Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters It's been 10 years

I started my weblog 10 years ago. My first post is from Aug 30, 2004. Back then, I had just heard about blogging. It was all new to me. I had been self-publishing and helping others self-publish electronically for years. This was wholly different. It was more like writing in a diary and having the whole world read it.

Back 10 years ago, Mooseboy had yet to take his first deer and Angus was still too small to pick up a rifle. We were still settling into a life of perpetual deer camp. Sure, it was not all idyllic, but it beat going to soccer and hanging out at the mall. If anything, Genesis 9:2-4 Ministries has documented a man's investigation into the premise that the only thing better than a successful hunt is helping your children be successful hunters. I am here to declare the premise is true.

We had done a lot of work fixing up the farm a decade ago, but there were still a lot of projects ahead. We finished off siding the last shed in 2005 and immediately started repairing the stuff that was starting to fall apart. It never ends.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped being a beginning deer hunter. I don't know quite when it happened, but I will admit to anyone the first decade or so of my deer hunting career was on the steep front side of the learning curve. With turkey hunting, I will always be a beginner.

I grew up the son of a semi-retired builder. Dad kept the last 72 units he built and managed them. I have now been on our farm for 13 years. I am now hunting the 4th, 5th or 6th generations of the deer and turkey that constituted the land's original tenants. Let me just express the glee of a landlord's son being able to hunt the tenants, their children, and grandchildren without reproach. Dad would be proud.

Ten years ago I had reached the peak of my career. There was a lot going on, and there was a lot of stress. I needed to get to camp every weekend to unwind. Within a few years, the solder factory was sold, I was unemployed and there was nothing to unwind from. Friday nights were getting to be like every other night of the week. Today, I am happily back in the saddle, and it feels good to crawl into the Thoughtful Spot pour a scotch and peer out into deepening gloom of a Friday evening and know it was all worth something.

Ten years ago, I had not introduced my friends Pooh, Nosmo, Chin, and the rest to y'all. Now that I look back on it, I was probably still mourning. For you see, the shamanic entourage had followed me from my days editing the Black Hole Literary Review. I had met a truly wonderful mind (albeit a tad schizophrenic) in a personage known as the MadHatter. 'Hatter was a retired DARPA employee best known for his work on the M1 Abrams. Something went a bit odd in 'Hatter's mind (his real name was Stuart) and he began having long spiritual conversations with himself and his pantheon of invisible friends. When I started the Black Hole Literary Review in 1989, I invited MadHatter to be a sort of intellectual recluse-in-residence , and he was a huge draw. He was wonderfully entertaining, spiritually insightful, and (sort of as an aside) completely nuts. When MadHatter left for other planes of existence, I think he willed me his invisible friends. It took several years for me to acknowledge that fact, but I hope you will agree that having invisible friends can be a sane thing. You do agree, right? For the most part, I have kept them out of my weblog, partly because I need a place where I can be away from them lest I wind up like MadHatter.

Also, I have a wonderful pantheon of friends from the neighborhood around camp to keep me amused. In typical form for Kentucky, they all seem to be related. You have O.T., my buddy that runs the mower shop. O.D. is O.T.'s brother and we often meet up at the store. They have in turned me on to O.G. , O.C., O.P. and of course, Darrell who I hardly ever mention since he has not said all that much since he came back from the Army.

I also cannot go without thanking Scooter, our intern at the Black Hole Institute of Wildlife Studies, who came to us as an orphan and worked summers at the Deer and Deer Hunting Pro-Staffer's Lodge. He has sacrificed so much to help in our studies of the effect of Daylight Savings Time on deer and turkey.

Most of all, I want to thank you guys. I was looking over the stats today and more people come from the 24HourCampfire to read my stuff than anywhere else except the Japanese housewives who Google "How do you take a turkey's temperature"
every Thanksgiving and get my entry that includes the instructions:

This is a great post!

The Shaman usually comes up with something good to read.

Yep, I like to read his posts. They are usually a good story and I like how his sons used to (or still do) hammer deer with an M1.

