Bridging Heritage and Health: Hunting 101

Melissa: Hey, pioneers. Welcome to episode number 402. Today's podcast, we are talking about a subject that's not as often talked about in homesteading circles, yet is a really important piece to land management, health and keeping old-fashioned traditions and skillsets alive and practiced within our modern society. Specifically, we are going to be talking about bridging heritage and health with a hunting 101 episode. Now, today's guest is one, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you may remember Chris. Chris Gilmore we had on... Oh gosh, it's been several episodes back where we were talking about foraging and hunting for mushrooms, but in today's context, we're actually talking about hunting for game. And what's interesting is Chris actually was a vegetarian and then he shares his health journey and he is now a hunter and an advocate for ethical hunting, but hunting very much has its place within homesteading and society as a food source and being done in a way that is actually extremely beneficial.

And a lot of times there's a lot of folks who really don't actually understand hunting. They have a preconceived judgment about what hunting is and what it does. So, we're going to be diving in that today. So even if you don't hunt, I think you will find this a very fascinating episode. And Chris also gives some excellent tips because so many of us may not have anybody directly around us who does hunt that you can go and learn from because we're finding as we get further away from where we provided more of our own food, that a lot of these skillsets, hunting being one of them, is not something that we have modeled and practiced for us in a really close state. So, Chris gives some excellent ideas on getting started with hunting, things that you need to know in order to be safe and legal, and then things to consider about which method of hunting you are going to pick up, where you can begin to learn that, some kind of like the pros and cons of different things as well as how to do so on a budget.

You don't have to invest a lot of money in order to get started with hunting. So, really excited for this episode because again, this is something that we see being lost as a skillset. It used to be very widespread that almost every family hunted or had someone close to them that hunted, and we're not seeing that as much anymore. So, I think you're really going to enjoy today's episode, including hearing some of Chris's health journey and how hunting has played a part in that. Now, our sponsor for today's episode is Azure Standard. So if you are not able to get started hunting, but you want to taste what venison... Of course, venison is where we're talking about, our deer population. A lot of people have never even had wild game. So, Azure Standard offers a venison, and you can get that by going to azurestandard.com.

And if you are a first time customer to Azure, you can use Melissa10, use coupon code Melissa10 for 10% off your first order of $50 or more as a new customer. And Azure, aside from what we produce on our own, is one of my main sources to stock our pantry, as well as a lot of other items. They meet my standards for the companies that they source for, what they're not growing themselves, when they source from outside sources, other farms and that type of thing for regenerative agriculture, ethically done, just the type of food raised and prepared in the manner that I am most comfortable feeding to myself and my family, so definitely check them out. They're an excellent resource to have in order to stocking your pantry.

So, we're going to hop into this episode with Chris. It's a great one, we talk about a lot of things and cover a lot of ground. So as always, if you want to go to the blog post for further resources or different links that we're talking about, you can do so at melissaknorris.com/402, so just 4-0-2. This is episode number 402, or if you're watching this on YouTube because we now put the podcast in video format on YouTube, you will see those links in the video description listed below. So without further ado, welcoming Chris back to the podcast. Well, hey Chris, welcome back to the Pioneering Today podcast.

Chris: It's so nice to be here again. I'm always a huge fan of your work, so it's such an honor to be able to sit down with you today.

Melissa: Thanks. Well, I'm really excited for us to talk about this topic because in the realm of homesteading, I'm sometimes surprised that this doesn't come up more or isn't something that we see more, I guess, taught because it's definitely a skillset and one that even within my own family, it's not used as much or is taught as much to the younger generation or younger generations don't have as much exposure to it, and that is the world of hunting. And one of the reasons that I wanted to have you come on is... Not necessarily in the realm of homesteading, I would say, but we have a lot of people when they think of hunting tend to have a very quick judgment on hunting, and a lot of times it's negative. And so I think talking about that, but also for people who want to get started hunting, who haven't had it modeled for them, they haven't had anybody to take them out hunting and know all of the things, how do they actually get started? So first, your story I find fascinating because you actually didn't eat meat for a while, correct?

Chris: I was a vegetarian for eight years and was one of those people that had some judgments around hunting, but I also have to admit, I was brought up in an urban context. No one in my family hunted and I really didn't know a lot about ecology, so I was kind of making a judgment about something that I really didn't actually have a deep knowledge or understanding of. So, one of my passions is having these conversations now that I can kind of look back at it from the other side.

Melissa: So, walk with me a little bit then. So, you went from being a vegetarian for eight years and now you've been hunting and foraging, but hunting and eating meat. So, just give me a little bit brief about that journey. How did that evolution happen for you?

Chris: Well, there was probably a few main pieces for it. Two things kind of line up simultaneously. So in my early 20s, I got really fascinated by homesteading, permaculture, growing food, and I was actually working on a permaculture farm out on the West Coast. I basically did an apprenticeship there for a summer. So, I'm learning all about growing food, eating all this fantastic food, and simultaneously I'm having massive digestive and stomach problems. So, I actually had a bit of a health crisis that built over a few years, to the point that I was seeing all kinds of specialists, and long story short there, I ended up working with a naturopath who suggested I start eating meat again. And within two weeks, multiple years of digestive issues we're gone, and we don't need to get into all the specifics of that, but I had some imbalances in my body coming from my diet.

The second part of that, being on the farm, I was becoming fascinated with the growing of food and realized how little I knew about the forest and the ecology around the farm. And I was asking big questions like, "How do we know that we're actually being sustainable in the way we're growing food?" And I had this epiphany on the farm that I'm like, "Well, I don't actually know unless I really understand the ecology around the farm and our impact on that." So, that led me down this pathway of wanting to learn about wild plants and foraging and even just general tree ID, ecology, tracking wildlife, so I started going down that journey.

So I guess the two ways, just to sum that up, so one, I realized I now need to eat meat. I have some problems still morally with the industrial food system, so suddenly I'm open to exploring this idea of hunting and that lined up with me starting to learn more about ecology and recognizing that it actually has the potential to be incredibly sustainable. Humans have been hunting since we've been humans. We've always been hunters and there's still lots of wildlife around. So, there is the possibility for a very healthy relationship to exist between humans and wild animals as meat. So, those two things kind of lined up, and geez, that's been a 20-year journey since, but there's the short version.

