Friday, January 19, 2024

2024 Hog Hunt Day 5 - I'm Old

I spent my early morning browsing and reading online.  Something got me wondering when was the last year we hunted pigs in Georgetown?  2014 - a full decade ago.
I recently saw the definition of nostalgia as "strategic oversimplification of the past" - which is probably as good of a definition as there is.  It's hard not to miss parts of the past, but equally easy to overly-romanticize them.  It can be a tendency to judge current events more harshly compared to this "strategic oversimplification of the past."  I think the greatest gifts to humanity are the inability to travel backwards in time and the inability to see into the future.  

Doug left fairly early and the remaining three of us went with Rick to feed stands.
Down time at the lodge followed by getting ready for pigs.

I was dropped off on the weird-lighting stand.  I don't know what it is, but I do like this stand.  Although it seemed like the chair had suffered a very difficult year, since the seat webbing was gone, replaced with wood, replaced with logs.  Logs!  Talk about uncomfortable.  But between the two cushions on the chair and my own, I managed to get reasonably comfortable.

The morning's thinking about past years sauntered back into my brain.  I suppose if I can have big helmet thoughts on motorcycle trips, I can also have big treestand thoughts (or in this case, big ground blind thoughts).  I don't consider myself old yet, but I'm definitely not young anymore either.  Physically age is definitely starting to take its toll.  But thinking back to 2014, the next 10 years might look a little scary.

Around 4:30 a few deer came into the corn.  Then a few more came in.  The stand is like looking down a tunnel so it was hard to see how many deer there were, since for quite a while deer would filter in and out.  At any one time, there may have been as many as 10 deer.
One of the things I don't like about ground blinds is that I can't see behind me from most of them.  The deer were definitely worried about something in my direction.  I wasn't sure if they knew I was there, or if something could have been behind me.  Eventually they all bolted, leaving me lonely again.

Around sunset two bucks came one with one of them being at least nearly a shooter.  They stayed in the area until it was dark.  And darkness came early to this stand while the open areas were still light (it is the weird-lighting stand).

It seemed like it took forever for Rick to pick me up.  As I was waiting, coyotes started howling from back towards the stand - what a magical sound.

Back at the lodge Denis and Claude graciously shared their burger/gravy/fries - a facsimile to French Canadian food.

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