Long Range Plans

My hands smell like gun oil. This is the first day since last spring that they've exuded that lighter-fluid-spiked-with-detergent aroma peculiar to Hoppe's No. 9, though you might have caught a whiff of it on them on many afternoons last winter.


This is notable mainly because anytime during the twenty or twenty-one years prior to last January, my hands had been free of that smell entirely. Too long a time, for both practical and spiritual reasons. The last time I fired my shotgun, back when I was in high school, I didn't clean it afterward. During all the years since, I almost dreaded opening it up, fearing a horror of corrosion building inside. Still, I thought I would, one of these days. In fall, the sight of a newly leafless aspen copse or a wetland bordering some woodlands would fill me with a wordless, tremulous compulsion to walk into those places with my gun, seeking partridge or woodcock. Usually the feeling would quickly pass, but I would continue thinking, one of these days…

Last winter, even though most hunting seasons had already closed, I decided the time had come to follow through. One evening, with a box of cotton patches and a fresh bottle of Hoppe's from Cabela's , I dislodged my gun from the mound of dust and spiderwebs where it sat beneath the bed and cleaned it--apparently sitting dirty all those years had done no lasting damage. Never having been taught to shoot properly and never having brought much game to the ground when I did hunt, I began going to the shotgun range at Island Lake State Park a couple of days a week and shooting skeet or trap. My scores were pretty miserable, but with practice, and some off-the-cuff coaching from other guys there, I started reliably hitting 17-20 out of 25 targets each round. Not great, but not embarrassing. The more clay birds I shot, the more my head filled with visions of hunting trips I would take this fall, to local public lands like Waterloo, or possibly up north on a weekend or two. It felt as if I was about to recover the use of some long-crippled appendage; not adding something to my life so much as regaining an older fullness.

At least until about April. I think I went shooting once after my first steelhead trip last spring, but not again until today. Once fishing season kicked off, I hardly thought about shooting at all. By August, I wasn't even sure if I would start hunting again. The activity had come to seem remote, alien, too much trouble to concern myself with. And wouldn't efforts to advance the academic career be a wiser use of my time this fall?

The objective answer to that question is "yes," though this is a case where the most objective response isn't necessarily the truest one. With cool nights, turning leaves, and a whiff of woodsmoke from the distance the other evening, I've started to think about hunting again. Just in time, too, since small game season starts a week from today. I didn't have to go to campus today, so this morning I went up to Island Lake and shot a couple rounds of trap--17 & 19 out of 25. Apparently I haven't lost the touch entirely. There are other things I can and possibly ought to do. But none of them prompt me with anything resembling a pang.

I may not hunt the opener next week, but I will at some point this fall. My gun is once again clean and fragrant--it's possibly more ready to go than I am. I'm still not sure if I want to plunge into hunting too deeply (there are some pangs better left ignored), but I can't make an informed decision about it unless I actually go, can I?