Sunday, September 11, 9:00 PM. Brewer.

It’s time we learned to hunt.

I don’t think I’ve ever admitted this to anybody but I don’t like hunting. My grandfather took me out a few times to hunt deer when I was maybe 12, 13, 14. I didn’t enjoy it. In fact I hated it. What I remember is the cold, the deafening explosions of gunfire, the blood, and a beautiful, harmless creature lying there suffering and dying.

I also remember fear. Grandfather couldn’t hunt without drinking. In fact I never could identify an activity that Grandfather could perform without drinking. This isn’t the rancher grandpa who’s looking down on me from heaven. This is the car mechanic grandfather, my dad’s dad, who could be anywhere.

When he was drunk he was short-tempered and impulsive. If I stepped on a twig and made a noise, he’d whip around and shout profanity at me (shouting louder than any twig) and tell me I’d spook the game. The shouting stung. The sight of his rifle muzzle sliding past my belly, and the thought of what would happen if his finger slipped at that moment, stung even worse. I’m not saying I thought he’d kill me on purpose. I never thought that. I just thought a temperamental, drunken man with a gun is an accident waiting to happen. I don’t consider myself to have been a cowardly boy, but I was constantly uneasy trudging through fields and forests swinging those loaded weapons around.

Eventually I told my mom I wasn’t going anymore no matter how much it embarrassed her.

Most of my friends went hunting every chance they could and clearly enjoyed it. I suppose they had better teachers, better first experiences. They would invite me to hunt but I always found an excuse not to. I said I couldn’t go, not that I didn’t want to.

I still don’t want to, not exactly. But I think it’s something we ought to do, to learn to do, not just me but Garrett and Trevor and Claire and Amy if they’re interested.

We don’t have to hunt. We’ve got canned meat that I’m betting will last a decade, give or take. More to the point, we have cattle that we can slaughter and live off of as long as we can keep them healthy and breeding. I don’t look forward to slaughtering cattle either but it’s a simpler affair overall. You don’t have to hunt them down first.

I’m not even sure why I think we ought to learn to hunt. Back then, there was something about it that seemed indulgent, unnecessary, a luxury—a luxury at the expense of some animal. And maybe it’s still a luxury for us. But it won’t always be. And it would be better for us to learn when we don’t need to do it than when we’re desperate. We’ve got a lot to learn and nobody to guide us. It could take us months to get to where we can reliably bring home meat.

Part of our problem too is that we don’t know when it might stop being a luxury. What if we go out on the road next year and our car breaks down in some remote part of the Appalachians? We could find ourselves on foot, miles from anything, and needing to find our own sustenance. Knowing how to trap and hunt would be a lifesaver.

I want the boys to know how to provide their own food. If civilization goes back to normal in ten years, it won’t hurt them to have learned. If it doesn’t, they’ve got long lives—and then new generations—that will have to survive with these skills. If I can be a better teacher than my grandfather was they can end up enjoying it and finding honor and respect in it in place of aggression and fear.

So it’s time for us to learn how to hunt.

I’ve been able to find some hunting magazines at libraries and bookstores. These are a lot better than nothing but it’s like learning to drive a car by watching a car commercial. The only way we’re going to learn is by getting out there and trying. In the next few days when we get some time I’ll take the family out to the sporting goods store. We’ll set up a target in the parking lot. I’ll let them try some rifles and each of them can pick one out. I’ll pick up some corn feeders and trail cameras and see if we can find where there are deer around here. While we wait for that to pan out, learning is probably a matter of just getting out, looking for tracks, watching for squirrels and birds, and seeing what we can bag.