Ah! The M1 Garand! I was at the LGS yesterday, and that very subject came up.



A fellow came in and traded several thousand rounds of .22 for an SKS. We all got to talking, and I explained how Mooseboy had grown up so much between 11 and 12 that I took him off the 30-30 and put him on the Garand. He took several deer with it.

When he became an adult, I bought him a Win 570 in 30-06. His brother Angus started with the Marlin 30-30, but took a shine to his Mom's Savage 110 in '06 (I think he liked the scope), so the Garand has been sitting idle. He finished out his career as a Yute with a Mosin Nagant M44. On Fathers Day this year I gifted him my Win 670.

My most memorable moment with the Garand was the day Moose took the little button in the picture. We were up in a buddy stand and Mooseboy managed to eviscerate a deer with the M1. I'm not talking an icky gut shot either. There was enough of a pressure wave created by the bullet hitting the chest that it opened up a seam in the center of the abdomen and everything fell out. The deer ran 60 yards until he tripped over his own entrails and fell. When we got there, there was nothing to clean.

Here's the rest of the story:

Moose's Last Yute Hunt

Shaman, thank you for your always entertaining eloquence. I've been to your blog a number of times.

I've seen something similar to Mooseboy's dink on a little fork my nephew shot at a scant range. It was his first deer, and it drug its guts a ways. Not a picturesque situation, but he was immensely proud.

I still remember my reaction to finding that trail of entrails. It lasted 60 yards from the point of impact. My buddy John had landed on Omaha on D-Day +14 and spent the Fall of '44 in France. He could never walk through freshly fallen leaves, because he was still afraid of mines.

As I saw a lung, a kidney, a little this and that in the oak leaves, all I could think of was John and all the times he'd probably seen similar trails. John used to say that both 30-06 and 8X57 were quite explosive at close range, but he didn't give specifics. Yikes. After 40 years, he was still occasionally stopping on hikes to partake of the dry heaves.

BTW: Moose is named for him.

Blech! My nephew's deer fell when eviscerated entrails got tangled on some deadfall. Like I said, not a photogenic situation. 30-06 with 165 SST was bullet used. Range was maybe 50 yds, and the deer dragged goo maybe 20 after bolting at the shot. His beaming pride is what I recall the most though. It was/is TOUGH getting him on deer. Lighter SST make great deer bullets.

I'll have to pay a visit to your blog today. Always enjoyable and interesting stuff there. Well done, Shaman, with the blog, with your sons, with a life honestly and honorably lived.

Aw, shucks!

Honestly and honorably?

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I remember a few years ago, Ken Howell had finally anointed me by declaring I was a bonefide official gunwriter. Prior to that, Pooh and I and the rest of my crew had been beating down the gates of Outdoor Writerdom without significant success. All of a sudden the door swung open, and this old cowboy-looking dude with shooting sticks (he's a lot older than he looks in the picture, kids) was standing there.

"What are you doing?" he asked. Pooh was handing me tools, and I was finishing work on The Pillar of TRVTH.

"I'm finishing off this thing that will settle all the fuss," I said. "You press this button, and then stand on top of the pillar and express a definitive statement and wait. If what you said is true, the little green light here beeps and you get to get off. If what you say is false, a lightning bolt comes down and fries your ass. All that's left is ashes."

"How's that going to help solve any arguments?" Asked Ken.

"Because no gunwriter is ever going to stand on that pillar, " I said.

Ken chuckled in agreement and wandered off. I didn't see him again until the incident with the lesbians. Come to think of it, I haven't seen the lesbians in a while. The last time I did, they said they were taking an extended motorcycle trip. When I heard they were headed towards Leon County, Texas, I asked them to stop out to see Boggy Creek Ranger.

I have not heard from Boggy or the lesbians since. I wish them all the best, but if you see two women in matching outfits driving matching lacquered pearl Harleys with white leather saddle bags, you might want to tell them the kid quit last month to go in the Army and the grass around the trailer needs mowing. Check Boggy's place. They may be there.