Analyze the Hunt but Don't Make Excuses - Cat Dog Chronicles Excerpt
Despite what the non-hunting public thinks, hound hunting, I have discovered, is really, really, really difficult.
Really hard.
Painfully challenging.
Humbling in a thousand different ways.
The dogs—some days they work with me flawlessly and we’re a well-oiled machine while other days it feels like we’re in a grueling wrestling match, butting heads like rams, often in the most literal sense.
The terrain—getting around the hills I hunt is a huge undertaking on its own and rarely are there trails that lead to where the dogs end up.
The game—wild animals will do what they are going to do and always seem to find a way to extract the highest levels of frustration out of a guy, especially for a newbie hound hunter like myself.
Every time I hunt, around every corner, there are hundreds of different excuses lurking in the shadows ready to be gobbled up and vomited from my mouth to explain why things didn’t go exactly as I had planned.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
Throughout the book, I’ve been trying to paint a picture of how remarkably difficult it is to tree bobcats with dogs. Writing this has been a cathartic experience and reviewing my entire hunting season from start to finish has made me feel extremely proud of how far I’ve come as a hunter and houndsman.
But still, there are many things I’ve learned about myself and one of those is that I need to work harder to combat the impulse to make excuses.
And I’m not talking about blabbing excuses to my mentor or friends, though I have done plenty of that, I’m talking about making excuses to myself—justifying things to make myself feel better.
It is bitter medicine to accept the cold hard facts of reality, especially when it comes to making mistakes, but that is, I know, the righteous way forward.
I hang my head in shame at the excuses I’ve made over the last season because I know the only one harmed through all of it is, well, me.
The dogs could care less—I know, and they know, that they are always doing their best.
There are so many factors that play into achieving success when hunting with hounds, and many of them are beyond my control, but I’m resolving that those few factors that are under my control I must do everything I can to manage them at the highest level my abilities allow.
The book “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink comes to mind and I think the concepts therein apply to hound hunting very well.
When viewing the sport through that lens, hound hunting can almost be treated as a modality for self-improvement. And I really like that thought.
With that, stay tuned for my next book, “Self Help for Hound Hunters.” Just kidding.
If you’ve been enjoying these excerpts from my new book, Cat Dog Chronicles, you’ll like the actual book even more. Go get it now on Amazon and be sure to leave a review!
P.S. If you’re not much of a reader and more of a listener, the audio book version will be coming soon … as soon as these dang hounds will quite down enough for me to start recording!