Melissa: Well, I love it for a lot of reasons and we probably could just go back and dive into the whole health aspect and that journey. So, we'll just have to have you come back on because that I find fascinating because so many people that I've talked to, literally just changing your food can bring so much healing and it's just by changing what you eat. It's not even medicine, which is so under talked about in Western health and Western society, but that aside, I want to go back to... Because with hunting, there tends to be, I've ran into this a lot, a very big misconception, and that is people want to naturally assume though if you're a hunter, you're just out there doing trophy hunting, which can happen, of course, there is that part, but the misnomer that hunters don't really care about wildlife and they don't care about ecology and they don't care about all of this, whereas hunters probably care more and they understand it in a deeper level.

And really almost all of our funding for our wildlife programs and for our habitat and fish and game here, at least in the US, I know you're in Canada, that all comes from hunters. They are actually supporting to create healthy balances and habitat for animals, much more so than people who don't hunt, and I think that that's important to bring up so that people understand that hunters are actually very beneficial for the wildlife population.

Chris: And I can definitely relate to that because again, that was my judgment when I was in my late teens, early 20s as well, not having any exposure to it. How could somebody go out and take another life? Actually, the third part of the story that I forgot to mention, so my wife now, who was my girlfriend at the time, her stepfather was a hunter, and he was the first person I actually knew that hunted, and I pretty quickly realized like, "Wow, this guy knows so much more about nature than I do," and he's incredibly passionate about... I should say compassionate, sorry, he loves wildlife, he loves animals. He's spending all of his time out in the woods. He would occasionally cry after harvesting an animal, and I suddenly was opened up to this idea, "Oh, wow, he's not some guy that just loves killing, he's somebody that recognizes that life and death is part of how nature works, that things need to die for us to live."

And he actually wanted a relationship with his food, a healthy one, and he didn't want to pass that off to somebody else. He was actually going to do the hard work of learning how to take that life and process it, and how beautiful is it to be able to now go and feed your family after going through that journey. So, that was another part of my story that really opened my eyes that, wow, hunters are often very compassionate people. They're often nature lovers, they're naturalists, they're outdoor enthusiasts, and absolutely, beyond pouring millions, if not billions of dollars into conservation, they're also... If you go and sit on the different boards of conservation societies and different nonprofit organizations, almost all of them have a whole bunch of hunters on them that are there doing land restoration work and habitat restoration work and biology and research. And so, when I realized how involved hunters actually are in land management, it was a total paradigm shift and a little bit of a slap in the face for those silly judgements I used to have.

Melissa: So, as someone who's moving into hunting and it's kind of completely foreign, they don't have anybody in their immediate realm that they could go and learn from. I think first is one, and these can vary a little bit, as I said, I'm in the US, Chris is in Canada, but there's a lot of similarities too, and just being cognizant of legal requirements because I think that's probably the first place you should start would be your legal requirements in order to hunt. And then we can kind of go from there. So do you want to... I know what the legal requirements are for us, but I'm curious to see what they are for you and if there's any differences there.

Chris: Absolutely, and I guess maybe the other thing, just to build on the thread that we have there, as somebody that didn't hunt and had those judgements, I thought, "Oh, people just go out and they shoot animals, and if they do it long enough, there won't be any more animals left." Hunting is very regulated, and there's conservationists and naturalists that are out there studying the numbers and studying the populations and studying those trends. And every year they give out a certain number of tags for different species that are based on a sustained population over term. So, when we start to bridge into the world of legalities and licenses for hunting, it's important to realize that the reasons those exist, that's part of what keeps hunting sustainable in the long run, it's kind of having those systems in place. You can't just go out and harvest anything you want.

So, it can be really overwhelming, kind of getting started, wrapping your head around the legalities. It's really going to vary from state to state or where I am, province to providence, but there's kind of a few key things that tend to be universal. So first off, you need a hunting license, and usually in most places, that starts with taking an intro to hunting course. I believe that's the same in the state where you are. So, in Ontario you just have your hunter safety course, and once you take the hunter safety course you can apply for a license, and here in Ontario, that license allows me to hunt small game only. Beyond that, if I want to harvest something like a deer or a moose, I actually have to go and apply for a specific tag for that animal, and I believe some states work that way and others don't, and I'm not totally sure, maybe you can share on that.

But there's licenses, which basically means I'm allowed to hunt because I've taken the course, and then there's tags for specific species and they give out a certain number of tags often, and that's how they control the management. So for example, for deer season here in Ontario, the does are obviously the breeding animal. So, in an area where the deer population is a little bit lower, they might not actually give out doe tags. They might give out mostly buck tags because one buck can impregnate many, many does. So, you can harvest quite a few bucks from an area, and most of the does are still going to get impregnated and the population is going to continue. So, they'll actually control management based on how many tags they give a bucks to dose. Now the flip side of that, there's many areas often because of human influence on the land, where there's so many deer, they're actually having a negative impact on the ecology of the area.

So in an area like that, they may actually encourage the hunting of does and give out lots of doe tags. So anyways, that's kind of how tags relate to the systems, but I think that the [inaudible] whatever province or state you're in, if you just search your state, plus hunter safety course, your local government... Or sorry, your state government or your provincial government is going to have a website on there, you should be able to figure out where to take your course. And during that course, they're going to explain how the regulations work for that state or that province. If you want to transfer to another state or province, you do need to learn a little bit about what's different in that next state or province, but the course itself will help you understand the language and just kind of how it all works.

Melissa: And one of the things that I think is important... It was very interesting, so my son is 18 now, so this has been many, many years ago, but he had to do a hunter safeties course before, just like you said, same in the States, had to do a hunter safeties course, and so I took it with him. We kind of have grandfathered in, depending on where your birthday is, if you have to take a hunter safeties course or if you're grandfathered in and can still just apply for your hunting license based upon species, again, without that. And so where my birthday fell, I was taking him anyways, and I'm like, "I'll go through a hunter safeties course with him. We'll go through it together, it'll be our thing," and it was interesting because now this was, oh gosh, over 10 years ago because at his age, I think he was about eight when we took it.

