Stay home… just kidding… As hunters, we are all familiar with the highs and lows that come with the hunting season. We’ve all felt the highs, and we’ve all felt the lows, maybe a little too hard. Sometimes those lows are a little too much, though, and we catch ourselves wondering why we put ourselves through it. Nothing like a wind-chapped face and sore feet, staring into a void with a glass of whiskey at the end of the day.
Luckily, we can combat those bad feelings like stress and anxiety with a little planning ahead.
Set priorities before your season starts.
It’s easy to over-crowd your schedule during a short hunting season. Whether your pocket is full of tags, you have a bunch of spots you want to check out, or maybe your family and friends rely on you to take them out. Though it’s a blessing to have lots of tags, lots of spots to hunt, and/or plenty of friends and family to spend time with, it can be incredibly overwhelming, especially in the middle of the season. Deciding what is most important to you before you’re knee-deep in the season can be crucial to enjoying your time out. For example, I have a whitetail goal, and my husband has a mule deer goal, so we have established that those goals come before anything, right behind filling the freezer. Overall, it’s best to get your priorities straightened out before the season starts. The best way to figure out those priorities is communication.
Communicate with your hunting partner/s.
Communication is important in nearly every aspect of life, and hunting is not an exception. If you plan on taking somebody out hunting, you should plan those dates ahead of time, if possible. Hunting is unpredictable and can be tricky to plan. However, knowing who and what you have time for can ease a lot of stress and anxiety for everybody. As well as knowing what your hunting partners' goals are for the season and figuring out how those might correlate with your plans. Once everybody is on the same page, you can start scouting areas that may be beneficial to you and everybody in your party!
Scouting
Scouting ahead of time is so important when it comes to hunting. You can never know too much about the area you like to frequent. It can save you so much time and stress before the season even starts. Knowing if an area holds the game that you’re after can avoid a lot of frustration and make the hunting so much more fun. If possible, set trail cams before the season even starts and keep them there. You can spend a slow afternoon checking trail cams, which adds a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment for the day. Even if you don’t find THE area, at least you know you may have ruled an area or two out.
Remind yourself and your party your “why.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the season. Sometimes, our goals get squashed and become further and further out of reach. We might not be punching tags as quickly as we’d like or an as large of animals as we’d like, but we are still hunting. Hunting is something so many of us look forward to year round and spend so much time and energy preparing for. It’s easy to get discouraged and want to throw in the towel. A reminder can do a lot of uplifting, whether you’re reminding yourself or reminding the fellow hunters around you. Hunting is a privilege that not many have, but we do. As the famous saying goes, “A bad day out is always better than a good day in the office.” If we never had bad days or slow days, the fast-paced, fun days wouldn’t mean anything.
Quit scrolling on social media for hours.
Don’t you hate it when you get home or back into service after getting your butt ran into the dirt, only to find that that one person you follow on social media just tagged what you could only dream of? We’ve all had bad days, and it’s too easy to wallow in self-pity while spending hours scrolling social media, where we see everybody else’s best days out. Hardly do you see anybody talking and sharing about their worst days, their failed attempts, their missed shots, or their bad shots. But the best days will always be shared. Having a rough few days hunting pairs with social media like wine pairs with the Moldy chunk of cheddar that’s been lost in the back of your fridge for 6 months. It seems right but the only thing it’s going to do is make you feel like a turd stuck to a toilet bowl. For the betterment of your mental and emotional health, limit your time on social media during hunting season.
Have a Happier Hunting Season
No matter how your hunting season goes, it’s still the best time of year for most of us. Having an opportunity to skip the grocery store and fill our family freezer with some of the best meat on the planet is a privilege that should always be enjoyed. But it can be easy to get caught up in it all and get down in the dumps and discouraged. Taking preventative steps to avoid some stress and anxiety can make or break your hunting season. Enjoy the fresh air and memories made.
