Since starting college, I’ve more-or-less put hunting, fishing, and all other traditional outdoors adventures on the back-burner, to much of my family’s disappointment.
Sure, I still spend lots of time out-of-doors with my expensive camera, shooting wildlife and the wilderness with it. And, I go off-roading with my dad in the jeep about once per month in the summers.
But as far as outdoors activities that are regulated by their own licenses and laws, and are revered by my rural, redneck loved ones, I’ve pretty much stopped doing those. The last time I went hunting was in the fall of 2018. The last time I rode horses was in the spring of 2021, at an unfamiliar stables with ridiculously strict rules in Washington state (I wasn’t even allowed to trot my horse, let alone canter like my cousin promised we could). I haven’t successfully caught a fish since… well… I honestly can’t remember the last time I did, even though I spent all of last summer with my spincast reel, prowling the banks of the Harriman and Johnson reservoirs.
On top of that, I’ve been steadily attending college, ramping up the course load and difficulty with each semester, which means I’ve been less willing to play hooky to go hunting or fishing. Also, I’m still too chickenshit to even give even backyard camping a shot, so there’s that.
In other words, I’m slowly morphing into the liberal yuppie type my rural loved ones love to joke about.
But, despite my (largely temporary) change in lifestyle, I haven’t lost my love for the wilderness or the desire to get back into hunting, fishing, and horsemanship. I still prefer the country life over the city life. I still dream of owning a cabin and enough land to hunt and fish on in the middle of nowhere, far, far away from civilization. I still find myself fondly looking over pictures and objects that bring back memories of the family farm. And, I cherish the rare(ish) times I visit the valley and fail to encounter a single soul the whole time I’m there.
Plus, the want to hunt and fish again has pushed itself to the forefront of my mind, especially as the fall draws near.
However, unlike hiking and photography, which are usually things I do spontaneously without any planning involved, hunting and fishing take a lot of planning and researching (and cash) to accomplish. I can’t simply go out to some public land with my rifle any time I want and shoot an elk. That method of hunting was outlawed well over a hundred years ago, after it almost caused every big game animal in America to go extinct.
Nowadays, I have to apply for a chance to draw a tag for a specific area in the state in April, which means I have to have my hunting grounds picked out and hotel/cabin reserved by March at the latest.
All that year, I have to be diligently practicing shooting my weapon-of-choice, so when I’m actually aiming at game, I can be as accurate as I possibly can. As someone who lives with a very anti-gun mom, I’d have to drive across town to my grandparents’ to get my gun, and then drive a long way to some public land in the middle of nowhere to shoot unless I want to shoot at a crowded range (which honestly sucks), and then bring the gun back to my grandparents after a full day of shooting, and finally go home (unless, of course, I choose to stay with my grandparents for the fall, which would make getting to college every day an even greater headache).
Even worse, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t draw a tag during the first raffle (which happens in April), which means I’d have to log into the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website the literal second leftover tags went on sale in June, wait forever to get in, pray to God that the website doesn’t crash as I’m desperately searching the catalogs for my wanted tags, and miraculously reserve and purchase a tag before someone else gets to it. So far, I’ve played that game twice and lost it both times.
Is it any wonder why I’ve decided to sit out the past couple hunting seasons while already torturing myself with college?
When it comes to fishing, while it’s not nearly as logistically nightmarish as hunting is for a city-dweller like me, I haven’t been a very successful angler for a long time. Granted, I’m not the most experienced angler out there. It takes a lot of research and patience to successfully lure in a fish, because every lake, river, and reservoir’s different from the others, and contain different fish that are used to eating different things. Plus, I’m not exactly willing to spend shitloads of free-time and money on lures that may work for some places near where my great uncle Courtney fishes, but doesn’t even get a nibble from the fish around me.
So again… is it any wonder why I’ve stowed away my fishing poles and gear, and didn’t even bother to renew my fishing license this year?
However, a few weekends ago at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, a fly-fishing store was advertising free, first-come-first-serve fly-fishing 101 classes to those who stopped by their stand. While I wasn’t interested in that stand, which looked to me like any other advertisement stand promising a one-in-a-million chance to win an all-inclusive fishing trip to Alaska if you gave them permission to spam your inbox with useless shit, my grandma Connie got to talking with one of the guys running it. She ended up signing herself, my grandpa, and me up for a free fly-fishing 101 class a couple weekends later.
Thank God she did.
Needless to say, I had a blast at that class. Not only was the class held before the store opened, which meant I was able to walk around the place in silence without anyone bothering me, but we were brought to the roof of the Cherry Creek Whole Foods parking lot to practice casting expensive fly-fishing rods at velcro fish, which seemed to come naturally to me.
Unlike spincast fishing, I discovered that fly-fishing was a lot more physiologically engaging. Instead of simply launching a heavy, baited lure into some weeds in hopes of luring out an invisible edible fish from under a log in murky waters, fly-fishing used light lures and emphasized launching those tiny things directly above or in front of a targeted fish, as trout, salmon, and other river-dwelling species like to stay moving above the rocks and logs.
In other words, fly-fishing felt a lot like hunting to me. Only, instead of aiming and shooting a rifle or a bow at a target animal, I had to aim and “shoot” my 10-foot-long line at a target fish, which almost always got a fish to bite as the lure mimicked the impact of prey on the surface of the water (at least, according to the fishermen instructing the class). But, I've since fallen into the fly-fishing rabbit hole, and it seems like those guys really were telling the truth.
Long story short, I was hooked (pun intended)!
After attending the class, in which I felt I learned a lot, I started wandering around the Orvis store and saw that the cheapest rod they had was almost $300! Worse, it didn’t even come with a reel, leaders, flies, or anything else for that matter. When I asked one of the employees how much they were charging for the cheapest starter kit they had, I was told it would cost more than $500. But, I wasn’t exactly surprised given that I was shopping around Cherry Creek North.
I figured my grandparents and I ought to go someplace else to pick up our fishing gear. That place, of course, being Cabelas (AKA the one store I could spend literal hours in and not get bored).
However, as a broke-as-shit college student, I wouldn’t have had the funds to even shop around Cabela’s if I hadn’t spent the last five years saving up hundreds of dollars worth in Cabela’s gift cards. Originally, I was saving up those gift cards for a 16-gauge shotgun similar to the one I shot my first turkey with. But, after several unsuccessful attempts to convince my very anti-gun mom to allow me to keep that shotgun (or any firearm whatsoever) at home, secured with a chamber lock and everything so nobody but I could use it, I largely gave up on the prospect of purchasing a firearm. Then, covid hit, which triggered all sorts of inflation-causing problems, essentially ensuring that I’d never be able to afford a shotgun (even with the gift cards) till I suffered- er I mean- put myself through college, got a well-paying job, and moved out of my mom’s basement.
I did, however, save up way more than enough gift cards to afford a decent fly-fishing starter kit, which would enable me to take part in nature once again, instead of simply being a passive observer of it.