And it was really interesting because I had shared online that my son and I were doing a hunter safety course together, and I got this very, very angry email from someone because there had been sadly a school shooting not too long from that date around there, and how dare I advocate for anything with gun... This woman was obvious, very upset, and I was really saddened, not because she was mad at me. In the world of online, people will get mad at you that you don't know for things you can't control, but what saddened me was I'm like, "You actually have no idea what hunter safeties course is because if you did, you would be flipping your opinion and you would be advocating for them." I think that all schools should have a hunter safety course because really it's not teaching you about how to kill an animal, it's teaching you how to be safe with guns and how to be a responsible person with guns.

And if every person actually went through a hunter safeties course and understood how to safely be in a situation with guns, either solely by yourself, if you're out hunting by yourself or with a group, it is so invaluable and it's so sad to me that people think that it's something that it's not, but it's really being responsible and safe with a gun. It's not teaching you this is the best place to shoot the animal or really anything like that. It's more all based upon, at least the course we went through, was really based upon that safety aspect. And of course, you can hunt without guns. There's bow and arrow, which we can talk about that too. It doesn't have to just be with guns, but anyhow, the hunter safety course is such an important thing, and I really wish more people would go through it just so that they had a true understanding of guns instead of what they see on media.

Because sadly, that's some people's only experience with guns is just what they see on the media, and they really don't have much of an understanding about that. So anyways, hunter safety course though, yes, is the same for us, and it's a great thing to go through. Even though I knew how to use guns, I grew up in a household that used guns. My husband and I went trap shooting. I was very comfortable using guns, et cetera, but I still learned a lot even going through that hunter safety course myself, even though I already knew how to shoot, had my own guns, et cetera. So, it was a really valuable thing, and so I guess just an encouragement, even if it's parents wanting your kids to go through it, even if your birthday is beyond that cutoff date, at least for here in the States, that you wouldn't have to go through it, it's actually a really great thing to go through as a family even.

Chris: If you're new to hunting or if you're a new homesteader that wants to integrate hunting into your food systems for your home, it's a phenomenal starting point. Maybe don't worry whether you're grandfathered in or not, just take the course if you don't have the exposure, because it's going to help you do it safely and help you wrap your head around it, and it's a pretty great starting point.

Melissa: It really is, but then beyond that, because I went through the hunter safety course and I said I had never hunted before, and so unless you have someone who is a hunter that can kind of take you under their wing and go with them, which is fabulous... One-on-one mentoring is the best way to learn, but a lot of us don't have that. So, where would you look at after doing a hunter safeties course and obviously knowing the regulations in your area, so what things are in season, getting the proper license when you can shoot them, that type of thing, but kind of developing that overall knowledge base on actually going out and hunting. Do you want to talk to that a little bit?

Chris: Absolutely, so hunting can be broken down into multiple different skillsets, and that's why having kind a community and mentors is so valuable. For example, once you get legal, that doesn't mean you know how to hunt, and that was kind of my story. So I got legal, I made my first bow. I had this dream that I wanted to harvest my first deer actually with a bow and arrow set that I carved myself. Now, I hunt with a rifle in a shotgun now, as well as a crossbow, but I had this dream in my head that I wanted to harvest my first deer with a bow and arrow, a homemade one. It took me six years from when I first made that bow and started harvesting to when I actually took my first deer because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. And funny enough in my head I was like, "Oh, well I have a bow. I know how to shoot it. Now, I'm just going to go into the woods and I'm going to go start harvesting food."

And little did I know, wow, you got to know a whole lot of other things to actually connect those two dots together. So, for people that are starting out to wrap your head around that, you can be starting to look for mentors, community, and places to hunt simultaneously with developing some of those other skillsets, so they can kind of be done in silos almost, and then you can kind of bring them all together for that complete skillset. So if you don't have the community, you don't have the mentor yet, what can you be doing in the meantime? I'll maybe touch on that and then I can share a little bit around how do you actually meet those people and get out on the land and find mentors.

So as far as starting out, the first starting point is maybe understanding what options there are for hunting in your area to begin with. What species can you literally hunt? And then just starting to learn about those species. A lot of people go right to this idea of, "I want to hunt deer, so I'm going to go out looking for deer," but what do you actually know about deer? Deer are dictated by food, shelter, water, and predators and their movement on any given day is influenced by those variables. So to be a hunter, you actually need to have a good understanding of how the deer are influenced by those different variables and where are they going to be on any given day? Where are the deer going to be in particular weather conditions? Where are they going to be particular seasons? What food are they eating different seasons of the year? Where do they travel going from their food to the water?

Probably one of the biggest variables with deer is smell. Deer have a phenomenal sense of smell. So you might not have thought of this, but if you go out deer hunting and the wind is at your back, good luck seeing anything that day. So, learning how to move through the landscape in context to the weather and those annual cycles is a massive, massive part of the learning curve of hunting. So, you can start off with saying, "Well these are the animals that I can hunt in my area," and generally we kind of have three categories, so they're small game, so those are things like squirrels, things like grouse and quail, maybe groundhogs. There's a whole bunch of things that kind of fall into that small game category.

Then there's big game, which are things like your deer, your moose, your sheep, your elk, your bellow, and then there's migratory birds, which are like ducks and geese basically. Small game is actually a phenomenal starting point because you can learn so much hunting a squirrel, it's way less intimidating, and you can actually apply that to hunting for a bigger game like a deer or an elk. There's transferable skills. Even the butchering process, butchering a squirrel is way less intimidating than butchering a deer, way less intimidating. If you mess up, you don't have to feel as bad about it because you're not going to lose as much meat. So, you can learn the basics of butchering on a squirrel. You can learn the basics of stalking and movement on a squirrel. So, I guess what I want to say here is figure out first what can you hunt in your area.

