surveyed in the NDA report offer a formal access program. This is a large decline from 2014 when six of 12 states surveyed had access programs, according to the NDA. Access to private lands in the Southeast is slowly improving with four of 11 states surveyed offering formalized programs in 2022.

But these private land access programs need to be continually funded. Here’s how it works: Private landowners voluntarily offer access to their lands for public hunting. In return, they receive a payment from the state. Most states receive funding for these access programs through grants given by the USDA’s Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program, which is powered by Farm Bill dollars. If those dollars dry up, the programs diminish or go away.

Some critter groups like Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever lobby hard for habitat and access funding every time a new Farm Bill comes to Congress (and they often have good results). Maybe it’s time for the deer hunters and state agencies of the Southeast and Northeast to get in on the action, too.

We Need to Be Realistic When Recruiting New Deer Hunters

Both Outdoor Life and the NDA (and many other organizations in the hunting world) have been promoting the effort to recruit new hunters in recent years. But in these three regions of whitetail country, where exactly should we recruit new hunters to?

Yes, there are public-land hunting opportunities in every state, but as the NDA report shows, those opportunities aren’t always fruitful. I think hunter mentors (myself included) need to be more realistic about where these new folks are going to hunt long-term. An invite for one day of shooting does on a private lease is great, but where are they going to hunt next season?

If the R3 movement is going to be successful in the long run, we’re going to need better answers to that question.

We Need a Door-Knocking Revival

I think that hunters of my generation (age 20 to 40) can get a lot better at the art of knocking on a farmer’s door to ask for hunting permission. I realize this isn’t the answer in every region. In areas where outfitters or affluent hunters are leasing expensive ground, most landowners aren’t going to let you deer hunt for free just because you seem like a nice person.

But I’ve done a lot of deer hunting in the Upper Midwest and Northeast where it’s still possible to secure hunting permission with a handshake or a nominal fee (more on this in a moment). You just have to get out there and try it. You also have to be realistic. You might have to knock on 20 doors before you get a “yes.” And you’re probably not going to lock down 400 prime acres, but you just might be able to get on the 80 acres of your dreams.

On the upside, with modern mapping apps we’ve got the technology to identify property boundaries and property owners with incredible ease. It’s time to get out there and start knocking.

We Need to Be OK With Paying for Access

Then there’s Texas, where if you want to hunt deer, you’re probably going to have to pay it.

There are a lot of folks who believe a pay-to-play model will be the end of hunting in America as we know it, and there’s a lot of validity to that perspective. But on the flip side, deer hunting is booming in Texas. Just breeze through the NDA report and you’ll see that there are a ton of Texas hunters, they kill more antlered deer than any other state, and they have the third highest percentage of mature bucks in their overall harvest (72 percent).

There are plenty of relatively affordable deer hunting opportunities in Texas (no, it’s not all high-fence trophy hunts). And I think the same can be said for most of whitetail country. A few years ago I stumbled into an incredibly affordable lease opportunity in western Wisconsin not more than 100 miles from Buffalo County, one of the most renowned and competitive deer hunting counties in the country.

I know I’m not the only one. Savvy hunters from Pennsylvania to Louisiana are already taking advantage of these opportunities whether it be through leasing, hunting clubs, or going in with buddies to buy small parcels. We’ve got to start celebrating and promoting that kind of affordable hunting access just as vigorously as we advocate for our public lands. After all, the private ground is where most of the deer are getting tagged.

Kip Adams, the chief conservation officer for the National Deer Association, is here to help. The NDA recently published an excellent video on how to estimate a buck’s age.

Tips for Aging a Buck on the Hoof

• Don’t focus on antlers
• Fall is best time to estimate age
• Key characteristics include: size of neck, musculature of shoulders, length of legs, size and girth of belly, sway in back
• Yearling bucks look like a doe with antlers
• If a buck’s hindquarters are larger than his shoulders, he’s almost assuredly a one or two-year-old buck
• Three-year-old bucks are the middle linebackers of the deer world, big and strong but also lean and fast
• Four-year-old bucks’ legs appear too short for their body, and they have heavy swelling in the neck.
• Older bucks have a pot belly and sagging back or sway back. “They may even look like a small cow.”

Why Age is More Important Than Score

Using age as a measuring stick for which bucks are shooters (as compared to antler score) makes sense since antler size is dependent on a variety of factors and the opportunity to take a giant buck is not equal across whitetail country. For example, in some places in the Northeast or South it’s unrealistic for hunters to expect to take 160-inch deer, even if they are carefully managing their property and herd. However, with good herd management most hunters can have the opportunity to take mature bucks, even though they might not be giants.

Plus, mature bucks exhibit all the interesting deer behavior that hunters love. For the best overall whitetail hunting experience (with that thrilling action during the rut that we all live for), the herd you are hunting must have a good age structure with some fully mature bucks and does running around, Adams says.

“Deer are a lot more social than many people realize,” Adams says. “They evolved with a very complex social order. Whitetails are like 5 million years old… So, the social order they have, the ways they communicate is all really cool. It’s evolved over a millennia, and it works best when you have full age structures of both bucks and does.”

Lastly, estimating age is fun. It’s just one more way to geek out over deer and keep the excitement going during the season.

How Old Is a Mature Buck?

What hunters define as a “mature buck” can depend a little bit on personal opinion, Adams says. Some hunters will call a four-year-old mature. And while a four-year-old buck certainly is mature in that it’s reached most of its antler size and body size potential, Adams counts five-year-old bucks (and older) as full mature. He considers 3- and 4-year-old bucks as middle aged.

However, this doesn’t mean that every hunter who wants to focus on buck age should try to hold out for a five-year-old. Each hunter should do their best to evaluate age structure where they hunt and then focus on the top age class. In some cases, on public land or pressured private land, that could mean targeting a three-year-old buck, Adams says. It all comes down to where you hunt.

How to Age Your Buck After the Kill

Adams and his hunting crew in Pennsylvania age ever deer they take. They do this by evaluating the jaw bone, looking at tooth wear and replacement, and by sending buck tooth samples into a lab.

“This is a perfect way to field [aging] skills,” Adams says. “You think you know how old he is, now let’s get a hold of that jawbone and verify how old he really is. Then you know if you need to adjust what your eyes are telling you [in the field].

For learning how to estimate a deer’s age through tooth wear and replacement, hunters can find articles and even take classes offered by the National Deer Association. However, this method is not an exact science for aging deer that are over 2 years old.

The most surefire way to age an older deer is to pull the middle two incisors from the jawbone and send them to a lab, where they count the growth rings in the tooth. There are two labs Adams knows of that will age deer for hunters: Matson’s lab in Montana and Wildlife Analytical Labs in Texas.

It costs $25 to $75 dollars and takes about three months to get the results back. For hunters who have spent years watching a buck and then tag him at a ripe old age, that’s well worth it.

• The Midwest had approximately 3.7 million deer hunters in 2020
• The Southeast had approximately 3 million deer hunters in 2020
• The West had approximately 744,000 deer hunters in 2020
• Texas had 770,000 deer hunters in 2020, more than the NDA’s Western-region states combined
• Total 2020 hunter numbers by region for states that reported data to NDA: Midwest: 2.9 million; Southeast: 2.7 million; Northeast: 1.5 million; West: 724,000

So, if we’re going to talk about issues facing hunting on a national scale, we should begin with America’s hunting heartland, which means the Midwest and Southeast. In these regions, broadly speaking, hunting participation isn’t skyrocketing, despite what some stories might indicate. In fact, in many Midwestern and Southern states, hunting participation appears to still be on a long-term decline.

