I have to agree with a lot of what others have said. It's just a different kind of excitement. When I was younger the saying "the anticipation is greater than the realization" came into play more for me than it does today. I still look foward to hunting season, but not with the same intensity as when I was a kid.
When I started hunting it was more of, "I hope I can get a deer this year", than "I hope I can get a big one this year", like I say these days. With everything I've learned over the years, it is more of a given that I'll kill deer. This doesn't take away from the love that I have for our sport though. I'm able to have a different anticipation for things like going to Alberta, which I only dreamed about when I was much younger. It's still the thing I love doing more than anything else, much like when I was a kid.