And you might even want to think, what's abundant in my area? Because maybe you have turkey there, but there's not a lot of Turkey, but there's a ton of deer, or maybe there's not a lot of deer, but there's tons of gray squirrels. So, what's abundant in my area? That's a great starting point there, and if you don't have the legal pieces in place or the confidence to go out, well, just start learning about that animal, read books about it, figure out, what does it eat? What does it eat in the spring, the summer, the fall, and the winter? Where does it live? What habitat does it live in? Where does it sleep? So, you can actually literally just start researching that animal, and then the same with its predators. If you want to hunt deer, you should learn a little bit about wolves and mountain lions because, well, they're master hunters of deer.

You can actually learn hunting skills by understanding how the wolves and the mountain lions hunt deer, so just broadening your natural skills, that's a great starting point. The next part is learning your actual marksmanship skills. So whether you're choosing to hunt with a rifle, a shotgun or a bow, those are all very different skillsets. So you could get your... Depending on where you live, here in Canada, everyone has to have a possession and acquisition license. I think it's a little bit different in the States and maybe different from one state to the next anyways, but basically acquiring your license if required and then figuring out how to shoot, whether you have a mentor that can take you out or you can go to a local gun range. I found people are often intimidated by gun ranges, but I've found generally people are really friendly there, people are really welcoming.

People encourage beginners to show up and ask questions and they help you out. So, my experience has already been positive there. So learning to use your hunting tool, whether it's a rifle or a bow would be the next step. And then after that, starting to find your community or your people to actually get out with. And there's kind of lots of ways you can get started there. Where you hunt, you can break into kind two categories. There's public land and there's private land. I hunt a lot of private land and if you have access to hunting private land, it's pretty amazing. I think from a safety perspective, it's nice because you don't have as many other people out there hunting theoretically, and you also kind of know what's going on there, you know you're the only person out there, or maybe there's only a handful of other people out there.

So for finding public land, it can be as simple as just starting to ask people in your network to see who has land. Who do you know that lives in the country, that has acreage with forest? Would they be willing to have you come and hunt there? And what I always encourage people to do is to integrate some sort of relationship building into that, as opposed to it just being an ask, "Can I have this for you, access to your land?" So for example, there's a property where I goose hunt on every year, and the landowner is a farmer. So, I message her a couple times a year and I'm like, "Hey, I'm starting to think about goose season. I'm really excited. I'm just wondering what you have going on. Do you have any firewood that needs to be stacked right now? Do you need to stack hay?"

Is there something that I can come and do throughout the year to actually help that person to tend that relationship in a good way so they feel good about me being out on the land hunting? Just so there's some reciprocity in that relationship. The other thing you can think about for private land, sorry, is a lot of farmers are really open to people hunting and open to the idea of hunting. So, if you don't have land yourself, looking for those local farmers that have acreage, whether it's fields or forest, and you can literally go and knock on a door, it seems intimidating, but I've done it before and surprisingly, it's only been a handful of times people have been rude. The majority of times, even if people say no, I found they've been really, really friendly. If that's too much of a push to knock on a door and ask, why not just write a really nice letter and drop it in the mailbox?

"Hey, I live down the road and I'm just starting to get into hunting. I noticed you have some forest back there and I'm wondering if you would be open to having a conversation with what it would look like. I'd be happy to share some of the meat. If I get a harvest. I'd also be happy to come and help you with some chores around the property as part of that. Here's my phone number if you'd like to give me a call, and if not, I completely understand." There's public... Or sorry, private land hunting, and then there's public land, which is a whole nother learning curve, but it's basically land that's open access to everybody. So, you can probably find maps in your region from your local websites. In Canada, or here where I'm in Ontario, there's basically a government database where I can pull up these map layers.

Actually, some of the map apps that you get on your phone too. Here in Canada, I use a phone called iHunter and on iHunter, I can literally pull it up and while I'm in the bush in real time and see where people's property lines are and see where the public and private lands are. So as I'm out navigating across the landscape, I can say I'm on private land or public land right now and here's a private parcel, so I better stay off there, but if I head a little bit further north and cut over, so there's a lot of apps that'll show you those layers right on your phone. Now, there is a little bit to learn around just the etiquette and how to hunt safely around other people on private land... Or sorry, public land.

Melissa: My husband uses an app called Onyx, and it's the same thing that you were talking about, and so that's been awesome. There is no doubt... And the lines are pretty accurate, so of course we have our property surveyed, so we even look at our own property on the app to see how accurate is it. It's decently accurate. It gives you a pretty good idea, but very important to respect private versus public and get permission first before you go on someone's private property. So, I'm glad you're bringing that aspect up.

Chris: Absolutely, I'm just trying to think if there's anything else that's really relevant. Oh, maybe the other one I'll just share about starting to find people. So, there's all kinds of groups you can start to look at too. Well, joining an actual shooting club is obviously a good starting point because there's going to be other hunters there, you can strike up a conversation with them. Facebook groups, like homesteading, Facebook groups, outdoor skills Facebook groups, things like that. I run a hunting course kind of a community, and one of the people in our course just moved to a new area and didn't have any access to hunt, so we encouraged him to go... There was actually a local... It was like a... I forget, self-reliance and homesteading Facebook group for that region, and he literally went on there and just said, "Hey, I'm new to the area. I'm just learning to hunt and I'm looking for land. I'm wondering if there'd anyone that would want to have a conversation."

And three different people responded and said, "Yes, I have land, I'd be open to having a conversation." So, he was able to actually do that through Facebook, posting in a safe community. Gatherings as well. There's all kinds of homestead gatherings now and survival skills gatherings and rendezvous. Those are great places to show up, talk to other people because those are communities that are probably open to hunting and you can start meeting people. And I guess the last thing I'll say is, don't be intimidated to do it on your own or find a friend as well, that's what I did.

The learning curve is just going to be a bit longer, so just feel good moving slowly. It's a beautiful journey. It's literally changed my life and changed who I am as a person, I think in a good way, learning to hunt. So if you can't find a mentor or find that support, don't be afraid to just take your course and start learning on your own and pursuing it, just move a little bit slower and know that it may take you a few years and that's okay to make that first harvest. Enjoy the journey.

