“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.” Henry David Thoreau
“It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.” William Faulkner
It’s a pretty common theme for me to sit around weeks before an opening day and come to believe that when it suddenly becomes legal to chase after something that the near opening day will blossom fruitful.
Big bucks in velvet, piles of teal, wood ducks, geese and doves for the grill, are all part of the fleeting fantasy. These visions are dreamed of weeks before every opening day.
This phenomenon simply seems to have been this way for as long as I can remember.
You gotta have confidence. Confidence reigns supreme; right up to the point that reality slams you into the proverbial wall.
Experience tells me that any opener is really just a slick way to sweep out an off season of cobwebs. Practice physically and mentally as you may; any opening day is fraught with a multitude of cruel experiences in dashing high expectations.
Cruelty, like missing the first four birds that you think are in range, dropping your finely tuned bow out of your tree stand, or realizing that your battery charger wasn’t much more than a total waste of energy. Let’s not dwell on the vast menagerie of things forgotten; but sorely needed, only to be left behind.
I once hunted with a goober, who will remain anonymous in print, but will remain widely remembered in local folklore, who went so brain-dead that he forgot his ammunition.
I’ve come to the conclusion that opening days have devolved into little more than a decent shake down cruise. It’s an easy excuse to “get the bugs out” and a feeble attempt to try to get the old head in the long seasons’s game.
Some guys skip it all together to avoid embarrassment. Some plunder on with very little self esteem; laughing at themselves, just happy in the fact that they have escaped whatever it was that they have been trapped under prior to an opening day.
After dropping the bow, shooting too many shotgun shells and grilling too few birds for the effort; I declared it just too %&*# hot to continue. September inevitably turned too hot again after a glorious, but short, fleeting little cold snap.
Blaming my demoralizing little defeatist attitude on the heat; I slunk back indoors to watching college football. Drowning my recent opening day rookie mistakes in cheap aiming fluid and wondering exactly why I delude myself about opening days year after year. The need for more aiming fluid suddenly became reasonable.
The other day, after spending a hot afternoon in a cut corn field and going two-for-three on a slow dove shoot; I stumbled on a documentary about an old trapper from Wyoming. College football was pretty sorry at the time, and it was so hot outside I found myself sulking under the tube, nursing my many mental wounds.
The trapper said he was born in 1914. He never rode in an automobile until he was 13 years old and he started trapping at age 7. Gophers were bringing a dime a piece from wealthy ranchers in those days. A career was born.
The documentary followed this tough old gentleman in his nineties as he trapped all manner of fur bearers. The film chronicled his trap sets, humane dispatch of his catch with a stout piece of rebar, skinning, curing, and selling his pelts.
This life story was refreshingly mesmerizing.
The total absence of political correctness and tales of his life was interspersed with welcoming neighbors, ranchers, family members, and sheep men’s stories. What a service this old guy was to any and all that needed a good trapper; when the time called for such.
The guy was a bonafide local legend was more than worthy of a documentary film.
One particular pearl of wisdom the old man left you with was simply this; every man should be as lucky as he to have had in their life just three things; “A good horse, a good dog and a good woman.”
That got me to thinking about past opening days and upon reflection, I managed to salvage buckets of opening days shared with a good dog, a good woman and a horse that allowed me to stay in his saddle.
And you know, the old man was right on the money. No matter how goofy it gets on some opening days, no matter how hard it is to get in the groove after a long layoff, it’s just plain good to get there again.
Thanks to the good luck in life brought on by a good horse, a good dog and a good woman.
Grouse season is about to open. It won’t be long until the muzzle loader is sighted in.
We can dream.