Sep 21, 2024 5 min read

By Dave Bates

For the Observer-Reporter

I was chatting over breakfast with a friend about our collective hobbies. He stated he just couldn’t get excited about hunting anymore. He said none of his hobbies provided him with the same excitement they once did, nearly a quarter of a century ago.

He wasn’t exactly complaining but was unsure how to rekindle that old flame for occupying his free time. My suggestion was simple: Make it more of a challenge. If the scoped rifle isn’t doing the trick, pick up an open-sighted version. Maybe a pistol. If that doesn’t do it, haul out the old archery tackle, maybe even a stick bow rather than the cams, pulleys and crossbows of today’s archery scene. If that doesn’t work, maybe invite someone new to the game to accompany you. Take a kid out and you’ll see the world through a fresh set of eyes.

He stared at me like I had just landed from Mars.

How about reloading, fly fishing, hiking the Appalachian Trail? When I inquired what was wrong, he just repeated the same phrase, “The excitement is gone.” He finished his cup of coffee, picked up the check and headed out the door of our local watering hole without looking back. I immediately thought to myself, “Am I that lucky?” Maybe I forgot something in my litany on passion from the playbook of Bates, Chapter 3, Verse 80: “Work hard, play hard, fight hard, party hard, makes the body hard.” I might have omitted some inappropriate content for our younger readers. I’m afraid it’s all smoke and mirrors these days, but there was a time. However, in the absence of anything of real value I might have conveyed to my friend, this was the best I could come up with.

I pity my compatriots devoid of any real passion in their lives, their hobbies, their sporting pursuits. I believe in being passionate about anything of which I care deeply. Heck, I’m passionate about breakfast cereal. When it comes to my kid, anything she wants to do is on the table for the sake of cultivating our relationship. World travel? Sure. Fire building? Give’er a whirl. Drinking tea in subzero weather? Why not?

Last weekend, we were busy being Scottish at the 65th Highland Games in Ligonier. Whether ski bumming in Colorado back in the 1980s or teaching my daughter to ski at Nemacolin Woodlands 30 years later, it was all one varying degree of passion or another.

Baseball – I can’t imagine coaching without some sort of passion. If my fungo bat (look it up) was a woman I would have dated her in my younger days. No one relishes a win and calling in a game with a beer in hand more than me. No one detests the ensuing loss more than I do. I wish everyone got to feel once in their life the way the game of baseball has made me feel dozens of times over. I have collected friendships and memories and championships and losses and smiles all with the same inexplicable degree of appreciation. Sure, there have been hard times and disappointments along the way, but I wouldn’t trade one minute of them for they all have taught me some lesson I needed to learn, even if it was one I didn’t care to learn at the time.

I’ve spent the last three years coaching baseball, losing more games than we lost in all the years prior. Call it learning patience or perseverance or whatever, I can’t say it was a good time every minute of the journey but I got something I needed in the process, and perhaps gave back a little to the game, in regards to passion.

As for hunting … it’s becoming fall, the best time of the year. And, yes, I am looking forward to every moment, every experience, every snapshot in time that I can capture and carry with me to the old hunter’s home one day. Deep down, I fancy that I will end up in Valhalla but that’s not a very Christian thought and my propensity for battle has waned of late. Maybe I’ll become a pacifist if things get too boring. I’ll simply have to make due with flushing grouse and woodcock in Northern Wisconsin this fall. Possibly, I’ll take my pleasures chasing pheasants provided by the Pennsylvania Game Commission with my big brothers in Garards Fort, sans Gertrude the Wonder Dog this bird season. Quite possibly there is a better than average buck waiting to make my acquaintance in the hollow behind the house this deer season.

And really, does it matter anyway? I have 20-gauge rounds to reload for the coming grouse forays. My swing and lead need some work and I’ll have to hit the skeet field a time or two prior to departure if I plan on hitting a flushing woodcock next month. I’m almost out of my pet .308 rounds, too, so I should get busy reloading in advance of the season.

There’s another Appleseed event coming to Western Pennsylvania in November.

Oh, that reminds me, our anniversary is Nov. 2. Thirty-three years! I wonder if Kelly would enjoy a Weatherby Orion side by side .410 as much as I would? Talk about your passion.

Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com