Outdoors sports teach responsibility, discipline

THROUGH A

DECOY’S E

YE

CHUCK K

OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN

I watched a buddy’s daughter step into the shooting station, mentally prepare for the first true pair of the station, and call for the birds. I heard her say “Pull!” and watched the pair come streaking out of the launchers about six feet apart.

After the first 30 feet, they began to separate, with one flying fairly flat and starting to drop, and the other rising and breaking left. She broke the first clay and then moved to the second, breaking it about one second later.

She repeated this two more times, sweeping the station. She was putting together a good round of sporting clays for this shoot.

A few moments later, I watch another buddy’s son sweep the same station; he swept many stations that day. In the end, he broke 90 out of 100 clays, winning the event.

I’ve known both of these fine young adults since they were very small children and have watched them grow up at competitive dog field events and in the grouse woods over the last 25 years for one. One is 30 and building his first house, the other is 21; she works full time and is pursuing an engineering degree.

They learned responsibility by caring for and training dogs. They learned how to handle pressure by running dogs at events. They learned discipline while hunting safely over long hikes with hunting bird dogs.

They clearly learned mental concentration, how to break down a scenario, and put together a solution while at the range. All life lessons, all centered around this thing we call hunting. I thought of other people their age who can’t hold jobs, struggle with life events, and make poor decision after poor decision.

Not that the hunting lifestyle means they won’t struggle or that the lifestyle is the only way to instill and teach discipline, responsibility, problem solving, and mental fortitude, but it succeeds a fair amount of the time as a framework for parents to work with.

Parents needs to work with what tools and means they have available. The hunting lifestyle isn’t available for parents to use as a tool if you live in New York proper or Chicago proper. It’s an advantage we have living where we live. We’ve taken advantage of this and other tools available to us. I have watched several friends from around here do the same. It’s good to see things come together for younger adults. Succeeding in life as an adult, participating and coming to the group as equals, entertaining the group with the stories of their successes from daily battles we all face in life. Watching one continue to rise and the other surpass us as he comes into his prime. They both work hard and they have learned how to play hard as well. They are beginning to develop and follow their path. One’s a bit farther along than the other, but both clearly plan to continue the hunting lifestyle and even expand what they do in the outdoors. They have gained confidence through all this as well.

But the best part is watching them have fun displaying all this. At one time we, the parents, were the ones coming into our own and reveling in the joy of it all. Watching our children grow and succeed and come into their own has provided us all with an enhanced sense of enjoyment in this hunting lifestyle. We did this with friends and now those that we raised are becoming friends of our friends.

We shot clays, assessed a young pup that belonged to one of us, and talked about the others pups we are starting. We talked about how to fine tune our hunting plans further for this fall. We planned another day like this for a couple of weeks. We confirmed our plans for the big camp.

We learned about the enjoyment of watching the others experience pride in their adult children’s successes. We also spent a fair amount of time lamenting our growing list of maladies and shared ideas on how to pretend we are still young and don’t need to plan how to get out of bed in the least painful way every morning.

We did this getting ready for the hunting season that starts in less than 30 days. And, like many things that you realize along the way of life, I think all of us old timers had several realizations as we watched this unfold.