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Show Mary Says Fall Is Time for Hunting, Searching, Camping The great hunt. Cars, trucks, campers, 4 wheel drives, motorhomes, tote gotes and all the other items of convenience are being driven or towed to the great mountain in search of the deer. I might emphasize search. Remember the old days when we baked cookies, made gallons of chili, sent fruit and tried to make the hunt as comfortable as possible for our beloved hunter? I remember the tales of setting up camp and the rigors of getting the tent up and how each year the hunters were hopeful it didn't snow and catch them in a ravine where they had to push and dig their way out. I recall stories of having to wear their clothes to bed to keep warm. Oh, those by gone days of the great hunter. Now the hunter sleeps in heated campers with gas stoves, gone are the days of lugging the deer back to camp. Remember shooting the big buck down in a canyon and having to carry it back to camp? Blood oozing down inside your sweat shirt, raw meat flapping aginst the side of your cheek. The odor of sage brush and camp smoke filtered into everything you took on the hunt. Buck fever lessened with time in our family. I recall a brother in law who left his gun home one year much to the consternation con-sternation of his wife. Another year a couple of fellows didn't buy a license and the final blow came when the guys took fishing poles instead of guns. Now its another story, every modern convenience is available to the avid hunter. No roughing it today. I told the story of raw meat slapping the face of the bearer and Mildred Sutch indignately stated that you. don't carry the deer. "You get in you 4 wheel drive and go load it up," There are all kinds of hunting stories like the one Bob Cornaby tells of minding his own business sitting on a mountain top when a big deer practically ran over him. I suppose some people still need the meat, but often a wife yells at her departing husband, "don't you dare bring home a deer." I think the great hunt is an excuse to get away for a weekend or a week, whichever you have the time for. |