"Lonesome Charley" Reynolds. Son of a physician, Reynolds was such a loner that he ended up with a solitary name in an occupation that involved solitude, that of U.S. Army scout His days ended at Little Big Horn. Prior to being a scout, he'd occupied a variety of occupations, including that of buffalo hunter.
I've been a Wyoming hunter my entire life. And in the context of being a native Wyomingite, what that really means is I'm a subsistence hunter.
The Subsistence Hunter
Elk hunter in Wyoming, early 20th Century. In a lot of ways, for some, it hasn't changed much.
There's a lot more to that last sentence than immediately meets the eye as it implies an ethos and a very extensive one. It also implies one to almost anyone who can state the first sentence as well. Indeed, it tends to apply to people who grew up in what geographers would define as rural areas, but which those who have experienced it would define as natural areas.
Subsistence hunters hunt for food. But more than that, they believe, and believe strongly, that securing your own food in nature, the way that human beings have done since before humans had language and ever since. It expresses, at least to an extent, a longing for a more natural condition, and a questioning of the history that lead us away from agrarianism, with which it is closely linked.
As a child, I was first introduced to bird hunting.
My father hunted birds and the thing he hunted more than anything else was waterfowl. I started hunting birds at about age 5. We also hunted sage chickens during the short sage chicken season, and when Wyoming reopened a dove season, we hunted that as well. As a early teen we started hunting blue grouse when a friend of my father's, who loved eating blue grouse, started taking us. For my father, all of these game bird species had been ones he'd hunted when he was young and to the extent that some had dropped off that reflected the pressures of work.* Work disrupted his hunting of game birds that had to take him far afield, which did not mean that he wasn't outdoors generally on a weekly basis. He was also a dedicated and successful fisherman in a way that far surpasses my comparatively meager efforts. Indeed, I'm a fair weather spring and summer subsistence fisherman where as he fished far into the fall. He didn't ice fish, however, which I've taken up, with my daughter, a little.
Me and my father when I was a little kid. This is at the Dan Speas Fish Hatchery.
Shortly after I started hunting waterfowl, I started hunting rabbits too, and it was a byproduct of it at first. Rabbits are everywhere in Wyoming and if there were no ducks to hunt, where we hunted them, I sometimes hunted rabbits. When I was grade school, however, I had a couple of friends, one a native Wyomingite who was the child of native Wyomingites, and a native Utahan who was the child of native Uthans, whose primary hunting activities, as a kid, were focused on rabbits, so stand alone rabbit hunting came into the picture.
Native hunter with rabbit, 1890.
Big game hunting didn't come in until just about the time I was ready to leave grade school. My father had hunted deer and antelope when he was young, and at a time at which antelope populations had just recovered enough to allow for antelope hunting, but he had also quit doing that when I was born for the same reasons noted above. He took it back up when I was a little older. Some of my friend's fathers, however, were dedicated Wyoming subsistence big game hunters all along. As soon as we were old enough to big game hunt ourselves, which was an older age than Wyoming provides for now, we all became deer and antelope hunters. Some of my junior high friends were also elk hunters, something that some of my father's friends were as well, but which required a much more extensive time allowance for big game hunting than my father had. I didn't start hunting elk until I was in junior college, when I had a lot of time, and could drive.
By that time my mother had fallen extremely ill and my father and I were basically on our own, or more properly on our own with an invalid to care for. As hunters, our table was shiting over from heavily game to more and more exclusively game. When I left for university, I was on exclusively game. When I got back out, and my father passed away, that continued until I was married. All in all, I lived on game almost alone for a period of over a decade. As my father put in a huge garden, and I kept it up after he died until the first few years of our marriage, we were not only on a sustenance hunting diet, but a sustenance produce diet as well.
I'd still live that way, if I could.
Which I probably could, but my ranch raised wife insists on beef as well, so we pack a volunteer cow annually. We supplement that, however, with a lot of wild game. Having said that, the last couple of years, due to the percentage of licenses that go to out of state hunters, we've had bad luck in drawing big game licenses. But that's another story.
Springer
Pheasants are an Asian game bird, long hunted in China and Mongolia. China once had huge pheasant populations until Chairman Mao ordered them wiped out, because he was a Communist doofus.
The Springer/Bump Sullivan Wildlife Management Habitat Area is an area in Wyoming's farm belt owned and operated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. It's use and size, as related by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, are as follows:
Public Access Area Open: Foot and horse access open year-round
Exceptions: Closure is limited to vehicles only. Foot and horse access open year-round
Recreation Opportunities: Fishing, Hunting, Camping, Hiking, Wildlife Viewing
Amenities: Comfort Stations, Boat Ramp
Restrictions: Oct. 1 - Memorial Day Weekend
Additional Restrictions: ORV travel is not allowed
Total Acres: 3071.4
One of the hunting opportunities afford by Springer is pheasant hunting, and the WGFD raises the pheasants. I.e, its a wild bird farm run by the State. It isn't the only one. At least one more (and there's probably more than one more) is located near Glendo Wyoming.
