Hipster

“Chaz” with his Fur-Friend, “Voltaire” (Volt)

Hipster, a term sometimes intended euphemistically, are trend-bucking folks with a quirky sense for hair styles, clothes, and music. Oddly contradictive, this subculture purposefully identifies as an attempt to be different from mainstream by emulating one another. The entire phenomenon is certainly not new but it is very trendy. Beatniks of the ‘50’s, hippies of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s – no one can explain the ‘80’s and ‘90’s – now have their revival as Hipster Outdoorsmen.

Aside: Before anyone attempts to read into it, I do not use the term “Outdoorsmen” because I’m gender-intolerant. Heaven’s sakes – no! Some of my favorite people are women. While maintaining an open mind, I simply don’t wish to imply that I understand women well enough to speak on their behalf.

If pressured to put a finger on it, I would say that this current trend began shortly after the movie, "A River Runs Through It" made fishing – fly fishing in particular - "vogue”. An obviously impressionable lot, these movie-goers could be found wearing what they just purchased at LL Bean - all at once – on the gravel bank of a popular stream.

The temperature may be sweltering but there they were; clad in long sleeve plaid flannel, wearing a neckerchief like a scarf, and topped with a new felt fedora – sweating in neoprene waders like a wrestler trying to make weight! Before the age of cross-overs, transported in their BMW’s that would high-center on a cigarette butt, they seldom left sight of pavement. They were easily tolerated with a chuckle. We referred to these folks, appropriately, as "LL Bean Fishermen, (Fishers)".

The fad has...well, I will use the term "morphed". The term “evolved” would give the impression that there was observable progression. What I mean to say is, how I learned to hunt and fish evolved from what I had experienced over the many years. As for outfitting, with no mentors for fly fishing or hunting, I simply just used what I had and used it wearing whatever was in my closet.

Like the LL Bean fishers of yester-year, the hipster culture strives to emulate media-propagated ideals as sort of a badge. In their typical fashion, they glean the media for information and what they get is a stylized (sometimes, slightly skewed) sense of reality. Despite a relatively recent introduction in an outdoor activity, they tend to confidently profess to know it intimately. It is very important to authoritatively regurgitate what has been recently read - or watched - online.

To illustrate, let’s consider this guy, (we will call him, Chaz), which fits the bill nicely. Chaz is well educated, enjoys music, finer cigars, food and drink. He has the resources (ie: CASH) required to emulate the photos in magazines and online to a tee. We met at a up-scale sporting goods store where I was ogling through glass at guns that would cost me another decade of employment while he was in search of the perfect upland firearm.

Chaz insisted upon an older, straight-stocked, side by side - double barreled, shotgun and it MUST be a twenty gauge. “English, Italian or, guh, if I must, American made, if you please”! None of that Turkish made fault-la-raw!”

Oh, and he had just purchased a Rastafarian Draht-Faced Putz-a-Doodle Pointer pup online and sent it off for six weeks to be professionally trained. Would have preferred a “rescue” but, apparently, the breed hadn’t existed previous to his finding this one.

Hunting - 70’s style.

I believe my love for setters began as a youth; portrayed majestically pointing hidden game in beer and cigar ads inside the covers of old outdoor magazines. While waiting for the opportunity to have a hunting dog of my own, I hunted solo in my faded bell-bottom blue jeans and pull-over sweatshirts. “Living off the land” being about all there was to it, there was no need to search for any deeper sense. The idealization of hunting or fishing as a spiritual participation in the natural world or the necessity of knowing where your protein was coming from are contemporary rationales. I wasn’t aware of any cosmic, transcendental, reasons for these activities. I guess I just didn’t feel the need for their justification?

Vesturing the full set; thick-rimmed “Buddy Holly” glasses, plaid flannel shirt, nylon gaiters over cuffed pants and Filson boots; literally topping off the ensemble with a tan fedora and the Hipster has almost everything he needs. Accessorizing with the afore-mentioned classic side by side twenty gauge and, on the rare occasions when it could be located, a pointing dog of fine continental breeding by his side. Yes, Chaz was well within the bounds of Hipster tres chic.

In addition to this fashion foppery, it should be mentioned that when there is a gathering, a male Hipster must sport a neatly trimmed beard complimented by a mustache provocatively curled at the ends. The appearance is most useful in mating rituals where positive gender identification is often difficult. You see, both genders continually gaze into a seemingly attached cellular device, have a tendency to display similar mannerisms, and wear pants rather snuggly. Given these circumstances, in a dimly-lit bistro or while gathering around “handcrafted” beer, one can imagine how mistakes can be made.

Aside - Again: “Handcrafted” food stuffs has a particularly unsavory sense to it. I mean, it definitely gives me the impression that my food has been handled a bit more than necessary. Handcrafted drink, for example, gives me the willies! Apparently, drink just a step above being brewed in a 55 gallon drum someplace in the back-woods, to avoid the local authorities, has found its way into fashion?

It hails back to a time when a concoction was derived from whatever plant-source could be easily gathered by men nearing permanent blindness from drinking it. Due to its rather aggressive spirit, the suspect liquid could be used to thin paint, cut grease, or, when the need arises, as anti-freeze in a vehicle’s cooling system. “Wait! Do I hear banjos”?!

The hunt, itself, should have the characteristics of a stroll with the shotgun fashionably carried, breech open, over one’s arm or shoulder. That is, until the dog, if it can be found, freezes into a magazine-cover, stylish, point. Where upon the gun is casually brought to bear while calmly closing the breech. In situations where birds have been planted like Easter eggs or otherwise can be trusted to hold tight in a confused - dizzied - state, this technique is considered “safe”. When birds don’t play the game that way, it is much less so.

Aside - Yet, Again: You see, wild birds tend to run, hide, flush and repeat! Decades of experience teaches that carrying a shotgun at the ready when afield is not only safer but offers a more reliable shooting platform when you spy your dog on point and the starting flag goes up! It becomes a race between bird and caninid beast; one of the creatures involved is sure to bolt!

Acting fast, you sling the gun off your shoulder, scattering shells like seed across the countryside all in the same motion! Loading the right barrel with lip balm and a standard round in the left, you hastily slam a thumb (or carefully groomed beard) in the breech! Freeing yourself, you use the digit that wasn’t crushed numb to thumb the safety forward; all the while locating a wildly flushing target in frantic escape!

Face it, the level of coordination and calculation would have made the astronauts on Apollo Thirteen throw up their arms and say, “Screw it”!  And the birds that somehow evaded your dog’s expensive nose only to flush out from under your unsuspecting cuffed pant legs?! “Fu-get’a bout it”!  

Though firmly established as a card-carrying member of the old-guard, I’m very comfortable with a group that impressively dresses much like my grandfathers might have, had they hunted. And doing so while pocketing more powerfully compact computing devices on their person than what most former Soviet-Bloc nations use to track their satellites.

To continue to be relevant, hunters need to welcome anyone with some shared sense of values. We could use more investors to carry on all the sound conservational practices developed, and almost exclusively financed, by outdoor harvesters. We can all learn something new. In mentoring the Hipster Hunter, I have learned, first-hand, the complexities of looking and smelling good while shooting poorly.

We have all started from someplace. Welcome, new hunters, whoever you are!