Seeing that certain elements of the so-called cultural change are aimed directly at hunting, it’s almost a sure bet that you’ve been asked pointedly, “Why do you hunt?” There are, of course, pointed answers to that question. But for the sake of civility, it’s best just to ignore it and go about your business. On the other hand, though, if you’ve reached the age where there’s a lot more trail behind you than ahead of you, what do you say to your friends and family members when they ask, “Haven’t you done enough hunting?” or “Are you still hunting? I thought you must’ve given it up by now.” Moreover, what are your answers when you ask yourself such questions?

Personally, I have to admit that the excitement I feel for hunting nowadays falls short of what it was back along, when I couldn’t sleep on the eve of opening day or, for that matter, on any other night during hunting season when the alarm clock was set to rattle me out of bed in the wee hours. Setting the alarm, therefore, was nothing more than a seasonal ritual practiced religiously but unnecessarily. Even now I’m awake long before the alarm is set to go off. I continue the ritual, though, because lately I’ve noticed that the arms of Morpheus are becoming warmer and cozier and 4 a.m. somehow arrives earlier and darker and colder.

Moreover, at the risk of readers thinking my mainspring is broken, I’ll say that although I anticipate hunting, shooting is no longer important to me. That’s not to say, however, that I no longer derive satisfaction from dropping a duck that has the wind tucked under its tail feathers. Likewise, I look forward to toppling a woodcock at the top of its wing-twittering rise, and I’d be lying if I said that tumbling a partridge plunging slappity-crackity through tangles of thorn apples and alders didn’t please me as much as it did my English pointer, Bud. What I’m saying is that, at this stage of the game, the number of shots I fire and the amount of game I bring home is no longer important to me. But hunting is.

Last week, for example, Bud and I combed through a cover that held a fair amount of woodcock but not a sign of a partridge. In short order the choke-nosed pointer locked up on four woodcock, each of which held like it was glued to the ground. Owing to thick foliage I didn’t get a shot at the first two that took wing but tucked the next two into the game pocket of my vest. I thus filled my self-imposed daily limit of two woodcock, which I’ve held to for the past 10 years or so. Granted, stopping one shy of the legal limit of three won’t make any difference in the eastern woodcock population, but it does to me: I like knowing I’m leaving some for seed.

At any rate, it was encouraging to find more woodcock this fall than I’d found in recent years. Conversely, however, the dearth of partridge is disappointing. The consensus is that last spring’s prolonged cold, wet weather took a heavy toll on eggs and broods. Apparently, a hen woodcock, which typically lays four eggs, has better success at raising a brood in adverse nesting conditions than does a hen partridge that produces an average clutch of eight to 12 eggs.

As an aside, the breasts of the woodcock I shot – a plump female and a smaller male – showed quite a bit of fat, causing me to wonder if they were flight birds that rode in on the rain-lashed nor’easters of late or natives fattening for their long and arduous migrations to points below the Mason-Dixon Line. Either way, the observation started me thinking: reading signs and symbols, sifting through and sorting out connections and interactions, guessing and speculating, considering the imponderable and pondering the immutable, all of which make nature and wildlife so intriguing and hunting so enjoyable.

Deer hunters, of course, do much more hunting than shooting. Nevertheless, old-timers who’ve done their share of dressing out and dragging out aren’t bashful about saying it doesn’t matter to them if they ever shoot another deer – but they still love worrying the elusive whitetails. Obviously, shooting has become secondary, actually anti-climactic, to their passion for hunting.

Nevertheless, according to anti-hunters and animal-rights activists, anyone who hunts is a blood-lusting barbarian. A question that effectively counters that emotional nonsense is: What difference is there in eating the venison of a deer killed in the woods and the veal of a calf killed in a slaughterhouse? Actually there is a difference: The deer has a chance, the calf doesn’t. Think about it.

Controlled hunting is proven to be essential to successful wildlife management. Moreover, if it were not for sportsman-funded conservation-restoration programs, there would be very little wildlife left in this country today – including nongame species that benefit from such programs. Clearly, the growing human population is a far greater threat to wildlife than hunting. Consider the continuous loss of wildlife habitat to development and the accompanying increase in vehicular traffic. If a statewide tally of road-killed wildlife were available, it would be deplorable; nationwide it would be appalling.

