By Rick Hall

Considering some of the trials and obstacles most of us face in our daily lives, it may seem a little silly to associate a trait as intense as fortitude with hunting success. I often wonder if I’m taking my love of hunting too seriously and if that energy would be better used in other areas of my life. The fact is though, I am a hunter, have been for my entire life, and always will be. Hunting is a major part of my identity, it’s helped me become a better person, and given me perspective that I likely wouldn’t have otherwise. I know that many of you feel the same way. We live for those few short months every year, to finally be who we are and where we were meant to be. We pour so much into our passion for the outdoors. We spend our money and devote countless hours of our time to this lifestyle, and for those reasons we should be willing to do whatever it takes to be as successful as we can. Needing extreme fortitude in our pursuit of big bucks is absolutely not an overstatement. No, it’s a necessity to ensure that our effort, blood, sweat and tears are not in vain, and to fulfill the desire that burns deep inside us hunters. 

Fortitude is the tool that allows us to push through pain, discomfort and adversity, so we can accomplish something that is important to us. We live in a world that caters to comfort and as we get lulled to sleep with fast food, on demand television and same day delivery, it is easy to lose the desire to do a little more, push a little harder. This lackadaisical mentality can bleed into every area of our life, and can be one of the biggest hurdles for finding success. This is as true in hunting as anything.

The hunting industry is full of products designed to make life as convenient and comfortable as possible for hunters. We can use cell cameras to get real time pictures and videos of wildlife. ATVs, golf carts, and even e-bikes are full of features that get us to and from the stand with ease. Almost every hunting club has shooting houses and blinds that are more like small resorts than they are a treestand. I am not at all opposed to these things and do not condemn their use. I use all of these things myself at times. However, prioritizing the chase of comfort instead of the chase for deer is a mindset that is backwards of what the hunter’s mindset should actually be.

After moving to Florida in 2013 and realizing that hunting public land was my only option for more hunting opportunities, I picked a piece of public ground about an hour from my house and decided to start spending all of my extra time finding deer and success there. I started scouting it in the summer of 2014, spending several solo weekends hiking through some pretty nasty terrain. Each trip came with some miserable moments, sweating my tail off and fighting yellow flies, mosquitoes and snakes every step of the way. Once the season began, I carried heavy climbers and hang-on stands through the palmetto flats and swamps, still fighting all of those biting critters and the FL heat. I was fortunate enough that year to see one nice buck and a few does, but nothing ever close enough for a shot. As the 2015 season approached, I repeated the process, scouting in tough conditions through the summer, and grinding through those same conditions during the season. The deer sightings picked up that year though and I knew I was honing in where I needed to be. Right after that season ended, I invited a friend to join me as I went to pull a couple of stands out. He was a lifelong Floridian and an outdoorsman, but he couldn’t wrap his head around why I would hunt like this, dealing with all of the discomforts that come with hunting public land in FL. All I could tell him is that I’m a hunter and it’s what I do. I also remember telling him that I knew I would ultimately be successful and when that did happen, I knew it would all be worth it. 

In September of 2016, it finally happened. On opening morning of the archery season, I arrowed a doe, and then followed that with a small 7 point buck the next morning. At this point in my hunting career, I had been blessed enough to harvest two bucks over 140” and several other really nice deer on private land in Alabama, but I don’t know if I’d ever felt the level of excitement and satisfaction that came with the harvest of these two FL deer. All of the hard work, pushing through multiple moments of wanting to quit, and showing the fortitude to finish what I started, brought forth a sense of pride that was hard to match. That weekend was a huge turning point in my hunting life, lighting a fire to continue hunting public land not just in FL, but across the country. 

It also showed me that I might need to work a little harder when I was hunting my private lands too. I started venturing into areas that I previously thought were too hard to access. I started waking up earlier and not skipping hunts when I was tired. I started parking further and taking the best, not most convenient, route to my stand. Ultimately, I started finding more deer, having better encounters and experiences and more satisfaction at the end of each season, knowing I had done everything in my power to be successful. 

I still have plenty of room to grow my fortitude and its application in more situations. My guess is most of us do. As we all start gearing up for this coming hunting season, I challenge you to reflect on seasons past and find those areas where you could have pushed harder, or given a little more effort when adversity or discomfort showed up. Did you sit in that cushy box blind because of convenience when deep down you knew that you might have better odds somewhere that was a little harder to get to? Did you sleep in one morning because you got to camp late the night before, only to wake up to great conditions and a little bit of regret because you didn’t get to the woods? Were there times you could have taken a weekend in the offseason to scout, but skipped it because the work week had you tired? 

Hunting season, while only a few months, can really be an exhausting and grueling period. When the early mornings, long drives and junk food diet starts adding up, it can be super easy to slide into a comfortable routine, and lose track of our goals. As I wrap this series, the biggest lesson I’ve learned from hunting public land is the lesson of fortitude and fighting through the obstacles. It’s a lesson that can and should be applied to hunting private land as well. Hunters are a different breed and I think we can all agree that being a hunter shapes our lives for the better. Fortitude is a foundational strength needed for life, in and out of the woods. Lean into that strength this coming season and push a little harder. I can’t promise that it will bring success, but I can promise that the sense of pride and satisfaction you’ll feel from giving it your all, will absolutely be worth it.