Hunting Adventures, 2014

Every year I take pictures and video of my experiences out hunting.  I have been getting better at my movie making computer program, so I think this is my best yet.  It is also my longest yet.  I split it into three parts of about seven minutes a piece.

Part 1. 

Part 2. 

Part 3.

Hunting Season 2012: Story 5, Fighting the Good Fight

Story 1: http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-1-gator.html

Story 2: http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-2-hoggin-it-up.html

Story 3: http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-3-mystery-at.html

Story 4: http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-4-cypress.html

Enjoying the outdoors can be a great time, unless it's that time of the year for the bugs to be out.  Unfortunately in Florida that means all the time.  So when out hunting it is always important to apply generous amounts of bug repellent.

For years I have used a brand called Muskol repellent.  It is 99.9% deet, and the mosquitoes don't even think about touching me.  However Muskol has been hard to get down here, so I knew I was eventually going to have to go to another brand.

The bad thing in Florida is that, besides mosquitoes you have to deal with other biting flies.  For me, I react worse to the bite of no-see-ums than I do from mosquitoes.  And unfortunately, Muskol doesn't offer any protection from sandfleas, gnats, or no-see-ums.

It just so happened that my Dad had bought a new kind of insect spray called Repel 100.

I put it on after I was done cleaning the hog, and an amazing thing happened.  The no-see-ums backed off my hands in a hurry where I had it on.  But they kept at my face where I had previously applied only the Muskol.  I know companies don't like to give away their company secrets, but the Repel 100 has some stuff in it that blocks a number of bugs, not just mosquitoes.  Whatever it's formula, it works great.  In fact, the description on the website says it all.

Repels the following insects: mosquitoes, ticks, gnats, chiggers, no-see-ums, biting flies.

According to the bottle it is 98.9% deet.  But whatever the other 1.1% is, it does a great job of getting the other bugs to back off.  And the thing I like is that it is a pump bottle, not a spray.  The spray bottles always give me the wiggles.  The pump is definitely the way to go.

So I feel good about having another repellent to use now that my Muskol has all but run out.  I wish I would have had this years ago, especially during some of the really hot winters we had down here in Florida.  Some years, there would be huge clouds of sandfleas floating in the air.  But now I have a way to back them off, and I am very thankful.  Hopefully, a lot of other hunters will be able to get the bugs to back off as well.

Hunting Season 2012: Story 3, The Mystery at Spur 4

Here are the previous stories about Hunting Season 2012:

Story 1, The Gator:
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-1-gator.html

Story 2, Hoggin It Up:
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-2-hoggin-it-up.html

Imagine if you will, a mystery.  A mystery where we park the truck out at hunting at Spur 4 (that's the name of the road.)  Here is the scene.

First we notice a bad smell.  It is the smell of death.  That's when we notice the skin of a hog.  Apparently, someone has skinned a hog right here.  That's when we notice a bunch of of large palm fronds cut down, and laid out on the ground.  They are laid down in a pattern to cover the ground.

We then notice two T-shirts lying on the ground about 60 yards apart.  This is disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as the ripped up underwear lying on the ground in between them.

We thought that was as bad as it could get until we notice the used tampon lying in the middle of the road.  Things had already become weird, but this just solidified the weirdness.

Sidenote:  I know a lot of people are not really believing what I am saying right now.  I usually take pictures to back up my stories.  However, I thought that this crossed the line.  It went right by the boundaries of good taste.  So I didn't take any pictures.

So as we walk back to the truck I take this picture of the creek/ditch at the corner of Spur 4 and the main road.

What you don't see is the hogs head lying in the creek being ate up by flies and other insects.  Yeah, it was pretty bad.

So basically, here's the mystery.

1.  Hog's head thrown in the river.
2.  Hog's skin in the road.
3.  Cut palm fronds on the road in the pattern of a blanket.
4.  2 old shirts 60 yards apart.
5.  Shredded undies.
6.  1 used feminine product lying in the middle of the road.

So if you were Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc. what would you like happened?

I guess is a Satanic ritual was held there sometime in the last few days.  That, and someone completely shit their pants.

