When the Bourbon Starts Flowing

The Roman saying, in vino veritas — “in wine there is truth” — very much applies to bourbon at a hunt camp.

I have sat among hunters of all ages, all regions, and all levels of experience over the past decade at my hunt camps. Most of these camps last several days, and by the final evening, often when the hunting is done or nearly done, something magical happens.

Men release their vulnerabilities, often to their own surprise.

I say men because when the company is mixed, I’ve found that few men will allow themselves to become truly vulnerable in front of women they have just met a day or three before. Not because women are unsafe, but because men have been trained, often brutally, to armor up in unfamiliar company.

But when the bourbon starts flowing and the clock pushes past ten, talk moves away from gear and dogs and shots taken or missed. Voices grow quieter. The circle tightens. And the stories begin to shift.

The same men who that morning spoke only in antler scores, calibers, wind direction, and bird counts now begin speaking in uncertainties. Divorce. Estranged kids. Aging parents. The quiet panic of not knowing who you are once the job is gone. The fear that you waited too long to build the life you wanted to live.

These are not dramatic confessions. There are no sobs, no grand performances of pain. It’s quieter than that. A man staring into his drink, or at the wall, a beat too long before speaking. Another nods silently in recognition. Others set their phones face down on the coffee table to listen. And then, slowly, truth starts seeping into the room.

A young father who had just taken up hunting so he could guide his children through the pursuit admits to the terror of squeezing the trigger for the first time. An older man, who’s hunted his whole life, chuckles and notes that he got over that when he was 13. But then he grows quiet, eyes glued to his glass, silently giving the lie to his words.

Another older man pours a stiff one — three fingers deep, no ice — and announces that this is his last hunt: He has cancer, and was given less than three more months to live. He wanted one last hunt before the White Queen takes him.

A square-jawed father from the Midwest asks me about what happened with my partner. After I tell him, he tells us that he and his wife have grown apart over the years, that they no longer have much in common — did they ever at all, really? — but their children need them. What should he do? Unsurprisingly, several others chime in with this most common of crises, and talk turns to options ranging from divorce to “sucking it up” to “an arrangement.”

We didn’t decide his fate that night, but he saw that he was not alone, and was comforted. At least for that moment.

I didn’t set out to create this. I thought I was organizing hunts — a shared table, good food, deer on the gambrels or birds in the bag, a few nights of camaraderie and storytelling. But over time, I realized I was curating something else too: a space where men felt safe enough to stop performing.

Safety, it turns out, has very little to do with rules and everything to do with tone. With listening. With knowing when not to fill the silence. With making it clear, without ever announcing it, that whatever is said in that room will not be carried into the daylight as currency or gossip. That I will hold space for even the quietest in the room to speak.

The hunt gives men permission to arrive. The table gives them permission to stay, to laugh, to be sated with the fruits of their hunt. And the night gives them permission to speak their truth.

When I later launched To the Bone, I started to receive private notes with that same late-night energy: a quiet, low-voiced honesty that rarely survives in daylight, and definitely not in a public forum. What began as a place to talk about hunting, food, and craft has become a space where men — and, here online, women, too — wrote to me about panic attacks, identity fractures, regret, grief, and longing.

Many of these notes began the same way: “I’ve never told anyone this before.”

Men in general and hunters in particular are trained experts at containment. We hold still. We suppress reaction. We endure cold, discomfort, fatigue, hunger, and doubt without complaint. Those skills serve us in the field. But they follow us home too, where they can calcify into emotional walls we no longer remember building.

It is not that men do not feel deeply. It’s that most have never been shown where, how, or with whom those feelings are allowed to land. I am grateful that at least in a small way, I’ve helped create a place where that can happen. Safely.

This is why I am almost always the last to leave the table at night, holding space for those who need it. And often, after they’ve all gone to bed, I’ll finish my glass alone and in silence, absorbing the weight of the night.

Here’s to all of you who have trusted me enough to speak your truth: I raise a glass in your honor.