Rob,

First off, this is an excellent thread, thanks for starting it up, I too look forward to hearing what everyone has to say.

Remembering why I hunt. For me its about the mountains and all that inhabits them, Dad introducing it to me as a young child! What a tremendous teaching tool the outdoors can serve as. It's sharing them with the folks that I so care about andmore importantly seeing the smiles on others faces. I can't wait till my boys can hunt with me. Keeping in touch with my mentor, sharing in his successes...The practicing, the mistakes and lessons learned. The preperation and honing of skills. Hanging stands, building blinds, finding a shed antlers, an art? a science? a little of both in my book......climbing through the bluffs, coming out of the woods 2 hours after dark from a long hike, getting home at daylight after getting a big ole bear or bullelkout...all night long...praying on my hands and knees under the light of a lantern following a poor blood trail while its snowing to beat heck, knowing itsresponsibility to do everythingI can to recover a critter...finding him and realizing how much you learned just from one blood trail or lack there of it......conversely....losing a critter and vowing to be better the next time...and then working to not make the same mistake again...

It's about experiencing everything from the smell of a fresh rain in the timber to the slight glimpes of an old whitetail buck sneaking out behind me, to eyeing a doe and her famly of youngin's working through a creek bottom on their way to their eveningfeeding area, the sound of a screaming bull elk that stands the hair up on my neck, then the thunder of the ground shaking as he moves in two get a closer look at my soft cow calls...the gobble and then strutof a boss tom, the stealth quiet of a big ole bruin moving in...the foolishness of a couple tree squirrels jockying over a pine cone. The unmistakable feeling of chill...as a pack of wolves howls... a moose that won't get out of the road! the coyote that almost steps on me after a rattling session...my "war room" of maps and sattelite photos...tracking them all...

Somewhere along my life of hunting I fell in love with bow-hunting the old bucks of my area. It's not like they grow on trees here but they are out there, its the scouting and searching for them that keeps me revved up year around. Now that passion has spread to finding the old bulls and bears in the area too. I can't imagine not being able to do something that involves hunting on a daily basis. My family fills the freezer every year with deer, elk, bear and turkey. We don't buy meat at the grocery store, we like butchering our own critters,it's a family tradition that's been passed down for generations. I appreciate afull freezerheading into winter. Every time we sit for a meal and give thanks the hunt replays in my mind.

The art of taxidermy and the hunt recaptured....every now and then I get the chance tosneak off into my basement were my sheds and critters reside...