Hunting Season 2012: Story 2, Hoggin It Up

Here's the first story of the Hunting Season 2012 series:
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2012/12/hunting-season-2012-story-1-gator.html

Let me continue with my original story.  We (Me, Dad, and the Weasel) had gone hunting later in the year due to Dad injuring his back.  So we only had two travel days (one up, one back) and three hunting days.

It was the third day of hunting when our friend The Weasel (pronounced like Grease-el) asked if he could hunt out of my tree.  This story goes back 17 years, but I will give the short version.  Basically, I found this hunting spot, and marked a certain tree that I put my treestand in.  I shot my one and only deer out of it.  A few years later during a year I couldn't go hunting, The Weasel sat in my tree, and shot a hog.  Ever since then he has claimed that there is some debate as to who found the tree.  His memory is complete shit, and every blasted year I have to tell him the long story on why that is my hunting spot, and not his.

So he asks me if he can hunt out of my tree.  Since it is the last day, and none of us has seen a thing I say, "Sure.  Go for it."  When we get out there, he gets out of the truck super early, and gets out to the tree to set up his tree stand.  Dad and I take our time, and leave the truck a few minutes after The Weasel. 

We start by walking down the road called Spur 4.  My usual routine is to walk about 80 yards down Spur 4, and then walk back into the woods about 200 yards.  There's a nice place where a few game trails come together.  That's where my tree is.  However, since The Weasel is in my tree, Dad and I decide to walk down Spur 4 to see if we can come across some good woods.

We were about 220 yards, and/or four minutes down Spur 4 when I hear some noise at about 7:10 AM.  I say to Dad, "Did you hear that?'

He said, "No."  And then a lot more noise came from the bushes.

I asked, "Did you hear that?"

He said, "Yes!"

I then put my shotgun up, and pointed down the trail.  It was then that a pack of hogs started running across the road.  I shot twice in quick secession.  I tried to shoot a third time, but my gun jammed.  As I was unjamming it, I heard a squeal.

I told Dad, "My gun jammed, you go on ahead."

At this point Dad put down his treestand, and walked on ahead.  I worked on clearing my gun, and reloading.  He walks up to where the hogs crossed, looked down and saw the hog I had shot.  It was still moving so he put a kill shot in its head. 

I caught up to him, and we both agreed that there were about 7 hogs in the group.  I shot twice, and thought I had hit two.  However, I did not hit the hog I was aiming at, I hit the hog behind it.  And it was a small hog.  To be honest, it was so small that a few years ago it would have been illegal.  But since hogs are an invasive species and breed like crazy, the rules were changed that there was no size limit and no number of game limit put on them.  So basically you can shoot all the hogs you want during hunting season.

I told Dad, "I think I hit two.  We should get some of the dog hunters down here to see if one of their dogs can track down that hog.  Dad walked back into the woods to see if he could spot a blood trail or a downed hog, but he couldn't find either.  I marked the spot on the trail where the hogs had crossed with a orange ribbon.

So we grabbed our stuff and the hog.  I counted how many steps I was when I shot, and it was 65 steps.  My steps are pretty close to a yard so you can call it 65 yards.  Once we made it back to the truck we flagged down some dog hunters down the main road. 

The dog hunters we ran into were pretty nice.  They had a couple of trucks and quite a number of dogs.  The one guy told me that he had "hog dogs" and he had "deer dogs."  He wanted to get his son over with the other truck to get the hog dogs.  His son was also really nice.  I jumped in one of the trucks and they both went down Spur 4.  When we pulled up the ribbon, I showed them the blood pile where the small hog had fallen, and Dad had put a bullet in it.

The deer dog hounds started whimpering and going nuts.  They could smell that much blood not 7 yards from them.  But the dog hunter got out a red nose pit bull, and a black pit bull mix.  He set them on the trail and had them search the woods.  They ran around, but couldn't find anything.  So it seemed that I only hit one of the hogs, and not the one I was aiming at. 

