The Thanksgiving Hunt

By Jacob Robinson

Before the turkey goes in the oven, somebody is already in the woods.

Across America, Thanksgiving morning starts long before the parade comes on television.

Headlights move down dirt roads in the dark. Coffee gets poured into thermoses. Shotguns get uncased beside flooded timber. Rifles ride in trucks toward deer stands. Dogs start whining because they know exactly what the boots and orange vest mean.

For a lot of hunting families, Thanksgiving doesn’t begin around the table.

It begins outside.

A Morning Made for Hunting

There is no single Thanksgiving hunt.

In one part of the country, it’s a deer stand.

Somewhere else, mallards are dropping through gray skies into a flooded field.

A group of rabbit hunters turns loose a pack of beagles.

Pheasant hunters walk shelterbelts and grasslands.

Families head into squirrel woods.

The quarry changes with geography, seasons and tradition.

The basic idea doesn’t.

Everybody is home.

Work is closed.

School is out.

Family has come to town.

And there are a few precious hours between daylight and dinner.

So you hunt.

Thanksgiving morning became a natural place for hunting traditions because it brings together two things hunters rarely have enough of: time and family.

The Deer Stand

For whitetail hunters, Thanksgiving falls in an interesting part of the season.

Depending on where you hunt, peak breeding activity may be fading, still underway or long gone.

Either way, November has changed the woods.

Bucks have been pressured.

Doe groups have shifted.

Food sources have changed.

Some deer have survived weeks of hunters moving through the property.

That means the Thanksgiving hunt isn’t necessarily easy just because it’s November.

Sometimes you’re hunting the tail end of breeding activity.

Sometimes you’re beginning to transition toward late-season food.

Sometimes you’re sitting in the same stand you’ve hunted every Thanksgiving for twenty years because that’s where you’re supposed to be.

Not every hunt has to be optimized.

Some stands are chosen for reasons a mapping app can’t understand.

The Duck Blind

Thanksgiving morning belongs to waterfowl hunters too.

By late November, migration is underway across much of the country.

Cold fronts have pushed birds.

Local ducks have learned where blinds are located.

New birds arrive and change everything.

A Thanksgiving duck hunt can begin hours before daylight with decoys splashing into black water and end with everybody checking the time because someone promised they’d be home before dinner.

Sometimes the ducks cooperate.

Sometimes you spend the morning staring at an empty sky while eating something from a gas station.

Both somehow become good stories later.

And if birds do work?

There aren’t many better ways to start Thanksgiving than watching a group of ducks turn on the call and begin losing altitude over the decoys.

The Small-Game Morning

Not every Thanksgiving hunt needs antlers or a migration forecast.

For generations of American hunters, small game provided one of the easiest ways to put several family members in the woods together.

Rabbit hunting especially lends itself to the occasion.

Turn the dogs loose.

Walk.

Listen.

Talk.

Let the kids come.

Nobody has to sit silently in a tree for four hours.

The hunt moves.

People laugh.

Someone misses.

Someone claims they didn’t.

And somewhere in the distance, the dogs keep running.

Squirrel hunting offers much of the same simplicity.

So does an upland hunt where seasons allow.

These hunts may not generate the attention of a giant November buck, but they can be exactly what a family needs on a morning when the point is being together.

The Kid Who Came Along

Thanksgiving also has a way of creating first hunts.

A nephew is finally old enough.

A daughter wants to see what Dad has been doing every November.

A grandfather has an extra shotgun.

A cousin who hasn’t hunted in years decides to come.

There is already family gathered in one place, and somebody says:

“You want to go with us in the morning?”

That’s how traditions start.

Not with a strategic plan.

With an invitation.

The kid may be cold.

They may get bored.

They may whisper too loudly at exactly the wrong moment.

Let them.

Twenty years from now, they probably won’t remember what the temperature was or whether the wind was perfect.

They’ll remember that somebody took them.

Get Back Before Dinner

Every Thanksgiving hunter knows the agreement.

Go hunt.

But don’t screw up Thanksgiving.

If you said you’d be back at ten, don’t wander through the door at one-thirty because a buck crossed the property line and you decided to start a three-hour tracking job without telling anybody.

If you’re responsible for cooking something, plan accordingly.

If people traveled to spend the day with you, spend the day with them.

The hunt is part of Thanksgiving.

It doesn’t have to consume it.

Besides, there’s something satisfying about coming home from cold woods to a warm house.

You open the door and immediately smell what’s cooking.

Your hunting clothes get piled somewhere they’re probably not supposed to be.

Someone asks:

“See anything?”

And now the story starts.

When the Hunt Comes to the Table

Thanksgiving is ultimately a meal.

And for hunters, there is an opportunity to put something on that table that didn’t come from a grocery store.

Venison.

Duck.

Goose.

Rabbit.

Pheasant.

Wild turkey where legally harvested during an applicable season.

It doesn’t have to replace the traditional Thanksgiving turkey.

It can simply join it.

A venison appetizer.

Duck breast.

Wild-game sausage in the dressing.

Something from last season’s freezer cooked for people who may have never eaten wild game before.

There is something fitting about it.

On a holiday built around a feast, the hunter can bring food to the table that has a place, a story and a memory attached to it.

The Empty-Handed Hunt

Of course, most Thanksgiving hunts don’t end with something going into the freezer.

That’s hunting.

You may sit until ten and see nothing.

The ducks may never show.

The rabbit dogs may run everything except a rabbit.

You come home empty-handed.

Dinner still tastes pretty good.

That’s because the Thanksgiving hunt has never really required a successful hunt.

The opportunity is enough.

A few hours outside.

A cold morning.

Someone beside you.

Then home.

Save a Seat

Eventually Thanksgiving hunting traditions change.

The grandfather who used to wake everybody up before daylight isn’t there anymore.

The kid who tagged along is bringing a kid of his own.

The old lease gets sold.

A new property becomes deer camp.

The group gets smaller.

Then, if you’re lucky, it gets bigger again.

That’s how traditions survive.

Someone keeps going.

Someone keeps inviting people.

Someone keeps an extra seat open in the truck.

Thanksgiving gives us one day every year when much of life slows down long enough for families to find their way back to the same place.

For some of us, that place happens to be a deer stand.

Or a duck blind.

Or behind a pack of dogs disappearing into the timber.

Then we come home.

We eat too much.

We tell the story.

And next Thanksgiving morning, before the rest of the house wakes up, we do it again.