Let's Get Physical

While searching for the ultimate bow, rifle, scope, call, scent or whatever other gadget we think will increase our hunting success, most of us drive right past our most critical need: fitness, which you may spell "b-o-r-i-n-g," but only if you think a 350-inch elk or 40-inch ram or 180-inch whitetail is boring.

While backpacking in the Alaska Range one day, my guide and I were faced with a choice. Rain clouds were moving in. It was an hour from full dark. We could drop down to a protected basin, cook supper and roll out our bags or we could push over one more ridge to look for rams. We'd been going since dawn, a good 12 miles and 3,000 feet elevation gain under our boots, but we tackled that last ridge and found a 39-inch ram behind it. The next morning the entire mountain was fogged in, but we were packing out sheep meat.

A fit hunter is a successful hunter, able to scramble around a rock pile before a mountain goat jumps into a canyon, to haul a 50-pound pack and seven-pound rifle into a valley no one else is tough enough to reach, to race a caribou to a mountain pass.

Listen, you can buy all the long-range spotters and shooters and electronic surveillance gizmos in the world, and you still won't get your dream bull unless you're strong enough to walk into his life. So start spelling fitness "s-u-c-c-e-s-s."

The good news is that success doesn't have to spell "m-i-s-e-r-y." You, me and your grandpa can get ourselves into top hunting shape with no pain and minimum sweat merely by duplicating what we do while hunting. In short, walk. A lot. This builds endurance, and endurance is what enables us to keep going.

If you hunt mostly by sitting, then you must train by sitting, too, but not in a soft chair by the TV. No, you sit in your stand and watch for game, training your eyes and ears as well as your butt. You train to endure those long hours in November when your weary back and bored mind try to convince you every buck in the bottoms has been shot or chased into the hills.

If you're planning a horseback hunt, you ride. Two or three times a week you ride, rain or shine. You ride long and far, and then you walk, and climb. In short, you spend all summer doing what you'll need to do to bag your game next autumn. Then, when your moment of glory is at hand, you'll perform easily, perfectly and without pain and misery.

Here's the simple way to hunting fitness. Assess what you must do to reach game when hunting, then imitate it, putting most of your effort into the aerobics part. For most of us that means walking--up and down hills with a pack, binoculars, rifle, handgun or bow.

Recently a buddy and I trained for a mountain backpack hunt. He trained hard by running in the Rocky Mountains. I trained easy by hiking in the Midwest with a backpack that gradually grew to 60 pounds. I wouldn't have wanted to race my partner over a mile, but in the mountains, under load, he lagged behind.