{"id":6898,"date":"2014-11-30T22:07:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T03:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/?p=6898"},"modified":"2014-12-03T00:38:58","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T05:38:58","slug":"hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/?p=6898","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got colder and colder as the sun peeked over the treetops on the edge of the fire lane. It took my father and grandfather two days to find that pristine spot. It was an absolutely perfect morning until my scope started to fog up. For the next hour I busied myself swirling my jacket on the lens to try to get it clear. I looked through the scope to see if it was clear. And there, 150 yards away, I saw the doe.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t even anticipated seeing a deer that day. I\u2019ve always been a crappy hunter, and I didn\u2019t have the luxury of nice private land. I was out in the middle of nowhere and I had no\u00a0idea if anything even lived where I was hunting.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Jenson Chier\u00a0prepares for a long wait in the deer stand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But I did see a deer. And in the next moment, it was gone. It took me several minutes to realize my gun had fired. With my heart beating out of my chest, I ran down to the spot where I saw the deer. No blood. No deer.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t mad. Most guys my age would be though. Junior Drake Enderlin is one of those people. He said, \u201cI get one pretty much every weekend. I\u2019m lucky because I have my own land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enderlin said, \u201cI’ve passed up deer most people wouldn\u2019t ever pass up. Seven points, eight points. To me, it\u2019s not just about getting the deer. It\u2019s about getting THE deer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enderlin doesn’t flinch in the face of a dead deer. Neither does Junior Jeremy Baste. Baste said, \u201cWhen I kill a deer, I just tell myself, \u2018My family\u2019s got to eat.\u2019\u201d Baste\u2019s family cleans, stores, and eats everything they harvest on their own land.<\/p>\n

Junior Josh Pinter isn’t nearly the hunter Baste and Enderlin are. He said, \u201cI just like going out there. I’ve killed a few, but I can\u2019t say I really enjoyed getting the deer. It was more about just being there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even Pinter has had more success than I have. I still have never killed a deer. But I can\u2019t say it upsets me. To me, a successful hunt is being out in the woods, with the sun peeking over the treetops.<\/p>\n

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I got colder and colder as the sun peeked over the treetops on the edge of the fire lane. It took my father and grandfather two days to find that pristine spot. It was an absolutely perfect morning until my scope started to fog up. For the next hour I busied myself swirling my jacket…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[97,196],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/liftoffnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/photo-2-1-e1416973552904.jpg?fit=2448%2C2448&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3xfZw-hunting","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}