By Art Santella
When I was a much younger man, I did a great deal of hunting for big game.
I hunted everything from Kodiak bear to deer.
As I grew older, and my kids had kids, I began to notice the world was changing around me.
After much soul searching, I finally decided to give up hunting, and search for new hobbies.
I never lost the recollection of the feeling, or the thrill that I felt, at the completion of a successful hunt.Years later, I was playing Omaha H/L in a poker room in Las Vegas.
I was sitting at a table with at least 4 players who were vastly better at the game then I was.
I knew that I was outclassed, but I wanted to learn the game by playing against tough competition.
I figured I had to pay my dues sooner or later.
Well, I finally realized how the old adage "I would rather be lucky than good," had started.
Lady luck had come and jumped in my lap, and said "I'm yours, do with me what you will."I was winning big time against this table and running way above expectation.
At about 3 a.m.
that morning, the game ran short and started to fold.
One of the players, who I knew was a far better Omaha player than I was, turned to me and said "That's it for me, some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you."In an instant, my memory flashed back years, to my days of hunting.
It dawned on me that poker was in its own way very similar to hunting.
Sometimes you hunted for big game, sometimes for small game.
I remembered some of the things that I did to prepare myself for a tough hunt.
I would get plenty of exercise, and get in shape weeks ahead of time.
Many hours of aerobic and weight training, so that I could overcome any reasonable physical hardship that I might encounter.
Problems such as long hours of sitting in uncomfortable positions, and remaining motionless, lack of sleep, and the ability to keep going on as little food and drink as possible.
This was necessary to keep from having to pack too much weight, not only on my back, but also around my waist.Next came camouflage, I had to be devious, and make myself blend into the background so that the prey I was after would mistake me for a tree, a bolder or anything but a hunter.
Then came the stalk, I remember reading everything I could about the game I was going to hunt.
I read about its sleeping and eating habits, territorial movements, and its own methods of stalking its prey.
I would then place myself in its position, and try to imagine what its instincts would likely tell it to do.With this information firmly implanted in my mind, I would set my game plan to intercept the animal, just when it thought it was safe, was at ease, and had let its guard down.
I was aggressive in seeing that I carried out my plans to the letter.
If I failed, it would be a stroke of bad luck, but not lack of planning on my part.
Luck was something that I had no control over.
Preparation for the hunt was my advantage over my prey.
If it were luck that decided whether the outcome of the hunt was successful, it would be because luck had been on the animal's side that day.The final step in any hunt is the win, victory, kill, or whatever you wish to call it.
Sometimes, the best laid plans that I could devise ended in failure.
I respected the animals that outsmarted me, because they had detected a small error, one that I had let slip by.
An error that I thought was too small to worry about, and would go unnoticed.
Too small for me, maybe, but a major tell for the animal that I had been patiently stalking and waiting to ambush for over a week, in the cold, frozen dampness.When I was ready for the final outcome of a hunt that I knew was going to be over in a few moments, I would feel the adrenaline coursing through my body.
My heart pounding in my chest seemed so loud to me that I thought it would be heard by the very animal I was stalking.
Every nerve, although heightened and in chaos by the coming climax of the hunt, was kept under disciplined control.
There was not the slightest trace of the excitement raging inside me that could come to the surface, and give me away.The last instant before my victory, I knew I had totally outsmarted my prey in its own habitat.
When it was over, I had no feelings of remorse, just the feeling that I had contrived a successful plan of attack, and followed it to the letter.
I must tell you that at those moments, I did have somewhere in the back of my mind the thought that had that animal been me, I would have had for an instant a look of surprise and puzzlement on my face.
A look that would come just before I realized I had lost the game.
I put many of these same tactics to use when I play poker.
The difference is that I am now dealing with the human animal.
Now I take only chips, not life.
Chips are inanimate things, and can always be replaced.
No longer do I lurk in the frozen wilderness.
Now it's a well air-conditioned casino with almost everything you could want right at your fingertips.
There is one great difference: this prey not only has excellent instincts, but a reasoning mind, an excellent thought process and instant recall of past events.
In many cases they set up a game plan for their hunt that may be better planned and executed than mine.
My thrill of the hunt now is to win as much money as I can from the world's most dangerous predator, Man.As one gets older it seems that there is a greater respect for life of all kinds, maybe because you start to realize your own mortality, something you do not even think about in your youth.
I find myself now, when out for a walk with my grandson, making a conscious effort to sidestep around or over an ant or bug on the sidewalk, so as not to take away its existence.
One day on one of these walks, my grandson Robbie looked up at me and asked me why I do that, when he has seen so many pictures in albums of my past days as a hunter.
I tell him that someday when he is a little older, I will explain to him all about it.
Then we go back to talking about baseball, fishin', skateboarding, what Gramps is getting him for Christmas, what he wants from Santa, and other neat stuff.
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