I'm off after the great Hart

© 2010 Joshua Stark

In a few hours, I'm on the road to meet up with Phillip from the Hog Blog, and pursue both blacktail deer and wild pigs. 

The last deer I took, a beautiful, tiny, blacktail doe during the late season archery hunt in Monterey County, happened while my wife was pregnant with our now three-year-old daughter.  I was elated that my daughter was made out of the coast blacktail, and I've told her that her whole life (she's also made out of the wild rainbow surfperch and rainbow trout of the Sierra).

This year, we are expecting another baby, a boy, some time in September or early October.  Of course, I again hope to bring home venison and pork.

However, even if I come home with only life-sustaining stories with what I know will be a wonderful, powerful time, I am still lucky.  From my relatively new community of blogging friends, my baby is already made from coast blacktail and wild boar.  For, we were invited to Hank and Holly's Big Fat Greek Party back in Spring, where they served up wild sausages I believe were made from Maximus.  Later, they also provided me with venison stew meat, and chunks of Trinity River steelhead.

It sounds fru-fru hippie, I know, but it isn't that in my mind.  In my mind, places are very important, and places include the animals and plants that have thrived there for hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of years.  And though my family doesn't have the ancestral connections to this most beautiful of places, I have still thought myself a Californian, in love with the myriad habitats and climates, and the wonders they hold.  This is why I have taken off for the wilds my whole life.  This is why I hunt. 

And knowing that my children's synapses were formed from this place, that they have been nourished, if only a little, from these amazing lands, makes me very happy.