Nature's Inspiration

At the Heart of a Hunt
by Craig Springer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

I’m a hunter-conservationist. That’s a paradox for some, an enigma. Explaining that I can kill what I want to protect stirs controversy and never satisfies all ears.

When I hunt, I’m a participant engaged in the ecosystem. Stopping by a grocery store to pick up a chicken, boned and wrapped in plastic, does not evoke the same emotional, physical, or spiritual response as when slogging through a slough to pick up a duck I just downed.

A successful hunter must have a deep understanding of nature to be successful, a point which really hit home last season while in a duck blind along the Rio Grande in central New Mexico with master waterfowler Patrick Donnelly. I do not give Donnelly the title gratuitously—he earned it. Many seasons in his youth were spent hunting alongside his father, watching, listening, learning, followed by time in the blind on his own, making observations and putting them to the test. Donnelly understands ducks and their environment.

At 4:30 a.m. the morning of our hunt, we were in waders setting out decoys by the light of our headlamps. Feet cold, hands numb, knee deep in the river, the sounds of nature filled the air and our spirits. An owl in a riverside tree proclaimed aloud what was his own. A half-mile upriver, a gaggle of geese joined in, honking a discordant clamor. Sandhill cranes passed overhead sight unseen, speaking their liquid chatter. “Put the teal decoys near shore, a couple of pintail blocks on the perimeter,” Donnelly instructed. “We’ve got to set them up in such a way as to get the birds near enough for a clean kill. We’ve got to give them a reason to get close to us.”

We put out 150 blocks in a pattern that would make sense to the birds. Back in the blind, as the eastern sky rouged with toasted-orange, the ducks came. Donnelly chatted with them on his call. The first flight passed us by. Moments later, the wings of 20 birds, mostly mallards and a couple of pintails, whistled overhead. The flock banked. They came toward us, giving a headlong second look. My heart pounded in my ears. I was immersed in the primal relationship of predator and prey bequeathed to me by my ancestors. The ducks set their wings, and as they dropped to Donnelly’s spread, we fired.

Death is never pretty. But when I’m immersed in a primal affair that virtually all my ancestors knew, I gain more respect for the animals and their element. Taking a life is a serious matter, and most every hunter has considered the ethics of the pursuit. While hunting, I’ve learned a good many lessons about myself and my inseparable and most intimate relationship with nature. I know of no other activity stripped of a societal veneer, where I can be fully involved in nature’s circuitous orbits of life and death.

The engagements of hunter and waterfowl are irreducibly spiritual. It’s no wonder, then, that I’m a conservationist of things wild.