Hunter Numbers in the Midwest and South

Let’s look at the NDA Midwest regional data. I excluded North Dakota, which had an extreme change in deer hunters that was likely caused by new regulations or how the agency collected its data. The rest of the data in the report show that from 2016 to 2020, the total number of deer hunters in the Midwest decreased by 6 percent. The state-by-state breakdown looks like this:

Midwest

• Illinois -5%
• Indiana +11%
• Iowa -.4%
• Kansas -4.5%
• Kentucky 0%
• Michigan -3.6%
• Minnesota -21%
• Missouri -5%
• Nebraska -30%
• *North Dakota +75%
• Ohio -7.5%
• South Dakota +4.2%
• Wisconsin -3.4%

Comparing the 2016 and 2020 seasons in the Southeast—and removing outlier data from Georgia, which had a suspiciously drastic decline—deer hunter numbers increased by 7 percent. The state-by-state breakdown looks like this:

Southeast

• Alabama +20%
• Arkansas -8%
• Florida +8.5%
• *Georgia -40.9%
• Louisiana -6.8%
• Mississippi +16%
• North Carolina +2.7%
• Oklahoma +24%
• South Carolina +8%
• Tennessee +13%
• Texas +4%

For curious Pennsylvania deer hunters wondering, hey, what about the Northeast? the NDA report found a 7 percent decline in deer hunters in the Northeast from 2016 to 2020. Find the state-by-state breakdown here.

The Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports issued a report last year that showed similar data, though it drew its regional boundaries slightly differently (Texas for example, was placed in the West, not the Southeast). CAHSS compared all 2019 hunting license sales to 2020 license sales and found a 1.2 percent increase in the Midwest and an 8.7 percent increase in the Southeast.

The takeaway here is that even though the number of overall hunters did grow in the Southeast and Midwest from 2019 to 2020, it wasn’t a dramatic increase across the board. And in the Midwest, the deer hunter number bump of 2020 didn’t surpass totals from just four years ago. Using the NDA’s numbers (with the outlier states removed) there’s a total loss of about 38,000 deer hunters in the Midwest and Southeast combined.

Hunting Increases in the West?

Yes, hunter numbers have increased in the West. Several Western states didn’t provide data for NDA’s report, but for states that did offer 2016 and 2020 data, there was a 9 percent increase in deer hunting licenses. The CAHSS report found a 6.8 percent increase in overall hunting license sales from 2019 to 2020 and a 2.9 percent increase in nonresident licenses. That might look like a small increase in nonresident sales, but it’s still three times higher than any other region. The NDA state-by-state breakdown looks like this, with Wyoming excluded as an outlier:

West

• Colorado +7%
• Idaho +1.5%
• Nevada -29%
• New Mexico +22%
• Washington -7%
• *Wyoming +130%

However, complaints about overcrowding aren’t generated from percentage points in a report. They come from Western hunters who are seeing more pressure in the field and having a harder time drawing tags in big-game lotteries as more and more people enter and drive up the number of preference points required to draw a tag. In other words: point creep. This issue isn’t new with the COVID-bump in hunting participation, it’s a problem that’s been festering for years. For example, in Colorado elk applications per license have almost doubled since 2005, according to a point-creep report PJ Delhomme wrote for Outdoor Life last year.

While point creep is a very real issue for Western hunters, it doesn’t represent what’s happening in America’s hunting core. Throughout the Midwest and Southeast, the vast majority of resident deer hunters can buy a tag over the counter, for whatever season they like.

Why the West Gets So Much Attention

And still, Western hunting seems to dominate the conversation around hunting participation, hunter recruitment, and overcrowding. That’s partially because the West holds the majority of the country’s public land and offers aspirational big-game hunts for critters you can’t find in the Midwest or South. When Minnesotans like me (blue-platers, as they call us) or Kentuckians travel for big-game hunts, there’s a good chance we’re pointing our trucks West.

But I think it’s also because there’s an disproportional amount of media coverage dedicated to Western hunting. Media mogul Steve Rinella based his MeatEater empire in Bozeman, Montana. Many of the top hunting social media influencers are Western based. When the embattled and widely popular podcast host Joe Rogan talks about hunting, it’s almost always bowhunting for elk. And this is not a new thing. Think about all the hunting show hosts from the South who you’ve seen chasing elk in New Mexico and Arizona in their Realtree or Mossy Oak camo. Remember all those magazine coverlines you’ve read over the years encouraging Midwestern and Southern hunters to Go West. Full disclosure: Outdoor Life’s hunting editor and shooting editors both live in Montana.

The West has always captured the imagination of America’s hunters, and it probably always will. The problem occurs when Western hunting issues are conflated with what’s happening on the ground in the Midwest and South. When the most popular hunting outlets and personalities are constantly writing, podcasting, and posting about busy trailheads and point creep, it skews the national conversation.

Plus, there was some bad journalism at work here. Many mainstream media outlets, big and small, reported a “spike” in hunting participation over the last two years, which indicates a sudden and extreme increase. For most states, that was not the case. The long-term national data on hunter numbers is a mess, but the general trend for most states in the Southeast and Midwest is this: There’s been a long decline in hunter participation for decades, during 2020 there was a meaningful uptick in first-time hunters compared to 2019, but this increase did not bring hunter numbers above the peaks of the past. That story, however, does not make for a sensational headline. It’s also too soon to tell if the uptick in new hunters will continue into the future.

“We’re just not quite sure yet,” says Kip Adams, NDA’s chief conservation officer. “There definitely had been that downward decline, then [in 2020] many states saw the bump up, but I think it remains to be seen if we can maintain that or not. We’ve, at least hopefully, bottomed out and are headed the other way … But we won’t know for another year or two if we’ve actually made up some ground [on hunter numbers].”

Why the Numbers Matter

Right now, wildlife agencies, critter organizations, and conservation groups are weighing how much effort and funding they should spend on hunter recruitment, retainment, and reactivation (R3) in the years ahead. What should be a complex national conversation often gets dumbed down to a simple question: “Do we need more hunters, or do we have too many hunters?”

The big takeaway from all this data is that we should discuss hunter numbers at a local level, just like we do with game populations. There are, undoubtedly, areas of the country that have too much hunting pressure to support a quality experience. There are also areas where hunter numbers, and hunting culture, is dwindling. We should all be working to introduce new hunters to experiences that are sustainable into the future, and we should also be pushing to grow hunting opportunities wherever we can get them. And that all starts in America’s hunting heartland.

Correction: The original version of this story included the incorrect percentage change of hunters in Tennessee from 2016 to 2020. That number has been corrected to +13%.

“I see the bear and its eyes are completely locked on the guide, and I’m like he’s not gonna hit me, he’s going after the guide,” Adams tells Outdoor Life. “But I have this ice axe, and I instantly realize that I have one swing to try to slow this bear down. He runs right past me, probably a foot by me, so I just swung that ice axe as hard as I could, and I felt it sink in all the way to the handle.”

Adams then watched as the bear tackled the guide from behind, and the two rolled down to a flat spot below. The guide was on his back trying to shoulder the rifle as the eight- to nine-foot boar reared back on its hind legs. That’s when Adams saw that the axe was still lodged in the bear’s head.

Chaos on the Mountain

Looking back, Adams knew that bringing his girlfriend on the hunt was a risky proposition. She had never been hunting before, and a multi-day goat hunt in southeast Alaska is about as far as it gets from beginner territory.

Adams explains that he’s hunted in Alaska before, and even though he’d never had a run-in with a bear, he knew it was always a risk. But he was more concerned about the grueling hike than he was about bears on the afternoon of Oct. 14, when the group caught a boat ride across the bay from Sitka. After making it to a large lake, they zipped across with their gear in an inflatable raft fitted with an outboard motor. They started hiking up the mountain that evening and climbed about a mile and a half before making camp in the rain.

The skies cleared up the next morning and they got an early start. Working their way up a ridge on their way to a good glassing spot, Adams, Ericksen, and Orozco used their ice axes during the hike, driving them into the earth and using the axes to pull themselves uphill. They were just getting in a rhythm and were only about 400 yards away from camp when their guide uttered those three horrible words.

“After he said ‘run’ I heard the bear’s deep, bone-chilling roar. Then the guide turns and runs by me, and I look up and see the bear coming out of the brush,” says Adams, who stands 6 foot, 6 inches, and weighs 285 pounds.

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When he saw the bear charging, Adams bared down, leaned forward with his left shoulder, and braced for impact. But then he saw the bear’s eyes, which were locked onto the guide. Realizing that he wasn’t a target, he drove his axe into the bear’s skull as it ran past.

“I look up just in time to see the bear and the guide rolling down the hill. That bear hit the guide right in his backpack and just crumpled him. When the bear turned around, I looked and saw the ice axe was still hanging out of his head.”

