Reflections on our Sport - Relevance of the outdoor pursuits in the 21st Century

Mountain men trappers Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, and Jim Bridger, conservationists and hunters Aldo Leopold and Teddy Roosevelt, and trail blazers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to name but a few, are all great legends in the annals of our North American outdoor heritage. The great spirit that drove those individuals to hunt, trap, fish, and explore is the same spirit that courses through the veins of every independent-minded and self-reliant outdoor adventurer today, ranging from the casual enthusiast who breaks out the camping gear once a year to the hardcore mountain man who chooses to live completely self-sufficient, acquiring his own sustenance from the land, and requiring little or no assistance from society. Under this bell-curve of outdoor interaction exists a great majority that falls somewhere in between the two extremes, such as an avid hunter, trapper, or fisherman who gets to the woods and water as many times as possible during the year. Moreover, within that majority a collective consciousness exists whose contention is that our outdoor heritage is something much, much more than mere sport. For many of us it approaches classification as a way of life.


Most widely accepted definitions for sport involve recreation, play, and competition. Ball playing, auto racing, boxing, running, and the like, without argument, are all great pastimes and are enjoyed by many of us. Any one of them can provide valuable lessons learned including, but not limited to, maintaining physical health, learning to participate as a team member and experiencing the rules of competition. For those of us who pursue hunting, trapping, and fishing, however, this definition becomes grossly inadequate.

While some sports definitions pertain, others have no real place in the outdoor pursuits. For example, play is a grossly disrespectful description when considering the harvesting of living creatures in nature for food and clothing and, from a safety point of view, play is certainly not an acceptable description of activities involving any lethal weapon, i.e. firearms or bow and arrow. Competition should be accepted only guardedly in the outdoor pursuits. Competition with one’s self to continuously improve skill and ability and thus, take game more often, efficiently and discriminately is desirable. However, unbridled competition and ambition between outdoorsman for more and bigger game unfortunately often leads to desecration and exploitation of wildlife laws and, therefore, of wildlife itself, as we have all seen in historical documents as well as recent news casts.

On the other hand recreation is an acceptable description, albeit somewhat lacking, since outdoor enthusiasts usually enjoy the toil of self reliance. Generally speaking, outdoors folks pursue and enjoy any exercise that preserves their freedom to take responsibility for themselves, whether it is to provide themselves with food, clothing or shelter. It is a way to maintain our connection as an integral part of the whole of Nature and understand our position and responsibility in the Creator’s intricate fabric of life.

Beyond just definitions, in the outdoors the experiences themselves are something much more than sport. They are milestones in a life that are burned into the soul. Experiences such as gazing, from a 9000 ft elevation, across a drainage at the instant the sunlight clears the distant horizon and beams through the mist rising from the meadows below as elk bugle in the distance is more, much more, than sport. It’s like seeing the Creator open his eyes and smiling upon his great creation.

Experiences such as listening and watching as the peepers and whippoorwills make their last calls of the night just prior to the still-roosted tom turkeys thundering their first early-morning gobbles into the dim crimson sky is more than sport. It’s like watching a baby slowly slip into a warm, peaceful sleep and watching a young child bursting awake on Christmas morning all in the same moment.


Experiences such as anxiously anticipating the first strike as you cast into the hazy, early morning steam cloud hanging over a remote river while hearing only the surging water running over the gravel bar on which you are standing, is again, much more than sport. It’s like waiting to hear your name called while listening to ancient voices echoing down the bluff-lined river valley, forever whispering the names of all those souls who have trod there through the ages.


Finally, similar to most sports, the finished recipe for the complete outdoorsman experience would be lacking without true physical expenditure. The further from the house, camp, road, truck, horse or ATV, the richer the overall experience. Exhausted and still working many miles from the nearest portage you feel the burn in your back and leg muscles as you pull your line after the season’s last bountiful trapping run. The combination of ache, pain, sweat, cold, and wet can seem very close to agony. As you watch the snow softly fall onto the riverbank, your face, ears, and fingers freeze from exposure to the wind and water. Yet, in the solitude you would choose to be nowhere else, for where else can you experience the deep primeval connection with Nature as an integral part of the whole. You stand in awe at the Creator’s design realizing you are just a small piece in the circle of life. You remember the old proverb, ‘success generally finds only those working too hard to realize they’ve found it,’ and at that moment you have an epiphany about life itself. At that moment of epiphany, that singularity in the natural living experience, the only way it could ever be more rewarding is if you were sharing it with a child or neophyte, for that would be to gain favor with the Creator, as you are sharing His great creation. These are soul moving experiences that can approach religious experience.

Thoreau summarized it best when he wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." While seemingly hardcore and raw, alienation of the casual enthusiast is not the intention. The intention is, however, calling attention to all who hold our way of life as something more than a playtime definition. There are those of us who are far enough back in the hills, up in the mountains, out in the swamps and out on the prairies to think we are beyond the grasp and influence of our detractors. We are not. Ironically, our way of life, which is the foundation of our world society, needs and invites all walks in order to survive the onslaught of anti-trapping, hunting, and fishing ideologues who haven’t a clue of the cycle of life and the reality of life and death, which is exactly what Thoreau was trying to convey.

Our aforementioned forefathers: the mountain men trappers, the explorers, and the hunters who first settled this country, did a masterful job laying the foundation that enabled the greatest society in history to grow and prosper. They left us with wonderful tales of adventure that have inspired many, the wanderlust spirit in adventuresome children and adults alike. However, one respect in which they and all the rest of us since have seemingly fallen short is the instilling into our social consciousness of the individual’s responsibility of conservative consumption of our renewable wildlife natural resource. Much like affluent parents who unintentionally spoil their children, our society has bestowed more resources and fewer responsibilities on the younger generations for want of a better future for them. As a result, however, we have allowed the progeny to marginalize us, swinging the pendulum of trapping, hunting and fishing from individual personal responsibility to sport. Human beings, although residing at the top of the food chain, seem to have become completely oblivious of the fact that we are still today, and always will be, completely encompassed by Nature. No matter where you live, your occupation, your wealth, or your governmental protections, Nature, proves time, and time again, that it is still at the helm. It seems the idea of personal self responsibility and the importance of comprehending and maintaining a balance in Nature through conservative consumption, is lost on those who have become too comfortable and have chosen not to actively participate.

The time has come to begin reclaiming those who have become lost to their comforts. Independent-minded and self-reliant outdoor citizens need to stand up and proudly remind all of what our forefathers set in motion. We must reeducate those who have fallen victim to the abundance our societal foundation has provided. Don’t just participate but proudly proclaim and teach to society what we do is more than sport. Rather, it is an essential societal building block that is a substantial contributing factor for successful human society. Without doubt, the outdoor pursuits of trapping, hunting, and fishing have proven to be a major building block upon which the foundation of all mankind’s prosperous life and society is built.

No, the outdoor pursuits of trapping, hunting, and fishing are NOT merely sport. The experience is somehow diminished if ‘play’ or ‘competition’ clouds the mind. Anyone who insists on seeing it only in that light simply chooses not to fully embrace the levity of the undertaking. Therefore, when reflecting on our sport, only cautiously acknowledge the label. At best, it is dangerously allowing for the slippery slope of future marginalization and, at worst, it is sacrilegiously desecrating the greatest gift ever presented to the human race.