Zen and the Art of Deer Hunting

What the most influential Zen master and deer hunter have in common

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When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from what he's working on, then one can be said to ‘care’ about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing.

- Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

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October 11, 1926

Thich Nhat Hanh was born in Hue, Vietnam. At the age of 16, he joined a monastery and eventually became one of the most influential teachers of Buddhism.

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September 24, 1924

Larry Benoit is born in East Berkshire, Vermont. Learning from his father, he shoots an eight-point buck weighing over 200 pounds at the age of nine. Larry successfully hunted for decades before writing one of the most influential deer hunting books of all time: How to Bag the Biggest Buck of Your Life in 1973.

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I’ve been lucky to have some great teachers. Some in formal school, but others outside the confines of a classroom. I discovered Thich Nhat Hanh in college and studied abroad because of him. In the winter of 2001, I stayed in Plum Village. It was two weeks full of different types of meditation along Thich Nhat Hanh: eating meditation, walking meditation, working meditation.

One of my favorite passages from Peace is Every Step (arguably his most well-known book) is the following:

Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment. Many religions are based on the notion of hope, and this teaching about refraining from hope may create a strong reaction. But the shock can bring about something important. I do not mean that you should not have hope, but that hope is not enough. Hope can create an obstacle for you, and if you dwell in the energy of hope, you will not bring yourself back entirely into the present moment. If you re-channel those energies into being aware of what is going on in the present moment, you will be able to make a breakthrough and discover joy and peace right in the present moment, inside of yourself and all around you.

Representing engaged Buddhism, his teaching ingrained mindfulness in me. I don’t always practice it and am certainly not an expert, but his ability to distill and convey key Buddhist principles had a huge impact on me at a formative age.

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Skip ahead to 2013, and I began to take deer hunting seriously (this was also the same year Larry Benoit died at the age of 89). A friend gave me a copy of Larry Benoit’s landmark book, and I was hooked.

Let me make one thing clear: the “big buck” part of the book isn’t what got my attention. While I’m sure the title was crafted to attract the eyeballs of aspiring deer hunters with dreams of wandering into the woods and slaying a monster deer, that wasn’t who I was.

What resonated with me about Larry’s writing was the lyrical nature of it. For instance, here’s an excerpt from the beginning of his book:

They live, breed, and die on the mountain tops, far removed from valleys pierced by roads and blotted by houses, shops, gas fumes, man noise, and man scent. They course those small mountain streams that are pure as freshly fallen snow. They browse on moss by hidden springs that are fountainheads for lakes, and they feed on beechnuts, leaves, and buds. They bed down on small hillocks, where the trees are often stunted by the altitude. In winter, when the hoarfrost whitens the mountaintops and the winds is sharp, they browse their way down the mountain to the basin swamps, their winter habitat. In spring as the sun rises high over the vernal equinox, they follow the buds that redden the mountainsides. The sharp wind turn sweet, refreshing, and blow the flies away from their nose and eyes and rack.

Perhaps more importantly, it was the Zen-like mindset he discussed and advised upon his readers:

The most enjoyable part of the hunt begins– trailing the trophy buck. You must have only one thing in mind, and that's bagging that trophy buck. Don't be thinking about your wife and the milkman. Don't worry if your car is going to start when you come out of the woods after tramping 20 miles. Don't worry about getting lost. Don't fret about if the cartridge is going to go off, or whether the firing pin is broken, or whether the rifle sights were bent the last time you fell down. Don't get anxious about pulling a muscle. And never get sick of chasing this buck, for when you begin to have those thoughts that buck will walk circles around you and you'll never see him…When you are worrying, you are no longer hunting.

Benoit’s minimalist nature resonated with me, likely because it boiled down all the chatter into the core essentials very much in the same way Thich Nhat Hanh did. When the chatter of the world gets in the way, shut it all out and focus on this one thing, the thing you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

Born only two years apart, Larry Benoit and Thich Nhat Hanh lived drastically different lives on opposite sides of the globe, but sometimes when I’m up on a ridge shuffling through maple leaves, smelling the crisp, spruce-scented mountain air, I wonder if they would have gotten along.

I’m certain they would have.