Melissa: Which I think is really key there. One of the things I do want to talk about though is a little bit about your overview of different styles and strategies of hunting, so bow versus rifle are the two biggest distinctions and why you would maybe choose one over the other, and also then that is going to naturally lead into money to get started. Because within the homesteading, I've seen there's some people that do both. My husband hunts and my son hunts, and we also raised our own beef. And then my dad never hunted, he always just raised beef because that was a sure thing. He had a large enough herd that he knew he was going to put in the work and the feed bill of course, and having the land, but he knew it was a sure thing to feed the family.

Whereas hunting, depending on your skill level set isn't always a guaranteed. You can go out and hunt for a weekend and not get anything, and then other times you will, and some of that's skill and some of it's population density. There's a lot of factors there, but talking about, like I said, the difference between... Obviously bow is with an arrow and bow... But there's different even within there versus rifle and the cost of entry, that type of thing I think is really good for people to know those types of options and how to get started on a more low budget and not going out and buying all the recommended gear you might see online from someone who's been doing it a long time and has all this gear.

Chris: Absolutely, that's a great place to go next. If I can make this one really quick comment on the homestead thing too. So, my wife and I have a very small homestead. So we're on 26 acres, but most of it is forest. We only have about a quarter acre garden, so we have chickens and we have rabbits, but it's not actually practical for us to raise a cow. It's not practical for us to raise a pig. We also both have full-time jobs, so we don't have actually have the time, but we've reached a level of food self-sufficiency that we're pretty proud of because we actually combined... So, we raise rabbits and we raise chickens, which is what we can do in a small space. We actually trade those rabbits because we can raise a lot of them in a small space to some of the local farmers.

So we trade them for chicken and beef, but then we also hunt and we fish and we forage. So, it actually allows us to kind of have this neat hybrid modern lifestyle where we actually have a small garden, but because of our hunting, our foraging, our fishing and our trading, we're actually able to be relatively close to food self-sufficient. So, that's just kind of a neat seed to plant for people that these hybrid systems are available when you don't have that massive 100 acre farm and fields for cattle and things of that. So, I just wanted to kind of share that, but back to your question, sorry to go on a little tangent there, so let's chat a little bit about hunting strategies. So, there's bow and there's gun hunting and gun can usually broken into rifle, shotgun. Down in the States, I believe you can even hunt with air rifles, but they all kind of fit in that category there.

And I don't want to say that any is better or worse, there's kind of advantages and disadvantages to each, and people tend to be naturally drawn to one or the other. Beyond that, there's also the different strategies that we use to hunt, and most of them you can actually use whether you have a bow in your hand or whether you have a gun in your hand. So, maybe I'll hit on the basic strategies and then talk a little bit about a couple of the reasons why you might lean towards bow hunting versus rifle hunting. So two overarching categories, and there's a ton of different techniques within each of them, but two overarching categories... There's kind of like a sit and wait approach to hunting where it's like, "I know this area really well and I know the wildlife. I go out and I track and I know how the animals move across this landscape, so I'm going to find a strategic spot to sit and wait with the wind in my favor and I'm kind of hidden and I'm literally going to wait for an animal to come through."

So, that's where you hear about people getting tree stands where they get up high in a tree, that has some advantages out of the plane of view of a deer. Also, it's going to be harder for them to smell you when you're up higher, depending on what the wind and other weather is doing. So there's the sit and wait technique, and then some people also do baiting as well. So, whether they have a food pile or maybe they're standing right over an agricultural field. So, that's just a strategy within that system there.

Melissa: And I will say on baiting, you need to know if it's legal or not because it is not legal to always bait an animal. So don't just think, "I'm going to go throw this huge pile of apples out and bait," because that's actually illegal in a lot of instances. So, I just want to make sure we point that out.

Chris: Thank you for mentioning that. Absolutely, and that's not a style of hunting that I'm involved in. I just kind of wanted to mention it's one of the things that kind of fits under that category. And even if baiting is not legal in the area, a lot of people hunt, say on the edge of cornfields and soy fields. Again, I don't do that one, because I'm worried about the GMO feed in the animals, but two, I also just don't live in agricultural lands, but in my mind, that's not too much different than baiting if you're sitting on a giant cornfield, but no judgment against that. If you're going out to hunt to be able to feed your family and that's what you want to do, then however you hunt, that's your own choice, but basically there's the sit and wait approach or there's the moving and looking for wildlife approach, which is totally different strategies being implied.

So under this kind of moving category, you have something you call still hunting, which means I basically... Let's say I have a larger chunk of land and I know the animals are out there somewhere, let's say I'm targeting deer, and I'm going to very slowly and strategically move across the landscape throughout the day. So, I'm actually going to go looking for my target species, and then once I see them, I need to use my stalking and my movement skills to get within proximity to actually line up a good shot to be able to take.

So, that's kind of a style there. We call that still hunting or another style that's often used kind of in prairie land, really common in the mountains is what we call a spot and stalk. So, it's actually covering a lot of ground, and this is a really great technique if you have access to a lot of hunting ground or big public areas is you might be driving around in the truck and you're driving to strategic vantage points and you've got your binoculars with you and you're getting out and you're literally scanning big areas, looking for an animal.

And then once you see it, it kind of turns into that still hunt or that stalk. So, those are just some general ways that people hunt. You sit and wait for the animal in a strategic location or you're going to move and look for it, very different skillsets. Now beyond that, let's talk about gun versus bow. So I hunt with both, I started off bow hunting and that's all I did for about the first seven, eight years of my hunting journey, and it was a very rewarding experience, but now I kind of hunt with everything and I still hunt all of them throughout the year, and I like the different tools for different reasons. So, a couple of things I like about bow hunting. One is it's something really special to be out with a bow. It just feels like you're tapping into this ancient technology and this ancient part of yourself.

So, I really appreciate that part of it. It's quiet, which I really, really like, and probably the biggest advantage for me for bow here in Canada, and again, I believe this is similar in a lot of the US anyways, that our bow seasons tend to be much longer than the rifle seasons.

Melissa: Yes.

