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Learn How to Conquer Your Fear on a Hunting Trip - Hunting Note

Learn How to Conquer Your Fear on a Hunting Trip

Hunting is a great pastime for many. It can challenge you, reward you, and even serve as a bonding experience among family and friends. However, if you are afraid on your hunting trip, it won’t be nearly as enjoyable and you won’t be nearly as successful. Luckily, there are a few tips and tricks you can use to conquer your fear on your hunting trip.

Get Familiar with What You’re Hunting With

The first thing you should do before you go hunting is to get comfortable with your weapon. You’ll feel much more at ease if you know how to handle the weapon you’re working with.

This is also a safety concern as well. Weapons such as rifles, AR-15s, and even bows aren’t things that you should try to learn to handle on your first hunting trip. Before you handle your weapon on your first hunt, you should know everything you can about it.

The best way to do this is to work with an expert on the weapon you’re using. If you don’t know someone personally, it’s best to look for classes and find your local shooting range for practice.

It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with what to do when something goes wrong. In the case that your gun doesn’t fire or misfires, it’s important that you know how to handle it when this happens. This just-in-case knowledge will help to ease your worries about if things don’t go as planned.

Hunt with Someone More Experienced

When you are on your first hunting outing, it can be stressful and more than a little overwhelming to get prepared and remember everything that you need to. The best way to handle this stress is, once again, to look to someone with more experience than you.

Think about it this way; when you start a new job, you aren’t expected to know the ins and outs on your first day. Instead, you are usually paired with and trained by someone who has more experience on the job. They teach you the ins and outs of the trade before you go on your own.

Hunting is the same way. If you work with someone who knows the ropes on your first few hunting trips, you’ll be more prepared to handle future hunting trips that you lead. Remember, you have to walk before you can run.

Pack a First Aid Kit

A source of fear for many is the question of “what if something goes wrong?”. When tackling this question, though, it’s hard to convince yourself that nothing will go wrong. Instead, a better approach is to be prepared in the case of an emergency. At the most basic level, you should have a first aid kit on you.

You’ll want to make sure your first aid kit has certain things in it. For instance, you’ll want bandages, gauze, and medical tape. In addition, extra supplies such as antibiotic ointment, pain relievers such as acetaminophen, and something to clean cuts such as hydrogen peroxide are good ideas as well.

Tell Someone Where You’re Going

A general rule for anyone going on a trip whether it’s an activity like hunting or camping is to tell someone the details. You should tell them when you’re leaving, where you’ll be, and when you’ll get back. This is information that can be used in the case that you don’t come back in time.

This can be another way to alleviate worst case scenario fears. It’s also a good way to protect your own safety in the case that something was to happen. As an extra precaution, many hunters also go on trips as a group, especially if it’s to somewhere new. This way, if a problem were to come up, there are people in the immediate area to take action.

Get Familiar with the Area You are Hunting In

If there is one thing that can give anyone anxiety, it’s being in a new place that you might not know your way around very well. This can be especially true in nature where there are no street signs to lead the way.

To alleviate these concerns, you should make yourself familiar with the area you’ll be hunting in. This way, you know where to go and where you are.

This is a tip that any hunter can – and should – use, in fact. Not only is it a great way to keep you on track as you move, it’s also a good way to get familiar with what you’re hunting. Look for trails and signs of game crossing through or even living in an area. By using this technique, you can find out where you can go for your best chances of a successful hunt.

Plan Ahead

Another tip that new and nervous hunters should keep in mind is to plan ahead. Make a game plan in advance and pack everything you need for your hunting trip. Once you have these plans, try to stick to them. By doing this, you are taking some of the guesswork out of your hunting experience and with it, some of the fear of the unknown.

At the same time, however, you shouldn’t be so rigid in your plan that you can’t make any changes. No matter how well you have something planned out, there’s always a chance that you’ll have to make changes to your original plan.

Maybe it’ll start raining heavily in the middle of your hunting trip or maybe one of your friends that was coming along has a last minute reason that they can’t show up. In these cases, you need to be flexible enough to make adjustments as needed.

Trust Yourself

Finally, you should try to trust yourself as a hunter. You’ve prepared for this and it’s something you are ready for. With the tips used here and a little self-confidence, you shouldn’t have much left to worry about. The biggest tip is to have a little faith in yourself as a hunter and you’ll have not only a successful but a more fun time as well.

About the Author

I'm Rodney Heaton and I love hunting in the wild. In the past, I was in the military for over 5 years. After that I became a licensed hunter and a mountain guide.