The impaled bear then reared up over the guide, who shouldered his rifle and fired a shot straight up into the air. Adams says he distinctly remembers seeing the muzzle blast ruffle the bear’s fur. The shot spooked the bear just enough for it to step back and hesitate. At this point, Ericksen drew the .357 revolver strapped to his chest and fired three shots at the bear through the brush.

The boar charged the guide again, and the guide leveled his rifle and shot a second time. Ericksen fired two more rounds from his pistol. Adams says they still don’t know if any of those shots even hit the bear, but they all kept screaming and eventually the bear ran off. They never saw the bear again, and although the guide reported the incident, Adams has no idea if the bear died or not. He did, however, get his ice axe back.

“After that second shot [from the guide], the bear looped down and got level with me about 30 yards away,” Adams says. “We’re making a ton of noise at that point, and it bluff charged once or twice. It took two steps forward, two steps back, and as it turned and ran the ice axe fell out of his head.”

Split-Second Decisions

Adams says he’s since heard from keyboard commandoes who’ve criticized the guide for running, saying he shouldn’t have put his own safety above his clients’. But the way Adams sees it, the guide reacted the best he could under the circumstances. The fact that the bear charged three times without anybody suffering so much as a scratch is the only proof he needs that the guide made the right decision.

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“In that specific situation, the bear would have been on the guide before he could have done anything. [The guide] did what he did so he could get his gun off his shoulder before he got mauled,” he says. “He was fully prepared to ‘get his face peeled,’ in his own words, but he was retreating so that he could get his gun off his shoulder before the bear got on him. Which he was able to do.”

Adams also says the whole experience opened his eyes to how gunshots help stop a charging bear. He says that because they were in dense brush in tight quarters, bear spray would have been useless, and he thinks that the muzzle blast from the guide’s rifle might have deterred the bear even more than the bullet.

“This might sound silly, but after going through that and seeing how the bear responded, I honestly would feel the most safe from a charging bear with a foghorn in my hand,” Adams says. “When I saw that .375 go off, it was not only the sound, but more so it was the air that hit the bear in the face. It was just amazing how that bear reacted when it got hit with the muzzle blast.”

Read Next: Bear Gun Shootout: 10mm vs .44 Mag.

He adds that, in his opinion, if you’re going to carry a pistol in bear country—which, of course, you should—your best would be to carry a 10mm Glock with a 19-round magazine and “make as many bangs as you can.”

Reliving the Nightmare

After their run-in with the bear, Adams says the group caught their breath, decompressed, and then glassed for a little while longer. Soon enough they saw another, bigger bear higher up on the mountain, which was the only sign they needed to turn around and break camp. They made it to the lake, and then boated across for their ride back to Sitka, where they spent the night. Orozco was (understandably) still shaken up, but when Adams and Ericksen saw that the weather would only hold for another day before turning sour again, they decided to make the most of their hunt and headed back into the mountains with their guide the following day.

After boating to a different mountain lake, they hiked up and camped above tree line. The two friends shared a tent, and Adams explains that Ericksen passed out around 7:30 p.m. while he stayed up and played a card game.

“I’m still wide awake, and after about thirty minutes, he sits straight up and starts screaming, ‘Ahhh!’ and he scared the absolute shit out of me,” Adams says. “And I’m like, ‘Whoa, what’s up?’ And he said, ‘It was just a nightmare. I was getting charged by a brown bear.’”

The skills you’ve acquired and gear in your pack are often the difference in making it through a life and death situation. But you first need the mental fortitude to survive. Without the drive to survive—and a strong mindset—no piece of gear will save you. The most important tool to bring along is mental toughness. Having a survivalist mentality (the will to live no matter how difficult the adversity) is multi-faceted. There are hidden hazards abound, but also remedies that can help us recover our advantages and get home safe to our families.

1. Tenacity

Whether you call it intestinal fortitude, tenacity, or grit, this facet of your survival mindset is all about endurance. Can you hang in there even when your hope has failed?

Tenacity doesn’t have anything to do with physical toughness or stamina. It’s a manifestation of the strength of your will and the toughness of your mind. A truly tenacious person will push themselves to tolerate the intolerable, suffer through the insufferable, and survive the situation that no one expected them to survive. It’s all about overcoming your inner weaknesses and fighting your desire to give up.

The Problem: A number of things can wreck your innate tenacity, but the one that worries me the most is declining mental health. In a lengthy wilderness survival setting or in the wake of a major disaster, it’s hard enough just to stay alive, let alone endure feelings of anxiety or depression or suicidal thoughts.

2. Adaptability

Adaptability is one of the crown jewels of the survival mindset. To be adaptable, you must be able to change along with changing events, situations, and environments. It’s all about flexibility and trying new options. If you get lost in the woods one afternoon, you may not make it home to your own bed. An adaptable person will assess the situation and realize that their bed isn’t an option, so they’ll have to find a new place to sleep. Since there’s no water faucet in the wild, they’ll find a new source of water. There’s no fridge either, so they’ll find a new source of food. These substitutions may not be as good as they would like, but they’ll be good enough for now. An adaptable survivor can embrace change while recognizing the things that are worth continuing and the things that need to be abandoned.

The Problem: What can prevent you from adapting? Stubbornness can do it. Sometimes we think of stubbornness as a good thing (confusing it with tenacity), but it’s often a stumbling block. It’s a refusal to adapt and a rejection of new things. When you’ve driven around town 10 times and still can’t find the building you need, but refuse to ask for directions, that’s stubbornness. When you keep throwing lit matches at the same crappy wet tipi fire lay, that’s also stubbornness.

The Remedy: Check your ego at the door and try something new. Stubbornness is like trying to break down a brick wall with your head. After the first strike, you realize it’s not going to work, but you keep going down the path to self-destruction. Instead of stubbornly repeating the same thing, try some new approaches. Change isn’t all bad, and you might be surprised how well something new will work.

3. Work Ethic

Your work ethic plays a major role in your survival mindset. Survival is hard work—that’s why we don’t choose to do it as a “day job” anymore. When thrust into an emergency that requires hard toil, lazy people are naturally going to suffer. Thankfully, your work ethic can be built up over time (if you survive your initial bout of laziness), and you’ll be wiser for the wear and tear. Experience is a hard but effective teacher, showing us the value of working harder next time. To build a strong work ethic, you’ll have to learn to stick with a job until it gets done.

The Problem: Your work ethic can certainly be hampered by factors beyond your control, like a physical injury, emotional distress, or mental issues. But one thing you can address is laziness. By making a habit of skipping the chores that you don’t want to do and taking shortcuts, laziness can ruin your work ethic (and your outcome).

The Remedy: You’ll have to work hard to build your shelter, drag in firewood, and haul water, but it’s important that you do these hard jobs and see them through to completion. Survival is not a vacation from work. In fact, it’s probably going to be the hardest work you’ll ever do. Skip the shortcuts. Take an honest look at your workload, and then get it done. Don’t be lazy.

4. Creativity

Humans make stuff. We make fire, metal, airplanes, and iPhones—and sometimes we even make our own problems. This innate creativity usually benefits us, enabling us to devise ingenious solutions to our problems (in daily life and in emergencies).

The Problem: A fear of failure can ruin someone’s natural creativity. This form of fear is different from normal fear (like being afraid of a dangerous thing). It may stem from childhood, when hyper-critical adults damaged your confidence. It may also arise from a reluctance to disappoint others or to admit that there are limits to your abilities.

The Remedy: Forget about permission and reassurance. Don’t beat yourself up if you fail sometimes—everyone does. When you see something that you can do and you think it might work, be confident and give it a try. Confidence can unlock your creativity, and creativity can save the day.

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5. Positivity

Just because everyone cites a positive mental attitude as a beneficial survival trait doesn’t mean you should discount it. In fact, you should pay even closer attention to the topic. I like to explain positivity to my classes as a lens that you look through. It’s a little like “beer goggles,” except that it doesn’t make everyone a “perfect 10” on the attractiveness scale. Instead, it allows you to see the brighter side of a situation. This is a hard skill to master, but it’s worth the work. Your attitude is vital to keep up morale. And this upbeat attitude isn’t just handy when you’re lost in the wilds: you can use it every day.

The Problem: Pessimism is the outlook that can ruin your positive attitude. Whether you’re a lifelong “glass half empty” person or an emergency is starting to wear on you, this destructive viewpoint can make any situation feel worse than it is and can negatively impact your outcome.

