From 1975 through 1980, two behavioral scientists at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse Campus (Dr. Robert Jackson and Dr. Robert Norton, both hunters), interviewed more than 1,000 sport hunters to see what makes us Nimrods tick. What their research revealed was fascinating: Most hunters pass through five distinct stages or phases during their hunting careers .... and they usually don't realize they are doing so until much later in life. Not all the hunters necessarily experienced all five stages, but most did, and if you’re a serious hunter you likely will too.
Shooter Stage: When most folks first begin hunting, they measure “success” afield by the number of shots fired. For instance, if they get a lot of shooting on a particular day, say during a squirrel, rabbit, or duck hunt, that’s a good day. Taking their first game animal is the highlight of this particular stage.
Limiting-Out Stage: Once hunters have killed a few game animals, they next progress to the Limiting-Out Stage. “Success” at this stage is measured by taking the legal daily bag limit of game animals.
Trophy Stage: Hunters then progress to the Trophy Stage, where they strive to take only specific game animals. For example, heavily antlered bucks or mature tom wild turkeys mean “success.”
Method Stage: This stage in a hunter’s maturation involves taking game only by a certain hunting method, such as deer hunting only with a bow and arrows (not a gun), or grouse hunting only with a smaller-gauge shotgun, not a 12 gauge.
Sportsman Stage: If a person has hunted most of their life, a certain mellowing-out sets in at about age 40 to 50 or older. It’s a time when getting lots of shooting, limiting-out, killing trophy game animals, or hunting in a certain way no longer matters quite so much, or possibly not at all. It’s a time when a hunter now enjoys and appreciates the entire hunting experience.
So, where in those five stages of a hunter are you? In evaluating your hunting career thus far—rookie, veteran, or somewhere in between—keep in mind that there are no right or wrong answers to that question. Also, you may be in more than one category depending upon the species of game you choose to hunt. For instance, when hunting small game you may best fit in the Limiting-Out Stage, but when big-game hunting you might be in the Trophy Stage. Or you may move back and forth between or among two or more of the stages. It’s a fluid system of ranking, but interesting nonetheless.
I’ve enjoyed hunting for 60 years, and now—from the perspective of age 73—I can well recall passing through each of The Five Stages of a Hunter. I was fortunate to grow up in the Midwest (Ohio) and to have had my father as my hunting mentor. We hunted cottontail rabbits and ring-necked pheasants in those early days, as larger game such as deer and turkeys were practically nonexistent in northern Ohio. Both species had been extirpated from the Buckeye State early in the 20th century. By mid-century they were being reintroduced, but hadn’t yet worked their way far enough north to be legally hunted, so Dad and I contented ourselves with hunting the uplands.
I began my hunting mentorship by first following my father afield without a firearm. Before being trusted with a gun I acted as the official “dog” of our hunts, kicking brush piles to scare out rabbits or wading through waist-high, briary weed fields in search of pheasants. But the hard work eventually paid off, and on my 13th birthday a single-shot, .410 shotgun appeared, along with my first hunting license. I can still remember the thrill of graduating to the status of becoming a “real hunter.” And yes, during that first fall, I measured a good day afield by how many times I got to pull the trigger (Shooter Stage), not so much if I hit anything or not.
My Limiting-Out Stage came when I was a teenager. Dad and I still hunted rabbits and pheasants, but I distinctly remember one particular Thanksgiving when the hunting was especially productive. I had graduated to carrying a 12-gauge and, shooting well that particular morning had taken three rabbits, one short of an Ohio daily limit of four.
After enjoying the holiday feast that Mom had waiting for us at noon, Dad settled in on the couch to watch football on TV, but I was still thinking about that fourth rabbit. I had a driver’s license by then, so I asked my father if I could take the family car and drive back to the hunting field in search of my first limit of cottontails. He tossed me the keys, and that fourth and final rabbit fell about an hour later.
By the early 1980s, wild turkeys had become legal game throughout most of Ohio and a buddy and I taught ourselves to hunt them. My Trophy Stage of hunting happened when I no longer shot whatever male wild turkey walked in front of me (jake or tom), limiting myself instead to mature longbeard gobblers.
Waterfowl were next on my hunting agenda, and after hunting from blinds for a few years I was fortunate to locate and purchase a vintage, original Dan Kidney Sneak Boat. The boat had been built at Kidney’s famous shop in De Pere, Wisconsin, in 1919. So now, duck hunting was all about the Method Stage, meaning that how it was done became important. Hunting the sneak boat on big water, Lake Erie or its adjacent Sandusky Bay, was what mattered.
My Sportsman Stage kicked in right on schedule, around age 40. My wife and I had two growing sons by that time, and wanting to spend more time with the boys and mentor them into hunting—as my father had done for me—became the priority. Consequently, I sold the sneak boat, bought beagles, and my sons and I hunted rabbits together for many years before they both married and moved away to establish families of their own.
Rabbits to rabbits, I’d come full circle.
My continued mentoring in recent years has focused on my five grandsons. Mentoring is one of the greatest gifts you can give a person because it involves sharing not only your hard-earned expertise but also your time, a very valuable commodity these days. Also, you never know how mentoring might change a young person’s life. In my case, it led to a professional career in natural resources management.
Following high school, I was so smitten by the outdoors that I just had to try to make it my life’s career. Consequently, in 1970, I enrolled at Ohio State University, majoring in wildlife management, graduating four years later with a Bachelor of Science degree. I then went to work for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, serving my first five years as a state wildlife officer, then transitioning to wildlife education and communications work.
The last seven years of my 26-year career was as editor of that state wildlife agency’s two wildlife magazines: Wild Ohio and Wild Ohio for Kids. Since retiring in 2002, I’ve spent the past 23 years as a fulltime freelance outdoors writer and photographer, writing for such magazines as NRA Family and others.
All that to ask, who are you mentoring? You may not know what effect you are having on a young hunter’s life until years later, but chances are the ultimate result will be well worth it, wherever it leads them.
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