So they went back to following where the hogs might have run to, and Dad and I went back to the truck to put our stuff away, and get some stuff out.  We needed to get out all the animal cleaning stuff.  But before we did that, we took some pictures and video.

Here's a picture of the hog:

And here's a picture to get a better idea of it's size:

I know, it's tiny.  But the one I was aiming at was so much bigger.  Anyway, here's the story in my own words, and my own choice of editing:

We then started laughing about how The Weasel was sitting in my tree.  As my story stated earlier, every year he wants to try to sit in my tree.  And when I finally say, "Sure thing, take my tree," I'm the one who ends up shooting the hog.

It was then that Dad and I had this conversation:

Dad and I then got to work on cleaning the hog.  It's funny, after watching "The Walking Dead" cleaning a hog isn't so bad.  We put it's feet up on some branches, and cleaned/skinned it out.  Since we were doing this right off a main road not far from the check station, we had people driving by us.  It was funny how they would be going way too fast, see the hog and let off the gas, and then slam on the brakes.  One guy even backed up, and hollared at us.  He was happy we got something.  So then, we put the hog, which was a sal by the way, in the cooler, and threw some ice on it.

At this point The Weasel had not come out of the woods despite three loud gunshots, multiple trucks going up and down the road, and a few dogs making all sorts of racket.  He said he could stay in the woods until 10:30 AM, and be back to the truck at 11;00 AM, and by golly he was not kidding.

Since it was still only 9:30 or so, Dad and I took a stroll down Spur 4.  After all, we still did have time to hunt that evening.  So we did what we were originally going to do, scout the woods and find a place to hunt.  We see some great woods down the road.  It's funny.  All these years I have always gone to my tree, but never all the way Spur 4.  There were a great number of places to hunt down there.  So after an hour of walking around Dad and I made it back to the truck. 

Some of the dog guys stopped by again to chit chat.  I'll admit, I was having a tough time understanding their "country accent."  But Dad is from West Virginia, and understood every word the guys said.  It was then that The Weasel got back.  He excitedly told us that he saw two very small does in the woods. 

The dog hunter drove off, and that's when I took this video of The Weasel:

He has a habit of getting all excited, and telling us what he saw, and forgetting to ask us if we saw anything.

So we then went down near the ocean to have lunch.  Hickory Mound is right on the water, and the area near the ocean is beautiful in its own way. 

So that evening Dad and I are planning on going back to Spur 4, but the strangest thing happens.  The Weasel wants to hunt this completely different area.  Since it is the last hunt of the last day, we say okay.  After all, I'd already gotten my game.  It's only fair to give him a chance to hunt where he wants to.  Even if that is right after I gave him the opportunity to hunt right out of my tree that very morning. 

Too Cute To Shoot?

In preparation for hunting season I have been watching a lot of the Sportsman channel.  It's mostly hunting and fishing shows.  However, I will give credit to them in that, they show a wide variety of animals and different situations out hunting. 

I was watching one show that I had not seen before.  It was called American Huntress.

http://www.americanhuntress.com/

From their website:

The American Huntress was born out of the idea to get women more involved in the outdoors, whether in hunting, wildlife conservation, or passing on our American hunting tradition. As women, we can and often do experience the outdoors differently from men. And we wanted to be able to share those differences.
As they state on the website, they hunt in a lot of places, including Africa.  The episode I ended up seeing was one that they happened to be hunting in Africa.  In the episode they were hunting Kipspringer (Cliff Springer) Antelope. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klipspringer

Now I had never heard of the Kilpspringer.  I had no idea what one even looked like, or anything about them.  And then they showed them in the wild, and I saw one for the first time.

Oh my God.  They look like Bambi.  Seriously, look at those big, black eyes.  They are overly cute.  Also, they are only about 2 foot tall.  Even the adults look like babies.  The above picture doesn't do them justice.  They look like something an 8 year old girl dreamed up.

For a better view, this video on Youtube, taken at a zoo, will give you an idea on how they look, move, and interact.

I may be a hunter, but even I have to admit that is cute.  I think it finally passed my cute threshold where I couldn't shoot that.  I prefer my game animals to be rather ugly, such as hogs.

