I think I'm starting to understand...

Living in the land of "all deer, all the time," I've learned to tune out most of what Bill has been talking about for the past month or so. But this morning, I had a REVELATION.

It's all about being male. Deer hunting has all the essential boy elements: Sex, Competition, Toys, and Bragging Rights. The goal--shooting a deer--is secondary to the process. If I had the task of filling the freezer with venison, I would treat it as another chore to tackle and complete. I would choose the most efficient method of completing the task. I'd put a pile of corn in the backyard, a gun by the door, and while I was vacuuming or cooking dinner or folding laundry, I'd check out the window, and blast the darn thing when it showed up to feed.

Bill says this is NOT the way to hunt deer. Yesterday, he explained the foreign concept of "fair chase," meaning, you must figure out where the deer are going to be, track them, look for signs that the males are in the rut and looking for mates (that's the sex part), buy all sorts of stuff (guns, stands, clothing, doe urine, no-scent shampoo and soap, etc.) to stalk stealthily, get up in the dark and sit in the woods for hours on end, come home to the little woman cooking breakfast, spend the rest of the day sleeping, and then go out again before sunset to do it all again. It's a game.

Why this game is interesting is beyond me. Here I thought the object was to bag a deer and move on to the next thing. Apparently, drawing out the process, obsessing about it, worrying about where they are, talking about it (before, during and after), is what it's all about. The journey, not the destination. I would find this highly frustrating.

No wonder we women go to the store and buy meat in packages. The hunt is just too time consuming for goal-oriented multi-taskers.