Hunter Ascetics

What we carry, and leave, in the wild

There are few things other than a successful hunt that hunters love more than their gear. I don’t mean to say we love it more than family or friends or any other value most of the community puts first in their life, but rather, in the hunting world, it is easy to see how much money, time and effort we put toward trying, adjusting, testing, buying, and fixing our gear. There is, ironically, one thing we do love more than our gear; leaving it behind. This is especially true of the backpack hunter, the one who walks far enough into the wilderness that they have to rely on only the things they carry on their back. This effort to leave the most behind, to minimize pack weight, is often referred to as ultralight.

There are other forms of ultralight travel, primarily those thru-hikers who have mastered the various trail systems the world over. There is inspiration to be found there, and gear, but hunters face a different task. For one, hunters hope to come out heavy with the meat and even the skull or cape of an animal. For another, hunters don’t often use trails, in fact, they usually try to get as far away from them as possible. For this reason, the stakes are a bit higher, the risk more palpable, the gear more essential.

Or is it?

Ultralight often coincides with gear being ultraweak. I can attest to this. While counting ounces for a photography coastal mountain goat hunt in British Columbia, I took a pair of lightweight rain pants that ripped after the second day of bush bashing. Good thing for Leukotape. I will spare the brand name because I was most certainly using them for a task for which they were not designed, and suffice it to say I did not request a repair as I might do in a different situation. Lesson learned; don’t cut corners on rain gear when the whole world is wet and the humidity is at 100%. This constant appraisal of what gear is best in what situation, and weighing, literally and figuratively, what should be taken, speaks to a certain type of hunting, a certain type of hunter. I call them, us, hunter ascetics.

There is an underlying question of the hunter ascetic, which is something like, how little can I carry to go as far as I need to? There are two phrases that drive this race for less. The first is more technical, more immediate: ounces make pounds, pounds make pain. It might seem like no big deal to have a tent that weighs one pound more, but after the thousands of steps, altitude gain, and additional seventy-five pounds of meat in the bag on a pack out, every less bit of weight offers some relief, offers a trade off to go further, faster. This first phrase is easy to understand. All things being equal, take the lighter piece of gear. The second phrase, the one we say less, hits a little different: we pack our fears.

When I analyze my pack based not on weight, but by fear, my kit starts to make more sense. I have this idea that I ought to be ready for any scenario. Water bottle? Got it. Second water bladder in case first water bottle breaks? Got it. Plastic bag with Aquamira tabs in my bino harness in case I am caught out without either of my two water bottles? Got it. Don’t forget the water filter and the two-level bottle cap that keeps dirty water away from the clean water. At last… I can now venture into the mountains completely safe. This plan seems well thought out, and advised by all the survival experts, but is it realistic? Do I really want total safety? Am I really going to be in a place with no water? Maybe; I’ve hunted drainages where there is no water, when it was very hot, and dehydration was a real threat. So, maybe water isn’t something to play with.

But what about food? I’ve seen a hunter take a full bagel sandwich, for each day on a mountain hunt. I wasn’t even mad at him, I was impressed. I suppose I have my own vices. Take my instant meals, take my trail mix, but for the love of the hunt, do not touch my Honey Stingers!

This minimal approach is applied to packs and clothing, too. Often, hunters only take one set of base layers, yes, that means one pair of briefs, for an entire week. We carry down instead of the more versatile synthetic insulation to cut weight and have even been known to cut off half of a toothbrush handle to save a few ounces. There is even a well known backpack hunter who does not take a stove into the wilderness and instead fills his meals with water in the morning and waits for them to hydrate at night. I could make that meal strategy work, but I still need my morning coffee and afternoon tea.

There are times to go lighter in the mountains and there are times to pack more food and heavier gear. It depends on the weather, the terrain, the duration, and just how far away from civilization the hunt will go. There is another aspect to the hunter ascetic, something we don’t always realize. In some ways not relating to red meat, an annual wilderness hunt is a bit like Great Lent.

Lent is a 40-day period in the Orthodox Church that spiritually prepares us for Easter, or what the Eastern Church calls Pascha (Greek, for Passover). It is a call for renewed focus on God through ascetic practices like prayer, fasting, and additional services that lead up to the greatest feast in the Church cycle. Lent is like going on a wilderness hunt, although instead of going in light and coming out heavy, we go in heavy and come out light. That is, if we do it right.

As hunters, our outings force us to take stock of what we carry, of the things we want to bring and the things we want to leave behind. As Christians, Lent asks similar questions of us, but instead of gear and the hunt, it asks about our passions and our heart. There are places where the overlap is hard to miss. Even absent any Christian faith, I don’t know of a wilderness hunter who hasn’t had to confront their own thoughts out in the wild. When there are no distractions, no phones and friends and media and books and music; questions arise that would normally stay buried deep in our packs. It is good practice for the hunter to leave the things that weigh nothing out on the mountain. It is good practice for the Christian to leave the things that weigh the most at confession.

We pack our fears, yes, but we also carry with us those things in life we ought to leave behind. Fear, for one, is not a Christian value. I know that my fears over cold weather, lack of water, or the ability to start a fire all come back to my fear of death. I also carry a misplaced pride that somehow the animal I kill is something I’ve done, something for which I ought to receive acclaim, when in fact it is the animal that gives itself to me. I suspect there is a tendril of covetousness that leads me to buy the latest and greatest hunting accoutrements. To spare you a personal unnecessary oversharing confession, I will stop there, but I suspect many of us could write a similar passage.

What I like about backpack hunting, what I like about the wilderness, is that like Lent, it forces us to leave things behind, it makes us ask questions of everything in our pack, everything in our heart. Only when we learn the ways to find water and build fire on our own, to seek only spiritual acclaim, will our packs and hearts be lighter. Hunters often admire those people who do difficult things either through more simple methods of take, further wilderness forays, or taking an animal of a rare size. There are earthly benefits to this, but they come because of the ascetic aspect of a challenging hunt, they come because of the implied suffering it might take to achieve success. There are no awards for hunting suburban squirrels.

When hunting goes wrong it is when we value only the outcome, the earthly representation of a successful hunt. When hunting is at its best, we value a tradition, we value the relationship between the hunter and the wild. In the Christian view, we can use hunting to value Creation, and acknowledge our role in its corruption. We can even use hunting to practice a form of asceticism that reminds us to learn more, to carry less. There are saints who first found God through the antlers of a stag, meat is a welcome food during feasts, and a good translation for sin is missing the mark. Missing the target? Missing the shot? Our accuracy in the field is a fine representation of our spiritually journey. It’s ok to miss, but keep shooting. Maybe we are more accurate when our heavy packs are on the ground.

As I look at my hunting gear list during Lent I am reminded of Christ’s interaction with Photini, the Samaratin Woman at the Well, in John 4:13, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

This Lent, I hope to leave some things behind and draw from Christ’s well. Maybe on the next hunt, I can take one less water filter. It might get me one more step up the mountain.