Chris: So here in Canada, I can hunt deer basically from middle of October to middle of December with a bow, but there's only two weeks that you can hunt deer with a rifle. So, I have a three-month-long season with a bow, and the majority of hunters, and I don't know this number, I'm going to make this up, but I want to say 90% of hunters are rifle hunters. So during those two weeks of rifle hunting season, there's a ton of people out in the woods. I tend to not go into the woods that much during rifle season because there's just so many people.

And one of the things I love about hunting is just being out there by myself, it's quiet, I'm really connecting. So, the bow is really nice for having this really long season. With that said, bow hunting takes a lot of practice and a lot of skill. And not to say that gun hunting doesn't take practice and skill, it absolutely does, but if you're not shooting all the time and 100% confident in your shot and your ability to shoot from different angles and all of that, it really is a commitment to bow hunting, and that actually was the original reason I started hunting... I actually switched over to the crossbow next because the crossbow is a little bit more like hunting with a rifle. My shot can get refined a lot faster, but I'm still able to hunt that whole bow hunting season, so I really like that.

And as a busy person and a homesteader, it's nice to have that longer season to be able to get out whenever I want. Now, rifle and shotgun hunting is really nice. Probably the biggest advantage if it just increases your range significantly. With bow hunting, you're usually talking about... I'm usually trying to be within 15 to 20 yards of an animal. A long shot with a bow might be 40 to 50 yards if you got a really good shot, depending on the tool you're using. With a rifle, you're potentially shooting hundreds of yards or more, so that's a really nice advantage of it.

This one is maybe debatable, but I want to say theoretically you can practice shooting less and be a really good rifle or shotgun hunter, although when you're first learning the skillset, it takes a while to be honed in. So, make sure you're putting in lots of days at the range practicing shooting. If you choose to go the route of a rifle or a shotgun, you really want to make sure you're dialed in on your shot before you go out, and you have a shorter season, but you have the ability to take these longer shots, and there's something really empowering and amazing about hunting with a rifle and shotgun as well. So, they both have their kind of ups and downs there. Those two strategies I mentioned though, the sit and wait or the kind of move and look for, you can do those strategies with the bow or with a firearm.

Melissa: It's funny because my husband has done both like you, both bow and rifle, and with the bow, like you said, you've got that advantage here in the States of it's open longer, but it opens first, and so the deer haven't really had a chance to get quite so skittish yet because once you have, like you said, all the rifle hunters go out, there's a lot more of them, and it's louder. So, they hear even if they're not particularly being hunted in that moment, they hear all of that and they just tend to spook and go up much higher into the hills. There's just not as much game available during the rifle hunt period as there is at the bow hunt at the beginning, and then rifle shuts down, and then you have that extended bow at the end of it too.

So, that is definitely the biggest advantage, at least for deer hunting, I should say where we live. We're on the west sides of the Cascades in Western Washington, and so we have a much smaller deer population actually than you do on the east side. So if we're trying to hunt on our own land in close to home, that becomes even more critical, but like you said, your shot range... I feel with the bow, and this is for me just listening to my husband, I have not bow hunted, I have shot the bow, and I don't have very good upper body strength apparently because I'm not very good with the bow. I can't get it to go very far distances to be honest, but it is fun to sit in target practice with the bow and arrow.

There's an element of there that just in itself is fun, learning how to shoot that, but I would never put my family's food on my skillset at this moment in time, but that lining up the shot, because a lot of times, even bow hunting, he'll see the deer, but they're just too far out or there's too much brush even. They might be close enough, but there's too much brush between, whereas the rifle probably would be getting through that, but you just know that the arrow's going to get deflected, so you don't even bother taking the shot.

Chris: I've had weeks where I've seen deer every day and haven't got a single shot off for the bow, where if I had a firearm with me almost every one of those days, I could have harvested a deer. So, it's absolutely a consideration in thinking about your timeline with it, and it's really nice. If you're really thinking about increasing your food on the homestead and your self-reliant sustainability, I really think it's a nice goal to have both in your pocket over time as a skillset just to round out your opportunities because absolutely early bow season before any of the... Sorry, the rifle hunters have spooked the deer is my favorite time to hunt.

The majority of deer are harvested within the first couple of days of gun season because the rest of the deer gets spooked, and then you hardly see deer, and that's not to say you can't harvest a deer later in the gun season, but the majority, and I don't know the exact stat, but I want to say it's in the 80 to 90% of deer are harvested within the first few days of the rightful season in any given district, then it gets significantly harder. So, it's a massive advantage to be able to harvest earlier. With that said, if you don't fill your quota during that early bow season, it's so nice to be able to go out with the rifle and have that extra range if you're really thinking from a practical sense of wanting to put food in the freezer.

Melissa: And like you said, there's definitely pros and cons to each one. There's the ammunition thing. You are still going to have to... If your arrow breaks or-

Chris: Cost I want to talk about too.

Melissa: I know there's so much that you could talk about with hunting. We're just barely scratching the surface, but let's talk a little bit about cost and then we'll kind of wrap up.

Chris: Perfect, the first thing I want to say to folks is you do not need to spend a crazy amount of money to get started, and I wish I knew this because I wasted a ton of money on a lot of gear that I didn't need when I was getting started in hunting. Hunting is a multi-billion dollar industry. They're trying to sell you everything. There's all kinds of gadgets and gimmicks, and a lot of it's really cool. As you develop as a hunter, you're probably going to be like, "Oh, yeah, I actually want some of those gimmicks and gadgets," but here's the thing, when you're first starting out, you don't really know what your strategy is, your style is, you don't know what you need, and there's many different strategies to hunt, and they use different types of gear and tactics. So, I actually encourage people not to spend a lot of money when you're getting started.

So really all you need to get started, you need your tool of choice, so whether you're going to get a firearm or you're going to get a bow or you're going to get a crossbow, you're going to want to make sure you spend a little bit of money and get a good tool. I would say if you're rifle hunting, your scope or your optic is arguably a lot more important than the rifle itself. Most rifles shoot a straight bullet, especially at short distances and will harvest what you need them to harvest. Now, of course, you got to use the right caliber for the right animal, and that's a whole nother conversation, but spending money on a nice optic... We often say to people, spend more money on the optic than you do on the gun itself, and a lot of people that don't know guns would be like, "Oh, that seems crazy. I want a nice, expensive gun," but a cheap gun will do the job.

