11-12-2023 Harford Mag - Flipbook - Page 50
Travis Huber and his 5-year-old son Case go deer hunting together. PHOTO BY KENNETH K. LAM
her friends into sharing her passion.
“Most of them don’t hunt, but my
[success] is motivation and they’re getting
interested,” she said. “I do believe girls can
hunt with their dads.”
Building a stronger bond
Not all of those who embrace the sport
in Harford County have ancestral hunting
roots. Twelve years ago, urged on by in-laws,
Justin Hall joined the crowd.
Now, at 37, the civil engineer hunts
geese and deer with his son Mason, who is
12. Daughter Emma, 8, goes along to spot
game.
“Every hunt is a new experience, so I feel
like Mason and I can be learning together,”
said Hall, of White Hall. Weekends may find
them hunkered down in a goose blind on
the family farm, or holed up in a tree stand,
aching for deer.
“Hunting geese is funner, because you
can talk more,” said Mason, a sixth grader
at North Harford Middle School. “My dad
will teach me stuff, like how to call the geese
in; there’s a [stuffed] goose that I shot in my
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| Winter 2023 | harfordmagazine.com
bedroom. Or we’ll talk about other stuff, like
sports, school or friends.”
Such moments are prized, his dad said.
“At first, we’ll converse about hunting,”
Hall said. “Kids are pretty reserved, but the
more you’re around them out there, they
really start to share things that they never
would have told you.”
In October, armed with a crossbow,
Mason shot his first buck on his uncle’s
farm nearby. Now there is deer bacon for
breakfast and deer sticks for snacks.
“Sometimes kids are more willing to eat it
because they worked to get it,” his dad said.
And though Mason plays organized
sports, such as football and lacrosse, he
prefers hunting because, when you achieve
your goal, “you get to eat what you shot.”
Score a touchdown, Mason said, and
you’ve still got to buy lunch.
A teaching moment
Last fall, Case Huber begged, time and
again, to go deer hunting with his father.
Inquisitive by nature, he was excited and
bubbling with all the questions that a 5-year-
old could muster. Finally, Travis Huber
relented.
“If you can be quiet, you can go,” said
Huber, 36, of White Hall. A lifelong hunter
whose forebears did the same, Huber now
has his son scrunch down with him in a tree
stand and watch for deer.
“Case will sit there and mumble to me,
but he’s pretty darn quiet for a 5-year old,”
he said.
Then, last November, Huber shot a doe
and the boy’s demeanor changed.
“He put his hand on the deer and cried,”
his dad said. “You could tell he was upset
about taking a life. I told him, ‘We don’t
shoot things for fun, but to put food on the
table.’ After several days of talking about it,
Case understood.
“Later, as he ate a backstrap [deer
tenderloin] steak, he said, ‘You’re right dad,
this is good food. I was sad when we shot it,
but we need to get more.’ “
“Hunting is a learning process, and Case
has warmed up to it. I guarantee that when
I get another deer with him, he’ll claim it as
his own,” Huber said.