But as the Kilpspringer is only native to South Africa, I don't have to worry about one crossing my path. 

A New Way of Hunting

I first started hunting when I was 12.  It seems like a long time ago, most likely because it was a long time ago.  Back then there was a moderate population of feral hogs.  But lately, the hog population has exploded.  And there are some simple reasons why.  A sow (female hog) can have up to four litters of piglets a year.  They have no natural predators, except for the odd alligator, and of course, man.

I remember back in the 80's there was a big anti-hunting movement.  The animal rights people did not like hunters shooting at bambi.  However, in these past few years the deer population has exploded in Northern states.  The average person has to worry about deer getting in their garbage, crop and flower gardens, and the massive damage that deer can cause when getting hit by a car.  Suddenly, deer aren't so cute anymore. 

In the North, many states have opened up hunting season so that there aren't so many deer competing for so little food during the winter.  I know of one place in Virginia when you buy your licence you get a licence to shoot one buck and two does.  If you fill that, you can go and get another permit for $12.00 letting you shoot one buck and two does.  And it goes on and on like that.  They really just want that $12.00.  But they are so overrun with deer they have to bring down the population.

So what does this have to do with hogs?  Well, in the Southern states we are having the same problem but with hogs. 

 

Here in Florida hogs and deer compete for a lot of the same food.  A lot of deer have been pushed out of their territory by feral hogs.  Just two years ago I shot a hog during the quota hunt season.  But I wasn't the only one.  There were only about 6 deer killed versus about 70 hogs killed during that time period.  Does that say something?  You bet it does.  The hog population has gotten out of control.

Hogs have started to creep into residental areas as well as farmland to seek out food.  The problem has gotten big in Texas.  They have an estimated 2.6 million feral hogs.  They have been destroying farmland in huge numbers.  It has gotten so bad that a bill was passed with help from Ted Nugent to allow hunters to take out feral pigs from helicopters.  That's right.  They can go all Vietnam style, and run down hogs with a helicopter while shooting semi-automatic rifles at them.

Here's the video from a series called "Pigman."

At first I wondered how bad the problem could really be.  If you've seen enough fishing shows, you know they fish over several days to get enough footage for a half hour programs.  At the end of the Pigman show, they said that they flew the helicopter for 8 hours and shot 272 feral hogs. 

Seriously?  272 hogs?  Okay, the problem is as bad as they say if they can shoot that many hogs in just 8 hours.  What you may not see in the trailer is that they are hunting strickly over farmland that has been taken over and destroyed by wild hogs. 

I was telling my Dad about this, and wouldn't it be great for him to get back in a helicopter, and take out a few hogs?  He just gave me "the look."  The background story on this is that, he flew in a helicopter once in Vietnam, and swore he would never get in one again.  You couldn't drag him kicking and screaming into a helicopter ever. 

So if I had the chance to shoot down hogs with an AR-15 rifle out of a helicopter would I do it?  You bet I would.  But Dad would take a pass.   

Quicksand

A while ago when I was listening to Loveline on the radio, co-host Adam Carolla said that in the 80's he thought his chances of dying in quicksand were 50/50.  For those who weren't there, it seemed that every show on TV had a quicksand scene.  It's something that you just can't make up. 

So what does this have to do with me?  Well, I go hunting.  And not just in the woods.  I hunt in swamps where there is a chance of quicksand.  One year I was hunting in a new spot.  It had rained a lot recently, and I actually did get stuck in quicksand.  Luckily, I did what Bear Grylls told me to do.

I threw myself backwards onto a log, and practically swam out of there.  In fact, I got stuck in some quicksand in a different place during that trip.  Oh yeah, and a copperhead snake was trying to bite me at the time.  It was almost typical.  I shot my gun, and fell over backwards. 

Also, take note.  Quicksand is as messy as it looks.

Also, it's not like they put up signs marking where it's at.

Oh, here's the end to that story.  I called home, and told my sister that I got stuck in quicksand.  She laughed her ass off.  She had also heard the Adam Carolla bit.

