doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Headed out again...

Stan,
I've heard that a body in motion, stays in motion!
Karl

Some folk's constitution holds up longer than others. I guess it depends upon what one has done in his working life. Forty five years practicing law behind a desk, a stroke, and open heart surgery has not resulted in my own physical shape being what I had hoped for in retirement. I still get around and love a dove shoot, but the covid years have about done away with that activity due to the group nature of it.

My brother says he has some doves hemmed up at his farm which is adjacent to mine up in middle GA. We're driving up to middle GA Saturday morning to give them a try.

I still deer hunt even though I really don't care whether I shoot one or not, and I use a cane to walk back and forth between my blinds and my car. I made the trip up to Saskatchewan in October but I doubt I'll do it again. I passed up a free plantation style kick'em-up quail hunt last week because I don't feel safe with a gun due to my predilection for falling down at inopportune times.

Aging out is a personal decision and at 73 I'm sure there are those with a stronger determination to keep going than I. Dog-gone it though I've enjoyed the hunting life and hate to give it up. I guess that's why I've collected "Gray's Sporting Journals" for so many years, so I can re-live my experiences from those pages...Geo

Gentlemen, again...thank you all for the kind words. Ted, I am not hunting alone, but with a long-time friend and co-worker. A very successful trip here so-far, with only one tag left to fill. We are also scouting new areas for an additional trip planned for late December (with additional friends and family). Still fairly mild and dry here (minimal snow, so very manageable conditions). I hunt for a number of reasons, but I suppose at this stage of life it just seems to be what I do. It's the exercise, the comraderie, and the sharing of resources (and also the isolation from the continuous bad-news cycle). The meat for the freezer is shared and prepaired for both family and guests and is a long-held tradition in my family. It was never intended as a life's mission, but it does serve as a yardstick for where I am physically and where I might need to do some work.

My two hunting worlds. Compare this....



to this...



Not sure why, but it's hard for me to fully process how different they are.

Something I might add to my earlier post about hunting being what I do. I've thought about that for a bit and I'd have to say that it is also a place where I go to disconnect from the problems of modern society for a little while (to hopefully gain a little perspective). Hunting helps me to strip away some of the "affected" behaviors that we all fall prey to. It's rather stark simplicity is beautiful to my clearly inadequate mind. It slows me down, and helps me reconnect to my core. When I come back to the "world" I'd like to think that I see that social framework more clearly for what is meaningful and what is merely an overlay of trivial things masquerading as something more important.

Lloyd,

I just came over Rabbit Ears pass and sitting in Craig. I'll go out tomorrow for a few days. I know the news has been saying we need snow, but I can't believe the lack of snow.

Ken

Ken:

We might of gone over the pass at the same time (I just got home this afternoon). It's been very cold at night and warming to the mid-40s during the day. There are still skiffs of snow in many shaded areas but....it is terribly dry. The migrations are all delayed. Still seeing lots of deer but very few elk so-far. We did take advantage of the excellent remote road conditions and covered some areas we normally can't get to, which was fun. The down-side of all that was lots of other folks out there doing exactly the same thing.

Lloyd, you are making me kind of envious with your reports of your recent "Long Trip to the Grouse Woods" and now this hunting trip with an indeterminate ending date. I had hoped that by the time I reached this stage in life, I would have a lot of vacation time to spend outdoors. But unfortunately, I have made several job changes due to corporate bankruptcies, outsourcing, and my own desire to move on to better employment. So even while most all of these moves have resulted in better pay and benefits, one downside has been starting over with entry level vacation time. My most recent job change was in 2016 thanks to a booming Donald Trump economy.

I vividly recall working with a couple Swiss Technicians on some engineering changes and modifications on one job back in 1993. The Mechanical Engineer remarked to me on his last day here that when he went back to Switzerland, he would be going on Holiday. I asked him what holiday it was, and he explained that what we call vacation, they call Holiday. When I asked him how much Holiday time he got, he replied in his heavy French accent that he got 15 weeks. I was totally blown away because he wasn't that old, and he saw my shock and surprise, and asked me how much Holiday/Vacation I got. I had just started this job several months prior, and he was equally shocked when I told him that I got 40 hours after one year. He genuinely thought I was pulling his leg, and I explained that I had just started this new job. I then asked him how much Holiday I would get if I was a new hire at his Company, and he said, "Six weeks... in Switzerland, everyone gets at least six weeks." Several years later, when I worked for General Motors, and they were beginning a massive downsizing of U.S. operations, I read a Wall Street Journal article that reported the much larger Buyout Offers that Volkswagen was offering to German employees, and also about the refusal of the I.G. Metall Union that represented Volkswagen workers to go back to a 32 hour work week, up from the 28.5 hour workweek they were on. The Union President remarked that Volkswagen workers were already over-worked. I guess someone has to work longer hours to pay for our Welfare State.

Envy is one of The Seven Deadly Sins, and complaining doesn't help. I am getting out for some hunting though, and always save some vacation time for Hunting Seasons. We actually had snow for the first few days of our deer season, which is certainly a sign of Global Warming. Yesterday, I finally put the studded snow tires on the truck, and sprayed the frame and underside with Fluid Film. I haven't seen a decent buck yet, and won't take a doe until late in Flintlock Season. So I'll be out there again tomorrow.

Life gets simple, quickly, in LOW county, Lloyd. You won’t be doing any nightclubbing, or, hobnobing at a high end gunshop. You fish and hunt, eat, and prepare to do it again. The lake and the woods need to be respected, especially if the weather will be changing for the worse when you are out.
Those things seem to be enough to keep one engaged up there. The rest of life goes on an all too brief hold when in LOW county.

Best,
Ted

Ted: this last trip was in my own time zone, but the same rules apply. Not much nightclubbing in Craig, Colorado that I can speak to. And Keith...I get it. Not sure what I did right lately to deserve all these wonderful little adventures. They have all helped me to escape the poison that the mainstream media pumps out regularly, and that by itself is well-worth it. What was it that Karl said earlier..." a body in motion tends to remain in motion"? That seems to apply here as well.

More fun...





Then,







Like I mentioned before, not sure I'm deserving but...I'm working with it.