This week’s blog was written by Katie, a 2017 Gobblers alum. Since her time as a student, she’s just about done it all at the Academy — Youth Mentor, summer staff, and now full-time Multimedia Marketing Specialist. She loves that every day she gets to combine her passion for digital media with her love of the outdoors.
My family tells the story that when my brother was a toddler (and acting out) they’d tell him “patience is a virtue. Do you know what that means?”, and he’d famously say “it means you have to wait”.
Waiting isn’t easy. Now more than ever, we live in a time where we don’t have to wait. Amazon offers same-day deliveries, thousands of TV shows and movies are available at the click of a button, and you can search for anything you want to know on Google.
It hit me on the first day of archery season that hunting is one of the few places where I truly have to wait. Just me, in a tree, waiting for deer to walk by. Correction – waiting for a legal deer to walk by, at the perfect distance, facing the right way, all without detecting that I’m there.
The odds aren’t great. So why do it? After attending 27 field schools, I could list the ecological benefits of hunting – but in 13 years as a hunter, I’ve only harvested four deer. So it has to be something more than that.
Hunting is the one aspect of my life where it’s just me and nature. There’s no laptop pulling me in with the never-ending to-do list, there’s no work to do around the house, there’s no buzz of notifications. All the distractions are stripped away, and it’s just me in a tree.
I recently told the team at WLA that I do my best thinking in a tree stand. It’s a time when I am forced to observe, think, and question the world around me. The very things we teach every Academy student to do as part of their Conservation Ambassador training. And as I’m writing this blog from a tree stand, I can say that my phone’s notes app is filled with new ideas, nature observations that I wanted to document, and big picture thoughts about life. Today my screen time report will show Notes and Seek as my most used apps, instead of TikTok and Netflix.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t love waking up hours before dawn, hiking in the dark, sitting for hours in the freezing cold, and eating subpar Little Debbie cakes. But it is amazing how much clearer things are when all the distractions are gone. Not everyone is a hunter, but I encourage you to slow down, go for a walk, take your lunch on a park bench, explore new places, and find the time to just enjoy waiting. Patience is a virtue, and a gift, and it means you get to wait.
Patience is a Virtue
Posted: October 18, 2025 by Katie Mace
This week’s blog was written by Katie, a 2017 Gobblers alum. Since her time as a student, she’s just about done it all at the Academy — Youth Mentor, summer staff, and now full-time Multimedia Marketing Specialist. She loves that every day she gets to combine her passion for digital media with her love of the outdoors.
My family tells the story that when my brother was a toddler (and acting out) they’d tell him “patience is a virtue. Do you know what that means?”, and he’d famously say “it means you have to wait”.
Waiting isn’t easy. Now more than ever, we live in a time where we don’t have to wait. Amazon offers same-day deliveries, thousands of TV shows and movies are available at the click of a button, and you can search for anything you want to know on Google.
It hit me on the first day of archery season that hunting is one of the few places where I truly have to wait. Just me, in a tree, waiting for deer to walk by. Correction – waiting for a legal deer to walk by, at the perfect distance, facing the right way, all without detecting that I’m there.
The odds aren’t great. So why do it? After attending 27 field schools, I could list the ecological benefits of hunting – but in 13 years as a hunter, I’ve only harvested four deer. So it has to be something more than that.
Hunting is the one aspect of my life where it’s just me and nature. There’s no laptop pulling me in with the never-ending to-do list, there’s no work to do around the house, there’s no buzz of notifications. All the distractions are stripped away, and it’s just me in a tree.
I recently told the team at WLA that I do my best thinking in a tree stand. It’s a time when I am forced to observe, think, and question the world around me. The very things we teach every Academy student to do as part of their Conservation Ambassador training. And as I’m writing this blog from a tree stand, I can say that my phone’s notes app is filled with new ideas, nature observations that I wanted to document, and big picture thoughts about life. Today my screen time report will show Notes and Seek as my most used apps, instead of TikTok and Netflix.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t love waking up hours before dawn, hiking in the dark, sitting for hours in the freezing cold, and eating subpar Little Debbie cakes. But it is amazing how much clearer things are when all the distractions are gone. Not everyone is a hunter, but I encourage you to slow down, go for a walk, take your lunch on a park bench, explore new places, and find the time to just enjoy waiting. Patience is a virtue, and a gift, and it means you get to wait.
Category: Youth Blog Tags: connection, featured, hunting, nature observation