So what does quicksand have to do with this year's hunting trip.  Well, I am going to a new place.  Here's the map of it.

http://www.floridafishandhunt.com/articles/hunting-articles/florida-management-areas/pdf/northcentral/Spring_Creek-web.pdf

If you notice one thing about the map is that, I am hunting right on the ocean.  Which is of course, quicksand central.  A lot of hunters/ firearm enthusiasts like to point out how few firearm accidents there are out hunting.  Well, I haven't seen the statistics of quicksand deaths, but I don't think it would be anything to brag about. 

I worry that I will actually have to write a will before I go hunting.  Again, nothing to do with guns.  I just have that feeling like Adam Carolla I will have a 50/50 chance of dying in quicksand.

You Are Only Limited By Your Dreams

You are only limited by your dreams.  But unfortunately for me, my dreams are limited by my brain.  But let me start at the beginning. 

I was having a dream.  My Dad and I were out hog hunting.  There were hogs everywhere, and I mean everywhere.  There must have been over a hundred just within shooting distance.

So my Dad takes the first shot, and takes out a hog.  He then hands the gun to me.  I don't know why I didn't have my gun with me, but he hands me his Remington .308.

I lollygag with my first shot, and miss.  I then get serious, and hit a hog with my second shot (third shot overall.)  I then put it down with the next shot.  I move on to another hog, and hit it.  

I then aim carefully for another hog, and then, "click."  Why did the gun go click?  Because in real life my Dad's gun only holds five shots.  So of course in my dream it only holds five shots.  Because in my mind, the gun has to, it absolutely has to have only five shots because that's what it does in real life.  Oh, and here's the funny thing.  All the hogs had tusks like elephants.  

Believe it or not, the hog pictured above is kinda tame compared to the hogs in my dream.  That's right, they were all savage wild looking things.

So let's recap.  The gun is limited to five shots because anything else would just be wrong.  However, the hogs can look like something from ages gone by, and that's okay.  

Sometimes I really hate my brain.

Inside the Secret World of Adrian's Hunting Adventures, Part 3

Back to the fun videos.  But first, why the duck you ask?  I just feel like a curious duck most of the time.  But seriously.

Clip 9.  While cleaning the hog I run into an old wishing well/ old timey water pump.  Then, hilarity ensues. 

Clip 10.  Out on the Hickory Mound inpoundment we run into a gator sunning himself on a sunny day.

Clip 11.  At the very end of our trip we were driving out of our hunting area.  It was then we found out where the hogs were hanging out at.  Right in the middle of the road.

I hope you enjoyed the insider's look at what really goes on during hunting season.  And remember, the Weasel is always right.

Inside the Secret World of Adrian's Hunting Adventures, Part 2

Onto more adventures in hunting.

(Really, do these guys look like they know what they're doing?)


Clip 5.  I am tired.  So tired.  Why?  I put in a lot of work in a very short period of time.  You can even see how completely covered in sweat I am.

Clip 6.  Down the road comes the Weasel (rhymes with Grease-el.)  And it turns out I have shot his hog.

Clip 7.  And the conversation continues.  Notice how the Weasel knows everything except who actually shot the hog?  This clip is kinda funny in that, you can see just how argumentative the Weasel starts getting.

Clip 8.  Finally the tension breaks a bit, and the conversation devolves into crude sexual humor.  This is very typical of men out hunting.  When you are in the middle of nowhere, it doesn't really matter what you say.  The trees could care less what you say.

Stay tuned to part 3.  More fun, fun, fun.

Inside the Secret World of Adrian's Hunting Adventures

I have plenty of hunting stories that I've aquired from years of being in the outdoors.  Sometimes the tales can get either really hairy or relaly tall.  Back in 2009 I took my video camera with me to show just how weird things can get out there.

Today I bought a machine/ program that lets me transfer my video to an MPEG format.  I am really glad that this type of program exists so that I can share my wonderful and weird hunting experiences.

So without further ado, here's the highlights of the Perry, Fl. 2009 hunting trip at Hickory Mound.

Clip 1.  The Waking of the Weasel (rhymes with Grease-el.)  Note how I am doing my best Steve Irwin impression.

