My favorite kind of “office day”—an afternoon spent hunting, grappling with the greater realities of what being a hunter means, and getting a little writing done.

There was no wind to speak of that afternoon, no rustling of leaves, no swaying of branches, however, it was far from silent. The woods were alive.

My blind sat on a lane between two dense thickets and as I settled in for an afternoon sit, the silence that accompanied my intrusion gradually began to be replaced with the noise of life within the surrounding underbrush.

Birds flitted to and fro across the lane and the squirrels resumed their raucous barking chatter. The chipmunk or mouse that had nested in the blind over the past year, his or her nest removed when I cleaned it prior to the season, was busy scampering from beneath it into the thicket. Perhaps he or she was amassing the necessary materials to begin anew.

I had positioned my rifle at the ready inside the old wooden box blind, its barrel pointed down the lane in anticipation of the quick crossings that often occurred. As I sat watching the lane and listening to the constant activity surrounding me, a tiny swamp sparrow lit on the rifle barrel.

He tilted his head from side to side all the while staring intently through the window at me, this stranger in his hedge. I, too, eyed him thinking how odd it was, this juxtaposition of feathered flesh and steel.

I moved slowly and, to me, what seemed only slightly in hopes of easing my camera into position to capture the moment and, instantly, the sparrow disappeared back into the safety of the brush, and I slipped back into my observation.

When the Mississippi “gun” deer season opened the weekend before Thanksgiving, my son Dan asked when I planned to start hunting. My response was simple–“after the wedding.”

Our daughter Tate’s wedding was set for December 16 and even though G and Tate had done all the “heavy lifting” of wedding prep, aided by wedding planner extraordinaire An Howard Hill, my mind had remained constantly awash with all things wedding.

Therefore, I decided that I would wait until after the wedding to head to the woods and quiet my mind. The timing would be perfect as the rut would be in full swing at the farm and the big bucks would be on the move during daylight hours (at least that was my hope).

Late that evening, as the sun began to sink into the pines, I found myself pondering what I think about quite often when I hunt these days. Why?

It’s funny to me that I never thought about this much, if at all, as a boy, a teenager, or even as a young man. It’s just what you did. I was fortunate to have grown up with a father who hunted and who passed along those skills to me, and I never questioned the “why?”

As I have gotten older, I have gained a better understanding and appreciation of my “why,” and I have also come to believe that the questioning should always be present when it comes to taking the life of another being.

That questioning has given me a much greater respect for the land and the wildlife that it sustains, both of which, in turn, sustain me and my family.

In his memoir “The Homeplace: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature,” J. Drew Lanham speaks to this understanding and appreciation.

“Life sustains life, something I’ve learned watching the world wake-up from high in a pine and feeling the pounding of my heart when a wary creature walks unknowing and close enough for to view the wildness.”

Like Lanham, I know the feeling of that pounding heart and his take on what comes next, what it means to hunt and, in turn, to take a life is a perspective that, I believe, is much needed today and one that needs to be passed on.

“Killing is a dying art. In a shrink-wrapped, prepackaged world, most people don’t consider, or want to know where their meat comes from…We grill, stew, fry, and chew through animal flesh as if nothing had to die for it,” Lanham writes.

I hunt, in part, because I want to know where my meat comes from and, as such, I must grapple with the reality of my part in that process. As Lanham so aptly states, “I am a hunter. I watch and wait. I savor the stalk. I aim, exhale, and tense trigger-finger to send fast lead to quick, ethical end.”

The reality of taking a life is, for me, very humbling. Watching the light of life disappear from the eyes of a deer should have that effect on us. It has taught me gratitude, respect, and responsibility to both the creatures and the land.

Like Lanham, “I want to understand the world that I share with prey and other predators. I hunt because it sustains. Hunting is food for my soul. If I’ve studied, noticed, and guessed right and my aim is true, it provides meat for the body, too.”

Gratitude, respect, responsibility, and understanding—I pray that for those I have mentored into hunting and fishing, I have been able to pass these attributes along. There are no “unlimited resources,” and it is up to us as hunters and fishermen to make sure that is clear to those whom we mentor.

Until next time, here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.