GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: LAST OHIO GROUSE

Sometimes what flies around the bend comes back again. In this magazine's Autumn 2022 issue, my subject was keeping a hunting journal, which I had done religiously for the previous 50 years.

- Bob DeMott, 

Clearly, I am not done with the topic, which has come back around. A hunt journal is an indispensable memory bank and information resource, which, if rightly administered and tended to, creates a record of best and worst field moments and everything in between.

The key to lasting success is being persistent and enthusiastic enough to write up each day's hunt and to be bone honest in order to give what Ernest Hemingway called "the true gen," the straight, unembellished account of a given moment, at least in so far as subjectivity allows. Besides offering a diverting and often entertaining portrait of a shooting life, field entries provide access to nuts-and-bolts, baseline factual details on the who-wherewhen-what of our personal sporting history.