In Alaska on the the Golsovia River a little NE of St.Michaels,watching Grizzly bears feeding on blueberries across a seemingly endless tundra,,,insignificant indeed.

Good thoughts DEP. We all need to experience this from time to time to keep our persective. And I am sure if Mila Kunis could read she would agree.

SD Whitetail Hntr,what part of South Dakota?I've a fair amount of history out there.

i had that moment, when i was about 20. i was lost in a huge swamp, getting more lost by the hour. it was my first time out hunting on my own. no one went with me. i was 20, i was invincible, right? in my youthful ignorance, i had total faith in my compass. after all, a compass can never read wrong. well, as i learned after about 3 hours of tromping deeper and deeper into the swamp, they can. IF you read it with your gun barrel to close to it. it was not until i had to sit and rest, that i discovered my mistake. sitting there, alone, with no person or even animal in sight, i realized, that it was just me. no one to come looking, no one even knew where i was. i told my father that i was going to hunt in West Branch, not the swamps around Houghton Lake. some 35 miles apart. when you are completely alone, you really are insignificant. at 20, i had nothing to really say i was on this earth, except my parents, and a piece of paper saying i was born. i had done nothing memorable, did not have a girl friend of any significance, no real accomplishments other than graduating high school. it took me another 5 hours to get out of that swamp. but i came out within a mile of my car. with some very valuable knowledge under my belt. first, i REALLY was a nobody. just another young punk kid, whom if never returned, only a few would even notice. the rest of the world would have no knowledge, or care that i was gone. really, the vast majority of us live our entire life that way. sometimes, that is a good thing. i would rather live my entire life as a nobody, than to be remembered as a tyrant, or other miserable human being that inflicted pain and horrors onto others.

I get the same sense of "insignificance" fishing a certain stretch of the Madison, she just keeps on rolling on.

This is one of the reasons that i enjoy hunting alone, working my way deep into the woods far removed from any extraneous noise or bothersome people, I can hunt, I can shoot or just simply stretch out under a big old oak and take a nap.

I live in Atlanta, and when I go out to Montana, Idaho, Wyoming or South Dakota, I always spend a few hours away from the campfire just to stare up at the clear night sky...not another feeling like it.

The rocky Mountains Look down from the high peaks and you can see forever. Then you will know your rightful place in this vast and magnificent universe. John Denver said it best in his song "Rocky Mountain High"

Ripper, and I thought I was the only guy in the world who hunts alone. Been doing it for forty years and sometimes for weeks at a time.

When riding out alone for twenty miles on a mountain trail with snowflakes falling as big as saucers in the night(of course, it never gets totally dark if there's snow on the ground) one has lots of time to reflect. Swaying back and forth in the saddle barely awake and sometimes barely asleep with only the sound of the horses to break the total quiet ... for hours. I did it many times. And I'll do it again. At least one more time. I'm sure that's what it'll be like riding to heaven at the end of my last hunt. Hopefully the same for the rest of you too. No one should exist without the benefit of that experience at least once. Pray for it boys!

All you have to do is sit in the woods from sunup until sundown to realize how insignificant your life is in the great scheme of things. The animals are still out there doing what they have been doing forever. We have just built little boxes to hide in so we are no longer included in their daily rituals.

I think to be satisfactorily insignificant, you must be alone. Have two solo back country trips planned this fall. Once I the mule train rides off, I'm alone until they come back. Can't wait.

I would have to say climbing Mount Greylock Mass. with my father as a child. It was the highest point in the north east and the muse for Herman Melville's Moby D*ick. You where literally in the clouds. I could make it rain by waving my hand. When the clouds blew off you could see the Green Mountains in 5 states. My father remarked that if you can't see Gods hand here you'll never find it in a building. The summer of that year we where in Montauk point. Frank Mundus had harpooned a record Great White Shark. Laying on the dock I noticed he was as big around as a nearby VW bug. I felt very small that year!! Not to denigrate Miss Kunis it did take the fall of the USSR to bring that smokey eyed beauty to America.

For extra credit can anyone tell me why I had to use an Asterisk in the above post!

I' tell ya another moment of insignificance I experienced...
A few years back I went to visit a girlfriend who lived out of state, I arrived at her house a few minutes before she did, headed upstairs to stow my gear and noticed what appeared to be a personal service device plugged into the wall, Black & Decker no less...I was relieved to discover on closer examination that it was an electric screwdriver...

Dave you have very good taste in young ladies . I have never out of place in the woods , I feel at home there . Have never been any place that many of you have hunted nor have I wanted to . Mostly hunted alone when younger now with my sons and with Gods blessing my grandchildren when they get a little older .Hunting is a way of getting back to a life that we dearly need and to many have forgotten . I feel sorry for them . Many more days in the woods small or big for all of you , may you find what you are look for .

Petzal,

I too prefer Brunettes over Blondes

I think Charles Lindbergh said it best - "In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia."

