Leave it to me to have a different take. I ate beans last night so I’m fulla gas this morning.
This is an excellent question, but there are a lot of “depends on” variables. Depends on what I’m hunting, what method of hunting and where I’m hunting.
If I’m deer hunting with a bow, sitting in a tree stand all day it is a lot different than water fowl or turkey hunting sitting in a blind all day. The former doesn’t really lend itself to learning much from you partner because of how quiet and still you need to be but the latter lends itself well to a day long chance to pick you companions brain on any and every subject.
There is Latin saying, “In Veno Veritas” in wine there is truth. I think this is carried through to hunting. In hunting there is truth. I think if you spend a day, one on one, in a hunting blind, with the only distraction being the quarry, you can get to know your fellow hunter. There is “jenesaisquoi”, something that compels you, and your companion, to be truthful, be honest, be yourself.
Having said that, I’d love to spend a day in a blind with any number of US Presidents. I’d like to pick GW’s mind to see if he is indeed as ineloquent a speaker or unintelligent as the media portrays him. I’d like to spend time with He Clinton and She Clinton, not that they would ever go hunting, to see if they are as disengenuine as I think they are. Ronald Regan, if he were still alive, I’d like to know if he was indeed “The Great Communicator” or an actor who read his lines “To slip the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God” has to be one of the best lines ever written. Tricky [censored], I’d ask him what was on those 14 minutes of blank tape. No, it really goes deeper than any one question with anybody. I wanna sit in the blind and try to figure out what makes a person “tick”. Why they did what they did and what tangents in there life caused them to be what they are. Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and their ilk on one side of my list and Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. on the other side. Don’t get me wrong, I want to hunt with people I admire as well as those who are nuts, to find out the truth in who they were/are.
If you are talking learning about hunting, that is a whole different matter. That’s where I pick the minds of the greatest hunters around, and that is any hunter I’m speaking to at the moment. I can learn something from everybody.
If you are talking about who you’d like to sit around a campfire and BS with, then it would be anybody on this site.
My gas is expelled now.
The ‘Bonker