I Don't Wanna'!
It's raining out there this morning. I'm supposed to meet Mike at his house to go bird hunting, but I really don't want to. It's a funny thing about rain; in the spring, I enjoy it, admiring how overnight even a brief thunderstorm will green things up and jump-start my garden. I love to hike in a spring or summer rain, but come fall, a cold rain just makes me long for a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of hot tomato soup and a nap. It's cold out there today, and the two inches of early snow that made tracking a pheasant fun a week ago has melted, and crossing plowed fields adds an extra five pounds of mud to each boot.
If I really needed to be as miserable as today promises, I'd forgo the long drive and go hiking barefoot in my friend's walk-in freezer. No, I don't want to go hunting at all today. I'll call Mike and tell him so.
I wonder if Mike, and another friend, Jerry, have ever considered just not going hunting when the weather is rainy. Probably not. Mike and Jerry have not been retired as long as I have. They're still making up for all those wasted years of employment. They're trying to do all the things now they could once do only every other weekend. I'm an old hand at being retired, though ― have been practicing for 25 years and have become very good at it.
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THE BIG HURTS
my Uncle Pat once told me that both pain and disappointment were good:“The more of those you have experienced,” he explained, “the longer you have lived; suffer but a little, and you’re in an early grave.
Day's End
NEAR MISSES
Hunting Dog Hypoglycemia
The first time I ever saw a dog have a seizure from hunting dog hypoglycemia was 25 years ago while hunting pheasants in western Kansas.
Profile of an Artist: MATT DOYLE
Throughout Matt's life, there has always been an active passion for the great outdoors. As a young Pennsylvanian boy, his dad and grandfathers would take him out fishing and later hunting to share their deep-rooted respect and enjoyment for God's country. It became very clear that their passion for the outdoors would soon develop his passion for it as well.
DESERT CATHARSIS
Miles of sagebrush and grasslands slipped past during the 10-hour drive between Bozeman and Denver.
RED CAR WHITE DOG:
A Riff on Sporting Vehicles and Other Matters
UENATOR CAUE (HUNTER BEWARE) A FIELD GUIDE +O HUNTING LODGES
From ice bars to plywood shacks, in-room hot tubs to a kitchen staff uprising, the hunting lodge experience can be fascinating and frustrating.
Charles Helles & Sons, London
“Some enchanted evening ... you may see a stranger across a crowded” – gunroom.
ON POINT: Finding My Way with the Help of an English Setter
Becky came into my life in a rather unusual way. My friend Tom McGuane had just bought a home on Mobile Bay as a place to retreat from the cold winters of his Montana ranch.
Tail feathers - STANDARDS AND PRACTICES
\"An armed society is a polite society,\" the NRA says in one of its dicta, cribbed from Robert A. Heinlein, a 20th-century American science fiction writer.
