Thanks for the kind words! It's nice to feel welcome.
I've kinda felt a kinship with you guys since I first read thisnthing all the way through the first time. I lost my little brother 3 months before Waylon's tragic accident. It was one of those early April days where we got some light blowing snow after a couple of days of rain. The roads were a bit greasy in the morning. Jeep Cherokee vs. fully loaded cement truck. I got the call and had to tell our parents, my other brother who was in Florida on vaca and my sister who lives on the other side of the Big Lake. Not fun. He hung on six days for us. He left with us around him telling him it's OK and that we'd be together further on down the road.
Corey was a good man. He was a month younger than Dave and Waylon. We hunted together, fished and camped, you name it-anything outdoors is where he wanted to be. He went into the Army to pay for school. Little did he know Sadam wanted to own Kuwait. Only he found himself in Korea for a year instead. He thought he was good, but upon his return he went into 5th Group SF. He never would share anything he did when he was with them. He got out and went to college, got his biology degree and set forth trying to clean up environmental disasters. He said he'd never be a millionaire, but he was happy what he was doing.
His passing was the slow death of our deer camp as he was an integral part of our 30+ year deer, duck, and trout camp. Every camp has a guy who is sort of the "glue". He was that guy. The first season after he passed one of the guys put his boots and hat on the fireplace mantel. It was too much for my dad. He never hunted again. Another guy couldn't lay off the bottle while hunting and we had to give him his walking papers; he took another guy with him. Sadly, our 30 year camp is falling apart. My other brother and a few others are left.
But I am a "glass is half full" kind of guy. We still have a good core group. I have a couple of boys, one who is 11 and loves duck hunting. When I read the first dozen pages of this thread it gives me hope. When I read it all the way and then the day to day posts, well by god, there's healing going on. And it all seems to center around Chickenbuck. One picture says it all and that's Uncle Dusty's tattoo.
So I have ten acres up north in the middle of nowhere deer country with nothing on it...