But the thing is, if you have a cheap optic and it's a little bit foggy, well, that optic might fog up and you can't see anything and suddenly your gun's no good. So, getting that nicer optic that sees in the lower light conditions, that sees on a poor day, that's not going to fog up, to me, that's more important than having a fancy, expensive gun to begin with. So you need your tool, so a rifle, shotgun, or your bow. And then beyond that, you want clothes to be comfortable in the woods, and I'm generally a big fan of earth tone clothing. I used to spend all this money on fancy camo hunting gear. Now, I hunt in stuff from the thrift store, mostly in wool. I have a wool pair of pants that I wear because wool is quiet.

It doesn't reflect light, and that's something people don't often understand about camouflage. One of the most important things in how wildlife see you is not as much the pattern, as the way that light actually reflects off of surfaces. So, if you go out and buy brand new shiny camouflage clothing, it might actually reflect light and stand out more than an old wool jacket or an old wool sweater that's kind of dull in color. And again, I'm not saying... Some of those nice fancy camo patterns are awesome, and they absolutely work. There's a ton of research going into it, I'm not ripping on that, but I'm saying when you're starting out, don't spend the money until you kind of know exactly what you want. So, you can go out and just get yourself some nice comfortable earth tone clothing. Wool is also nice because if you're out in wet weather, your wool will actually still keep you warm.

There's that saying, cotton kills. Cotton just sucks the heat out of your body, whereas wool will actually maintain heat even if it gets wet, it's durable, it's quiet when it rubs up against itself. So, there's a lot of nice things about wool, but anyways, nice, comfortable, earth tone clothing, don't need to spend a lot of money, and you don't even need camo. Some of the best old time hunters around here hunt in flannel shirts and jeans, and they have success every year, so you don't need to spend a lot of money on that. You want a nice pair of footwear, and then probably actually your safety gear is maybe the next most important thing. You want to have a compass or a GPS, so you don't get lost. That's an important thing to have out with you. You're going to want to have a nice knife with you to actually, one, just a knife is really important in the woods.

But beyond that, to process your harvest and put a little bit the thought, how am I going to get my harvest out of the woods afterwards, and then how am I going to process it? And that's really all you need. You need your tool, you need your clothing, and you need a way to get it out of the woods and harvest it. Everything beyond that, calls, fancy camo patterns, more expensive guns, all of that is kind of gravy, and buy that once you kind of know what you're talking about a little bit, and you know what you want and why you're buying it, not just because it looks fancy at the hunting store. So, that's kind of my advice for new hunters.

Melissa: No, I love that, and I have to say with speaking on the wool and the clothing, because predominantly here at the beginning of the hunting season, we aren't snowy, but we're wet. And so when you first go outside, say it's 50 degrees and kind of rainy out, it's not super cold, but if you're out there for a couple of hours, it suddenly gets very cold over time, and so that comfortability aspect is super key because if you're super miserable, you are not going to want to stay out there on your hunt, that quickly becomes something where you're like, "I'm freezing. I'm so cold," and so I love that, and very much wool is something that we take advantage of a lot because if we can also kind of balance between almost snowing, but then being rain and it can even kind of flirt back and forth throughout the day.

So having something that if it becomes wet, doesn't make you cold at the same time, it's not a raincoat because they're quite noisy as well as certain rubber boots, you're not going to be able to move without the animal hearing you and spooking them all out. So, clothing as well as your tool is also really important. And gosh, there's so much more we could go into, Chris, but there's not enough time in a single episode to cover everything. But one of the things that you mentioned was a virtual hunt camp. So, talk to me a little bit more about that. What's a virtual hunt camp?

Chris: Oh, this was an idea. We kind of started up during COVID, so I never actually imagined myself teaching hunting skills. It's always something I've done kind of as a personal pursuit, and then I started realizing there's so many people that have a similar kind of story of my own. They were brought up in the suburbs or maybe they were even brought up in a hunting family, but no one taught them for whatever reason. Hunting is intimidating and they want to learn how to hunt, but they just don't have a community, a culture around them anywhere. There's almost like a gap in that lineage. I feel like if you went back 100 years, most families had... And maybe even less than 100 years, most families had hunting in their lineage. Now, I'd say that's actually become more the rarity, so you have these broken lineages.

Well, my grandpa used to hunt or my great-grandpa or my great-grandma or whatever, but no one has in a couple of generations, how do I get started? So, we were starting to think about this and it was actually during the whole COVID thing when we couldn't get together, and one of the places I've learned the most hunting is when you're out hunting with a group of people and often we go out and hunt by ourselves during the day, but we all get back together at evening and we call that the hunt camp.

So, we all go out and let's say we're going to go away for a week and we're all staying out at a cabin in the woods, you spend the days by yourself, but you come in the evening and that's when the stories of the day get told. And there is so many gems in there, and I feel like that's when my hunting knowledge really started to skyrocket because you could come back in and say, "Well I didn't see anything today or I saw a deer and I spooked him. What do I do now, or why do you think he spooked?"

And you start having those conversations about what went well, what went wrong, and what's the plan tomorrow? What are you going to try next? Or I'm having this issue with my gear or my shot or whatever, and you just start having those conversations. So, I realized how much value there was with those hunt camps. So we thought, what if we started a virtual hunt camp for people that don't have their own hunting community? So, we ran that for a couple of years during COVID where during the hunting seasons we would get together every week or every other week and we would have these calls and I invited a bunch of very experienced hunters to the call, so we'd all just be kind of having our hunt talk, talking about what we were doing during the day, and the students could kind of listen in to the hunt talk and just kind pick up on how we're approaching it, how we're adapting and the strategies.

And then of course, as some of the people listening started to hunt themselves, they would bring their stories and say, "Hey, Chris, I just went out today. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, this happened, what do I do now?" And then we'd have a team of people that would all kind of weigh in and share on it. So, we've actually been developing this into a program we're calling the Hunter's Journey, and we are doing in-person classes now as well up in Ontario, Canada, but we're also doing these virtual online hunt camp experiences where people can just be part of the talk and basically have a community to support them while they're binding or developing their own community where they actually live.

