Balancing Hunting and Family
Hunting has been one of the greatest passions of my life. At age 4, I distinctly remember being so excited when my dad took his bow out to shoot. That meant it was getting closer to my favorite time of year. The time of year I got to see my uncles more often, went camping, and, more importantly, got to hang out with my dad at the campsite for a few nights a week and talk about anything and everything around the campfire. It was more exciting for me because I was with my favorite man in the world doing something he genuinely enjoyed. Fortunately for him, he had an understanding wife who saw the passion in his eyes and the joy it brought when he got his son involved.
Now that I have two young sons and a daughter, I understand how my dad felt. I’m so excited to take them camping and hunting with me. My wife and kids are quite literally my entire world but I still need to scratch my hunting itch. Before my wife and kids, I had never considered how you balance hunting and family. Between scouting, practice shooting, and ultimately hunting, fitting it all into an ever-increasing busy schedule is tough. One of the only ways to accomplish this when you have family responsibilities is to have a good support system. For me, I got lucky. I got my wife into hunting when we first started dating. I suppose she liked me enough that she wanted to try things that I loved. The great thing was that she fell for the sport of hunting as well. We got her set up with a compound bow and she shot her first deer in her very first season with it. I’m not trying to brag, but my wife is pretty awesome.
It's wonderful that my wife supports the hunt, the early season work, and the scouting. What if your spouse doesn’t love or understand that those things take time? One of the things we have learned, as my wife has been pregnant or raising young children for the last few seasons, is that we need to plan things out in more detail and communicate better. We want to be as detail-oriented as possible, so there are no surprise trips to buy and lay corn, which takes more time than I’d like to admit. What can I say? I'm social! We have a set day during the week to work on my hunting “to-do” list - typically on Sundays. I get up earlier than I’d like, get corn since it is legal to bait here in MD, head to my spots, check my non-cellular cameras and then, finally, shoot my bow for about an hour. Currently, every Saturday is spent working on a project around the house or an event for work. Once the season is here, my one guaranteed hunting day a week will be Saturdays since there’s only a few days you can hunt Sundays here in MD. Because we like to block out a schedule and keep up with events that are coming up, this allows me to easily slide a day or two of hunting time in without it ever feeling like I am leaving her stranded with three youngins’. Plus, she wants to get back out there pretty soon herself so, we are prepared to make that time for her as well.
Because I have a spouse that likes to hunt, that circles us back around to having a strong support system. We have a great family willing to hang out with our kiddos for a day if we both want to be out in the woods at the same time. There are days that we don’t get that lucky but, we are both willing to sacrifice for one another that we never feel as though we are missing out.
My wife and family have always understood that, and just like my father, hunting is part of who I am and what I want to expose our kids to. I’m not going to be able to get away every weekend like I did when I was younger and that’s the balancing act that naturally occurs when you decide to have a family of your own. I have to do what makes sense at the time. It’s a little give and take, small compromises here and there. Ultimately, both you and your family need to communicate and as long as you’re bringing venison bologna back home to the wife, it’ll all be worth it.
