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I am always amazed at the different ways that you can make a living in this country. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. Who would have thought you could pay your mortgage by stuffing someone's creamated ashes into a shotgun shell?

I wonder how many pounds of ashes you get from a 200 pound man. Verrry interesting....odd...but interesting.

We transported my mother-in-law's cremated remains back to New England last year for burial. I think the remains weighed about 5lbs.
As an aside: Since the forum members here are noted for their thriftiness perhaps now is the time to teach the wife how to reload!
Jim

Beats all I ever saw

Let's not make an ash of ourselves

I am told theat there was on old duck hunter on the Cheasapeake who had his ashes put in a container in the bottom of a duck decoy, with a plaque instructing people who found it to simply set it loose again to float around the Bay. I have a modest collection of decoys, but I can assure you that one would never make it onto my mantle

A close friend just passed recently and when I was down visiting his widow the other day she asked if I'd go down to his loading bench and add some ashes to a shotgun shell for her. Took a minute to figure out how to do it but I got the job done and she was happy. I don't know what her plans are for the shell.

Destry

My old hunting partner from Marquette just passed away and I am headed up to his memorial this weekend. His wife is having another memorial Sept. 15th and about 10 of us are each getting a bag of ashes to distribute in his old coverts while we hunt the opener. Same idea executed a little differently.

A buddy wants his ashes spread across some lakes that he has hunted ducks in for the last 25+ years in Manatoba after he's gone. I hope I or someone else can do it for him.

I used to allow an elderly automobile mechanic I was friends with to fish a small natural lake I have just across the Florida state line. He was a good fisherman and once guided for trophy bass on Lake Jackson when it was in its prime. I still have a picture of him with a 14lb largemouth he caught and released in my pond.

When he died his family asked if it be permissable for them to scatter his ashes in the lake. I agreed of course. I happened to visit the place just after the family had had their ceremony; the roses they had scattered off the dock with the ashes were still floating just off the end. He loved that little lake even better than I do and it touched me deeply to realize he would always be a part of it...I thought of the old poem "Thanotopsis"(spelling?) we all had to learn in high school.

Being loaded in shotgun shells at $1,200 a flat seems a little too commercial to me though. JMHO...Geo

Mike Gaddis writes about an older grouse hunter and his last bird dog in the book "Jenny Willow". After the death of the grouse hunter his ashes are placed in a salt shaker type container and strapped to the collar of his setter-Jenny Willow and she is cast over one of his favorite mountain grouse covers to spread his ashes. Sounds like a classy way to go.

Thats the best idea I've seen yet, use my ashes as shot buffer and teach the missus how to pull the handle.....LOL

the Poem

THANATOPSIS

by: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

O him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

LOL!!!

We've actually done this a number of times in the 90+ years that our deer camp has been existance, for members who have passed away. It takes place at a little memorial location deep in the northern Ontario woods. The most recent time was in 2001. Family members brought with them 21 shotshells loaded with the individual's cremated remains. A 21 gun salute, so to speak!