If I would have went under the guise that I wasn’t welcome opening weekend just because you’d be unsure if I could handle it or not, and that I may get in the way, I would politely decline any invite to continue hunting. Your camp, your rules but dang.... they seem way strict and way too much government for me to have any fun. But the new guy probably just doesn’t know any better. Good luck to him. He farts wrong with the wrong direction of wind will probably get him expelled.
Todd
As far as farting goes, he'll have plenty of competition. We're all pretty proficient in that area. Frankly, I don't know how one determines if a fart is wrong. #2 son, Moose is the fartmaster. In other families, one blames it on the dog. In this clan, you just have to look at the Moose.
NewGuy's schedule is such that his weekends are at a premium. Having him start after the first weekend is as much a scheduling thing as it is anything else. I can't tell you what's in NewGuy's mind, but he seems happy just to have a chance at hunting private property and not having to drive from home to get there. Our last NewGuy was SuperCore. He joined camp in 2009. He found his first Opener to be far too hectic to really enjoy it. Things really didn't start making sense until the pace slowed down mid-week. It's kind of like when the kids were younger and they'd dive into the presents on Christmas Day. Within a short time, there they'd be in the middle of the floor, surrounded by wrapping paper and boxes and crying-- too much, too fast. Mind you, SuperCore was Airborne in his younger life.
If this NewGuy had been all pedal-to-the-metal about this, I'd have probably let him come for The Opener. This isn't about rules and probationary periods and hooey like that. Lord knows, we're all a bunch of helmet jockeys riding the short bus to deer camp. NewGuy is making a huge change, and it's one that I went through at some point. Up until now, he's been driving for a couple of hours to get a half-day's hunting done on crowded State Park land and now he's hit the mother lode and there are deer peering in the bedroom window. You can't walk the property without a herd or two snorting at you. My first trip to a deer camp, I felt like I was leaving the bullpen and getting the call up to the Big Show. It ended up being far from the expectation, but I still had those ideas.
