My warmest hat is full of memories of old friends, now long gone, of hunts and hunting areas also gone. The hat was made for me by a hat shop in Wuerzburg from a winter fox I shot with the shot barrel of a 16 ga. x 8x57IR SxS combination gun on the hunting area of one of my oldest and best hunting friends in Gross Winkheim. He was a veteran of both the Spanish Civil War and WW2 and shared many of his experiences while adding to mine. The fox ran into the woods after the shot, and we went to his house and got his dog to help find it. We let the dog loose where the fox went into the woods and then went downwind to the next path into the woods. After a couple hundred meters my friend stopped, smelled the wind, pointed into the wind and said there. Leaving me on the path, he went into the brush and came back with my fox in hand, having found it before the dog got to it. That was one of two times another hunter found an animal for me with his own nose (the other being a Roe Buck, which was another interesting experience). After having the raw fox skin tanned by a tannery in Kitzingen/am Main, I took it to the hat shop. It is the type with fold down ear flaps that tie under the chin. I wore is on the stand for many very cold weather hunts but can seldom wear it now because it is seldom cold enough in Alabama. Some years later, I had the same hat shop make a hat for my wife from a Martin I shot on a different hunting area of the same friend. It fell at the shot (rifle) so I had no problem to find it. My wife's hat is the type that doesn't have ear flaps, because a Martin skin is smaller than a fox. She also seldom wears Her's now.
Mike
