Right place, right time.
I just got back from a 6 day elk hunt where I was ready to tuck my tail between my legs, head home and eat a heaping bowl of tag soup. One of the funny things about hunting is the amount of time you put in for such an uncertain outcome.
You spend countless hours analyzing maps, pinning down locations, potential feeding areas, bedding areas, evaluating animal behavior, checking the weather, moon phases, and the list goes on. This is not to mention all of the time spent fiddling with equipment, firearms, archery tackle, binoculars, rangefinders etc. There is still the factor of making the shot when an opportunity presents itself which is not guaranteed either.
After all of this time spent, there is only so much you can do. Animals are going to do whatever they want whenever they want.
Back to the result of my most recent hunt. After 6 days of hunting hard, finding elk, but not getting any presented opportunities, just as we were getting ready to pack it in and go home, it was like the hunting gods decided to throw us a bone. A group of elk came over the ridge we were glassing right on cue. A perfect opportunity for us to get a shot as they were feeding down. Then the familiar sound of a side by side buzzing down the trail rang in my ears. They buzzed right on past where we had parked up the trail and right into the spot we were hunting. The elk were obviously not going to stick around for that. They shot back up over the ridge before that ATV even saw them. That was it, the end of the trip….
Then right as we are getting back to our parked location, its like the hunting gods were giving us one last opportunity. Sure enough, here come a group of elk running down the ridge straight for us. Things got a little western at that point, but we came away with the elk we had been trying so hard for all week.
Hunting has been a passion of mine for about 10 years now, and I can tell you I am nowhere even close to being proficient, let alone very good at it. But I think to be successful, 50% is prior preparation, 40% is being willing to work hard and put time and effort in the field, and the last 10% is just up to chance. You just have to be in the right place at the right time. You can do everything right and still come away with nothing to show for it.
This 50/40/10 analogy I use for hunting is directly applicable to the challenges we face in every day life. I believe that any goal or aspiration worth going after will require 50% prior preparation, 40% hard work, and 10% will be up to chance no matter what you do.
That last 10% is a hard pill to swallow. I can think of countless opportunities where I felt that I did everything right. I prepared myself to the best of my ability, worked my tail off, and for whatever reason the stars didn’t align. For the longest time those missed opportunities made me very bitter. If I did everything right then it must not be my fault right? That coach just didn’t like me. The hiring committee was biased. That instructor had an agenda.
What I didn’t realize was that even though all of that prior preparation and hard work didn’t result in the outcome I had in mind, it opened doors that I didn’t even know were there. I believe that God has a plan, and presents us countless opportunities. I also believe that bitterness and resentment can cloud our field of vision and cause us to miss those opportunities.
