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From childhood on, we are taught and encouraged to seek control - over our bodies, minds and behavior; over our environments, futures and fates; over our personal and professional lives and, via the metaphysical belief system of one's choice, we even try to control what happens to us after we die. Most of us, most of the time, struggle through life seeking control as a matter of course, without even thinking about it.

Regrettably, in the hunting arena as well, where the greater parts of our pleasures derive from purposely testing ourselves against things we historically have not been able to control - wild animals, wild weather, wild country, our own limitations, luck - many among us doggedly continue to try. Up to a point, this is good and even necessary. But beyond the ambiguous boundaries of "good and necessary," inappropriate attempts to control the hunt can side-trail us onto ethically shaky terrain while eroding our hunting pleasures, satisfactions, personal growth, and pride of accomplishment . . . and deflate our wallets to boot.

Consequently, I come to the campfire council today to propose that the less stuff we clutter our hunts with in pointless pursuit of control, the happier hunters we will be.

What do we really need (as opposed to merely want) in order to successfully challenge wild country and wild animals, and to hunt, kill, field dress and transport meat in relative comfort and safety? Look at photos of the early icons of North American hunting. Visibly, they carry stickbows and wood arrows, shotguns or scopeless rifles. They wear rugged, individualized clothing, often wool pants and plaid shirts (which, I can attest, work as well as any designer camouflage on the market today). And they carry gear to fit the season, terrain and game, including a belt knife and a frame pack suitable at once for hunting, subsisting and hauling meat and horns. A pair of binoculars may dangle from the archetypal American hunter's neck, and tucked away in pockets, predictably, are compass and map.

A few more essentials - you know what as well as I do - and that's all she wrote.

In order to hunt safely, comfortably, with dignity and success, we don't need an $8,000 ATV perched on a $3,000 trailer pulled by a $40,000 SUV to get us there and home. We don't need expensive "scent-proof" camo clothing, electronic trail-timers and infrared cameras, automatic game "feeders" (in fact, hi-tech bait stations), optical range-finders, cell phones, night-vision scopes, a pharmacopoeia of chemical scents and scent-killers, Taj Mahal portable ground blinds and tree stands, and on and on el barfo. Perusing the ads in most hunting magazines and outdoor-gear catalogs today is enough to make Grandpa laugh out loud . . . and then break down and weep for what our sport has lost.

Certainly, I don't condemn all of the stuff enumerated above, though I sure hate some of it. Nor am I saying it's all useless junk. I am saying that none such is necessary for a good and successful hunt, and that often, such stuff serves primarily to encumber us, slow us down, steal our traveling money and generally interfere with achieving happy and satisfying hunting ends.

A hunter is rich in relation to the amount of stuff he or she can afford to hunt without.

The root problem with contemporary hunting is that too few among the hunting ranks today are old-style outdoorsmen and women - hardy folk who take pride and find joy in expanding "just hunting" into an ever-richer outdoor experience, an ever-growing personal adventure. Most nimrods today are mere dabblers and pretenders, uncommitted to fair chase, fearful of breaking a sweat, and frantic to make a kill with the least effort and time invested, and then scurry home to a warm den with meaningless "trophies" on the walls, Coors Lite in the frig and outdoor pabulum on TV. Why work to develop a woodsman's skill and patience, strive to know the game and its big, wild world, endure prolonged discomfort and resist applying maximum purchasable control over the hunted . . . when it's so very easy and socially acceptable to "challenge nature" with a fortune in stuff, rather than with spine, grit, dignity and respect?

Why, indeed?

What the new generation of soulless sports needs most to learn is the secret to real, meaningful and memorable success isn't in controlling the hunt or the hunted. Rather, the secret is self-control. 

LaPlata County resident David Petersen is the Colorado field coordinator for Trout Unlimited's Public Lands Initiative, and the West Slope co-chairman for Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (www.coloradobackcountryhunters.org). "Control" is excerpted with permission from A Man Made of Elk: Stories, Advice, and Campfire Philosophy from a Lifetime of Traditional Bowhunting, just released by TBM Publications (Eagle, ID).