Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/812511
24 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S In the short rows, if you do nothing more than get the old Son-of-Misery into gun range, it's sort of a half-triumph regardless. I don't tangle with them on those terms as much anymore. I'm an older man now, not nearly so cock-sure of his bearings, and truth is, not so good as once he was. Not ready for the pasture yet, but not jumpin' the fence like once I did, neither. Though back in the day, this was my litmus test. Nowadays I'm forced to some limitations. I still love doing it with the bow, but I allow myself a few more comforts and "Ts" in the doing. But occasionally I still try myself acapella, and that's how. Anytime your hat band gets too tight, I'm here to help. Grab up the challenge; you'll love it and curse it, and if it's me that's the subject of the castigation and profanity, I'll readily admit I'm deserving. Believe me, it puts the "hunt" back into hunting. But go alone, never with a companion. Humility tastes better when there're no witnesses. n then you may want to get down on your knees), just surrender, lean your head back, and knock down the gallon of modesty you've got to bear. There's utterly nothing easy about it. Just you, your bow, the turkey, and the woods. You may fare better, but it's far and away the toughest thing I've ever tried to accomplish consistently outdoors. The first few times I was trembling like a willow leaf, so scared to move when he was in eyeball-close, so immobilized by cramps and mental paralysis that I missed the timing on the draw and never even got an arrow off. Boogered the bird and never got the chance. It took a long time to better that, then I shot over 'em, around 'em, everywhere but in them for another season before ever I downed the first bird. I learned more about rigor and mortis than ever I wanted to know, and a helluva lot more than that about 5-year-old gobblers. You can take only so much of failure, and after a time you know far more about yourself than you care to anyhow, so there's no reason to turn it into sodomy. At choosing the precise split-second his body language gives you at least Vegas odds of drawing and getting away with it, at picking the exact spot on an ink-black target to bury the arrow, at shooting accurately enough with your arms and shoulders so tired you can barely hold them aloft to put it there. Most of all, at keeping yourself sufficiently together mentally and physically to get it all done successfully, when every fiber of your body is screaming "Rush the damn shot, Dilly . . . whatever happens, just get it the hell over with!" But when you do all of it right, and he's out there flopping, and you run out, hoist him high against the sky, and mentally measure off the inch-and- three-quarters of his limb-hangers, you'll not only gain respect everlasting, but feel like the cat that ate the canary. Throws back to the original proposition of sporting fundament: "It's not that you take something; it's the way you do it." Just expect it to happen, at best, about two pokes out o' ten. The other eight (by "Now that hunting season is over, I'd suggest separate vacations." by john troy – courtesy skyhorse pubLishing