my careless contagion

Yep, that's a dead deer. Yep, that's me sometime in the early to mid-90s. This is a terrible photograph. It was night, so the flash created some monstrous shadows. I didn't try to fix this photo. My mom most likely took this photo, as my head is nearly cut off. If you think this photo is bad, the rest of this event are worse. I don't know if my mom would have done any better with the camera in my hand. I don't have a record of it being used. And, well, it's a bit of a crime scene. But at least I got to do my hunter face! Grr! Tough guy. Why am I posting a photo of me with a dead deer? Well, he's a beaut, for one thing. He's not the biggest deer I've gotten over the years, but he sure is pretty. That's a corn-fed Nebraska deer. It looks like a whitetail. Those were the days. All you had to do was sit on the corner of a cornfield at daybreak or at day's end and these guys are either leaving or descending to feed. Deer are crepuscular, whic...

October 2, 2019. That is a date I will remember. That's the date it crystalized in my head that I can no longer look forward to many years of hunting. It was a sad moment when I realized my hunting days were numbered. Maybe it was just a steep learning curve at play. Let me explain. It was the second time I had been out antelope hunting. The season had started about a week and a half earlier. On opening day, I was out there, but the rain was relentless and driving. I stepped out of my car to pee maybe three times in an hour (I had a lot of coffee because I got up early), then I decided to call it a day. It's not much fun hunting in the rain, especially a cold, driving rain.  Hunting on public land has its advantages; also, it has its disadvantages. Since it was opening weekend, there was a stream of trucks going down the road where I was parked on the shoulder. I decided if there was this much traffic on the weekend, even on a rainy day, I should try in the middle of ...