Thursday, February 21, 2008

Surprize Birthday Gift

The year was 1992 , early Feburaury and I was working a commercial plumbing job in Murfreesboro, Tenn.. My job had just played out as we finished the construction on the new city hall so my wife and I decided it was time for a change. We packed up everything we had and moved to Bushnell,Florida where I started a job at Ace Hardware in Wildwood,Florida until a training class as a correctional officer started in June after which I was hired on as a correctional officer in the kitchen at Marian Correctional Facility in Ocala,Florida. We were living near my brother-in-law ( Allen Cole ) who was also a correctional officer and my birthday was approaching in October but deer season was opening in September and one evening after work I was picked up by my wife,brother-in-law and sister-in-law and was told we were going to dinner but that my brother-in-law had to go get his bow worked on first. We got to this little country bow shop and as I walked in I began looking at all the bows and eqippment on the walls when the owner approached asking if he could help me. I told him I was just looking while waiting on my brother-in-law an the man told me he had a new bow that I might like.The man went in the back room and came out with a new PSE Blacklightening, handed it to me and ask what I thought of it. At that moment my wife stepped up and whispered in my ear that it was mine and happy birthday at which time the owner also fixed it up with arrows,sight,release,eye sight, broad heads, silencers and even took me outside to his range and helped me sight it in. Now you talk about someone that was blown away with surprize and happy, that was me. Today I still have the same PSE bow with eqippment and have killed a few nice deer with it. Perhaps one day I will buy a new bow but nothing I feel will ever compare to my Pse Blacklightening which I will continue to use till I can't shoot any more. Thank you Honey for giving me the best surprize birthday gift of a lifetime,one that I'll always charish.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

The Old Farm House

Ive been sitting around the house this weekend trying to come up with a new memory from my past that might strike an idea for next years huntso here it is in a nut shell( or maybe something bigger). I've wrtten about dreams coming true and it put me to thinking about a dream I had several years ago which took place in Lascassas, Tn. on a farm with an old abandoned, weathered farm house standing in the middle of the property and the woods grown up all around it. As I dreamed I seen myself on a camping trip in which my hunting buddies and I stayed the weekend in the farm house to hunt the farm and the weather was cold. We awoke on saturday morning after a night of hard drinking ( beer and cheap wine ), got dressed and ready to go hunting, headed out the front door. Upon stepping off the end of the front porch we all paused to relief our stomachs of the nights drinks then headed off to our picked hunting sites. As we got to the back corner of the farm house, we spooked a small group of squirrels playing on the ground which in turn spooked a herd of deer that was feeding 45 yards from the farm house one of which was a really nice tall racked buck. As luck would have it nobody got a chance for a shot due to everyone with unloaded guns, slow reactions and very bad hang-overs. Now you can imagine 5 hunters hunting with hang-overs in the woods with guns-- that's SCARY and STUPID. Needless to say my drinking days while hunting are long over and has become a seldom ever drinker now but I still try to hunt every chance I get. I returned to this old farm house the following week and did manage to take a small buck but never returned again and the property has now been turned into a houseing development area---another lost hunting area due to mans greed for money.