Therefore, I don’t mind saying I wince at the sight of road-killed raccoons, squirrels, woodchucks, whatever. I see them as lives ended pitifully and without purpose. Wasted. Yet I’m labeled as a blood-lusting barbarian because I hunt, even though shooting is no longer important to me. Then why bring a gun someone is sure to ask. The answer is because without a gun I’d only be walking in the woods. I wouldn’t be hunting, feeling and enjoying the spirit and tradition of the season at hand. Again, saying that shooting isn’t important to me now doesn’t mean that I’ve given it up altogether.

Allowing that, like me, you’re getting long in the tooth, how do you respond to questions like, “Haven’t you done enough hunting?” I’m willing to bet that although your answers are probably the same as mine, all told, they come down to this: Hunting is a touchstone to times that we now realize were the best of times. Wonderful times, they were, when hunting was respected, not reviled; when boys were given rifles or shotguns – spanking new or second-hand didn’t matter – as birthday, graduation, or Christmas gifts and were excused from school to attend the cultural colleges of deer camps.

Aside from tagging a deer not being important to you now, there may be medical reasons for why you’ve given up the gun, so to speak. By no means, though, have you given up going to deer camp, going hunting, nonetheless, in the spirit of the season. Content with being the camp custodian, you keep the wood box and the gas lanterns filled, tend the fire, get water from the brook, do the dishes, and have the beef stew and dumplings steaming when “the boys” come in talking excitedly about hunting: Harry, who didn’t get a doe permit, telling about a tiptoeing doe stopping and looking at him and stomping her feet, “tryin’ to spook me into movin’;” Bill describing ground all gouged up around a stump all stove to hell; Jack cursing a buck that “hunkered in them alders and let me walk right by him, no farther than from here to the outhouse. Then he bailed outta there just hittin’ the high spots.”

If you started duck hunting when a federal stamp sold for $5, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear you say your desire to kill ducks had diminished. Yet you’re still addicted to the waterfowler’s game of hurry up and wait. Why? For the same reasons I am: To rig old decoys with a longtime hunting partner while the face of dawn blushes behind a veil of mist… To sit in an old blind and drink coffee from an old Thermos while listening to a retriever’s tail swishing steadily, expectantly… To stuff shiny new shells into an old shotgun whose barrel is also getting gray and, if things work right, to drop a duck or two for the table and to make the dog feel important. And if things don’t work right, so what? We’ll take home a limit of memories without having fired a shot.

Here I’m reminded that my son, Jeff, and I recently returned from a duck hunt without popping a cap: Right after October’s torrential rains puddled fields and flooded ponds and bogs, I said to my oldest offspring, “Let’s take the canoe and go jump-shooting. With this high water ducks are finding new feed everywhere. Not much sense in setting decoys now.” The next morning, under a bright and breezy sky, Jeff occupied the shooter’s seat while I paddled quietly along a winding woodland stream that sprawled far beyond its banks. To make a long story short, two miles or so later we had jumped only a beaver towing a piece of poplar and a female wood duck that flushed from a pothole way back in the willows, well out of range.

It was hard to believe we didn’t find more woodies in that acorn-abundant flowage. Neither did we see a great blue heron or a kingfisher or a turtle, not even a frog showed its face. It seemed that the native stock had evacuated their flooded habitat, like the residents of New Orleans when Katrina stormed ashore.

As if to affirm that, on the return trip we paddled alongside an old tire and rim floating along with the current. Curled on the rim were five woolly bear caterpillars, larvae of tiger moths. Figuring that the fuzzy brown-and-black critters were attracted by the sun-warmed metal, I wished them bon voyage on their impromptu cruise courtesy of Mother Nature. It’s interesting that hunters in pursuit of game will pause to investigate distractions unrelated to their sport. In doing so, however, they not only satisfy their curiosity but often discover answers to the fascinating interactions of fauna and flora.

So it was that Jeff and I loaded the canoe into the truck and set a course for home. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t fired a shot, didn’t make any difference one way or the other. It wasn’t important. What mattered was that we hunted legally, ethically, and enjoyably in the spirit and tradition of the season at hand. If by chance, then, owing to getting older or otherwise, you concur with at least some of my answers to the question, Why do you hunt? I’ll conclude by wishing you a safe and successful deer season. Even if you don’t tag one.

Tom Hennessey’s columns and artwork can be accessed on the BDN Internet page at www.bangornews.com; Tom’s e-mail address is: thennessey@bangordailynews.net; Web site address is: www.tomhennessey.com.