Hunting Money

Some people meditate. Others journal. I do math I already know I can’t afford. The truck dashboard doubles as my accountant’s desk—graph paper spread across the console, calculator ticking under the dome light, the air thick with pencil eraser dust and stale coffee. Receipts curl around the gearshift, breadcrumb evidence on the trail to financial ruin.

Welcome to The Hunter’s Balance Sheet, where arithmetic meets confession.

Column A: Equipment Depreciation.

Column B: Gasoline Theology.

Column C: Spousal Goodwill—our most volatile market.

I start with fixed assets: rifle, boots, binoculars, Dad’s lucky hat—a non-depreciating relic with infinite sentimental value and negative resale potential.

Then come the variables: tags, ammo, snacks, replacement socks, and the annual maybe this jacket will make me competent expense. Add gas, lodging, and the traditional unplanned roadside breakfast (“because it’s tradition”), and the subtotal begins to resemble a down payment on regret.

Now for the existential math:

Total Annual Expenditure ÷ Pounds of Venison = Cost per Bite

If the number exceeds $200, congratulations—you’re performing capitalism as interpretive dance. If it’s under $50, you’re either a liar or you hit a deer with your truck.

Under deductions, I enter the usual suspects: frostbite (medical expense), emotional labor (non-compensable), and self-delusion (fully deductible as long as you can laugh while filing). I briefly wonder if hope qualifies as an investment. Probably not. Hope, in accounting terms, is an appreciating liability.

In the margins, I record “potential write-offs”: three missed days of work (spiritual R&D), one borrowed cooler never returned (loss absorbed by friendship), and two tanks of gas spent finding “better sign” (classified as research).

My attempt to log hunting mileage as a tax deduction once got flagged under “hobby masquerading as faith.” Hard to argue. At least the IRS didn’t request photos.

There’s a section for “unrealized gains,” which in hunter economics means lessons you claim to have learned but will immediately repeat next season. I mark them optimistically in green ink. The page looks healthier that way.

I pause halfway through, calculator in one hand, thermos in the other, and realize the absurdity: I’m itemizing meaning. Reducing every breath of cold air, every false dawn, to ledger entries and loss ratios. The math can’t capture what the story forgives.

Still, I press “equals” because the ritual matters. The display flashes a number that could fund a beach vacation or two months of therapy. Instead, it buys more thermals and a slightly stronger sense of purpose.

If accounting had a soul, it would smell like wet wool and gasoline.

I close the notebook, watch my breath fog on the windshield, and try not to laugh too hard at the totals. At least religion comes with holidays.

After all, the hunt itself is the only part we haven’t outsourced yet.

Conservation of Cash (and Other Fairy Tales)

They say every dollar spent on hunting licenses supports conservation. Technically true, in the same way buying an espresso machine supports rainforest biodiversity—there’s paperwork involved somewhere.

The state brochure—still damp from the licensing counter—assures me that my annual donation will “preserve vital habitats.” I picture a modest patch of grass where deer and bureaucracy coexist in mutual confusion.

The smell of ink and damp paper clings to the permit as I slide it into the glove box beside old tags and expired optimism. My contribution, apparently, keeps nature wild. In practice, it mostly keeps the printers employed.

Each purchase—rifle scope, camouflage, hunting-app subscription—comes with a faint halo of virtue. We’re not spending money; we’re “supporting conservation.” We say it with straight faces under fluorescent lights, surrounded by plastic water bottles labeled Wilderness Hydration Systems. It’s commerce cosplaying as crusade.

Official reports promise our fees fund habitat restoration, wildlife surveys, and “education initiatives.” Observation suggests they also fund conferences held in lodges with better Wi-Fi than rural hospitals. For every acre preserved, three new camouflage patterns emerge, all equally terrible at hiding the human ego.

That’s the paradox of the modern outdoorsman: we buy authenticity one receipt at a time. The brochures promise ecological balance; the invoices promise free shipping. Conservation, as practiced, isn’t about protecting wildlife so much as protecting our sense of nobility while quietly overdrafting the savings account.

Dad calls it “paying our dues.” He keeps his permits stacked neatly in a coffee tin on the workbench—proof of years spent “giving back.” The tin rattles when you move it, full of metal and moral credit. I sometimes picture the deer from that ledger lined up like grateful accountants, nodding at our generosity.

And yes, some good is done. Habitats recover. Populations rebound. Somewhere, a wetland thrives because of men who routinely spill coffee on their paperwork. But the balance sheet of virtue rarely gets audited. The smell of justification travels farther than gun oil.

A recent study found that 92% of hunters feel better about their spending when it comes with a conservation logo. The other 8% just like the hat. Either way, the conscience and the credit card shake hands.

We tell ourselves it’s for the deer. But mostly, it’s for us—to feel like we still belong to something wild enough to invoice us for membership.