About a decade ago I signed up as a member of a conservation organization. The token of gratitude they shipped me for my membership donation was an olive green ballcap with the logo stitched in orange. I liked the look of it, and the hat fit just right. This became my lucky hat.
I wore this hat hiking, target shooting, kayaking, fishing, hunting…you name it. I had it on when I caught some big fish and I had it on when I harvested some deer. I began to associate it with success. Life went on and I bought new hats, but the other hats did not have the same charm nor did they bring me luck.
Hunters will tell you they’re practical people. My loyalty to this hat definitely hinged on impractical. For all our talk of strategy, tactic, and biology, hunting is filled with quiet superstitions, little rituals, and good luck charms. Things that defy logic but feel crucial anyway. Maybe it’s serendipity or maybe it’s the placebo affect, but we aren’t going hunting without them.
I put a call out on social media asking hunters to share their good luck charms and rituals, and boy, did they deliver. Some are funny, some are sweet, and some hit the heartstrings hard.
Heirloom Charms
Hunting is often solitary in execution but communal in lineage. So much of hunting culture is centered around passing traditions from generation to generation. Many of the charms we swear by are tokens that were given to us by a family member or mentor. These items become a bridge between generations.
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Finn Kangas, a sportman from Vermont, carries a hunting knife that was gifted to him by his father.
“He passed in 1994. and he gave it to me in 1985,” Kangas said. “It’s 75 years old, made in Finland. I simply must carry it!”
Adirondack whitetail hunter Jacob Gydesen has been wearing the same wool hat for 27 years. He also carries both his grandfather and his father’s handkerchiefs in the back pockets of his wool pants.
Outdoorsman and gudie Bill Foote has a hickory nut in pocket of his hunting pants.
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“My daughter picked it up one day in the woods when she was little and gave it to me,” he said. “I’ve carried it ever since.”
David Simmons carries his .280 Remington rifle, which was built to honor a dear friend who, sadly, lost her 14-year fight against NonHodgkins Lymphoma.
Shilou Cote Since received a small safety mirror at age 13 in 1991. It’s meant to be used to reflect light to aircraft in an mergency situation.
“It keeps me feeling safe,” she said “And I’ve used it to apply sunblock and fix wet mascara.”
For some hunters, the lucky thing isn’t a thing, it’s a person. My dad used to get a deer almost every opening morning that we went hunting together. He used to say I was a lucky charm. For hunter Eric Centro, it’s not one person, but people. He brings his kids hunting, and he has harvested a deer with every one of them, to his delight.
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Bullet Traditions
Some hunters carry the first shell they ever dropped a deer with. Others keep the spent casing from a particularly meaningful harvest, a first buck, a first hunt with a parent, a deer taken during a significant time in thier life. It rides along in a pack or a pocket season after season.
I used to have old shells that my grandpa had left in his hunting jacket the last time he hung it up after rabbit hunting. Those shells jangled in the pocket of that jacket for years.
Artemis Sportswoman alumni Morgan Harrel carries her dad’s ashes in a shotgun shell while hunting.
“My dad passed away a number of years ago,” she said. “He had asked this his ashes be loaded into shotgun shells. I carry a shell in all my gear- one in turkey vest, deer hunting bag, dove belt and my waders. Keeping him close feels like luck!”
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Rituals and Superstitions
Some hunters won’t enter the woods without saying a quiet prayer or touching a specific talisman. These rituals ground us. Ritual is different from superstition of course, but they overlap.
Some superstitions are based in avoiding any back juju that could befall if we don’t do a specific set of actions. Some just develop naturally when things go right and we try to repeat whatever magic happened the first time.
If you arrowed a buck on November 9th last year, there’s a good chance you’ll be in the woods on November 9th this year, probably even in the same spot.
“My grandmother would always find four-leaf clovers everywhere she went,” Registered Maine Hunting Guide Demitria Giroux Kline said. “After she passed away, I was in her yard and decided to try and find one for some luck. I ended up finding one and got drawn for a moose permit the next day. I found another one the day before my hunt, laminated it and put it in my binocular case for good luck. I ended up finding one more while on my moose hunt and ended up harvesting my first moose!”