The Remedy: How can you cure pessimism? I recommend an attitude of gratitude. Find the “silver linings” in your situation, and be truly grateful for them. Do you have air to breathe? Be grateful for it. Are you uninjured? Be glad about it. Even in the worst settings, you can find things that ARE going your way. If you’re grateful for them, it can change your whole attitude.

6. Acceptance

When you’re in a tough situation, you may just have to accept it. It’s only natural to resist and deny an ugly revelation or a frightening scenario, but this knee-jerk reaction to fight reality is a mistake. Acceptance doesn’t mean that we like the circumstances around us or want them to continue. Instead, it means that we recognize their reality and understand that we can’t change them right now.

The Problem: Denial is a powerful opponent to acceptance. When we refuse to admit there is a problem or deny the severity of our troubles, we’re just kidding ourselves. And if we act on this false reality instead of what’s really happening, we could end up making things worse.

The Remedy: It takes hard work to accept an unhappy truth or a dire situation. You may be tempted to equate acceptance with surrender or apathy, but they aren’t the same. You’re not giving up or giving in when you accept a situation, you’re simply facing the facts (for now, at least). Acceptance doesn’t mean that things are going to stay bad forever. It just means that you’re being honest about the trouble you’re facing right now. My favorite example of acceptance comes from the book Adrift by Steven Callahan. He was alone on a raft in the Atlantic Ocean for over two months, and at a certain point, he accepted his fate. There was nothing he could do about being on the raft (other than jump out of it), so he accepted that “raft life” was his new life. This let him focus on surviving as he drifted across the ocean, and he ended up covering 1,800 nautical miles before he was rescued.

7. Humor

I’m not talking about clowns and slapstick comedy. I’m talking about the other kind of humor—dark and bitter. It may surprise you, but humor does play a role in human psychology and survival. Sometimes called “gallows humor,” this grim sense of comedy was used by our ancestors as both a weapon and a shield. And it’s still used today. Most of our soldiers, police, firefighters, and EMTs know this type of humor very well. It helps them push through the bad days. No, not everything is a joke, but there is some value in identifying irony where you can.

The Problem: The human mind is complex, and so is the array of emergencies that could befall us. There are some heartbreaking situations when humor is inappropriate and impossible.

The Remedy: Even when someone is in the depths of depression, if you give them enough time and find the right approach, humor can be therapeutic. Satire, irony, and other forms of dark humor may be able to cut through the fog of stress and enhance their brain chemistry, recalibrating their pleasure-reward center and lifting depression and anxiety.

8. Bravery

How do we explain bravery? It’s not a lack of fear. Instead, it’s more like a conquest of fear. Fear and bravery are not opposites—in fact, they coexist. When a situation isn’t dangerous or frightening, there’s no need for bravery and no condition for it to exist. We have to be afraid before we can be brave.

The Poison: When we’re too frightened to even think clearly, there’s no room for logic or bravery. There’s only room for panic. This fear response can be described as an unrestrained and all-consuming fear. It’s a common response in emergencies, and it can manifest in several ways. You may engage in frantic behavior or stand frozen in fear. You may even become overwhelmed by emotion, screaming or crying inconsolably. Any of these responses could get you into more trouble, and then you’ll have a whole new set of problems. But if you can use your fear as a tool and hold panic at bay, then you’ll be the master of your fear (and not the other way around).

The Remedy: Accept your fears. Fear is our natural instinct to avoid dangerous things, and it keeps us out of harm’s way. If you can own your fear and keep it under control, it will start working for you.

9. Motivation

What motivates a person to stay alive when everything has gone wrong? Many survival stories speak of the survivor’s devotion to their religion, or to a higher power that motivated them and gave them hope. Other survivors have told of their intense desire to get back to family, friends, and loved ones. What would motivate you to stay alive in a survival emergency? It’s different for every person.

The Problem: Hopelessness is the Kryptonite to your superpower of motivation. When a person loses hope that they will be saved and reunited with loved ones, their desire to keep going begins to dwindle. When a person believes that God has abandoned them, hope dies another death. In short, when the thing that normally motivates you begins to lose its strength, you are in a bad situation indeed.

The Remedy: Dig deep. Keep thinking about the things and people you value most. It may take a combined effort from many facets of your survival mindset to put you back on the path to survival, but a positive attitude and tenacity can help restore your will to live. Top them off with your faith in something bigger than yourself, and you might find your motivation returning.

“Pick out a stand,” I shouted to my sons, Park and Bobby, but the advice wasn’t necessary. I saw Park shift to his right to take a stand beside a thick multiflora rose field border. At the same time, Bobby climbed onto the trunk of a fallen elm tree which afforded him a good view of the black berry thicket all around him.

Homer was pouring on the fuel. The rabbit decided to run rather than dodge into heavy cover, and it sounded as if the little beagle was breathing right down its neck. Finally the rabbit had to break out within range of one of our guns, and the next thing I heard was Bobby’s 20 gauge crack once … twice … and that was it.

“Did you get him?” I called.

But before Bobby could answer, Homer opened up again and I knew that the bunny managed to squirt past Bobby and now was heading toward the next county. What followed, though, was the kind of chase to make a beagle owner proud. The rabbit changed it stactics. Instead of running at high speed, it turned into a dense plantation of Scotch pines and dodged about until the dog was completely confused. Then it zipped out into the open again.

At first it seemed the rabbit would have to pass near me because I saw it coming while still far out of range. But suddenly it swung to the left, switched into high gear, and ran right toward Parker. I saw the boy raise his Browning over-and-under, hesitate, and then fire the 12 gauge. A minute later he was holding up the bunny while Homer, excited as a puppy, jumped up and tried to reach it.

“Here’s your hasenpfeffer,” Park called to me.

That same happy scene was reenacted several times before the day was over. We found enough rabbits and we had enough shooting to make it an occasion we wouldn’t forget for a long time. It was also the beginning of a wonderful week of hunting which I’d promised the boys on Christmas, 1961, when Bobby was 12 and Park was 15. Bobby had received a three-monthsold beagle pup as his Christmas gift. He named the dog Homer-Hungry Homer is his official name in the registers of the American Kennel Club—and announced that he personally would train the beagle.

“By next Christmas,” he promised, “Homer will be the best rabbit dog in town.”

“If he’ll just run rabbits at all,” I answered, “we’ll hunt every day of the Christmas holidays next year.”

I’d made the promise for two reasons. For one thing, with open seasons as short as they are, a father doesn’t get to hunt with his sons often so long as they’re still in school. For another, I like rabbit hunting. I’ve been lucky enough to hunt around the world, from Texas to Tanganyika and back, but winter cottontail hunting still gives me a big thrill. Maybe my love for cottontail hunting is part nostalgia because I can remember my own first hunting trips. At that time, we could find rabbits at the ends of the electric streetcar lines in Cincinnati. After the hunt was over, my mother, who was German, would plunk the bunnies into a rich spicy liquor and later cook hasenpfeffer-spiced rabbit and dumplings. I never could get enough of it. Even though we have to travel a bit farther to find game nowadays (the rabbits around my suburban Columbus, Ohio, home are protected by a city ordinance), I promised the boys that the hasenpfeffer would be the same.

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All summer and into early fall, Bobby worked with his puppy. First, he tied a duck wing to a practice casting plug, then he would cast the whole thing across our lawn and encourage Homer to chase it as he retrieved it. I’m convinced that this greatly stimulated the pup’s desire to hunt at a tender age.

Next, Bobby would run a barefoot path through the neighborhood and encourage the dog to track him. It was a strange sight to see a beagle running and howlingafter a boy, but it worked. The first time he jumped a live rabbit one day in early fall, he ran it like a veteran beagle. Many evenings after school, Bobby and I would also take the dog to a nearby thicket where we would enjoy a chase or two before dinner. This was the best experience of all.

But the most carefully laid plans can go awry. On November 8, a week before the opening of our Ohio rabbit season, Bobby and I drove to a woodlot north of Columbus for a practice run. But a couple of hunters were jumping the gun-hunting before season and one of them mistook Homer for a rabbit and shot him and then deserted the scene. When we found Homer, he was a sad, bloody mess.