Melissa: Oh, I love that, so where's the best place for people to find out more about that if they want to join the virtual events?

Chris: We have a website, it's called thehuntersjourney.com, so thehuntersjourney.com, and right now there's no intake for the program as we're recording this, but if you sign up there for the waiting list, you'll also get kind of on the newsletter for that where we send out a bunch of information for beginner hunters. And if you do sign up for that, I actually send out some videos on figuring out the regulations and on picking your gear and camo and all those kinds of things. So, you get almost a little mini course just by signing up for the newsletter. So if you go to thehuntersjourney.com, you can sign up and then we usually run these virtual hunt camps during the spring and fall hunt. So, whenever we launch our next sessions of the virtual hunt camp, you'll get invited and the details will come out through that newsletter.

Melissa: Perfect, we'll put the link in the blog post that goes with this episode beneath the video for our podcast YouTube watchers. Well, this was really fun and I think it's important because as we talk about skillsets, I don't think hunting is one that comes to front of mind as much, at least in the homesteading community as a lot of others, but as I was sharing with you a little bit before we started recording, even within my husband's family, his older brother went hunting with his grandpa and his dad and got to have that personally, you got your deer and shown all the things to do to process that and get it in from the woods, et cetera, but my husband was so much younger that he didn't actually get to go on any of those and get that personal experience.

So, sometimes you even see that gap within a family and it's just because you've got older siblings versus younger siblings or there'd be different variances. So, I think it's really important that we bring some light to this skillset as well and make it accessible for folks who might not have that person. So, I love that you're doing this virtual hunt camp where you're kind of bringing the best of the old-fashioned skillset in the modern world together in a really helpful, cool way for community building, so thank you for coming on.

Chris: One other thing I wanted to say on that, I'll be really quick, but the other one I've heard a lot is in some families the men hunt and the women aren't invited, but historically there's all kinds of phenomenal women hunters. So, we also wanted to create a culture and a community where women could feel like, "Hey, I can show up and I'm not going to be judged, and I'm welcome to be here to learn this skillset as well," and we actually have some phenomenal female mentors in our course as well and female instructors that have been hunting their whole life just as far as the accessibility piece there.

Melissa: Oh, awesome. I love that because I have to say with the bow hunting, like I said, I don't have the upper strength that my husband does, and so the way that obviously, and you're going to have different size bows based upon your lever lengths and all those different things too, but sometimes his style, he can use brute force in order to get that, whereas I felt like I had to kind of maneuver and shift and maybe get a little bit different stance and stuff in order to get the same effect. So, I love that you have some female hunters in there to kind of talk to those different aspects and that people are doing it together. So, that's really awesome and thank you so much for coming on, Chris.

Chris: Thanks, Melissa. It's been a pleasure to hang out with you.

Melissa: Well, I hope that you enjoyed that episode as much as I did, and if you want to dive further into wild game, then you'll want to go back into the podcast archives and check out episode number 353 where we talk about cooking with wild game, so that it tastes amazing. And onto our verse of the week, we are in Colossians chapter three, verse 23, "Whatever you do work hardily as for the Lord and not for men." This has been a verse, and there's several verses that are similar to this without the Bible, but this has kind of been something that I have been chewing over this past week, especially when I may be a little bit grumpy or might be something that I don't necessarily enjoy doing or something like that, and remembering that all the work that we're doing, but especially when it's something that's very much feels like work, and sometimes that's physical, sometimes that can be menial tasks, that type of thing.

Sometimes it's not so much physical, but certain things that you're doing on the computer, depending on what your job is and in what context, but reminding myself that whatever I am doing, in all things that I am doing, if I do it as an offer and as a service to the Lord, even if it's working for a boss you might not like, or even with people that you might not like, or just simply doing a job that you don't really enjoy, I think we all have tasks that are a necessary evil that we don't necessarily enjoy doing, but have to be done, but in light of that, whatever those circumstances for you may fall under, when I remember that I am doing this unto the Lord. Other people might think I'm doing it for them, especially if you're working for a boss, but if I remember that I am doing this as a service to the Lord, it is a sacrifice towards him.

It is done in order to bring him honor, when that changes the way that you feel and look at a job, so that can completely transform it, you're doing the exact same thing as far as what you are doing, but it changes your mindset and you shift and the way that you think about that changes because it then becomes a gift to the Lord, and that completely changes the way you feel when you're doing it and also the way that you do it sometimes. And it's really amazing because when you look at the Bible, at least for myself, when I look at Bible verses and I look at those things, you can look at them as a list of to do or not to do. Really you can kind of break that down. You don't do this, you're supposed to do this, and it becomes almost like a black and white thing of just a list of things to do and to not to do.

However, when you're in relationship with Jesus and with God and you start applying these foundational things in scripture that we're taught to do, you realize it's not just a list of things to do and not to do. They have very real tangible benefits that we often don't understand or fully appreciate until we're doing them, and we're doing them from a place of love and faith that God is only going to ask us to do things that He knows are for our benefit. And sometimes they can be cloaked in wording or understanding where we think we're doing it for God's benefit, it's to praise him, that's to his benefit, which he does enjoy our praises. It's one of the reasons that I feel that he puts it that we're to do that, but truthfully, it's how we enter into his presence and it's for our benefit.

Because when you view something as a gift and you're giving it unto someone that you love, that completely changes how you feel about something, and the tone, honestly for the rest of your day, for the rest of your hour, and even for the rest of your life, when you approach something in a very different manner than is just menial work or something that has to be done. So no matter what it is that you are doing, I am trying to remind myself and actually rededicating certain aspects of our homestead and of my life and of things that I'm involved in, that I am working heartily at them, not for myself and not for other people, but for the Lord as a gift, if you will, to him.

It's been pretty transformational and one that I would highly recommend that you try, so this is going to be one of those verses I know that I'm going to be coming back to and chewing on and meditating on and reapplying as much as needed. So, I hope that it serves you in the same way that it has been serving me. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode, and I look forward to being back here with you next week. Blessings and mason jars for now, my friends.