From: “Brave Hunter, Stout Woodcock”

I’m not sure I want to know why I’m attracted to bird hunting. But I will try to make sense of the matter.

- P.J. O’Rourke

I’ve been shooting in New Brunswick, Canada, for a decade. Usually 8 or 10 of us make an outing in the fall. We are an ordinary lot, halfway though life’s actuarial leach field and pretty well fixed. We’re not likely to be tapped for a Benetton ad.

Some of us are avid hunters and deadly shots, and some of us have a gun that doesn’t fit and needs a different choke and the safety keeps sticking. I was using the wrong size shot and too light a load. I’m beginning to get arthritis in my shoulder. I have a new bifocal prescription. My boots hurt. The sun got in my eyes.

This is not one of those men-go-off-in-the-woods hunting trips full of drink, flatulence and lewd Hillary Clinton jokes. For one thing, some of us aren’t men. A couple of us aren’t even Republicans. We pack neckties, sports coats, skirts and makeup (although I don’t think anyone wears all four). There is little of the Cro-Magnon in this crowd. Though there is something about three bottles of wine apiece with dinner and six-egg breakfasts … Did someone step on a carp? And you’ve heard about Hillary . . .

Our New Brunswick sojourn is not a wilderness adventure either. We’re no Patagonia-clad apostles of deep ecology out getting our faces rubbed in Mother Nature’s leg hair. And we’re too old to need a 30-mile hike, a wet bedroll and a dinner of trail mix and puddle water to make us think life is authentic. If we’d wanted to push human endurance to its limits and face awesome challenges of the natural elements in their uncivilized state, we could have stayed home with the kids.

No. We spend the shoot in the deep woods but at a good lodge with an excellent chef. The chef not only cooks six-egg breakfasts and Bordeaux-absorbent dinners but also packs delightful lunches for us; for example, moose sandwiches, which are much better — also smaller — than they sound.