Types of Sportsman

Types of Sportsman

By Jason Smith

Sportsmen and women come in all different shapes, sizes, ages, etc. We have our own individual personalities that make us each unique. We come from different walks of life. Work different types of careers or go to different schools. Have different political and religious views. etc. It seems, at times; about the only thing that makes some of us even remotely similar is our common love for pursuing wild game, habitat improvement, or just plain spending time outdoors.

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet, talk, hunt and fish with my fair share of other sportsmen. What I’ve found is that each individual person is very unique, but often the type of actual sportsman that they are can be easily grouped in with general characteristics of other sportsmen that I’ve encountered. Some I’ve been able to mesh with right away and others have left me scratching my head in wonder and disbelief.

Here are a few different types of sportsmen personalities that I’ve encountered, and I’m betting you have, some of them, too.

Competitive
Yep, THAT one. The sportsman who turns everything into a competition.

I’ve personally experienced and heard stories about this type of sportsman when it mainly comes to fishing and bird hunting.

You’re fishing a shoreline with a buddy and you start catching a couple of fish in a little area, and your buddy isn’t, but they see you reel in that second fish and make a beeline for you. Before you know it, they’re practically fishing right on top of you. Lines get tangled. Words get exchanged. Heads get dunked underwater. You know, the typical stuff. Sure does make for an uncomfortable ride home together.

They’ll do the same thing when you’re out ice fishing together. Holes could be six feet apart, and if you start catching fish, you know it’s only a matter of time before you’re giving up your honey hole and drilling another, because nobody goes home happy if they get dunked in ice water.

If they’re running the trolling motor in a boat, and they think you’re catching more fish than you should be from the back of the boat, they’ll maneuver it so for the rest of the day, you’re never within casting distance of the structure you’re fishing again.

Bird hunting is similar. Birds are flying up and straight away just in front of your footsteps and before you can go from shock to shouldering your gun, BLAM, BLAM, BLAM, your buddy starts blasting at them from forty yards over. Clearly they’re your birds to take the first shot at. Jeesh!

Then, when it comes to telling everyone about how the fishing and hunting went, the first thing they do is start throwing out stats. Jimmy got two nice ones, but I got seven of them suckers… Some people.

Tall-Tale Teller
This is the sportsman who always seems to have a story to tell. Stories that I usually can’t officially confirm or deny, as I wasn’t there in person.

Not too long ago, before everybody had a smart phone, and every smart phone had a camera, I heard some whoppers. One that sticks out is a buddy that told me on several occasions that he and another buddy were catching loads of two pound bluegill out of a local lake, and throwing them back. Now, I’d caught thousands of bluegill in my lifetime, and I doubt I’d ever caught one over two pounds. I let this one slide because hey, it’s just a fish story. I had another buddy call this buddy out on it though, and to this day, I don’t think they’re buddies anymore.

Recently, I’ve been told about five pound bass being caught, and I’ve asked for picture evidence. Occasionally, but rarely, pics are pretty convincing it’s a fish that might tip the scales at or over five pounds. Usually though, it’s a two to two and a half pounder, three max, and I get a kick out of it every time.

I guess it’s not limited to fish though. I was in my mid-twenties when my ex-sister in-law’s, ex-brother in-law was talking to me about deer hunting. I may have looked wet behind the ears, but I’d been deer hunting for over a decade. He told me a story about how his buddy, ex-special forces something or other, was in a tree stand bow hunting and when a buck walked under him, he hung his bow up, unsheathed his knife, and jumped out of the tree onto the back of the deer.

It was all I could do to keep a straight face.

Unlucky
This is the sportsman who, no matter how hard they work or how hard they try, they always seem to fall short.

One of the guys in my deer hunting party had gun problems three seasons in a row. The first season, he bought a new gun that couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. The next season, different gun, something was wrong with his safety. I can’t recall what exactly, but he couldn’t get it switched off. The next season he had the same gun, with a fixed safety, but the firing pin was now either broken or missing all together. He had a bit of a stutter, and would tell the best story about his firing pin troubles. “I dropped my gun down on that buck, squeezed the trigger, and c-c-c-c-click. So I shucked another shell and c-c-c-c-c-click.”

He may have had gun troubles, but he harvested his share of deer. He was a truck driver and drove a lot of overnight and early morning hours. He’s hit more deer with vehicles than most sportsmen harvest in their lifetimes. The last time I talked to him, his company stopped allowing him to drive company vehicles due to hitting like three deer within a months’ time, or something crazy like that. It’s like he’s a magnet for them.

Lucky
This is the sportsman on the other side of the coin that I just talked about. They’re usually going to catch the biggest fish, or stringer of fish, no matter what. Or be covered up in birds and deer any time they hit the field.

I’ve got a buddy that out fishes me every single time that we go out. We can be fishing the same spots, fishing the same baits and techniques, and he lands at least three or four fish to my one. Sometimes that ratio gets ridiculous and all I can do is shake my head, smile and laugh.

Being lucky isn’t always a long-term condition though. I usually see this with first time deer hunters. No matter where we incorporate them into our party, they usually end up seeing and/or harvesting the largest deer of the entire season. That first season is golden because of this, which is a good thing, because it gets them hooked and coming back for years.

Any of this sound familiar? Know anybody who fits into any of these categories of sportsmen? Any of them fit you?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve probably spent at least a little bit of time in most, if not all of these categories. I’d like to think that I’m more of a well-seasoned ‘Awesome’ type sportsman today though…