Superstitions

Hunters and anglers are superstitious.  We get caught up in a ritualistic way of doing things.  That's the way we're supposed to do it.  The way we always have.  The way we always will.

Maybe it's that old lucky hat.  Maybe it's doing a certain number of wraps on a clinch knot.  Maybe it's throwing out your decoys in a certain order.  Maybe it's counting each guide on you fly rod as you pass your doubled up fly line through.  Maybe it's, as a buddy of mine fervently argues, refusing to use the word "perfect" to describe the weather conditions, or anything for that matter.

For me it starts in the truck.  What's on my dash is a rabbit's foot, from a Tyrrell County cottontail.

I've got a lucky hat or two.  One's for fishing.  The other, duck hunting.  There's a duck blind/duck-boat/wood-duck-swamp snack, introduced to me by my neighbor, Tav Gauss.  Vienna sausages.  Mechanically separated chicken isn't always the the most appealing thing in the early morning cold of a duck hunt, but I've always got them in my duck box.  And when I'm tying on a new fly with a clinch knot, it's exactly seven wraps - five's too few, and I'm just not a fan of the number 6.  

But for whatever the reason, as impractical, as possibly meaningless as some of these superstitious rituals are, you still do them.  

You don't stop doing them because, sometimes, they work.