...he went hunting, but he wasn't successful". My first question would be "did he see deer", but I've seen them act like that didn't matter because he didn't kill one that day...,
"Unsuccessful hunt" = I
saw nothing interesting, NOTHING. (imho)
And that is hard to do, so see nothing but a few trees.
I can remember in the past 45 years, three times when I didn't see any critters of any sort, and no "sign" of them. Which was depressing..., since it was like all the animals had gone away...kinda lonely too. It was simply too dang cold where I was and the animals had enough sense to be hold-up in thick cover keeping warm, while me, the silly human, was out there freezing my backside off.
But I've had lots of hunts, and not taken a shot...,
A hen turkey flew in and landed about 20 yards from me, and it wasn't turkey season. I'd never seen a turkey in flight in real-life before then...they have a rather LARGE wingspan..., startled me near to death. She spotted me and dashed away...they move pretty damn quick too.
I've seen kit foxes at play, a black bear and her cub at play (only for a moment at a distance since a Sow-bear and a cub near me means to me that I needed to move away from her
), I've seen a bald eagle snatch up a bird in flight, I've had a chipmunk come and sit on the toe of my boot and start to eat a seed, and look up at me with what looked like an expression of curiosity and NO fear, I saw a bobcat for the first time in my area this year, I've seen woodpeckers of many types, hawks of many types, ravens giving hawks a hard time, owls, snakes, racoons, opossums, skunks....,
I even saw a fox dash past me one time, then go up a partially downed tree, reversing direction and jump from that partially downed tree to an adjacent, standing tree, that was leaning over a small creek... then down to the far side of said creek and dash away..., all the while I was sitting on a log about ten yards from the fox, with my .40 caliber squirrel rifle (and fox were in season), but the fox didn't care about me one bit....and was rather frantic.... to be followed less than a minute later by a couple of dozen fox hounds and four riders. (Which explained the fox's hurry). One of the funniest experiences in my life was watching two-dozen hounds yelping and milling about trying to figure out what happened to the fox's trail.
Needless to say with them hounds and four mounted hunters, I wasn't going to see any more squirrels that day, and no chance of a deer wandering by either..., STILL IT WAS WORTH IT!
Never did find out if the dog's ever got back on that fox's trail....I wasn't going to tell the riders what I'd seen the fox do..., a fox that brave to come that close to me I figured deserved some respect and a break.....I still laugh about that even today....I thought that was a pretty successful day.
And yes there were days when I bagged goose, or ducks, or quail, or pheasants, or chukkar, or rabbit, or squirrel, or a fox, or deer, or doves, and those were successful days too..., but they wouldn't have been unsuccessful if I had not harvested anything.
LD