I don't know how long Springer has been around. I really only became aware of it as an adult and only then when one of my uncles, who had hunted in his youth but not much as an adult, started to hunt there with his coworkers. When he first started to do that he lacked a shotgun, so he borrowed one from me for a couple of years until he bought his own.
I wasn't tempted to go to Springer at the time and it was for a long time thereafter that I wasn't. This was partially, indeed mostly, for a philosophical reason. Pheasants are a wild bird, but to my mind, pheasants raised on a bird farm aren't wild, so it didn't match with my ethos as described above.
Indeed, pheasants aren't native to Wyoming. . . or North America, at all. Not that this particularly bothered me. There are a lot of bird species that have been introduced into North America, although pheasants are the only game species I can think of offhand. At least one other game bird species, however, has been introduced into Wyoming, and that very successfully. Indeed, almost too successfully. That other species are turkeys, which are now everywhere, including all over town.
Introducing wild species into an area they are not native to is a dangerous thing to do and with at least mammals, I'm really opposed to it. Indeed a couple of domestic species that have been introduced into North America and then escaped to go feral have been real nuisances, those being feral (i.e., "wild") horses and feral cats. Chronic Wasting Disease, the disease related to scabies and mad cow disease that's been ravaging deer and elk populations in the West came out of Colorado game farms, something that shouldn't be legal. And feral pigs are wreaking havoc from Colorado on down.
But generally introduced game birds haven't been a problem and are even a benefit where they've been introduced, so I have not problem with them. Indeed, pheasants have been so successfully introduced in the Midwest that they're practically a native species now. And they do a lot of good, actually, in terms of pest eradication. More pheasants, fewer grasshoppers.
So that wasn't my problem. It was the farm aspect of it that was my problem.
Well, once I started practicing law I was introduced to a set of hunting practices that were more social in nature than the sort of hunting that I was used to. And right about the same time, or actually while still a law student, I was strongly introduced to big game trophy hunting.
I've never accommodated myself to trophy hunting, although I don't begrudge those who hunt for trophies as long as they eat the meat, which you are required to do by law, and which they generally all do. I do have a problem with managing big game horn populations for horns. I feel that they should be managed for populate, and generally in Wyoming, they are. I hear trophy hunters complain about that, but I"m sure not one of the ones complaining. I will complain on another thread about the number of licenses going to out of state hunters, but that's for some future thread.
I have accommodated myself, however, to the game bird farms.
Perhaps it just hypocritical, but I think it's okay largely for the same reason that I'm okay with stocking fish, something that I've been familiar with my whole life. Birds are frankly a lower form of animal, and while I'd rather catch wild fish (and usually do, as I fish in the mountains most often), I want fish in all the streams and rivers and that means stocking. Same with birds. That gets birds out there. Indeed, pheasants exist in a couple of places locally where I know that they were introduced eons ago, and they wouldn't be there otherwise. Down in the farm belt some of the pheasants make it out into the farms and take up life there, having been established in this fashion. Where we farm now there are pheasants that got there that way. And in much of the farm belt the fields would be devoid of a year around bird but for pheasants. Waterfowl would be present seasonally, but not all year long.
And game farm birds to serve to get hunters out into the field and introduce some to a more natural way of living than would otherwise be the case. With me, even in my now ever advancing years, I engage in even bird hunting in really rough terrain, part of the reason that I'm in good shape for my age. But I know that a lot of desk bound workers aren't going to hike a couple of miles into the hills just to have a chance at native birds, hunt miles while doing that, and hike miles back out. I'd do that every day if I could, but a lot of people can't. And they can't, because they physically can't. Stocked birds helps reverse that a bit.
And it helps keep wild grounds wild.
So, I've acclimated myself to it.
The Midwestern Gregarain
Construction workers drinking beer at the entrance of a bar, December 1940.
People who don't think various cultures are different even within the United States just haven't met very many people from elsewhere.
The West seems to favor people like me in a way. I.e, in a lot of settings it's pretty easy to be an introvert here.
Indian scout, Mexican Revolution, 1911.
Being an introvert isn't the same thing as being a misanthrope. It just is a different mental make up. As part of that makeup we find social settings, frankly, draining, except when they're people we're highly familiar with. Extraverts are just the opposite, and extreme extroverts highly different.
I think a lot of that is genetic. My father was certainly an introvert. But some of it may be learned or environmental as well. I grew up as an only child and when I was 13, my mother became extremely ill which left the family as basically me and my father, as previously noted here. In that setting, you learn to do things for yourself, entertain yourself and you learn not to ever be lonely, as you always have yourself. At some point, you not only learn that, but you need it. Too much interaction is too much, and you need a mental break.**
Extraverts, on the other hand, aren't that way at all.
