Growing up, it seemed like very few of my friends participated in hunting.

Sure, a few of my friends would put on their blaze orange each November for the 9-day gun deer season but that seemed to be the extent of my cohort’s participation in the sport.

I felt like I was one of the few people my age who spent time in marshes chasing ducks or in fields hoping for a flock of geese to try and settle down in my spread. At this point in my life, hunting seemed exclusively like a family-based activity.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it sometimes made me feel as though few of my friends truly understood an important part of me.

When I entered college, however, that began to change.