Can't Take it Away

It is often a curse of humanity that we can relive the past but cannot change it. But it can also be a blessing. Today was the perfect dove day; upper seventies, crisp blue sky, light breeze. In previous years, I would be walking through the buckwheat on a day like today enjoying the perfection of pre-fall. This year I spent the day wedged up under a sink fixing a leaky faucet. The house, it turns out, is a fixer-upper. But I knew that going in, and while the timing could have been better, I willingly accept the current chaos for a better quality of life tomorrow. However, today, when I heard the locusts buzzing and saw that blue sky and felt the pull of the field, I felt trapped; trapped again in maturity and responsibility. But it quickly passed, because my spirit only had to travel through the escape route of my memory. With a firing of a neuron, I was back. The King and I flushing, hunting and bringing down birds. Later, looking at the website, I again relived the past days afield. And no matter where I am, or what I may be doing, no one can take that away.

Rooster

Busy Times

I am closing on a house tomorrow, and while I am excited about the denouement to a 19 month ordeal, I am a little pissed it happened in the second week of dove season. The house is going to require a lot of work over the next couple of months and that is going to interfere with my freedom to hunt as often as I would like. This is, as I stated in an earlier post, a by-product of modernity and maturity. I will not, however, let this keep me from heading out into the field. My hunting career has so far survived employment, relationships, and marriage. Home ownership only represents the latest challenge. This too will pass; to be followed no doubt by more challenges. But I resolve to always find the time to go out into the field as much as I can. Because if I deny that, I will lose my nexus into a piece of the human experience that I know of no other way to reach. The righteous experience. The true hunter knows of what I speak.

Rooster

Opening Day

There is absolutely no feeling that compares to the first few minutes of dove season. First the sound of gunfire in the distance, then seeing the first birds crossing the horizon, and finally pulling the trigger on the first birds heading into gun range. It never fails to live up to expectations. And so it was yesterday. We went into an area that gets a lot of pressure on opening day and found a little corner to ourselves. It didn't take long for the first bird to fall and after a great mark and find, we had the first dove in the bag. Now, while over the next couple of weeks we will hopefully get out some more and shoot a lot of doves, and have an absolute spiritual blast, it will never quite feel the way it does that first ten minutes.

Rooster