Born Again in the Outdoors

I grew up in a rural county in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, in a small town called Berkeley Springs. I was constantly exposed to the outdoors from birth. It wasn’t just a part of the culture; it was the culture. My mother’s side of the family have been living and farming in the same county since the mid-1700’s. The combined properties I grew up roaming were about 160 acres of private land, plus a public waterway that passed through called Sleepy Creek. Sleepy Creek flowed out of the Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management Area, which was the only significant nearby public hunting area at about 23,000 acres. It ultimately flowed out into the Potomac River. We often hunted up there and fished at the lake; I frequently camped there throughout the years as well. The only things I cared about growing up were hunting, fishing, farming, and football. Myself and my two younger sisters had a fantastic childhood. We had great parents, lived in a safe community, and all our neighbors were literally family.

A beautiful mountain view from the author’s home state of West Virginia.

Every day during the summer, I would walk the creek one way or the other and fish from the banks or wade. I caught more Smallmouth Bass than I can recall, along with various species of sunfish, the occasional Largemouth Bass, catfish, and Fallfish. The water was clean enough that we frequently kept and ate them as well. I hunted deer with a rifle in those days, killing my first, a yearling doe, at 9 years old with a borrowed .243 Winchester. I also chased small game like squirrels, rabbits, and groundhogs with a Ruger .22lr that I got for Christmas around age 10. My cousin, who lived next door, and I would go shoot pigeons in a neighbor’s barn with air rifles and bb guns often. I started hunting with my dad’s .30-06 Springfield when I was in my early teens, and the first thing I killed with it was a trio of hogs on a trip to South Carolina with family. A year later, I shot my first buck, a nice nine-point. I developed into a hunting machine by that point. I couldn’t be kept out of the woods; and like any good woodsman, I learned lots of things about other aspects of nature along the way.

Over the next several years, I dropped bucks and does alike each season. I’d racked up a sizable antler collection. I graduated high school in 2016 and went to college. Biology is a tough major; in my first semester, I had introductory courses with labs in chemistry and biology, plus electives in art, business, and geography. I managed to get a day or two of hunting in during that time, and dropped a nice seven-point buck. Despite this, I was burnt out – exhausted from weeks of waking up early for class, staying up late to finish homework, not ever seeing my friends because they’d all gone to other colleges, and being completely, utterly alone. I became severely depressed for the first time in my life. I couldn’t find the energy to go outside and do anything I had loved doing before. I stopped fishing and hunting, and didn’t go at all the following year. I even sold all my antlers and bought a guitar with the money.

            Eventually, as college went on, I gradually became less and less interested in hunting and fishing, and even as my love of the outdoors was reignited, it took on a much different form. I’d always been interested in reptiles, and wanted a pet snake as a kid; my parents wouldn’t let me have one, but when I was 19, I got one finally. Then I got another, and another, and another. I ended up with 14 pet reptiles, all of which I loved, and I still have several today. I made an Instagram account for them, and around the same time, I landed a summer job working with one of my professors. Naturally, during field work, you find lots of animals besides the ones you’re looking for. When we would find a wild animal, I would take a photo and post it to my Instagram page. I would usually write a long caption to go with it about that animal. Eventually, the page started to amass a bit of a following, to my surprise. It soon surpassed 2500 followers, even. I started meeting people from all over through it, and met lots of other pet content creators and wildlife people along the way. Naturally, I met lots of people who described themselves as “animal lovers”, which is a term that I have since learned to approach with caution. It is a term that essentially means “animal rights activist” – a lot of the time at least. I started to take on a lot of those beliefs myself and really adopted that persona wholeheartedly. I even went vegan for a while, but that was never going to last. As someone who has an education in conservation, has made a career in conservation, and should know exactly how conservation really works, I cringe, to some extent, looking back on that time.

            I eventually went back to just being someone who eats meat and feels bad about it. Privately, I missed going hunting and especially missed fishing, but I shoved those feelings aside, because I had come to the misguided understanding that those were bad things to do. For a huge combination of personal reasons, I abandoned that account eventually. I kept posting here and there until early 2022, when something that happened that completely changed my life. I got a dream job, doing dream work with a dream employer. Because that employer is very focused on its carefully crafted image, I won’t say exactly what I was doing or for whom, but suffice it to say that it’s the type of outdoor job where people of all ages will approach you and tell you “I want your job.” I fell in love with the work, and felt fulfilled. I no longer felt the need to go posting about animal facts to feel fulfilled, I was getting all of that from my day job now. I eventually even deleted that account permanently.

            Because it was an outdoor job where I met other people with similar interests, I naturally ended up meeting other people who hunted and fished. I wanted to get back into it, especially as a money saving measure – resident licenses are cheap, wild game meat is good. I also had gotten a new idea – why not try archery hunting? I had never really been much of an archery guy; it wasn’t something people really got into where I was growing up. As crazy as it sounds, it was mostly treated as a kind of secondary form of hunting. One day, however, I had come across a guy named Tom Miranda, who has been a TV bowhunter for a number of years. He inspired me to go out and just give it a try. I eventually bought a bow and some arrows, and absolutely loved shooting it. I decided I wanted to try to not only get back into hunting after so many years, but also to become a dedicated archery hunter. I ended up going hunting for some small game and accompanying a friend of mine on a few elk scouting trips before I finally went hunting. I got permission on my girlfriend’s parents’ property in Virginia to archery hunt for whitetails, and although I blew a stalk on the buck I was after, I did manage to arrow a doe through the lungs at about 38 yards. I was ecstatic when we found her, and I processed her a few days later. We served a venison shank Kare Kare to everyone at Thanksgiving, and everyone commented on how delicious it was. I have not felt so happy in a long time. The thing that made me the happiest was sharing that deer with everyone around. It started to get me thinking about how I could start sharing my hunts in other ways.

The author with a White-tailed doe he took with his bow in Virginia in 2023.

Being a born-again outdoorsman means I am not going to present myself as an expert. I’ve only recently gotten back into this. That said, I know there are lots of other hunters and fishermen out there who are also brand new to the sport of the outdoors, and maybe are intimidated to get started. Some may even be in my exact situation, unsure where to start or how to get back into it. My goal, in terms of this blog and whatever other projects may come of it, is to share my personal journey as an outdoorsman, from the beginning, with as many people as possible. Mistakes will be made, opportunities will be missed, but it’s all part of the learning process. I hope we can learn together.