Fresh Coffee and Humble Pie

But increasingly, there is a demand to get more specific. We’ve made an effort to produce more “how-to” content, to modernize our sources of information (e.g. Where to Fish) and to share stories that encourage folks to get outdoors and try something new.

Even so, there still seems to be a trend within the R3 community and from our customers to make it even easier – to tell people exactly how, what, where and when in order to quickly experience success afield or afloat.

And admittedly, I sometimes struggle with that. It’s not that I don’t want others to be successful. It’s that in a society used to instant gratification; social media likes, food deliveries and Amazon Prime, the joy gained from outdoor pursuits is heavily founded in the contrast of all that. What’s lost is embracing the slowed pace of sometimes forced patience, the tranquility of having time to soak in our surroundings, the challenge of there not always being a consistent recipe for success, and every now and then, the unadulterated pride felt when the pieces do come together.

And I can’t help but feel like, if we remove failure from the journey all together, we wouldn’t be gifting people the full experience and we may not even retain someone if victory becomes too easy and too often.

Whether we fib about it in hallways and at dinner tables or not, failure is an inherent part of the process, and the eventual satisfaction that has hooked many of us on this lifestyle. So perhaps maybe rather than trying to make hunting and fishing easier, we could simply do better to celebrate the not so impressive moments.

Oct. 4

I took the day off work in pursuit of my tribal pronghorn tag. I brewed coffee, toasted a bagel and was on the road by 4:30 a.m. I drove down the two-track and made sure to park past the gate before slipping on orange and making my way across the harvested alfalfa field in the dark to sit by a bale.

I watched the sun come up, I watched a whitetail doe and fawn feed, heard turkeys come down from their roost and eventually spotted another hunter of some sort appear in the corner of the field glassing the draw beyond with seemingly no recognition or care that I was there hunting pronghorn.

By a little after 9 a.m., I elected to leave and try somewhere else. I walked the section line past the gate to check out another piece. While the peak fall colors did not disappoint, the section had been heavily grazed and was still full of cattle, so I walked back to my car as a pickup and trailer pulled up to the gate.

We exchanged greetings, he was checking on his cattle and said he had just bumped a pronghorn doe on the way in but otherwise hadn’t seen many around since late summer. We jointly admired the beautiful day and views before wishing each other well and going our separate ways.

I devoured some snacks in my car and drove to check a few other spots that had previously harbored pronghorn during scouting, but to no avail. My final stop of the day before returning to Finley and an inbox of emails was a parcel a friend had spotted a buck on right at dusk the Saturday prior. I hiked to the almost-glowing, rust hillside of little bluestem; this was a fine piece of remnant prairie. I sat down and pulled up my binoculars and instantly spotted a group of white butts.

My afternoon got longer.

I quickly formulated a plan and started walking. My breath was heavy as I crested the ridge I assumed to be beyond the group and slowly made my way in their direction, stopping often to look both ways, and creeped over ledges that had not been apparent from my bluestem hillside.

Funny how the prairie is so deceivingly “flat.”

Almost 30 minutes passed, and I had crept over just about every mound and hill, made a big circle and was definitely far too close to where I had originally glassed them to be anywhere near on track. I looked back in that direction and saw nothing. I must have misjudged a ridge, unknowingly spooked them long ago, or they simply quickly moved on.

Almost two hours since I originally pulled in there “just to check,” I sat on the warm grass, chugged water and laughed at myself. That was not the first time the rolling hills and their wise inhabitants have fooled me.