Bobby was crushed, and there’s no describing how I felt as we carried the whimpering dog to a veterinarian. But it was a tremendous relief when we learned that the wounds were only superficial. By shaving Homer’s rear end, much against his wishes, the vet found that one pellet had passed through his leg and six others were embedded in his rump.

“He’ll probably be O.K. in a week or two,” the vet said. “But I doubt if he’ll do much hunting. I figure he’ll be gun-shy.”

A Beagle’s First Season

Both of us were happy enough just to have Homer alive. And when we dressed in the familiar boots and canvas hunting pants on opening day, we got a great surprise. The dog was wild to go along. When we left him behind, he whined pitifully and tried to claw his way through the door. Finally I relented.

“Let’s take him along,” I told Bobby, “and see what happens.”

What happened was a heart-warming experience. The dog’s performance was limping and slow, but he hadn’t lost a bit of his enthusiasm for chasing cottontails. And I doubt if he even heard the considerable shooting we did over his head that day. Except for being very tired and sore, he was as good as ever. Christmas morning, 1962, produced another surprise for Bobby. He received his first gun, a Stevens 20-gauge double-barreled shotgun, and I got the impression he couldn’t have been more pleased with $1,000,000.

“Santa Claus must’ve been reading my mind,” he said.

The day after Christmas, as I said before, was made to order for beagles and rabbit hunters with rabbit-hunting sons. We had a great time of it. But whereas I was tired after a whole day of tramping across Franklin County’s snow-covered real estate, the boys weren’t really warmed up.

“Where are we going tomorrow?” Bobby asked on the way home.

“Let’s try that spot in Morrow County,” Park suggested, “where we found all the rabbits last year.”

“This week is on me,” I answered wearily. “You just say where.”

Morrow County is a prosperous agricultural country with neat, cozy farmhouses, and it’s out of that portion of Ohio which is so intensively developed. Fertile croplands are interspersed with farm woodlots, and here and there some of the old buttonbush swamps are undrained. I’ve hunted several locations in the county, but one of my favorites is Hobe Sanderson’s farm. That’s where Park and I had discovered a good concentration of cottontails in a 100-acre sugar maple and blackberry thicket. It isn’t easy to hunt-the briers clutch at your clothing and trip you up—but I’ve found that some of the toughest rabbit habitat is also the best.

It was even colder than the morning after Christmas when we parked my station wagon beside an old cattle gate, filled the pockets of our hunting coats with shells, and started out on foot. I was using a Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump. The car radio announced it was 10°F , and it felt like it. But Park, Bobby, and the dog didn’t seem to notice it at all.

“Today is going to be my day,” Bobby said.

What he meant was that he planned to bag his first rabbit with his new double. The day before, Park and I had split our final bag of four. Bobby hadn’t quite connected on the several shots he had. We pushed off into a waist-high patch of briers with Homer sniffing back and forth in front of us, his nose poking into the snow like a vacuum cleaner.

“If he keeps that up all day,” I said to myself, “his nose will be badly chapped or frostbitten.”

Bobby hadn’t traveled 20 yards before he practically stepped on a rabbit that seemed to explode from the snow under his feet. But he was too surprised to even raise his gun. Instead he shouted to me that a rabbit was coming my way. I saw a blur of gray as it bounced away ahead of me, but I didn’t have time for a shot. It didn’t make any difference, however, because Homer also spotted the bunny and went in full cry after it. Following even a fresh trail on such a cold morning is murder for a hound dog. Even the best and most experienced beagles have trouble following a track under such conditions. Evidently the scent doesn’t hold on the frigid surface of the snow, or perhaps the footpad of the rabbit doesn’t leave enough scent to detect. But Homer held onto the track for 150 yards or so before it seemed to evaporate. After making several circles to try to pick up the scent, Homer trotted back to us with a something’s-wrong-look on his face.

“We’re going to have to work harder for our game today,” I told the boys.

I was right. Though tracks were abundant, most of the rabbits which made them seemed to be underground, probably in woodchuck dens or old drainage tiles. Wherever it’s possible, rabbits retreat into such places when the weather turns extremely cold or damp. We hunted hard for another hour before I flushed a second rabbit from beneath a rusty roll of fence wire which was grown over with poison ivy and other brush. I was startled when the bunny flushed, but recovered in time to make a good shot.

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“This,” I bragged, holding up the fat cottontail, “is how to do it.”

With the ice broken, we began to have more action. Homer poked his cold nose into a brushpile and a cottontail catapulted out of the other end. Both Bobby and I saw the rabbit flush, but we didn’t shoot because it was too close to the dog.

“That’s good, quick thinking,” I commended Bobby. “It doesn’t pay to take a chance in a spot like that.”

Homer had a good chase going for several minutes and I thought maybe he would be able to push this rabbit in a complete circle back to us. But something went wrong again, and this time we found where the rabbit had taken refuge deep in a hollow, fallen log.

“How will we get him out?” Bobby asked.

“We won’t,” I answered. “He made good his escape and we’ll go find another.”

Around noon we built a blazing fire, brewed a pot of cocoa, and broiled several venison chops I’d saved from a Minnesota deer hunt a month earlier. It was a pleasant interlude, but the boys didn’t want to linger.

“Let’s get going,” Park said. “There’s a rabbit around here with my name on it.”

We doused the fire and slipped the leash from around Homer’s neck.

“Now go find me a bunny,” Bobby pleaded.

Fresh Ground

By now the bright sun had had some effect and it was getting warmer, though the temperature still hovered around freezing. The change was helpful to Homer, and he suddenly sounded off when he nosed a rabbit out of a brier patch. Bobby had a snapshot at it, missed, and the target shifted into high gear. Homer wasn’t far behind. Though this was his best chase of the day so far, Homer couldn’t quite turn the animal and bring it back to us. Once or twice he lost the track and recovered it, but after the third loss, he never found it again. Maybe the rabbit ducked underground; maybe its tracks dissolved in the snow. We couldn’t tell.

Before the afternoon was finished, we bagged two more bunnies and Homer did run a successful chase. He jumped the cottontail himself and, except for the fact that Bobby didn’t score, wound up a happy day in the field for a tired father. At home later that evening, we had a call from Joe Fodor who farms a picturesque bit of countryside in Medina County. That’s north of Columbus and not too far from Cleveland. I usually spend a day or so every fall hunting with Joe. His farm work was pretty well caught up and he had time to make our usual excursion.

“Come on up tomorrow,” he said, “and bring the boys. We’ve got a few rabbits around the place.”

I can’t remember ever seeing so many rabbit tracks engraved in the snow as I did in the hollow and brushy woodlot behind Joe’s house. There was hardly a square foot of snow without a rabbit track on it. But finding rabbits above ground was another matter. We had to kick deep into brushpiles and grapevine thickets where they’d taken refuge. And even after we flushed them, Homer had a hard time following. Still we had our share of action, and that goes double for Park who bagged four, which is our state’s legal limit. After the last one, on which he made a fine shot at a quartering target, he was the happiest 16-year-old in the whole Midwest.

We didn’t hunt all day every day during the rest of the holidays because I still have to work to earn a living. But I took the boys out for at least a couple of hours every day, and I’d like to tell about one of those occasions.

The Greatest Christmas Ever

The place we went to is almost within walking distance of our home, but we drove to save time. It’s abandoned, heavily overgrown farmland which, sadly, will soon be developed into a residential area. It’s full of rabbits, and I felt that maybe this would be our last chance to hunt them. In any case, we had a perfect day for the snow was melting slightly and the sun felt almost warm.

Homer had a rabbit going almost immediately, and he never stopped chasing it until it circled back toward me. I bagged it on the first shot. A minute later, Park kicked a second cottontail from it’s squat in a clump of high bluegrass and rolled it before it was out of range. Then Homer jumped a third rabbit and began a wild pursuit which was pure joy to hear and watch.

He’d flushed the rabbit from the fairly open face of one hillside, and we could see it travel down to the frozen creek at the bottom, cross the creek in one jump, and then dart up the steep slope on the other side. Homer followed the track as if he were glued to it. It isn’t often you can watch the maneuvering of a rabbit the way we did this one. It changed directions often and even crossed back over its own trail, but Homer carefully unraveled the complicated course. He pushed so closely that the rabbit had to give up its fancy tactics and head pell-mell for the opposite hillside where it had first flushed and where we were waiting.

