How the Cow Face Pose can make you a better duck hunter

In the days before I ever considered hunting waterfowl, I found the same solace I was seeking on the yoga mat.

At the studio, the environment is controlled. The temperature, sound, the austere surroundings and even the space in which we practiced our postures — the mat — are prescribed.

Our instructor walked the room, his voice a calm reassurance that we would all achieve a benefit for our effort. The benefit would be physical, spiritual and mental. He was right — we walked away feeling cleansed of the disorder we felt in our lives. I often walked away hungry for something more.

As much as I wanted to learn how to sustain a clear and balanced mind in an otherwise distracting daily life, there is more to yoga than the postures learned in a class. Yoga students talk about their practice "off the mat," and the ways yoga is meant to connect us with something greater than ourselves.

As much as I enjoyed the exertion and how the calming voice of my instructor echoed my deepest values — effort and achievement — it was another voice that invited me duck hunting.

The weather was cold and unforgiving my first day on the Kenai River flats. The nearest escape from the misery of damp cobwebs and the flesh of rotting salmon was a 400-yard crawl away.

Mascara dripped into my eyes as the sky opened up with rain, I took the lead as Steve followed, and we began the long crawl. The borrowed shotgun was heavy, and I used it to break my trail. When we reached the edge of the pond, two widgeons glanced at me from the sides of their heads. Their bodies broke from the surface, shedding pond water and lifting into the rain-filled sky.

I heard Steve's voice behind me tell me to shoot, and I pulled the trigger without fully mounting the gun. I watched the pair of widgeons fly into the distant clouds. Their wings carried an untranslatable story — a sound like the rushed beating of my heart if it pumped wind instead of blood.

Beside me, a spent 12 gauge shell lay in the marsh. Steve picked it up and held it to his nose. "This is what fall smells like to me," he said.

Until that moment, the only thing that fall ever smelled like to me was school supplies. The misery of the swamp — its pungent smell, the grainy river mud, the cold, wet environment — teemed with life in forms that could never be seen from the road. These were the creatures some fear in the house — spiders, shrews, insects — making their living in the wild.

And off in the distance, gently gliding on a pond, were the ducks. I didn't know anything about them or their distant journeys on the wind. I only knew that they were why we were in the muck. The opening of the shotgun's action and the empty shells ejecting backward, and then the smoke emptying out of the barrels, was a new kind of exhale.

Instead of returning to the yoga studio, I purchased an over/under 20 gauge shotgun made for the field. The CZ Redhead was lighter than the borrowed 12 gauge, and its satin chrome-finished receiver and chrome-lined barrels would weather the salt of the tidal flats.

For many years, I forgot about going to yoga class. The opportunity to practice yoga was replaced by a pursuit that took all of my attention. It seemed that the subject of hunting would take a lifetime to master, and at first it seemed at odds with the principles of yoga.

I had read that the Dalai Lama eats meat, and I wondered how he reconciled meat-eating with the yoga and Buddhist tenet of nonviolence. My emerging thoughts and experiences had led me to the idea that compassion for game animals is not exclusive to the fact that they die and become food. The moral gymnastics that sanction eating meat without killing are as full of ethical blind spots as agriculture and industry — the disconnections do not change the results.

Ten years after leaving yoga class and starting my journey as a hunter, I found myself taking a 200-hour yoga teacher training in Maui. There, I learned that I had an imbalance in my back and shoulders, likely caused by repetitive shooting movements on one side. The muscles on my right side (I am right-handed) were over-built and caused stress in my joints.

Many who shoot repetitively for practice don't consider practicing on their opposite side. After a day of shouldering a shotgun, I now make sure to practice mounting the gun an equal number of times on the opposite side. Yoga postures that provide an inward rotation of the shoulder, like Cow Face Pose, create balanced flexibility. The widening of the collar bones and drawing down of the shoulder blades in Mountain Pose provides relief. The Sun Salutation series is a nice flow of counteractions.

The real purpose of yoga is not in the postures themselves, although the practical benefits to hunters can provide relief for the gripping action used in practice shooting or to relax sore muscles after a long day of backpacking. The focus on the breath to calm the mind and relax or to work through tension helps in any intense activity.

Yoga is considered a practice in the sense that it is a repeated exercise to acquire skill or proficiency. If you are a sheep hunter, nothing replaces climbing mountains in the offseason to prepare physically for the hunt. But practicing yoga benefits every activity and is not off-limits to hunters any more than consuming meat or the products of industry is off-limits to Buddhism.

The two practices — hunting and yoga — bring together meat and meditation in a way that works for me, but not necessarily for Steve, who leaves Downward Dog to the actual dogs.

A day spent on the tidal flats hunting ducks takes as much out of a hunter as it gives. It's what makes me feel most alive. The sedentary ache of my body on cold mornings with the company of an alert chocolate Lab at my side for hours in the duck blind is the ultimate sustained focus and harmony.

For every duck we bring home, I am overwhelmed with gratefulness for how it sustains me. If yoga taught me it is the effort to achieve the result that has value, hunting has taught me the value of the result.

Christine Cunningham of Kenai is a lifelong Alaskan and avid hunter. On alternate weeks, she writes about Alaska hunting and fishing. Contact her at cunningham@yogaforduckhunters.com.