Clip 2.  This is an osprey sitting in a tree.  The osprey is one of the best fish hunting birds out there.  I was really glad to get this shot.

Clip 3.  In this video you can see some hooded merganzers and grebies.  This video was recording in the Hickory Mound Impoundment Unit.  It is a beautiful estruary that supports a huge amount of wildlife.  I've never seen a place quite like it.

Clip 4.  A funny little butterfly landed, and hilariousity ensued.

More to come.  Stay tuned for parts 2, 3, and 4.

Hunting with the Weasel

Jul 6, 2009

I have one of the strangest hunting buddies.  I won't say his real name, but I jokingly call him, "The Weasel."  Note:  It rhymes with "Grease-el."  To be honest, hunting is totally hilarious because of him.  One thing I can say for sure is that it's certainly not boring.  It's like, the things he does is bothersome at the time, but you can look back on it and laugh.  Now I have hunted with him for 20 years so there's quite a list of things he has done over the years.  This is just what I can remember.  There is so much more.

He buys every single hunting toy on the market.  Fake antlers for rattling, the thing you cough into so you don't make a sound, super-sonic hearing headphones so you can hear every little thing in the woods, the ultra scope with yardage measure, and deer grunt.

He tends to leave his set of keys to the truck anywhere but in his pocket.  Dad just puts them in his pocket until "The Weasel" needs them.

One year we had a "secret knock" for the trailer.  He could of course just of knocked and said, "Hey it's the Weasel."  We would have heard him just fine.  Besides, we never had problems with anyone wanting to get into the trailer with us in there before.

He wears all camo, and then puts blaze orange on over it.  (Blaze orange as in accordance with state law.)  If you are going to wear blaze orange what's with all the camo?

When setting his rifle at the gun range, no grouping is close enough.  Watching him shoot is like nails on a chalk board.

The only time I got a deer, he said we couldn't get it all in the cooler.  I said it was just like a puzzle, and we needed to find the right fit.  It's not that he said it.  It's that he said it 50 times.  Guess what?  I got the deer in the cooler.  Also during this bit, he said he always left the ribs on the ground.  I told him there was no way I would ever leave ribs behind.  Anyone who knows me, knows I don't leave any kind of ribs behind.

One year he got it in his head that deer don't cross roads.  (Note:  Why do so many get killed on the highway?)

One year he said that he was going to get a hog.  That's all he talked about.  Dad ended up getting a hog.  So we pulled a bit of a prank.  Dad had the trucked backed out down the muddy road.  I saw "The Weasel" coming down the road.  I told him that I had an idea.  We put the tailgate up, but had the hog right in the middle of the muddy road.  (In all fairness, both the hog and the road were black.)  He walks up and keeps asking us what's in the back of the truck?  We say nothing is in the back of the truck.  He then walks up, steps on the hog and says, "I'll be damned, it's a hog."  True story.

Dad made a joke about getting some Cognac, and "The Weasel" took him seriously.  Dad did drink one shot of the Cognac mixed with 7-Up.  However, "The Weasel drank the rest of the bottle, and had a hangover the next morning.  He couldn't even get up to go hunting. 

The one thing that "The Weasel" did to really make Dad and I mad was this.  He had his knife taken to a "Professional" to sharpen it.  He just tore the hell out of the knife.  My Dad and I worked for weeks to hand sharpen it back to normal.  We used a piece of an old grinding stone to work off the worn and burnt places of the knife.  Then we used progressively smoother stones until it was extremely sharp. 
He could never tell when a knife was sharp.  He didn't understand that if it was smooth it was dangerously sharp, because there were no burrs on it. 
Well he didn't need to use it on anything that year, so before the following hunting season he took it to another "Professional," and that guy completely burnt up and destroyed his knife.  All of our hard work for nothing.  Dad told him his knife was destroyed, and that there was nothing he could do but get another knife.

Speaking of knives.  Dad's is dangerously sharp.  We were cleaning a deer, and "The Weasel" was using Dad's hunting knife, and almost cut the upper part of the front leg off.  I heard the tendon snap.  I really did.  He could not get the hang of a really, really sharp knife.

