The days are still hot but the evenings and early mornings are getting cool. It’s a sign that the dog days of summer are over.

Fall is, for several reasons, my favourite time of the year. I like the cooler temperatures but there is something else that I have been waiting and preparing for, for several months now: hunting season!

It opens with 10 days for bowhunting on Sept. 1 and from Sept. 10, it’s open for all other hunters too. The closer the hunting season comes, the more impatient I grow and when that day finally arrives, I am awake long before the alarm clock goes off.

Hunting is much more to me than just a recreational activity or a hobby. Hunting is a big part of who we are. It’s part of our identity, if you will.

You never hear a golfer say, “I am a golfer” or see one walking around town in a golfing outfit. Hunters are different in that they often will say, “I am a hunter.”

As part of that identity, hunters often dress in their camouflage outfits throughout the year and decorate their vehicles with hunting-related stickers. Why is that so?

Hunting is not the simplistic and often derogatory view of going out to kill an animal. It’s about the whole experience of returning to nature in its truest sense. It’s about our primordial instincts being challenged outside the constraints and comforts of modern society.

In the forests, fields, and plains we connect with the very roots of humankind that go back to the first time we walked upright on this earth and learned how to capture, kill, and eat the animals that sustained us and made us what we are today.

Being a hunter is also being part of a large brotherhood and a growing sisterhood.  No matter where you are in the world, or on the Internet, it will not take you very long to get acquainted with other like-minded people.

Some hunters, like myself, have an involvement that goes well beyond the practice of hunting.

We also spend many additional hours and days writing about our favourite pastime for one or more of the many hunting magazines that are on the market.

We travel to seminar engagements at relevant trade shows to share our knowledge and understanding of the many aspects of hunting. It has to be said that no other sport or recreational activity has so many dedicated magazines, television shows and marketing events. At last count, North America airs weekly over 160 different hunting shows on dedicated outdoor sports channels and on regular TV channels.

When I said earlier that hunting is a lifestyle, it is also because hunters do far more than just hunt. Hunters are also some of the most dedicated wildlife and habitat conservationists you will ever encounter, spending millions of dollars and many hours on volunteer work in one or more of the many wildlife conservation organizations.

With all that in mind, I wish every hunter a safe and successful hunting season. Enjoy, respect and share the bounty our great land has to offer.