By Breanne Thiel, Faces of Hunters blogger.
Growing up, we rarely think about the fact that as we are getting older, so are our parents. We can’t wait until we are old enough to drive a car, or old enough to move out of the house. As kids, we measure our lives based on what we can do at a certain age. Rarely do we stop to take the time to realize that while our lives are getting more exciting because of our age, our parents lives may be getting more restricted because of theirs. I was one of those kids who constantly set milestones for myself with each passing year.
When I was in high school, I remember setting a goal for myself to out-hike my dad. This may seem like a weird goal, but my dad is my hunting partner. We have spent a lot of time together in the field, and he always out-hiked me.
Ten years later, my dad is still out-hiking me, but not by as much as he used to. I first noticed this change during the fall of 2013 when I had drawn a bighorn sheep tag in Wyoming. We spent a total of 20 days in the field. Even though he beat me to the tops of the mountains every day, I noticed that he was getting slower and taking more breaks than usual. I never really put much thought into what this could mean until this last fall when my father went on his dream hunt -mountain goat hunting in Wyoming.
On past hunts, either we both had a tag or I had a tag myself. This was the first time that we were pursuing an animal only for him. While we were in the field, I was just as, if not a little more excited, nervous, and anxious as I had been when I had been the one with the tag. Being there alongside my father, pursuing an animal that for the last 33 years he has been applying for, changed my feelings about hunting with my father.
I remember him telling a friend once that you never truly understand the meaning of hunting until you have taken one of your kids. He had said, “There’s just something about going hunting with your kid, I can’t describe it but it changes you”. I never really understood what he meant until I accompanied him on his mountain goat hunt.
This last year was one of my most memorable hunting seasons and I never even fired my rifle. Being alongside my dad, while he was still young and in good enough shape to pursue an animal that lives in some of the roughest country in Wyoming, made me realize that I need to take advantage of hunting with my father every chance I get. I am no longer looking forward to the day that I can out-hike my dad, because when that day comes, it will mean that we will no longer be able to pursue animals in the backcountry of Wyoming together.
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