A Thanksgiving hunt provides opportunity to appreciate gifts of the present and reflect on errors of the past

“What’s it gonna be?” I asked Christine on Thanksgiving eve.

Giving me the stink eye, she replied, “It’s Thanksgiving and I’m not risking my bad choices on your favorite holiday. "

Christine has a history of believing that if she chooses where we go hunting on a given day, things go awry. It isn’t true, but perception rules in most things, and that’s hers so I get stuck holding the bag, as it were.

Since childhood, Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday. Not for the free-for-all of gluttony it has come to represent. The sole reason for its existence in modern times seems to be for folks to fuel themselves for the Black Friday experience the next day. The occasion, by the way, inherited the name Black Friday from a market crash on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1869.

Rather, it’s for the connection to hunting that Thanksgiving represented and that my dad made a point to go hunting Thanksgiving morning. His sound reasoning followed with the thoughts of Wendell Berry, who wrote, “To live we must daily break the body.” He was not referring to Thanksgiving but how to live with reverence to appreciate the day.

Off we would go, early in the morning, most of the time to the soil bank fields for pheasants. If times were tough on the birds, we might hunt the shelterbelts to take a few cottontail rabbits. Deer season came in early November in North Dakota, so deer hunting was out.

In North Dakota, Thanksgiving always included duck or goose, and a deer roast from the freezer. Any game that Dad and I took would either be added to the pot, or more often, shared with neighbors who didn’t hunt but enjoyed the change of pace wild game provided.

Imagine moving to Alaska in 1971 to find a late moose hunting season that started Nov. 1 and ended on Nov. 30.

Our first Thanksgiving in Alaska included fresh moose roast and halibut.

Unfortunately, game populations were experiencing the predictable decline from human pressure and the November moose season for our area was discontinued the next year.

Instead of moose, we would pursue snowshoe hares, ptarmigan or ducks to celebrate the holiday.

Our lives had been blessed enough by then that we would have a good Thanksgiving dinner even if the morning hunt wasn’t successful. Our good fortune, shared by many, continues today and is just cause in itself for giving thanks.

Hunting and gathering played an enormous role in Thanksgiving in 1621, when the first Thanksgiving occurred, although it is questionable that it even happened in November. Without it, there wouldn’t have been much of a meal. Turkey may have been served, but the minimal amount of documentation available for the time suggests a tribe of Wampanoag Indigenous people provided five deer for the event.

The Wampanoag people, “People of the First Light,” played a pivotal role for the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1619. They taught the Pilgrims how to gather safe foods, hunt the Indigenous wildlife and plant crops. It seems the Pilgrims would have perished was it not for them.

In exchange, the Europeans brought disease that began the decline of the Indigenous people who had inhabited the land for some 12,000 years.

Elementary school held little interest for me. A prison it seemed, that prevented enjoying the outdoors to the fullest. But, whenever the hunting relationship to history came up, I paid a bit more attention.

Even then I remember thinking that something didn’t make sense about the Thanksgiving story taught to us. We were told that the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people had a history-making get-together. Two years later, with the guidance of Miles Standish, the Pilgrims’ hired military man, began the systematic annihilation of the Indigenous people. Little thanks to the people who brought dinner.

By the early 1800s hunting had become commerce to feed the continuous flow of immigrants invading the land. Already running out of land by then, the move west and the subsequent history of destruction of the Indigenous people west of the Mississippi began in earnest.

The history of the Great Plains invasion is much better known now, no doubt because of romantic notions of cowboys and Indians. Not as well known is how “hunting” played a significant role in “winning” the West.

By ruthless slaughter of the plains game, bison, elk, antelope, mule deer and numerous plains grouse, the United States assured that the Plains Indians could not survive living the way of life they had with the land for thousands of years.

Is it any wonder why many Indigenous people consider Thanksgiving a day of sadness and some refer to it as “Takesgiving”?

But, ultimately, despite the beginnings, there are thanks in order from the hunter’s perspective. The ruthless exploitation of the eastern United States, and the near-extinction of many game species through misuse of land and commercial hunting caught the attention of some, most notably Theodore Roosevelt.

With his influence and help from like-minded folks, he secured public lands that would be protected from the scoundrels who had scoured every portion of land they could secure in the East.

As we move into the 21st century there is little doubt that hunting in America has taken a turn that finds less land available for hunting and private land a lucrative proposition to sell the hunting experience on.

Our public land — Alaska has an enormous amount of it — is a reason for hunters to be thankful. Public land is the salvation and the opportunity for folks who aren’t wealthy, who simply want the experience of enjoying country that remains essentially untouched by commerce.

For everyone else, I can only hope they understand the significance of living in a country that can provide more than 300 million pounds of turkey, some 77 million pounds of ham, and 250 million pounds of potatoes, not to mention all the attending side dishes. Americans spend around $96 million on breadcrumbs for stuffing alone. For one day.

With that, we are headed to the high country, hoping the avalanches stay at bay while Hugo, a life-loving English setter, runs the ridges and valleys seeking out willow ptarmigan that, if the opportunity presents, will provide Rigby the chance to ply his retriever trade of fetching them up.

I’m grateful that I have so many options to pick a place for us to go.