THE BEST DAYS!!!
By Montana Grant

Posted: November 11, 2018

Our Best days are the ones that keep coming around. Opening days, Birthdays, hunting and fishing seasons, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and all the special days that bring up our spirits and bring together out families and loved ones. Sadly, Best Days become fewer as we age. We better embrace and enjoy them while we can.

Thanksgiving is based upon a wonderful feast provided by successful and skilled fishermen, hunters, and gatherers. Christmas is a time of giving and coming together as a family and community. Easter welcomes a new beginning and spring season. Many of our celebrated Best Days involve the harvest and bounty collected by hunters and gatherers.

Harvesting wild game and fish is not a requirement to have a great banquet. Our modern farming, livestock, and food production makes up for food gathering. It seems like many of our Best Days, and holidays, coincide with hunting and fishing seasons.

Hunters and fishermen no longer must fill the table.

Hunting and fishing seasons are not year around but instead occur when there is an abundance of fish, fowl, and big game. Through limits and smart management, the schools of fish, flocks of birds, and big game herds can be maintained with a harvestable surplus.

License fees, permits, and extra tags pay the bill for access, real-estate and public access that everyone can use and enjoy. Service projects, trail enhancement, trash cleanups, and so many other activities invite and welcome outdoorsmen, sportsmen, families, and recreationists to enjoy our wild open spaces.

We all can choose what menu we want to enjoy on our Best Days. Most hunters will enjoy legal harvested bounty on their holiday tables. A wild turkey, Christmas Goose, wild salmon, Elk or deer roast, or whatever their favorite tastes are will end up on the Beat Day table. If others want different foods, traditions, and choices, thankfully we are blessed to make them.

Best Days are often about sharing. In my experiences, the best hunters, fishermen, and sportsmen celebrate their lives through sharing lessons, gear, experiences, and harvests with others. Hunters and fishermen were the fast food providers back in the day. A hunter coming to a village with a deer over the saddle meant the community would eat. Not everyone in the community could hunt or fish. Not every hunter or fishermen could make clothes, gear, and provide what others could. It took and takes a village to survive.

Best Days are not always measured by what we choose to eat but who we are with. Family and friends can be the best part of our Best Days. These days can happen afield, afloat, or at camp.

The best days often end around a great campfire. Telling a fun story, enjoying the snacks and S’Mores, or feeling the warmth from a fire and our company. This gathering of hunters, fishermen, and sportsmen can be the Best Day of all.

Hand me another marshmallow please, and another Hershey Bar!

Montana Grant

For more Montana Grant, pull up a stump next to him at www.montanagrantfishing.com.

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