On Hunting and Heredity

I was having a phone conversation sometime in mid-November with my uncle Dwayne. In the course of this conversation, we mused about how it was curious that, despite my lack of upbringing in the hunting tradition, I had come to gain such an interest in, and enjoyment of, hunting over the past couple of years. Dwayne's thought was that perhaps my interest in hunting was hereditary. This was an interesting notion, although I wasn't sure what to make of it, or whether I fully agreed.

However, it did get me to thinking. My maternal grandfather (Grand-dad) passed on, if memory serves well, in 2003. In my own estimation, I was still at that stage of growing up where one's relationships with other grown up's are becoming more - well - grown up. In these more 'grown-up' relationships, at least to my mind, one of the things gained is a certain mutual empathy between persons. There is a sense, I think, in which as adults (although we can be at many different stages in life still) we share common (albeit sometimes mundane) concerns, like bills, and taking care of loved ones, and the serious questions of life, so the sorts of conversations we have change according to this mutual empathy (I'm sure this point could be argued - I don't mean this as a sort of sociological commentary - just an attempt at describing experience).
I never really got to have any of these 'grown-up' conversations with Grand-dad. I felt that, at the time of his passing, I was really just starting to get to know him a little bit as a person.

This is why it was interesting to me that, in the course of the same phone conversation, it came up that Grand-dad had been an avid hunter and outdoorsman. I had never really known that side of him. By the time I was self-aware, I think he had probably already hung up his rifle. As much as one can gain this feeling though a sort of 'second-hand empathy,' I felt like in learning these things about Grand-dad, I was allowed to know him just a little bit better, even after all this time. I seem to have acquired a love of hunting very similar, if descriptions are accurate, to Grand-dad's love for the same. As it turns out, I have no really pithy comments to end this blog entry with, so I'll just end as follows. I am thankful for the way in which I've been formed, and I'm thankful that I've grown up with the traditions and family that I have. I'm glad that my forebears were farmers and hunters and, most importantly, people of faith. I don't know what kinds of traits and dispositions are hereditary, or if they are, but at least if I want shoes to fill, I've got them.