Measure of a Hunter
Norman Strung did not grow up in a hunting family, but when he graduated from high school in New York in 1959, he headed to college in Montana and never really came back. He made a name for himself as a writer and was eventually invited to become a contributing editor at Field & Stream in the early 1980s. Once on staff, he amazed his colleagues with an intimidating show of complete professionalism. He could write on nearly any subject, producing full-length features (in those days often more than 2,000 words) as well as short back-of-the-book how-to fillers with amazing ease. He had a deft touch embossed by personal experience—to complete one article he hoisted himself into a tree to watch a feeding rainbow in a pool.  He was destined for greatness, but was cut down in 1991 by cancer just before his 50th birthday.

“Measure of a Hunter,” which ran in January 1985, touches on a subject close to his heart: it’s not about numbers, but rather the quality of the experience. It’s a lesson worth repeating and passing on to the next generation. – S.W.

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We mature as hunters as we mature as human beings, and the process is no less complex than the journey that leads us from childhood to adulthood. I can still recall my first year with a gun. I was fourteen then, with a 16-gauge bolt-action shotgun and an unbridled blood lust. Throughout that fall, I would venture from the family’s summer home every Saturday and Sunday at dawn, and walk the woods all day long, a boy possessed.

My intent was to bag limits of grouse, quail, pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, ducks, geese, and even crows and fox. This fantasy of mayhem was not blind of reason, however. I couldn’t articulate it then, but I equated being a hunter and sportsman with all the elusive qualities of manhood: courtliness, confidence, knowledge, and above all, freedom. It seemed obvious that the shortest, most direct route to that state of grace was to bring home limit after limit of game. After all, what better proof existed that one was a good and able hunter?

There is, fortunately, a law of inverse proportions at work in the woods when you are young, inexperienced, and bloodthirsty. Although I would have decimated Long Island’s game populations had I been given the opportunity, my aimless wanderings, flock shooting, and sky blasting resulted in a season’s bag of one rabbit and one quail. I came to the painful conclusion that I was not a very good hunter.

The next year proved better. I had begun to learn from experience where and when game was likely to be found. I discovered that the twilight hours of dawn and dusk might be good for trout fishing, but that quail generally stayed under cover until the sun burned off the frost and went back to their roosts around sundown. I noted that rabbits preferred clearing edges rather than deep woods, and that grouse tended to hole up where laurels grew. Occasionally, I shouldered my gun fast enough, and shot straight enough, to bag a few.

Sadly, I had no mentors during those green years. None of my family, nor friends of my family, hunted. But I did have a role model, a man of casual acquaintance who lived next door. He had a pair of sleek bird dogs kenneled behind his home. He carried a fine, engraved shotgun from his house to his car when he left on Saturday mornings. And soon after he returned, a brace of mallards or pheasants or two quail and a rabbit, were usually hanging below the eaves of his garage, catching the low, fall sunlight like a still life by the Old Masters.

One Friday in late November, it snowed heavily. Then the snow changed briefly to rain and it got bitterly cold. I went hunting the following day and surprised a small covey of quail in a flattened, white field, scratching through the crust for ragweed seeds.

I can still recall my elation at the stroke of good fortune. There was generally no place for the quail to hide, and the shooting was wide open. I took my first double ever from the covey rise, then hunted each single down until I reached my limit; that too, a first. In the afternoon, six quail turned slowly on the string that was secured under the eave of our garage.

I waited idly until my neighbor returned, and then pretended to fiddle with the quail and the string. I waved to him as he kenneled his dogs. He saw the birds and smiled, returning my wave. He stepped into our yard.

“Did pretty well today, son,” he said through pipe-clenching teeth.

“Sure did,” I replied, and recounted the circumstances of the hunt.

Like the ticking of a clock, each detail removed one weathered wrinkle around his eyes and mouth. When I was done, his smiling face had become as flat, featureless, and somber as the crusted snow. He tapped his pipe thoughtfully on the palm of his hand, gazed at the quail, and smiled a different smile.

“You’re young,” he began, “ and I was too, once. You got your birds, and you’re proud, and I don’t want to take that away from you. But someday, when you get a little older, you’ll come to find there’s a difference between killing and hunting. It’s a distinction that people who aren’t hunters seldom understand.”

I was devastated. A rite of passage that spanned two years and had at last been successfully run was disqualified in half a minute. If numbers were not the name of the game, by what yardstick was I to measure?