“The purpose of hunting isn’t to kill some stupid animal. It’s to give yourself a chance to stand alone in the wilderness and realize how insignificant you are.”

I'm gonna have to commit that to memory.

It makes me pause and feel sorry for all those poor, sad souls who hide in big cities, far from nature, so they can imagine themselves bigger than they really are.

I was standing, looking at the vastness, while visiting "Billy the kids'" grave, looking at the sky, and I felt so alone and insignificant.
Mother nature is such a woderful thing and Im afraid we've pissed her off.

Fishing out of Neah Bay or La Push, WA out on the open Pacific sout hof Cape Flattery, even on a nice day, you might not see another boat for hours. You get to feeling mighty snall, especially if you are by yourself.

It might not be the end of the Earth, but you can see it from there!

I had that moment again last year. I had finally returned to Alaska having retired from active duty and too many combat sorties in Iraq and Afghanistan. I finally got away to do some moose hunting in September.
After a few hours of glassing and calling in the perfect, 50F weather under clear skies with autumn raging all around me, I lay there in the sunshine contemplating it all. Looking up to the Heavens I noticed up high, very high probably 5000 ft above me were gigantic flocks of waterfowl, heading south so high I could not hear them in the deafening silence of the tundra.
I had to wonder how many thousands of years they had done that and how many thousands more they would.
If I had all the ammo I could carry, and a gun to reach them with a barrel that wouldn't melt down, I couldn't have made the slightest dent in their population, their numbers were so vast. Knowing that in 20 or 30 or 40 years they would still be there and I would not. That's insignificance!

The Big Bonus:
It has been my observation that folks who go out with such an attitude always score much higher success than those whose goal is to "upgrade my mountain caribou listing", or some other such menial pursuit!
Best wishes to all.

"As much as I love to hunt, I realize that hunting is but one piece of the puzzle when looking at the Big Picture of Life. Through hunting, I have a front row seat on nature, and it speaks forth much truth about life and death. My first hand observations of nature reinforce my belief in a higher power, which I believe to be the living God of Christianity. I believe in Creation and enjoy my interactions with our amazing earth while pursuing wild game."

"Big Picture thinking gives me perspective and I realize that the creator of life communicates to us through his hadiwork of nature, through His loving spirit and through His word; the Bible. Our time on earth is limited and can be measured like a single drop of water on a mighty ocean.God tells us in His book about life beyond earth and how we can acquire it."

From the chapter "The Big Picture," TROPHY WHITE TALES.

"Insignificance" is probably fair, but I think why certain people love to hunt -- at least in my case -- is the simplicity of the experience. It's experiencing nature and your surroundings at a very basic level that's so appealing, particularly when workdays are filled with stresses that in reality are quite insignificant.

I have experienced this at least twice. Once while in a small plane about 25 years ago...the pilot let me sit in the co-pilot seat; we were flying in the clouds for quite a while...and final broke threw them and all around us was an ocean of white clouds...I felt like I was with the angels, my heart was beating I looked over at he pilot and could tell he was as moved as I even though he probably experienced that quite a bit.
The other time was when I was stuck on the side of a mountain in South America, all alone in a thunderstorm at least 12 hours by car from anyone that I knew...boy did I feel insignificant!

I'm not a religious man but I always feel when I'm outdoors hunting or camping that I'm in the best, grandest church there ever was.

Yeah. Every once in awhile I begin to feel mankind is omnipotent and there is no God. Then I screw up out doors. The first time I thought I would lose a few fingers to the cold I became a better man if not better sportsman.
I do agree that I would rather say I read the great philosophers than to say I am reading them. Sorta like freezing those fingers again.

What a bizarre post. It starts with a picture of Mila Kunis and then it goes into the philosophical analysis of why we hunt?? I say to hell with all this creationist and philosophical jibberish! I will guarantee any of you dudes that you would feel VERY significant if Mila let you romance her. You would think you owned the world, let alone think you are all alone in the Pacific. LOL

Nice topic Dave, ps-Nicer Pic!

Alaskan exile, I too did that. Back in the 80's with a friend I caught a bush plane across the Tanana River and packed into the Wood river wilderness area South of Fairbanks (we were stationed at Ft. Wainwright). to hunt caribou. All day long for 3 days huge flocks of sandhill cranes passed over heading South. We saw hundreds of caribou and a record class bull moose. Shot 2 caribou bulls and packed them out to a small airstrip. Man that was the most fun I can ever remember. Had to let the moose walk as there was no way to get the meat out and wanton waste is a major crime in AK. I can still hear those cranes. There are some photos of that hunt in my files if you punch my username.

Great quote. I love to get out and just see all different types of nature. In the last two years I've gotten to see everything from the bayous of Louisiana, to the mountains of Arizona, the forests of Virginia, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and the deserts of Afghanistan. It's all beautiful and sure does make you realize how insignificant you are compared to it all.