The one thing that makes me shake my head is that he "hears game."  He stays in until it is too dark to hunt.  In fact, he could get a ticket from the Game Warden because he stays in so late.  While he stays in so late, he "hears" game.  It's always, "I heard three does and a buck."  When I ask, "Did you see them?"  He says, "No." And then looks at me as if I'm the asshole.

Bad time management.  He is terrible at time management.  We get up at 5AM.  Out the door at 6AM.  He will want to stop at a convenience store.  That makes us late to get out in the woods at 7AM.  Namely, because he will want to talk to the Game Warden.  Then we try to get to our hunting spot at 7:30AM.  Hunt till 10:30AM.  After that, he will want to drive all over the place scouting.  His memory is so bad he can't remember all the places we've scouted before.  We eat lunch, try and get a nap in, then go in the woods to hunt around 2:00-3:00PM.  We then tend to come out of the woods at 5:30-6:00PM.  Or should I say that me and Dad come out at that time.  I was once lost in the dark, and never again will I go through that.  Never.  This is where "The Weasel" put us through Hell.  He comes out at 7PM, and wants to talk.  He takes forever putting his stuff up.  We have to check out at the check station, and he'll want to talk to the Game Warden again.  It's then an hour back to town, so it's 8PM.  We then have to eat.  So figure an hour there, and it's now 9PM.  Then, he will have to go to Walmart or some other crazy place for some oddball item.  It's then onto the trailer where we need to take showers.  I can swing it in about 15 minutes.  Well, it takes him at least 1-2 hours.  He has to shave his face, the back of his neck, and wash every hair on his body.  Dad and I will at least be in bed around 10:30 to 11:00 PM.  This does not work for me.  I need at least 8 hours, and this 6 hour crap just doesn't do.  In fact, there was one night he was going through his stuff till 2 or 3 in the morning. 

Really, it does take him forever to shower.  He really does use a mirror to reflect the back of his neck in the big mirror so he can shave it ..... every night.

Dad suspects The Weasel smoked so much pot in the Coast Guard that he can't remember shit. 

I've never met anyone worse with a map.  He makes it so much harder than it should be.

One year he said that the Weatherman lies.  He checks all three weather channels, adds up the temperatures, then divides them to get the real average temperature.  Really, I can't this stuff up.

Whenever he runs into a poisonous snake, he has been known to beat it with a stick instead of shooting it.  Why?  He didn't want to make a lot of noise.  Really.

One time he beat a snake, and it wasn't quite dead.  So I pulled my pistol to finish it off.  Every time I went to pull the trigger he told me to stop, and then proceeded to tell me how to shoot it.  I finally had enough, and shot the damn thing.  He then told me I should have had snake shot in my gun.  I told him, "Why?  I just shot it's damn head off with a hollow point.  I don't need any snake shot."

He orders food like a woman.  I once asked the waitress to only spit in his food, I just wanted one pancake, and nothing else.  He also tends to want everything ordered burnt.

He is always late.  Always. 

He drinks scuzzy beer (Keystone Light.)  When we were at Green Swamp, we had met some other hunters.  One guy looks at my Dad with his Coors, and says he's alright, but he didn't know about his friend (The Weasel) with his Keystone Light." 

One time he said he had a theory on the deer.  I knew it was going to be silly, so I started singing the song, "I've got a theory," from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical.  Dad asked me, "Son, what the Hell are you doing?"

He tends to believe anything that anyone tells him, but us.  He once "found out" about this great hunting place from this drunk guy.  Turn out it was a place that we had once hunted that was terrible.

Instead of us picking him up, he drove over here to our house, dropped his stuff off, then had Dad unhook the truck from the trailer, drive back to his place so he could park his Jeep in his garage, and then drive back to our house.  If it had been agreed upon before hand, no problem.  However, he just sprung this on us.  It also made us about 2 hours late for leaving to go hunting. 

He tends to hunt in other people's spots.  That has earned him some not so happy hunters when they turn up at "their" spot.

