Top 10 Health Benefits of Hunting

Hunting is an age-old sport that combines physical with nutrition. Hunters can enjoy the sport, commune with nature, and bring home a feast to their families. Here are the Top 10 from Health Fitness Revolution and author of the book ReSYNC Your Life Samir Becic:

• Connection with friends and family: Hunting is a natural physical activity that can be done in solitude or socially, with friends and or with family. Many hunters state that they were taught to hunt from a family member and enjoy the quality family-time that hunting provides to the family unit.  Hunters feel that they receive a therapeutic/relaxed feeling when out hunting or enjoy the quality time that it provides to be with family and friends.
• Physical balance: Remaining perfectly still in your shooting stance while aiming your gun at the target exercises your core muscles, which supports proper posture. When the abdominal muscles are weak, the lower back holds additional pressure and weight from simple daily tasks like walking. Strengthening the abdominal muscles allows the weight of the upper body to be evenly distributed over the front and back, improving balance.
• Is physically demanding: Hunters are busy preparing blinds, tending food plots, scouting the woods, target shooting and some even train dogs. All this preparation is far healthier than that of a sedentary lifestyle and is part of an active, healthy lifestyle.
• Exercise: Just to carry the rifle itself is a workout in itself. Most rifles weigh an average of 12.5 pounds, which isn’t a bad workout if it is held for up for six or eight hours. For those who choose to hunt with a bow and arrow, the heavier the pull tension, the more it the bow weighs, in which case a hunter would need to steady an eighty-pound draw long enough to get a decent shot off- all of which would contribute to some serious bicep and forearm muscular endurance.
• Enjoying nature:  Many enjoy the challenges that temperature, inclement weather and terrains can add to their hunting adventure. A 2011 study found that outdoor exercise was associated with greater decreases in tension, confusion, anger and depression when compared to indoor activity. And a 2010 study found that even just five minutes of exercise in a green space can improve mood and self-esteem.
• Nutrition: The objective of hunting is to bring home game meat and eat the fruits of your hunt. Game meat generally is a lean protein. The meat from an animal is only going to be as good as the food that it consumes. Therefore, meat from wild game that eats a variety of natural foods is healthier than commercially raised meat. An animal that eats a diet that is mostly grass contains a greater variety of vitamins stored in its muscle tissue than animals raised on grain. Venison (meat from deer) and elk meat both are low in fat. Game birds, such as partridge and pheasants and game such as rabbit all are lean meats, meaning they have less fat too.
• Increases mental discipline: To the surprise of many, hunting is a primarily mental sports. Experienced marksmen think sport shooting is 90% mental. Concentration levels are sharpened and expanded. Multiple problem solving activities involving logic, and creative thinking (thinking “outside the box”) are needed and employed to succeed at hunting.
• Help the environment: The taxes from hunting activities go to the states or to the federal government for such purposes as enhancing wildlife habitat, managing and maintaining parks and wildlife refuges, and conducting surveys and research to determine the status of not only game but also some non-game species. Due to these factors, hunters contribute in a big way to benefiting natural environments.
• Mental Relaxation: Hunters often reveal that being in nature provides time to clear the mind. In the woods, there is no rush, no schedule, and no deadlines; nature moves at its own pace. This is very therapeutic and counter-balances the rush that most people feel in their day-to-day lives. Hunting also offers a unique opportunity to interact with the natural world that is not possible through any other means. This interaction provides a deep spiritual connection with the land, the wildlife, and our planet.
• Gives the body an adrenaline boost: Holding a weapon and firing it can be an exhilarating thing to do! A hunter’s adrenaline will be spiked and cause a surge of energy to pulse through your blood. Increased levels of adrenalin in the blood signal your liver to break down glycogen, the substance that provides the muscles with glucose, the primary source of fuel in your body.

If you enjoy hunting, please read our article the Top 10 Health Benefits of Going to a Shooting Range

Read our other Top 10 Articles

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