Patrick Poston
Let me start by saying how excited I am to join Scott, Jerry and the rest of the Takedown Outdoors Pro Staff. As a new attorney working in the whitetail mecca of Central Illinois, my appreciation for the outdoors and the time I get to spend there has increased tenfold. Thus, the opportunity to join a group of quality guys and learn from accomplished hunters is truly a dream come true. I am thrilled to expand on my passion for the outdoors and even more so to be able to share it with TO viewers.
I was consumed with the outdoors at an early age, and was blessed to have been born into a hunting family. As a kid it was habit to fall asleep reading hunting magazines and catalogs, and my young mind would race imagining all of the hunting adventures my future would hold. Even before that, I can still feel the excitement in the house before my father’s hunting trips and the joy I got from helping him pack up his hunting gear the night before. Upon his return, he would always gather my brother, sister and I around and tell us stories of his encounters with that trip’s quarry as we “helped” him clean his guns and equipment.
As soon as I was old enough, my pre-hunt preparation role gave way to participation in the hunt itself. Early on, we would make the annual trip back to Missouri each year to rifle hunt on the farm where my grandpa was born and which has been in the family since pre-Civil War days. During these formative years, I learned more about the virtues of hunting from sitting around the campfire and listening to the oldtimers’ stories than the woods could ever teach me. It was on one of these trips that I killed my first deer, a four point buck, at the age of 11. Though I have been blessed to kill larger bucks since, this is still without a doubt my greatest trophy.
Though my earliest experiences were in gun hunting for whitetails, bowhunting quickly became my first love. This was mainly because I was allowed to tote a weapon on those hunts long before I was allowed to carry a rifle. I got my first compound bow for Christmas in the fourth grade, and I can still remember racing home from school everyday to shoot with my dad in the back yard. Spring and summer quickly gave way to fall, and the memories of those first bowhunting trips with my father after school every fall are some of the best of my childhood. Looking back, I now see how this marked the formal beginning of hunting as a bonding element between father and son.
As I got older, frequent moves took us far from family, friends and familiar woods. As well, competitive sports quickly came to consume my weekends. Thus, my trips to the woods were less frequent through high school and college. Although my passion for the outdoors took a secondary role to the realities of everyday life, it still burned as strong as ever. I got my outdoors fix through fishing and hunting whenever I could, and my father and I still dreamed of the day we would have some woods to call our own.
As college gave way to the working world and then law school, I once again had time to re-commit myself to the world of hunting and fishing. Today the hunting bond between my father and I that began so many years ago only continues to grow stronger. With my parents purchase of a farm in Southeast Missouri three years ago, our lifelong dream of having some deer woods of our own came to fruition. After years of successful harvests, I found a new appreciation and sense of purpose for my hunts. Working side by side with my father and family to improve the habitat and manage for quality whitetail deer and turkey has truly been one of my greatest joys in life. In all of my hunting experiences, nothing compares to the satisfaction of seeing wildlife respond to the improvements we have made to the surrounding environment. It has truly taken my joy of the harvest to the next level.
For me, hunting has always been about God, family, and friends. Never has God’s presence in this world been more apparent than those first few minutes of daylight when the woods “come alive.” The spiritual and personal reflection that my time in the outdoors continually spawns is, without a doubt, the best bounty any outdoorsman could ever reap. As well, impending falls and upcoming seasons hold the promise of spending much needed time with family and friends, and since we have had a place of our own to hunt, it has also meant introducing non-hunting friends to hunting and the outdoors. It still amazes me to see the way the outdoors bring me closer to family, friends, and God.
As a new-to-film hunter, I have even more reason to look forward to the upcoming bow season. I am excited about the new challenges that filming hunts will pose, and I am even more excited to share the successes and failures that these challenges will surely bring with TO viewers. I am grateful to be able to expand my hunting circle, learn from accomplished veterans, and take my hunting to the next level. I am even more grateful for the opportunity to share my passion for the outdoors with the TO viewers. I wish everyone a fruitful, safe, and fun hunting season and look forward to all the new friendships and memories that come from this experience!