He has "Little Man, Big Gun" syndrome.  Every year he got a bigger and bigger gun to compensate for his small stature. 

On the radio he once said that he saw, "Six turkeys."  So I called him "Sex Turkey" after that because it that's what it sounded like over the radio.

One time he wanted to get up at 3AM, so we could hit the snooze button until 4AM.  Dad just set the alarm for 5AM as usual. 

He can never decide where to hunt.  He will ask us, and I will immediately tell him where.  It still doesn't help him decide where to hunt.

He damn near blew a hole in his hand.  He cocked back the .357 he had, and had his hand over the revolver.  He then touched off the trigger.  Well, luckily he was wearing gloves because it blew a hole right through the glove, and burnt his hand.  That could have been bad.

He once opened a can of sardines in oil inside the truck.  Even though it was 45 degrees out, Dad lowered the windows.  It was that or throw up. 

This one is not so funny.  He is a bit shorter than me.  When he was walking by, and getting stuff out of the truck he kept sticking his gun under my nose.  He had it slung over his shoulder, but since he is so short it kept going up my nose.  He thought we were making fun of him being short.  I told him no it wasn't about that.  Dad pulled him to the side, and had a serious talk about gun safety. 

Every year he forgets something.  It can be medicine, license, wallet, chair, ammo, toothpaste, and God knows what. 

So we end up going to Walmart a lot to get what he needs.  We even had to go from store to store (in a small town) to find the travel size Colgate toothpaste.  He couldn't buy the regular size one.  No it had to be the travel size one. 

He told my Dad that he should get rubber snake boots instead of his leather ones.  That way they wouldn't leak.  Dad said, that his don't leak.  But, "The Weasel" said that Dad should give his boots to me, and he should get some rubber ones. 

When I got my one and only deer, the first words that, "The Weasel" said to me upon seeing it were, "Thank God it's not the big one!"  You see, the day before I had missed the big one.  I don't talk about it.  I get too upset.  Anyway, I couldn't believe he said that. 

One time, Dad told him to put his seat beat on.  "The Weasel" said that it was a dirt road, and he didn't need to be buckled on a dirt road.  Dad then hit a huge pothole, and, "The Weasel" hit his head on the roof.... hard.  He's always worn his seat belt since then.

As stated earlier, what he thinks is dark, and actual dark are two different things.  I once told him that a Game Warden could give him a ticket if he's out there in the woods with a flashlight, and a loaded gun during that time of night. 

One time while driving around scouting woods we saw a buck.  His head started spinning around like Beaker (from the Muppet show), and he started yelling, "Oh, my God, it's a buck!"  What made it funny was that his voice was high pitched like he had been sucking helium when he said it.

He ended up in the hospital out hunting once.  True story.  Too much alcohol + not enough sleep + over-exertion = heart going out of rhythm. 

We had an old fashioned alarm clock (still do.)  It would click 2 seconds before it would go off.  He would hear the click, and turn it off.  For a while we thought the clock was broke.  It just do happened that Dad had to go to the bathroom, and at that second the clock clicked, and he saw, "The Weasel" turn the clock off.  When Dad called him on it, "The Weasel" denied it, and called my Dad a liar.  That was one of the nastier arguments they ever got in.  Dad eventually put the alarm clock where no one could touch it.  It worked fine after that. 

He once shot a hog (hey, that's great right?), and then gave it too someone else (What?!!!)  He should have offered it to us first, or not shot it if he didn't want it.  Now to be fair he did give it to a very poor local family.  So it went to good use.

He knowingly put his guns in the back of the truck before hunting season when we were going on management lands to scout.  Under the old rules this was illegal, and could be considered poaching.  We could have lost everything.  I called him on this, and he blew me off (I was 13 at the time).  I told Dad, and he set him straight.

He once left his .44 magnum loaded under the seat. 

Out duck hunting years ago, he would swear he shot ducks that Dad shot.  Dad would say, "Ok, fine" and give them to him. 


I wish I could remember more, but these are the highlights.  "The Weasel" is not a bad guy, but he is the most anal retentive person I have ever met.