At first I thought the rabbit would take the deep gully between Park and me and that one of us would get a good shot. But halfway up the hill, it shifted sharply to the left and headed straight for Bobby. I held my breath, hoping he would see it in time and get a good shot at it.

I shouldn’t have worried. Bobby was watching the rabbit all the way and had his doμble ready. When the rabbit approached an opening right in front of him, he flipped off the safety. Then he calmly clobbered his first bunny with his Christmas gun.

The boy held his rabbit high for Homer to see, and Homer climbed all over him to sink his teeth into the critter. It was quite a picture. On the way home, Bobby summed up the holiday hunting in one short and appropriate sentence. “This has been the greatest Christmas ever,” he said. I knew what he meant. I also knew there would be fragrant, robust hasenpfeffer awaiting the three of us on our return home.

Mother Bauer’s Christmas Hasenpfeffer Recipe

Carefully dress and wash rabbit. Cut it into six pieces: two saddle pieces, two hams, and two forelegs. Place the pieces in a marinade of half white vinegar (do not use cider vinegar or wine) and half water, a chopped onion, salt, and pepper, and a teaspoon of mixed pickling spices. Marinate rabbit for 48 hours, turning the meat occasionally. Next, dry the rabbit and brown it in a skillet of hot butter. When meat is brown, drain it and wipe the skillet clean. Now put the rabbit back in the pan with almost enough marinade to cover it. Simmer the meat slowly until its tender (usually 30 to 45 minutes) and during the last five minutes add five or six crushed ginger snaps and one cup of heavy sour cream. Now bring it to a hard boil and turn off the flame. The hasenpfeffer is now ready to eat. I like hasenpfeffer best with fried red cabbage, potato pancakes, and a cold bottle of good ale.

Another 10 minutes passed before the bawling beagles started back our way. Then a slight movement caught my eye. To our left, where an old stone wall edged a spruce plantation, a patch of gray appeared. Nimbly, a gray fox jumped up onto the wall and peered intently toward the oncoming hounds.

“Don’t move,” I whispered as I eased my .22 autoloader to my shoulder.

When the rifle cracked, the fox leaped straight up, tumbled off the wall, and plunged blindly into the thick evergreens.

“Wow, Dad, what made him jump so?” Ed asked excitedly.

A half-hour later, fox and hounds in tow, we were greeted by my wife Theresa at the door of our frame home outside Bath in the Southern Tier of New York State.

“Your dad wants you to call him right away,” she told me. “He’s all excited about something. It didn’t make sense. Who ever heard of a black white rabbit.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A black white rabbit!” she repeated. “Oh, what’s the difference brown, white, black. You and the boys are late for supper every time you hunt them. Now get those smelly old hounds out of my kitchen.”

I winked at Ed as he coaxed the two beagles out the back door, and then I bestirred myself to get the long-distance operator. In a minute my call was placed to Art Flick Sr., who has been a full-time guide in the Catskill Mountains of eastern New York for the better part of his life.

“What’s up, Dad?” I asked.

“Son, I know I’ve got no right to suggest that we change our plans for our annual Christmas hare hunt next week,” he told me, “but you’ll never believe what I saw up on Halcott Mountain today. A black snowshoe rabbit. So help me, old Tiny brought him around three different times, but I never could get a whack at him. He looked big as a house cat and black as the inside of a cow. I’d sure like to have you boys come down here so we could have a go at him.”

“You know I’d come in a minute, Dad,” I replied, “but it’s Bill’s turn to host our annual hunt, and everyone’s plans are made. Black rabbit or not, I’m afraid we’re committed to hunt the Adirondacks this year.”

Christmas hare hunts have been a tradition in our family ever since Bill, my oldest brother, got his first hunting license back in 1943. He’s a fisheries-research associate and lives on a 27,000-acre wildlife paradise in the Adirondack Mountains where he does research for Cornell University. We rotate our annual hare hunts between his place, the family homestead in the Catskills, and my place in the Southern Tier.

Before meeting at Bill’s for our ’58 Christmas hunt, I had occasion to check in at conservation headquarters in Albany, N.Y. While there, I did a little research of my own on black varying hares. I also looked up Joe Dell, chief wildlife biologist for the game-research section of the Bureau of Game. After leading me through a happy haze of biological jive, he informed me that a black hare is really a melano.

“He zigged when he should have zagged when he came to color,” Joe told me, chuckling. “Instead of being brown in the summer and white in the winter, he’s black. Melanos, like albinos, are extremely rare. Anyone who’s lucky enough to bag one has a real trophy. According to our records, the last one killed in the Catskills was taken back in 1925 on Halcott Mountain.”

“Halcott Mountain!” I exclaimed. “Why, that’s where the hare I’m talking about was seen.”

I could hardly wait to see Dad and Bill to tell them what I’d learned. From that moment on, the Halcott Mountain oddity dominated our conversation.

“If I thought he could survive till next season, I’d leave him alone,” Dad said over a glass of Bill’s homemade chokecherry wine on Christmas Eve. “Only thing in his favor is being up on Halcott Mountain. We’re the only damn fools who’ll hoof it clear up there for the few hares that live in that swamp on top. But there’s always the chance that a predator will nail him. He’s so darned conspicuous on the snow, I think I’d better try for him when I get back home,” he reasoned.

Following our hunt at Bill’s, I returned to my work as a forester at Bath with the N.Y. State Conservation Department. I also do some part-time guiding there. It was too much to hope that the melano would be around the next year for our hunt at Dad’s place in the Catskills. My six-year-old son Johnny helped me to put thoughts of the unusual hare out of my mind.

“Maybe Grampy’s eyes aren’t so good any more,” he said, child fashion. “Prob- ably he really saw a dirty white rabbit.”

But Grampy was out to prove different. Before the season closed on February 29, he made two more trips to the top of the 3,500-foot mountain to try for the black white rabbit.

“The capers that rascal pulled on those poor hounds were enough to give a dog heartburn,” he wrote after his last unsuccessful Halcott Mountain hunt. “I got to see him one more time, but he made a monkey of me,” Dad lamented. “My lead was just right, but the instant I fired, he stopped. I must have missed him by four feet.”

The hunting for varying hares in the Catskill Mountains differs a little from hunting in the Adirondacks, New England, or the Lake States. The critters aren’t abundant, and most of them live on the tops of mountains. You’ll find Catskill snowshoes where stunted hardwoods grade into a mixture of man-high conifers some 2,500 to 3,000 feet above the valley floor.

On occasion a population spillover sends scattered hares down among the cottontails in the reforested areas along the lower slopes. When the visitor is chased by a flop-eared hound, however, there’s no guarantee he’ll circle. More often than not, the snowshoe heads for the top of the nearest mountain and stays there. Therefore, most serious hare hunters head for the high country.

That move entails a risk. Weather and snow conditions may be fine down in the valley, but put a couple thousand feet of elevation behind you, and you’re in a different world. Snow conditions, temperature, and wind may all be different. Sometimes the change is so drastic that hunting is impossible. Nevertheless we still concentrate on the snowshoe rather than his cousin, the cottontail. The big hare may not equal the cottontail as a culinary delight, but his habit of not holing up endears him to the true houndsman who revels in the chase. And we Flicks love the chase!

During the fall of ’59, Dad was booked full with hunters of grouse, woodcock, and deer, so he had no time to see if the melano had made it through the summer, though in November he did receive an encouraging report from a local deer hunter. While tracking a wounded buck through the swamp on top of Halcott Mountain, he had jumped a coal-black rabbit. Dad was elated. The hare was still alive.

THE 1959 Christmas holidays blew in on the heels of a sharp cold wave that threatened to finish our melano hunt before it started. By Christmas morning, however, the temperatures had moderated to a modest 18° above zero. To brighten the picture, a fast-moving storm had put an inch of new snow down the length of the valley on Christmas Eve. Dad allowed that conditions should be good on top of Halcott, provided the wind didn’t come up strongly.

“Shall we use the shotguns or stick to the .22’s?” Bill asked.

Now my dad is a purist in the strictest sense of the word.

“The melano gets no preferential treatment,” he decreed. “Either we get him fair and square with rifles or we go without.”

