by Some Guy
Is math really all that important to the sportsman? Yep! Whether you are hunting or fishing there are numerical limits on how much stuff you can take home with you. Being able to do simple math, like counting, is handy. The more advanced stuff like logarithms and hypotenuses are of no concern to us. Most sportsmen can count, some cannot. There is no hope for those who can’t count. Some sportsmen who can count just refuse to do it. There is no hope for these people either. For the rest of us, we sometimes find ourselves in situations where we could use better math skills. Counting isn’t all that difficult of a task by its self. But if you add in certain circumstances like changing numbers and pressure, accurate counting can become impossible.
Humans are the only animals who are concerned with exact numbers. Other animals deal only with the #1 and “some”. If a crow is flying by and sees some grain on the ground, it will think “Hey some seeds!” The crow will land and eat them. I’m quite positive the crow would never see the seeds and think, “Ah, screw that, there’s only 216 seeds there!” and then fly off. The lives of predators revolve around the number 1. A hawk flies over and sees a mouse, “Ooh, a mouse!” If the hawk sees five mice, it thinks “Ooh, a mouse!” Never does the hawk think, “Ah, screw that, there’s only one” and flies away. These are the same type of math skill used by the “can’t count” and “refuse to” guys. For them, this serves them well. For the rest of us we need something better.
Snow geese can provide a good example of certain circumstances that will make simple math difficult. Snows generally travel in large flocks. Multiple kills are quite common. Catch a flock on a small pond in a blizzard and multiple kills are almost assured. It was in this setting that my math skills were reduced to the level of the “can’t count” guy.
A friend of mine and I came up over the dike. The water was white with snows. You couldn’t have gotten more geese on that pond if you used a shoe horn! We both emptied our guns. The geese got up but just wanted right back down because of the blizzard. We emptied our guns again! As we were loading our guns for the third time we looked out over the pond in awe. There were dead and dying geese everywhere!
This is when our math skills deteriorated. Not wanting to go over the limit we were trying to get a count on the downed geese. We were trying to count while pounding the cripples swimming around the already dead. All the time more geese kept trying to land. The place looked like a hornets’ nest! No other time in my life have I had such a hard time counting to 40!
The pressure of these types of situations is when sportsmen really need better math skills. The presence of the game warden will also add to the pressure. Have you ever tried counting a bucket full of 4” perch as the game warden is charging across the lake towards you? It is impossible!
What every outdoorsman really needs is the math skills of the Certified Public Accountant. One who specializes in tax returns! The CPA performs his job under pressure and with a high degree of accuracy. The client will bring in a shoebox full of fraudulent receipts and other documents to the CPA. Just when the CPA has the return ready, the client will inevitably finds some more documents to add to the mix, and take some others away. The CPA will handle the added pressure and still meet the deadline. Think about it this way. Just replace the CPA’s shoebox full of fraudulent receipts, and other documents with the hunters’ pond of ever changing number of snow geese. Replace the CPA’s deadline with the IRS with the fisherman’s game warden making it across the lake.
Yep, the math skill of the CPA is what all sportsmen need. More specifically, I want the guy who did my neighbor’s taxes. My neighbor only made $10,000 last year but his “accountant” got him a $15,000 tax return! With this type of accounting skills the sportsman might be able to find “legal” loopholes in the DNR’s fish regulations to avoid over limit tickets. I think I’m going to have that guy do my taxes next year. That is if he is out of jail in time.
Outside of snow geese in a blizzard, hunting is usually pretty cut and dry as far as the need for good math skills. In most states the deer limit is 1. Even hunters who can’t count can manage getting to 1. But the #1 is the one number that will always come back and haunt the fisherman. If your limit of fish is 3 or 5 for example, this is not a problem. When you’re dealing with a limit of 50 or 100, the #1 will rear its ugly head! Multiple anglers provide a certain circumstance that will make the problem worse.
One time I was ice fishing for perch with a friend of mine when certain circumstances made the #1 rear its ugly head. My friend was one of those “refuse to count” guys. I was unaware of his math phobia at the time. The perch limit on that particular lake was 50. 50 is a pretty liberal limit. In my experience gathered over years of fishing it is very hard to catch 50 decent perch in one day! The two of us could catch 100 combined, for our “can’t count” and “refuse to” readers.
The perch were biting like mad that day! Most of what we were catching was little pukes, about 4” to 5”. Occasionally we would get a real nice perch about 8” to 10”. I was just throwing the 4”ers back. My friend was keeping some of them because as he said, “They’re big enough to get a knife into!” We never gave the limit a thought. 100 is a lot of 8” to 10” perch!
We had fished for a few hours and my bucket was looking kind of full. I counted, and I had 25 of the good perch. I said, “I have 25, how about you?” My friend said, “Yeah, about the same here.” “The way it’s going you might want to lay off keeping those little ones”, I said. My friend said, “We’re O.K., I’m only putting good ones in the bucket.” “Hey I’m gonna take a break and eat a sandwich.” “Besides, I’ve got a major bird’s nest in my reel and can’t get back down right now anyway.” He grabbed one of fish buckets and dumped them into the other. “I’m gonna use this to set my lunch on”, he said as he turned the bucket over.
It was shortly after that the game warden showed up on his snowmobile. I was pulling up another of the 10” perch. The warden said, “Hey, that’s a nice one!” “How many more you got?” he asked as he dumped the fish out on the ice and started counting. “. . . 97, 98, 99, 100, 101!” “I’m sorry fella, I’m gonna have to write you up”, he said as he was looking right at me! “What the hell!” “Write me up?” “I’ve only caught about 30 of these!” “That’s the guy you want right there”, as I pointed at my friend! “He’s the idiot who threw 70 pukers in there!” “Why the hell should I get the ticket?” “He’s the one over the limit, not me!” The warden stated, “You guys can have 100 perch, there’s 101.” “You can’t both be over the limit, and I just saw you catch #101.” As the warden was handing me the ticket he said, “Your friend was smart enough to quit fishing.” “He’s just eating a sandwich, isn’t any law against that.” As the warden was loading the fish on his snowmobile he said, “You should learn to count better so you don’t have this problem again.”
On the way home my friend said, “Bummer about the ticket man!” “That warden was right, you should have counted better!” He never said another word the rest of the way home after that. As a matter of fact it was about two weeks before the indentations left on his wind pipe by my thumbs popped out enough to allow normal speech again. Yep, sportsmen could stand to have better math skills!
