For most of my adult life, my preferred recreational activities have taken place outside. My father introduced me to camping, fishing, and hunting when I was very young and I have enjoyed those pursuits ever since. Team sports were also part of me life in high school and college (plus some “beer league” softball for a few years after college) but I have always returned to those earliest outdoor activities for my personal satisfaction.
As difficult as it is to rank my level of enjoyment of these outdoor recreations, I think my favorite is camping since it can be done all year. Certainly the best part of camping in the winter is a distinct lack of bugs. Fishing can span three seasons (spring, summer, and fall) while hunting takes place almost exclusively in the autumn. All three can also lend themselves to contemplation and introspection as well as adding other quiet pastimes such as photography and writing. Time spent in the outdoors can be as single-minded or as multifaceted as you choose.
Often when I am hunting I sit in one chosen place for long periods of time. My father taught me how to scout a potential hunting area during the spring and summer to look for likely places where deer would pass. Generally this involves identifying the paths that deer use as they travel between food and water sources and their bedding sites. Deer often use the same corridors year after year so that they wear discernible routes in the grass and underbrush. Male deer (bucks) will often have favorite places where they establish territory through scent marking and rubbing the velvet off their antlers every year. Female deer (doe) will usually also follow the same paths and their young will learn to walk there as well. Deer are predictable in some ways but it is impossible to anticipate their every move.
For many years I referred to this “sit and wait” tactic as “hunting”, just like all of the other techniques that I was taught to use. No single approach works every time so it is good to have several alternative methods that you can use. One day a friend called the waiting method “sitting on deer watch”. What a perfect description. So perfect that I adopted it immediately. That is clearly the best descriptor for simply sitting while watching for a deer to pass nearby. It is a quiet, low impact method that usually works best with minimal wind. Other tactics, like stalking, can work better on windy days. But, of course, no technique is ever perfect or guaranteed. It’s called “hunting”, not “getting”.
My favorite method, given the appropriate weather conditions is sitting on deer watch. It gives one the extended opportunity to observe your surroundings in detail and to feel like you are becoming part of the forest. Often while sitting still on deer watch I am visited by small wildlife, like the squirrel that runs over my foot or the chickadee that lands on the barrel of my firearm. Watching the sun crest a hill behind me and begin to illuminate the valley below is a sight I never tire of seeing. If you hunt, or even if you don’t, go sit on deer watch in the woods to see what happens. It’s a great way to spend a day.