Which .22 rifle is best for this type of hunting is a subject that often keeps the hot-stove league bubbling for hours. Bill prefers the little lightweight Browning autoloader, Dad favors the autoloading Remington Model 552, and I stick to the Savage Model 6 autoloader I bought as a youngster with furs from my trapline.

Among us we have seven beagles. On our Christmas hare hunts, we each choose one hound we feel will be the best under that day’s running conditions. Dad’s old Tiny dog, Bill’s 15-inch Star, and my four-year-old Briar won nods to go after the melano. The four other hounds were left behind to serenade our wives.

AS SOON AS the youngsters had opened presents Christmas morning, the hunters headed for Halcott Mountain. We drove up the Beech Ridge road to the base of the mountain and parked the car.

The minute we let the dogs out, they jumped a cottontail and were off. Dad was furious.

“I knew we should have leashed the mutts till we got through that brushlot,” he grumbled.

It took about 15 minutes before the dogs wheeled the plump cottontail by me. Luck was with us, and I dispatched the rabbit with a single hollowpoint on the first circle. After a quick gutting job, I hung him in a tree fork to pick up on our way back. Then we started off on the exhausting climb up Halcott Mountain.

We hadn’t gone 200 yards up the timbered slope before we started peeling off our coats. By the end of the first half-hour we were down to our undershirts, and we were still almost sweating as we plodded through the deepening snow. Halfway up we had to stop and put on our snowshoes. From there on, we took turns breaking trail, and the dogs tailed along patiently behind.

About the time we hit the last bench of ledges down from the top of the mountain, the dogs led on out. Minutes later, when we stopped for a breather, we heard old Tiny sounding off high above us.

“It may be the melano. Let’s get moving,” Dad said urgently.

We foolishly charged to the top of the mountain. The sudden exertion started the perspiration flowing freely from all of us.

“It’s a wonder the dogs are getting enough scent out of that powdered snow to run,” Bill muttered. “It must be close to zero up here.”

We made certain we knew where each man was to stand and then listened to the bawling hounds. By the time the hare had circled the second time, I was shivering because of my sweat-soaked underclothes. Star had joined in with Tiny, and they were really turning it on. My Briar dog, being reluctant to run with other dogs on a rabbit that he didn’t start, was off by himself trying to straighten out a cold track.

The two other dogs were out of hearing when I spotted a movement in a tangle of evergreens to my left. Thinking it was Briar, I called out, “Go get one started, you old fool.” To my chagrin, a snowshoe bounded out and then disappeared like a spook into the safety of the swamp.

“Must have been a stray,” I thought. I started to call Briar to put him on the track when I heard the other dogs coming back. Suddenly they quit. It took only a minute for them to make up the loss, and then they headed right for Bill.

I can always tell Bill’s shooting from Dad’s because he shoots his autoloader in short bursts, a habit he traces back to his army days. Dad grinds his shots out slowly and methodically. I do one or the other, depending on my degree of excitement.

In this case, the gunfire came in short bursts.

“Got him,” Bill yelled. “It’s a white one.”

“Good boy,” Dad called from the far edge of the swamp. “Now let’s head east to the far point. That’s where I jumped that black rascal the last time I was up here.”

“Hold it a minute,” I shouted. “I’ve got to get this wet undershirt off before I shiver right out of my snowshoe harness.”

I LEANED my rifle against a small balsam and started to strip. As I peeled off the sweat-soaked undershirt, Briar put his nose right on a hare not 50 yards away and sight-ran it right toward me. The other dogs picked up the cry, and all three burst from the swamp not five jumps behind the hare.  It was the melano!

Dad, sportsman that he is, frowns on shooting hares before they make a full circle, but in this case I was willing to risk his wrath.

I lunged for the rifle, but I put one snowshoe on top of the other. As I shifted my weight to swing the rifle to my shoulder, I lost my balance and the tangled snowshoes pitched me headlong into the snow.

“It’s the melano,” I cried, spitting out the white powdery stuff. “He damn near ran over me.”

The chase was on. Clumsily, I struggled to my feet. The melano made a tight circle and headed right back toward where I stood, half naked, with my rifle full of snow.

The whole entourage passed within easy shooting distance of me, but I was helpless. Numb from the cold, I fumbled into my wool shirt and bent to the task of cleaning my rifle. Laboriously, I unloaded, freed up the action, and blew the snow out of the barrel. Meantime the hounds and the hare passed out of hearing. They circled four times before Bill finally cut loose with a seven-shot burst. There was a pause and then five more rapid shots.

His muffled yell drifted faintly through the snow-laden evergreens. Had he connected? The dogs answered my question. They kept coming. Bill had missed, and the hounds were heading my way.

I saw the black hare silhouetted against the backdrop of white snow as he darted between two balsams. Then he stopped.

Slowly, carefully, I raised my rifle—Dad’s long-standing advice to move slowly was paying off. The melano never moved. He was backed up against a small sapling and listened intently to the approaching hounds. This was the golden moment. I squeezed the trigger—click.

The firing pin fell on an empty chamber. I had forgotten to chamber a round. Frantically I worked the action as the melano moved into high gear. In an instant he was swallowed up by the thick swamp. I could have bawled out loud.

Crestfallen, I listened as the dogs took the hare out of hearing again. Taking advantage of the lull, Bill and I moved to new stands. Ten more minutes passed before I heard the hounds working their way back toward Dad on the other side of the swamp. The losses were becoming more and more frequent as the swamp became marked with a jumble of hound and hare tracks.

Suddenly, all was quiet.

When the sound of the baying beagles started again, I was aghast. The dogs had split up and were running in opposite directions. While working out the loss, Star had jumped another hare. Things were really getting confused.

The dogs worked slowly and uncertainly. In the distance, sounding like popguns, the .22’s started talking. Both Bill and Dad were shooting. I couldn’t help but chuckle. Staid old Dad was shucking them out as fast as brother Bill.

Like a duet, a chorus of “I got ’im,” drifted through the dense swamp. I ran for Bill. As I approached, I saw him kneeling over Star. The hound was worrying a full-grown white hare in the soft snow.

“Congratulations,” I called out as I jogged by and headed for the spot where Dad and the other two hounds were kicking up an awful fuss. As I approached, a spruce dropped a load of snow down my neck.

“Look what I got, Son,” Dad chortled. “Isn’t he a beauty? Must weigh over four pounds, and not a white hair on him. What a chase he gave us!”

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“You don’t know the half of it,” I replied, shaking the snow out of my collar. “That devil really made a monkey out of me. I’ll never forget this hunt as long as I live.”

THAT NIGHT as we sat around the supper table, Dad told the day’s events for the benefit of the wide-eyed grandchildren.

“Let’s see now,” he said as he gestured with his favorite steak knife, “the last melano was killed on Halcott Mountain just 34 years ago. If history keeps repeating itself, Grampy ought to be able to take you youngsters back up there in 1993, and we’ll get us another one of those black white rabbits—if you can stay on your feet, keep your gun loaded, and hit what you’re shooting at.” With that, he winked at Bill and me.

Melano or no melano, I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend a Christmas than on a family hare hunt.

Earlier in the year, OL reported on the extreme drought conditions throughout much of the country and how those conditions could negatively impact waterfowl numbers. Mallards in a North Dakota survey were down nearly 49 percent from 2020 numbers, and pintails were down 68 percent, to their lowest count since 1991, according to a report by Hunting Editor Andrew McKean. But, perhaps foolishly, I didn’t think this data would impact what I was seeing in the field. I scouted my way into the middle of the season, sure that the birds would come.

During mid-October I pulled up to one of my go-to wood duck spots to find two other guys watching the same stretch of river. By 20 minutes past sunset, we saw a total of three ducks fly by.

“The river has sucked this year,” said one of the guys, and I felt a brief pang of depression, like we were the final three dudes hanging out a lonely dive bar during last call, all sitting separately but, sadly, somehow together.

I shook it off and went deer hunting. Cold weather would bring birds and better hunting. Except it never did. My waterfowl hunting buddies struggled through their seasons, too. Outfitters canceled hunts or pushed back dates. I’m sure that lots of other hunters had great seasons all cross the country. I just don’t know who they are.

Greenhead Gifts

Much of duck hunting is about tradition, or at least rituals. One of my traditions is to hunt the final days of the Wisconsin duck season with my buddy Todd Gifford (aka, the Crowman). We usually have one good hunt near the Mississippi River and then call it a wrap on the year.

