Well finally some cool weather. When I let the dogs out this morning the thermometer was finally below 40, thought the darn thing was broken.
Well I suppose I should call my hunting buddy this morning and see whats up. He's a retired Fed also. Like me he got a part time job, except he has gone from a couple hours week to a couple days every week. Like my mine better 4 days a month that's it.
We hunt quite a bit together. He is the only other person I know who hunt gophers as fanatically as I do. Nice to have some one to go with who enjoys getting out like I do.
My Kid would fit this bill, but unfortunately he is in the career/raising kids stage of his life and can't get away like a retired person sometimes can. Besides he live 2000 miles away. We did some archery hunting together when he was as a kid. I remember how hard he tried for his first stick deer. He realy wanted to get a buck the first time out, but the bucks were just too smart for him or so we thought. The last week of his first season we were out and he decide to just fill his tag. He saw a doe and set a stalk on her. I was a little ways away and watched. He made a good stalk...got a about 20 yards and let fly the arrow. The shot looked good and I could see the arrow come out as the deer ran into a patch of brush. We waited an hour and then started following the blood trail. Got in the brush and lost the the trail. We did a grid search and after a few minutes I found the deer down behind an old log. It looked like a nice yearling. I reached down and grabbed it by the ears to pull it out and notice antler nubs just barely pushing their way out of the hair. Yelled at the kid, "Over here, son, you got a buck!".
That was his first Archery deer. And he was pretty happy.
Got a call from him Sunday. He's living in Maryland now. Archery season has started back there. He called to say he got a doe with his bow, and he said "it's bigger than the buck" We spent a few moments talking about that time 25 years ago when he got his first archery Buck and I still feel proud of him.
Darn kid, he turned out just fine, despite my best efforts.
