Pursue Your Passion: Hunting is an Intensely Personal Endeavor

My name is Brad Fenson, and I am a hunter. Hunting has been a passion for most of my life. As a child, I took on odd jobs to make money to purchase my first pellet gun. Shooting sparrows and ground squirrels kept me occupied from sunup to sundown.

My first big-game animal was a mature bull moose with close to a 40-inch antler spread. I could not imagine going a year without hunting ducks and geese, and spur-of-the-moment walks with my shotgun provided opportunities for upland game birds.

Introduced to bowhunting as a teenager, I hunted whitetails in the boreal forest. There was never enough time in the field, so archery became my ticket to more time outside. The vertical bow was a passion for years, and I found myself flinging arrows daily. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to harvest many species with my vertical bows, including bighorn sheep, elk, moose, mule deer, whitetail deer, black bear, pronghorn antelope and several caribou subspecies. A number of those animals score high enough to qualify for the Pope and Young Club record book. Although vertical bows have generated a lifetime of memories, I continue to hunt with every tool available, including rifles, muzzleloaders, shotguns and crossbows.

I’ve also been an outdoor writer and photographer for nearly 40 years. These days, I prefer to say “outdoor communicator,” as digital outlets such as social media, podcasts, websites and blogs are all platforms I support.

I like to say my areas of expertise are hunting, fishing, camping, cooking and conservation. They are the pillars that help define my life. Working in the conservation field for close to four decades gave me an intimate look at wildlife and the habitat it needs to thrive.

No Off-Season

Spending 10 days in the Arctic hunting muskox taught me to look out a year ahead as it relates to hunting. The Inuit didn’t use a calendar to know what portion of the year or season they were experiencing. The available food and hunting were the calendar and dictated the season.

Have you hunted every month of the year? It was easy for me to take the challenge and plan my year around deer, ducks, moose, predators, black bears and anything else that runs or flies. July and August seem the most challenging, but an early deer season in California or a trip to Africa, New Zealand or Argentina filled the holes and my seasons. If there is a hunting season somewhere, I try to take advantage of it and can honestly say I hunt every month of the year. A resident of Alberta, Canada, I travel extensively and have hunted in most Canadian provinces and 25 U.S. states.

It isn’t unusual for me to head out on a hunting trip and have a rifle, shotgun and bow in my truck. Purchasing all available licenses has paid off over the years. I like to refer to myself as a planned opportunist. One never knows what you’ll run into when hunting, but having a fist full of tags and options for harvest has made me successful and able to keep my freezers full. The planning part involves having various tools, and when an opportunity presents itself as a legal animal to pursue, the ability to switch gears has always proven beneficial. Hunting sharp-tailed grouse on the prairie has often become a spot-and-stalk bowhunt for mule deer. Calling elk has produced several bulls but also generated close encounters to arrow black bears and wolves that came to investigate.

My Crossbow Journey

One of my first experiences with a crossbow produced a “Robin Hood” while shooting at a target. My second arrow was sunk deep into the first one already in the target, showing how accurate crossbows can be. I’ve shot two Robin Hoods with my vertical bows over the years, but neither on the initial introduction to the bow! This piqued my interest and led me to investigate the horizontal bow, its history and continued advancements. Crossbow hunters represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the hunting community. Although they are often met with opposition, they continue to expand in use and acceptance.

Hunting with a horizontal bow has provided me with plenty of opportunities. The experience has been a wonderful journey, and I can honestly say that my years as an archer, stalking deer and elk with my favorite compound bow, is what has made me successful with any hunting tool.

Yes, crossbows and vertical bows are different, but the hunt remains the same for me. Getting within 30 yards of an animal and making a lethal and humane shot keeps me flinging arrows instead of closing the bolt on a rifle for most of my season.

My passion for adventure has taken me around the world and allowed me to harvest some incredible animals. A central barren ground caribou taken with a muzzleloader is the current World Record in the Longhunter Society’s Big Game Record Book. And a mountain lion I harvested with my crossbow is the current World Record in the Safari Club International Record Book. That said, I have never set goals to break records and consider all antlers and horns taken as personal trophies. Anyone who knows me understands the meat is as valuable as the headgear, and the fact we can have antlers and backstraps means double the reward. Most of my animals have not been entered into record books, despite the fact that many of them qualify. They are a reward for hunting hard, smart and staying diligent.

I previously wrote a crossbow column for Petersen’s Bowhunting for several years and am glad for the opportunity to reprise that role now in Bowhunter. While personal opinions regarding crossbows certainly vary, there is no arguing that over the past 20 years, crossbows have become entrenched as part of an ever-changing archery hunting landscape.

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