For me, snowy river bottoms and plump greenheads have come to mark the start of the holiday season more than any Christmas tree or string of lights ever could. There is, after all, no better place to reflect on your year (and your life) than a frigid river while waiting for the next flight of midday mallards.

But this year we didn’t even hunt. Gifford scouted our usual spots and found no birds. I schemed up a last-minute trip out-of-state trip to save our season and continue our tradition.

We left on a Friday during a blizzard that shut down most of the upper Midwest. A drive that should have taken about 6 hours lasted 10. The next morning, we found ourselves in a pit blind overlooking a pond of flooded corn. We flushed a flurry of mallards out of the pond while setting our decoys and we waited all day for them to return. Exactly one hen mallard actually did.

“That’s just the way it’s been this year, bro” Gifford said while we picked up the decoys. He’d missed late-season mallard hunting last year after falling off a ladder and shattering his leg, while hanging Christmas lights. For a while, we affectionately called him “Tiny Todd.”

“But who knows,” he said. “Maybe they’ll all move in tonight and hunting will be better tomorrow.”

Now it was just the two of us hanging around after last call.

But on our drive out, we spotted a big group of birds in the distance. It was after sunset now but there was still enough fading light to spot the cloud of birds that were beginning to tornado down over a cut cornfield.

“Are those snows?” I asked.

“They’re freaking green beans, dude,” said Gifford. “Follow ’em!”

We pulled up to a field to watch thousands of mallards spiral down from the darkening skies. A rolling feeding chuckle from hundreds of more ducks on the ground rumbled through the open truck windows.

Gifford didn’t sleep at all that night. He poured over maps and schemed and paced and was ready to go at 4 a.m. when I got up.

“We’re going to get them. I know it.” was all he said.

Instead of going back to the pit, we decided to set up on a little point jutting out into the mighty Missouri River. We didn’t have a field spread with us, and even if we had, we weren’t sure the mallards we’d seen the night before would feed during daylight. But we knew that late-season mallards like to trade around big bodies of water during the middle of the day. All we had to do was set up somewhere near their loafing area, and surely, we’d be able to call and decoy a few of them in.

Only 15 minutes before shooting light, about 100 mallards tried to land in our spread while Todd was still setting it up. We had picked the right spot.

Legal shooting light came, and we were ready. An hour passed but we saw only flocks of goldeneye working the middle of the river. Another hour passed and the dread started to creep in.

“They’ll start flying around 10,” Gifford said. “They always do.”

At 10:15 we spotted a lone drake mallard coming in hot. He looped around us and we called to him at the far edges of his flight path. After months of waiting and hoping, Todd finally jumped up and killed a stud drake mallard over the decoys.

Next a pair worked around us and I killed the drake. Another single drake buckled in and we killed him high overhead. My dog Otis swam out to retrieve the duck through a thin iceberg sheet that was drifting down the river.

“Yeah baby!” Gifford hollered as she brought the duck back. He held the drake up in the morning sun like a kid might do to show off his most precious Christmas present.

More pairs and singles came to our decoys and calling. At one point a loose flock of about 250 mallards began to swirl high above our little spread of three dozen floaters. From the corner of my eye, I spotted a fat greenhead cupped up, not 10 feet over the water. Shooting instinct that had been pent up for months took over, and I killed him with a splash. Gifford laughed as 250 mallards backpedaled and flared above us.

About 20 minutes later I called softly to a lone mallard that was lurking behind us. He eventually circled close enough and Gifford killed him with a single shot. With that, our duck season was over.

We piled up our ducks and then packed up the spread while reliving every moment of the hunt over and over. Those red legs and green heads, shimmering in the sunshine, made for the most spectacular colors I’d seen all year. It was, finally, Christmastime once again.

It’s not like that anymore. The power plant shut down and the geese have shifted west and short-stopped us. But if you pick the right weather days to hunt, you can kill a few ducks and geese. And that was our plan. My brother and I looked at the forecasts and set our dates. We planned to hunt in late December, just after Christmas.

COVID Tries to Cancel Christmas

This time last year, I wrote about the trials of parenting in the COVID-19 era, and how I used hunting to escape—if only for a time—the constant stress of the pandemic. Like many of you, I presumed 2021 would be better for everyone. And in some ways, it was. I was able to reconvene with my extended family and see friends I hadn’t been able to in over a year. I took my 8-year-old son to a Chicago Cubs game this summer. Our family went on vacation for the first time since the pandemic hit. Life was returning to normal.

But then the pandemic surged again, and 2021 began to feel an awful lot like 2020 as new COVID variants emerged. The uptick in COVID cases the last two months made me feel even more panicked. I’m not all that concerned with the pandemic itself anymore, as it’s become less deadly, but the restrictions, mandates, and political fodder that come with each new strain are mentally taxing. And that was on top of life’s usual stressors. Both my wife and son had surgeries this year. I worried about them before, during, and after their procedures. I didn’t hunt as much at home here in Illinois, because I needed to take care of my family. That caused more stress because getting into the woods with my squirrel dog or sitting in a duck blind is important to my mental health. Without as much of it, I felt slightly off.

He had been looking forward to having a friend over for weeks, and now it couldn’t happen because he was sick. He cried for a long time and kept repeating, “I just want to wake up from this bad dream.” It’s hard to make your kid feel better when there’s nothing for him to look forward to but another week inside, closed off from everyone except his mom and dad. It’s even more difficult when you don’t feel all that hopeful yourself.

When that mood sets in, I must disconnect before I get overwhelmed. And to do that, I go hunting. Thankfully, my brother and I decided we would end duck season together, hunting the last few days before ducks were out. We were still able to go the day after Christmas and again on the final day of the season before I found out my boy had tested positive.

A Familiar Waterfowl Feeling

On that first afternoon hunting near Canton, my brother Carl and I watched specklebellies and flocks of Canadas trading between two roosts. They lifted off the water, flew sky-high, and then descended into another pool. Smart birds. In this part of the country, if a goose flies over a blind or pit, it’s likely getting shot at. Doesn’t matter if it’s 25 yards off the deck or 150—hunters come out here to shoot, even if it’s not always the best shot.

My brother and I knew that the last 30 minutes of shooting light would be our best chance to kill a bird. We just needed the right flock to fly in our direction. A string of honkers came off the water a few hundred yards in front of us. They were big. We call them Canton geese because they’re locals that never migrate, programmed to go where they know they will be safe. But this flock screwed up.

They were flying fast, but not high enough, and when they skirted the edge of our small wetland, I rose, pulled the trigger twice, and the lead bird crashed into a thicket of Russian olive.

I ran up the hillside to look for the bird. My brother stayed below on the levee and spotted it first. So, I worked my way toward his voice and found the goose.

“Oh Carl,” I sad.

He knew immediately what that meant. “You shot a band? Nice!”

We both also knew the bird was a local, and later found out the goose had been banded only two miles from where I shot it. It was massive, weighing over 14 pounds. When I cut the breasts out at home on the tailgate of my truck, they were the size of two Easter hams.

It had been years since I shot a Canton band, and reminded me of my dad and all the fun we’d had around here. While he brushed in goose blinds in the summer I would play in the standing corn. When the season came, I built sandcastles on the banks of the Illinois River in the early mornings. Later, we’d sit together in small-town taverns, eating foot-long hot dogs and frozen Snickers bars. I needed that band more than I knew.

Two days later, Carl and I spent one last afternoon in a Canton duck blind. We were hunting flooded corn, the spot where all the mallards would come into as shooting light set on another Illinois season. A few ducks did fly into the decoys before time was up. We shot four hens: three mallards, and one wigeon—an ugly but classic central Illinois lanyard of ducks. We take what we can get here.

The two of us picked up decoys and watched the mallards drop into the corn like they were falling down an elevator shaft. I love how ducks backpedal over the tops of cornstalks, sticking their necks out just before they cannonball into the water. One moment they are majestic in flight, their wings cupped; the next they are like a fat kid jumping off the diving board into the swimming pool. I wanted to grab my phone and record the moment to watch over and again until next season, but my hands were full of cased shotguns and Mojo poles. No matter—I’ll remember that scene in my mind for years to come.