Rich Landers: Kids, adults share valuable lessons in wild

Getting kids into the outdoors doesn’t come as naturally as it did years ago, before parents had to stand in line for a 1-on-1 moment in their child’s busy schedule.

I was reminded of this last week when a friend lamented that his high school son’s club-sports practice schedule was spoiling family plans for hunting and backcountry skiing even during the holiday school break.

My father had it much easier than modern parents, partly because he had cooperation.

Our parish priest celebrated a convenient 4:30 a.m. Mass on the opening Sunday of deer hunting season.

Our central Montana high school coach – a legendary winner in 8-man football – made concessions for hunting and even came hunting with the families of his players.

We were encouraged to learn lessons on and off the playing field.

For example, Coach taught me the valuable lesson that there can be consequences for upstaging a person in power.

I had given him the first shot at the big mule deer buck we spotted while sneaking along a high ridge in the Little Belt Mountains. My mistake was backing him up and dropping the trophy buck with the next shot.

Coach graciously recounted the hunt the following day at practice, praised my marksmanship and treated the entire team to a rest break so they could cheer me on while I ran 10 extra 100-yard sprints.

Nowadays, family schedules are too full for regular family meals. Finding time for hunting is difficult even in Pend Oreille County, where no kid lives farther than a mile from deer, elk, moose or wild turkeys.

But the rewards remain great for adults who make the effort to get a kid out of the box and into the wild.

Consider Greg Koehn, a PDO County hunter education instructor I have come to admire for his commitment to instilling hunting safety and ethics as well as respect for wildlife into the lives of hundreds of young people.

Hunter ed instructors volunteer so much time to helping other kids, we sometimes forget they have kids in their own families who share the same blurry schedules.

In a recent e-mail, Koehn was summing up a great big-game hunting season, with quick mentions of his tag-filling success and that of several friends.

But the bulk of the missive was devoted to the most rewarding of all the hunts, which involved a right of passage for his 15-year-old grandson, Jake.

“As he was involved with the Cusick Panther basketball team, practicing and preparing for the upcoming season and just finishing with football, he really didn’t have much time to hunt,” Koehn said, describing a scenario familiar to many parents.

“Undecided whether he should hunt or practice, I understood. We made arrangements to hunt the last day of the muzzleloader season, a Saturday. Got up early and headed out in freezing temperatures to the blind in hopes of harvesting at least a doe, maybe a buck.

“We sat together in the blind nearly two hours before common sense prevailed and we headed back to the truck, turned on the heater and had a cup of grandpa’s rot-gut coffee to warm the insides. Jake never mentioned his freezing toes.

“As we headed back to the blind, we spotted a single doe, about 100 yards away. Jake said it was too far for a clear shot. It vanished, and we marched on to the blind, where we barely got settled before another large doe and fawn stepped into the open at 100 yards.”

Again, the boy didn’t feel confident about the shot through the woods, so he passed.

Shortly afterward, in the opposite direction, another doe and fawn appeared, this time about 80 yards away, but still not in a clean shooting situation.

“We had agreed to hunt until 1 p.m. before heading back to the school for Jake’s JV basketball game at 2 p.m.,” Koehn said. “Wouldn’t you know it, about 12:55, out stepped a large doe and her rather small fawn not 20 yards directly in front of us.

“Crunch time. As we kept our eyes on the deer, I whispered that it was his call. I glanced over and I could see the gears were grinding. He was biting his upper lip and giving the situation much, much thought. Not once did he raise the muzzleloader, keeping it steady on his lap.

“We sat there until 1:15 p.m. Knowing we would be late to the game if he shot, he opted to not fill his tag this season. He gave the doe a pass.

“We exited the blind and walked past the doe and fawn, which ran off about 10 more yards before pausing broadside and looking back as if to say, ‘Where did they come from?’

“As we were walking back to truck, Jake mentioned the doe was ‘huge’ but the fawn was rather small and might not make it through the winter.

” ‘Besides,’ he reasoned, ‘next year we will have, perhaps, three more deer to hunt, possibly a buck, which he thought might be the fawn by the way it acted.

“I told him that what he did was very compassionate, that it took guts to pass up an easy shot and go home with an unfilled deer tag, that he had learned a lesson I cannot teach in any hunter education class, ever.”

It’s one of those lessons learned only by hunters who have the maturity to teach themselves.

“I told him I would share my deer with him,” said Koehn, noting that he would drink rot-gut coffee every day if it could make him feel that proud.

“Long story,” Koehn said, “Jake played his best basketball game ever that afternoon, rebounding and handling himself like a man on the court.

“In my eyes, he stepped out of childhood into an adult world in just 15 minutes of Crunch Time on a deer stand.”