Hunting has historically been a rural way of life, a family tradition shared between generations and among friends. But more people have been coming into hunting in mid-life as a way to form a more complete and intentional connection with nature, the cycles of life and the food they eat. Deer are not the only thing that turn up on this journey of both inward and outward exploration.
You can buy a drive-through burger anytime and stuff your face in the car on the way to your next appointment. Eating has become just another distraction. Eat & run. Woof & hoof. Snarf & barf. But not today. Today we’re going hunting for the elusive white-tail buck in the woods of Vermont, and it’s not fast food.

About the Back-40 Series
Back-40 is a collection of stories that take you into country living at its finest, most rewarding, and sometimes most ridiculous. There is a growing movement – a “rural-reboot” of sorts – that embraces a hands-on, mind-on, heart-open lifestyle. This approach to personal self-discovery has the power to reset social values, putting individuals and communities back together again. Basic homesteading, self-reliance, and social skills were the currency of the rapidly receding past, and will be required in a fast moving future.

It takes a solid connection to community to become self-sufficient, and it takes time to build those relationships. An ad-hoc group of friends and far-flung neighbors dubbed themselves "The Homesteader’s Club", sharing their time, experience, and spare parts to help build each other’s homes and lives. You’ll get to know a few members of the Club as they serve to tie together this collection of stories about homesteading in the 21st century. Each story in the Back-40 series focuses on a particular aspect, project, or musing that speaks to cultivating self-reliance, community, and opportunity in a world that sometimes seems increasingly constrained by specialization.

You’re invited into The Homesteader’s Club to help raise the animals, live with renewable energy, enjoy a homemade bowl of oatmeal with oats you sowed in the lower field, split firewood, tend the bees, go deer hunting, and ponder the value and fun of it all at the end of the day when you come home and feel the simple satisfaction of a job well done.

Immerse yourself in the adventure, throw yourself at life and accept what it throws back as gifts. You may not always like what you get or get what you want, but when you trust your instincts and respect the fact that everything found in the beauty and brutality of nature, and everyone who shares your journey has something to show you, you will always get what you need. Guaranteed.