A few years ago, my wife asked me if I wanted to do the 100-mile Tour de Prairie ride. I declined. I’ve done 100-mile bike rides in my younger days, but youth was a big factor in my decision to do them. The other factor was fitness. I’m not talking about general fitness. I think my lungs and my legs could still handle a 100-miler, but I’m absolutely certain my posterior could not.
Riding a bike for that long puts a lot of pressure on your sitting region, and you really need to build up to that. But it did get me thinking about the hunting season.
That may seem like a strange correlation, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to getting a hunting bicycle. They’re like a mountain bike on steroids. They have huge, fat tires, and you can get them with a silent electric motor that helps propel you up the trail. There’s still pedaling involved, especially if you want to have some battery left in case you knock something down miles from camp and want to be able to carry the meat back with the aid of your electric ride. But it would sure make four trips hauling out a quartered elk a lot easier.
But don’t think you’re going to get an electric hunting bike and be good to go from Day 1. You’re still going to need to ease into longer and longer trips on that thing – especially if where you hunt has any kind of terrain. The more bumps you hit and hills you climb, the more your rump is going to feel it.
I thought about getting in shape for biking so I could eventually get a hunting bicycle. I even went so far as to pull the mountain bike out of the shed and take a few rides on it. But then I gradually rode it less and less again, so now I’m back to where I was a few years ago. I’ll keep hunting on foot, or maybe I’ll convince my wife to let me take one of her horses with me this fall. I’m OK with a long ride on a saddle, but I’m nowhere near ready for one on a bike seat.