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Outdoor writer and radio show Craig Robbins has a gobbler feather over the visor in his Ford F150. It’s been there for for years. Before every hunt, he makes sure to touch the feather before getting out of the truck.
Michelle Izzo, her dad, and her uncle have a special phrase they say to one another before a hunt. “Shoot straight,” she said. “Their Dad would always say that to them so we continue the phrase.”
Manifesting Good Fortune
Maine Artemis Sportswomen Ambassador Crystal MacGown always looks to the sky and find Orion.
“I pray for the chance at a successful harvest,” she said. “It’s worked several times.”
New York State Conservation Council President Keith G. Tidball is still wearing a hat that I wore on his first Chesapeake Bay duck hunt back in 1999. He also has lucky socks that he wears on opening day of certain seasons.
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“I have a certain pair of duck socks I wear on the waterfowl opener, pair of deer socks for deer rifle opener, etc.,” he said. “My friends at Kuneytown Sportsmens Club have a post-successful big game hunt tradition that includes a German benediction; shots of liquor from deer shaped shot glasses stored in a ornate chest.”
Alice Jones Webb is careful to not let anyone jinx her hunt.
“If someone wishes me good luck, that’s like a ruined hunt,” she said. “I will go out of my way to keep people from saying it, including rudely cutting them off and walking away mid conversation.”
Sportswoman Lauren Tonti carries mini Snickers bars on every hunt.
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“When I first got into hunting they were introduced to me as easy, freeze tolerant, quiet, high energy snack,” she said. “Now it’s very nostalgic for me and I feel like if I don’t have them I’m missing something.”
Jesse Warner, the Northeastern R3 Coordinator for the National Wild Turkey Federation, follows a trick that his family swears by.
“If you’ve been hunting for a few days, and not seeing anything, start carrying a different rifle,” he said. “It’s been a common trick in my family and works great.”
Good Karma, Bad Karma
New England sportswoman Cheryl Frank Sullivan has a lucky face mask with a brim that she used for 20 years until losing it in the woods last year turkey hunting.
“I was devastated,” she said. “Given I was successful this year, I deemed it an offering to the forest spirits.”
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“Before the snows came, I found an old horseshoe in the tilled field where I have always had my best luck,” Sullivan said. “I started to walk away with it so it wouldnt end up in a tire and something didnt feel right…like it was meant to be a part of the land. I went back and leaned it up against my stand tree and harvested a doe out of it a few weeks later. I am superstitious but more of a believer in karma on so many levels.”
Jeff Evans, a hunter from New York, still wears the first camo shirt he ever bought and follws a very important rule: never carry a red lighter.
Photographer and hunter Sarah Jo Bushinger would always listen to Stranglehold by Ted Nugent on the drive to whenever she was headed to a hunt.
Alexa Roy, from Vermont, rolls around on the ground for scent cover before heading into the woods.
Keith Colonna Jr. has a ritual that is a win-win.
“This is a weird one, but no dirty dishes in the sink when I leave to hunt,” he said. “I went on a hot streak a few years back and every day I filled a tag, I’d happened to have done the dishes the night before. Now, I never leave one in the sink when I go hunt.”
Lady Outdoor Lifestyles publisher Brandy Elrod has to have Haribo gummy bears with her.
“If I forget them I feel like I’m going to starve even if I have a vest full of other snacks,” she said.
Zach Vucurevich once found an arrowhead on his family’s property.
“I was targeting a specific buck that year, and took it as a sign to hang a stand in the field by that gate for the evening hunt,” he said. “I had never been more confident in a hunting setup in my entire life! I was fully convinced the ancient hunters of that land had basically placed a glowing neon sign saying “hunt here!” I didn’t see a deer that night.”
Hunting culture is full of quirks, oddball traditions, and superstitions. As long as hunters have hunted, we’ve relied on something beyond skill to bring us some meat, weather that’s good furtune, faith, or a little bit of both.
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