Enter my coworkers. My coworkers is from the Midwest where it seems to me the urban culture favors extraverts. The same is true of the East. They always has. If you read about working men in the Midwest and East prior to the onset of the day, you learn how they worked closely together, and the hit the bars, after work, and on weekends they all went to the same ballgames and the like. Good depictions of this are given in the film The Deer Hunter and Good Will Hunting, and pretty accurately.
This makes for an interesting dynamic if you aren't in that group, as they way they view the world is so very different. My coworker, for example, always eats lunch at work except when he eats lunch out with other people. When he eats out, he invites people to eat with him that he finds interesting and chats them up. I'm sure they are interesting, but I find eating lunch with people I don't know well extremely stressful (and I often don't eat lunch). If he eats in the office, when I come back in I often find him engaged in conversations, as entertainment, that he finds interesting in ways that make me feel very awkward. We're co-religious and I'll answer questions and provide explanations, or defenses, regarding our Faith when called to do so, but I don't intentionally spark religious debates or just interject religious topics into the middle of casual conversations.*** He does all the time. I'll write about such topics here, but I don't routinely interject and discuss them with people unless I know them extremely well.
At the end of the day he often socializes with coworkers. "Let's have a drink!" is a common plea from him. I nearly always decline these invitations as after a day of interacting with people all day long, I want to go home. He and his family have people over for dinner or activities constantly. We only do so for really significant occasion or occasionally for holidays. I'd find a weekend in which I had invited a group of people over for discussions on religion or whatever to be taxing, and no break from human interaction for me is taxing. Indeed, I always cringe in horror when I have work to do that takes me into the office during the weekend and some helpful assistant starts asking to come in and help me. Help, for me, in that situation is not coming in to help me.
And hence my confusion.
The Trip
As soon as we got our reserve date, my excited co-worker starting asking; "We're going down the night before, right?"
I was baffled and simply answered that we were going down.
It's only 90 miles away and some people, maybe me, will be bringing their hunting dogs. Staying in a hotel with a hunting dog is a pain and, frankly, in my line of work I've stayed in a pile of hotels and really have no desire to stay in more except when I can't avoid it. For years I've had the 300 mile rule which is that if something I need to do is 300 miles from here or less, it's a day trip That way, I avoid the hotel. I'm a super early riser anymore so I can make 300 miles from here easily before 9:00 a.m. Making some place 90 miles away by sunup is no problem. Indeed, getting somewhere by sunup is something that is easy for me to do anyway as I have a lifetime of experience at it, first as a kid, then as a soldier, then as a geology student. No problem.
Unless the weather is bad, of course.
So, we always having our own view of things, I didn't take this question seriously, until it became obvious to me that it was seriously posed.
"Um. . . why would we do that?"
"Because we can eat out and drink beers!"
I"m not a teetotaler by any means, but like most subsistence hunters I don't mix alcohol with hunting. I.e., staying up late the night prior and drinking beer isn't something I"m inclined to do. Having a beer with dinner, if I'm camping, is something I will do, or having a beer or wine with dinner if I get something and cook it that night at home, which I'll often do, is also something I'll routinely do. But traveling someplace, putting my dog in my hotel room, and then drinking beer. . . I'm not going to do that.
For that matter, we all work together anyway. And we all have to stay in hotels all the time. Why would we want to do that.
Well, if you are an extravert and dig lots of socializing, you'll no doubt understand why.
If you are an introvert subsistence hunter like me, you won't get it. Shoot, you won't even do it.
I'll just drive down early that morning.
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*I was well into my adult years before I'd been to all of the places in the state my father had hunted and fished as a young man. I'm only now making it to some of them.
** People would find it odd, but statistically, a lot of lawyers are introverts. This probably has to do with the study of law being bookish, something that introverts are naturally drawn to. Ironically, the practice of law tends not to be bookish.
This gets to another point. Introverts aren't hostile to human interaction, they can just get too darned much. When they do, they seek to withdraw. As another blog notes, introverts often want an invitation, except when they don't (and you won't know when that is or isn't), even if they shy away from gatherings. They often do very well in gatherings, which causes people not to realize that introverts are introverts.
As an example, public speaking doesn't bother me at all, and I frequently get "I don't know how you do that" from people who otherwise are constantly talking. That's easy to answer, around people, save for people who an introvert is highly familiar and comfortable with, introverts are "on". That is, they're minds are focused and they're running at high speed. That's the very reason that they crave breaks from the same sort of settings. For introverts, again save for people they're very comfortable with, there's absolutely no such thing as a "casual conversation".
***It's obvious from this blog, but I'm Catholic.
