Ugghhhh

It's been over a month. Again. I don't know where the time goes! I sit down to blog (or respond to email or do anything really) and it never seems to get done! I have several projects that I want to get done and I have just seemed to waste the time entirely!

I had a ton of fun with my Dad, Bill, and Dixie hunting down in AL this past weekend. If you haven't seen Bill and Deb's floors yet, they really are fantastic. I haven't gotten to go hunting in several years, it is another thing on my list that I keep planning to do but never get out and accomplish. Dixie did phenomianally, and I have to admit I was a bit surprised. She is a little bit of a spaz, but she was totally in her element. Dad said she would be fine, and that was an understatement. Everything I have ever read is that there are two kinds of 'sporting' dogs. The ones that are pets and the ones that are workers. The general consensus is that you can't have both. Conventional wisdom also says that if you have a good hunting dog, it will be too high strung to keep around the house. Dixie sure did prove them wrong on all accounts! She instinctually knew what she was looking for and what to do with it when she found it. It really was a treat to watch her work. I would like to say I was as natural a shooter as she was a bird dog, but that would be a complete lie!

It was a bit like playing golf at first I would bring the gun up and start thinking. Ok. Keep breathing. Don't jerk the trigger. Find the bird. Close one eye. Not that one, close the other one. Keep the barrel moving after the shot. Lead the bird. Too much. There you go. Squeeze. Ok, you missed him, stay with it, you've got two more shots. Ok stupid. One more. Squeeze. Ok, now duck, maybe someone that can shoot will hit it.

See, that's alot to have go through your mind in about 3 seconds. And it leads to a missed shot (just like in golf). After missing several easy shots, I finally just stopped thinking about it. And you know what? It worked! I kept both eyes open. I think they call it 'instincual shooting' with a shotgun. With a pistol it's something like point shooting. I just know that I would find the BB on the end of my barrel, then find the bird, and then shut off my brain. My body knew what to do from there. Things got better and I got a few birds in the bag.

At least till I switched guns haha! The gun I started out with was my 20 gauge that my dad got me when I was a kid. It is an semi-automatic, which means that you pull the trigger and release it. It's ready for the next shot. The gun I switched to was a 12 gauge pump my dad gave me. That means you fire, then you have to 'pump' the gun to get the next round into the chamber for a followup shot. Nothing quite matches the experience of pulling the trigger, hearing the bang, feeling the thud in your shoulder, realizing you missed your shot, knowing you are lined up this time, and getting the click of an empty chamber when you pull the trigger because you forgot to pump it!

Pull trigger, go bang, repeat until empty. That's how it's supposed to work anyway haha. Oh well.

I think I shot about 5 of the 21 birds we got, so I guess I held my own ok. The best part is I got to come home with 6 birds, so at least we won't starve! Plus I didn't have to lie to my wife about how great a provider and mighty hunter I am. A little embelishment didn't hurt anything though.

I drove in from AL, took a quick run through a shower, and then April and I jumped back in my truck and drove an hour to a wedding. We were about 10 minutes late, and had to sneak into the back of the church. We got to see some old friends at the reception and had fun. We made the same old promises we always make to see each other more frequently. Hopefully this time we'll stick to it. The reception ran way too late. It started around 5pm and didn't stop until about 9:30 or 10, so we had to cut out a bit early to make it back home. I hated to leave before the bride and groom made their exit, especially since so many other people were doing it too, but we still had an hour to get home and had to do it.

Alright, well, I'm heading out back to chop up some firewood. Our neighbor behind us cut down a few trees and the guy doing it was nice enough to section some pieces for me for the fire pit. I'll let the trunk portions season for a while before I split them (plus I need to get a new axe first, I'm not splitting them with a dang hatchet!) but some of the limbs will be easy to section with the hatchet.

Talk to you later!