Reformation Faith Today

So I am in the Charter customer service office today returning equipment (went to Dish) when I noticed a magazine. The name of it is The Sportsman Magazine. So, I picked it up to have a look. The Sportsman Magazine is the official magazine of The Sportsman Channel.

As I perused it, I noticed a recurring theme (besides hunting). Several articles referred to God relative to hunting. So I kept reading.

One article I found to be very interesting is titled A Spiritual Deer Experience by Andy Aughenbaugh. Andy basically tells of a particular hunt where “John” felt the pressure to take a trophy buck (like the one pictured) so that he could be in the “in crowd” at last. The deer John had taken over the years were satisfying to him, yet the trophy hunters had joked about the relative small size of John’s bucks and he desperately wanted to be “in.”

On this particular day, John had been with the others hunting the suburban deer and found the hunts less satisfying than the many hunts he had gone on to public lands. The more natural hunts were what John had been taught on by his father and grandfather. So, John left the trophy guys and returned to what he had been raised on.

Here is his account:

The sun was on the down swing. Only an hour remained of daylight, when without a sound the buck of his dreams slowly appeared on the trail. In less than 30 seconds from when John first saw the buck, he let the arrow fly. He felt it was a well-placed shot.

Easily he found his arrow. It was covered in blood, a clean pass through, meaning the buck should not have traveled far.

The blood trail was good enough, but darkness forced John to reluctantly pack it in for the night.

The next morning John returned and resumed the search. The blood trail was harder and harder to find.

After three hours of searching John lowered his head in prayer. It was at this point that John no longer cared what the trophy hunters would think of him. He cared for the well being of the deer. “Please Lord, do not make him suffer. If my arrow had gone astray, heal his wounds, if my aim was true, provide him dignity in passing.”

Closing the prayer, a tear ran down John’s cheek, for he knew he had left the teachings of his father and grandfather in pursuit of acceptance of those he thought he admired. Their (father and grandfather) teachings centered on enjoying the hunt and the woods. The value of the hunt and the hunter is not in the size of the antlers, it is in the connection with God and all He has, and continues to provide for us.

John looked up and only a few feet away was the buck. Some say it was one of the top 10 size bucks in the state.

Good article. Good reminder of what is important in life and how we all face pressures to conform.