What was I thinking?
For some archaic reason I’ve been under the impression that hunting is supposed to be done on foot.
Like this is still the 20th century.
Then I saw the light. Or maybe it was the sun reflecting off the 4-wheeler that caught my eye.
But there it was, deep in the Breaks, a mile from the nearest road – an ATV traversing the same country through which I was walking.
Sure, the rider was there illegally. Off-road motorized travel is outlawed on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. But with 8.3 million acres of BLM land in Montana and just 10 enforcement officers to track down violators, who’s to know?
“It’s really hard to catch people,” says Mary Apple, a BLM spokeswoman in Billings.
Besides, what good is a 4-wheeler if you can’t take it places your 4-wheel drive pickup can’t already go? Isn’t that the point?
And since they don’t require a road, ATVs have redefined road-hunting.
This is, after all, the 21st century, an age in which hunters no longer have to worry about getting lost, thanks to GPS, losing touch, thanks to cell phones, or breaking a sweat, thanks to the 4-wheeler.
You can hardly pick up an outdoor magazine that isn’t filled with full-page ads for ATVs, showing them splashing through clear mountain streams or climbing rocky trails above timberline. And what cable television hunting show doesn’t feature 4-wheelers, if only to show them parked in the background?
“We’d like to thank our fine sponsors,” drawl every camo-clad host on the tube, who wouldn’t have a show were it not for Polaris, Yamaha or Honda.
Even duck hunters, it appears, need 4-wheelers to pursue their sport.
So what was I thinking, trudging up and down hill and dale on foot when I could have been seated in relative comfort, fingers warm and toasty wrapped around heated hand grips, rifle held securely in a scabbard, onboard GPS keeping track of where I’d been so I didn’t have to?
Maybe it’s time to embrace this new technology. With the money I could save on aspirin for my aching knees, an ATV might just be within my budget.
Whether it’s stubbornness of simply a case of bad vision, I seem to take longer than most to see the light. It was years before I gave up wool for fleece, I remain a bit uncomfortable with email and still think blackberries are best cooked in a pie.
Here’s hoping the sun reflecting off that 4-wheeler in the Breaks opens my eyes to hunting in the 21st century.