The Flight from Beijing

[Mike P]

The United Airlines copilot just informed everyone that our flight will take 13 hours and 57 minutes until we touch down in Chicago. I will try and catch some sleep but I know from experience that if I succeed it will only be intermittent short naps. Even with all my years and years of practice I still have never mastered the art of sleeping for any length of time in the seat of an airliner. The view of the pacific ocean from thirty-eight thousand feet for nine hours never changes. There is no reference to tell your mind that you are actually moving forward. You look down and confirm that you are in an aluminum tube jail cell with a hundred cell mates for the next nine hours and with a look of surrender on your face you summon the flight attendant and order a double vodka on the rocks.

I sipped my vodka and looked at the endless blue out the small window and thought there has to be a better way. I was going cold turkey. The last week had been at a frantic pace and now I was sitting doing nothing, contemplating nothing but the clear liquid sitting on the small tray table in front of me. You shouldn’t have to go cold turkey. There should be some sort of gradual slowdown, some weaning if you will. It is not good for the system to do this. Of course the airline knows this and is more then willing to sell you the alcohol pain killer at five bucks a pop.

I recline the seat, close my eyes and start to watch the slide show of images as they pass through my mind. You know the process. You’re trying to select what you want to think about. Even if you don’t want to think it doesn’t matter. You may want to go brain dead but you cant stop the slide show. The thoughts just keep flipping one after another. The first part of the show is always about the most recent events. You see the images of the past day, the past week as you move backwards through time. Then you start chapter two with all of the thoughts directed at everything you have to do when you get home. Slide after slide, the show is relentless in pace. Refill prescriptions, flash, pay bills, flash, set up preseason meeting, flash. And the frame freezes. That’s it! That’s the one! It’s the golden nugget. It’s the one you want to think about. With your subject in one hand and a double vodka in the other you set course for that little place in your mind where you hide with your happy thoughts. And when you get there you stare at the slide that announces the 2008 hunting season arrives next month.

This will be the big one. Arguments could be made that I already had passed this anniversary, but officially, this year will be the big one. This will be my fiftieth opening season. I “officially” shot my first buck on a cold December day forty-nine years ago. I was ten years old and with my father. Where had all the time gone? Where had all the hunting seasons gone? The time when there were more hunting seasons in my past then there were in my future had long since past. But they were all still here, every one of them. Some of them are crystal clear while some are hazy. But I will visit with them all over the next several hours as the drone of the jet engines and the taste of the vodka usher me off to those hunting seasons past.

When you have brothers you have competition. You compete for everything starting at a young age. You compete for time and attention from your parents. You compete for clean shirts and dry towels. And on a Texas cattle ranch in the 1950’s, you even competed for food at the dinner table. Slow with a fork and you could kiss that second pork chop good bye. But most of all, you competed with your brothers in the Super Bowl of all competitions, the quest for the largest whitetail buck. That’s what all the new seasons were about while I was growing up. What brother would hold the title. What brother would lord his hunting skills over the rest of us as we suffered through an entire off season. Who would take every opportunity at any gathering be it at home or at school to let all know that “He” was the most skilled of all hunters. Oh yes, this competition was fierce. The ante was high. An entire year was at stake.

I don’t know when it happened but I suspect it was somewhere in my late twenties. Somehow without me knowing about it one competition died and another was born. It was so gradual I didn’t see it coming. One day I was competing with my brothers and the next day I was competing with myself. These were the years that my two children were young. I realized that soon I would be hunting with them and hunting as I had known it would be radically altered. So I was on a frantic pace for bigger antlers. Every year had to be an improvement. The bar was being set higher every season. You searched for every extra point. What was the width? How is his mass? Shoot or pass, an entire season is on the line here. Make a mistake and its wait till next year. It was during this time frame that I was probably at my best. I had the youth, strength and desire. And the seasons were glorious!

The seasons of the children brought new found joys. There was no competition. The bucks didn’t matter. The joy of my daughter first and then my son joining me for the hunts transcended my now admitted addiction to antlers. The kids were my methadone. They were the only thing on the face of this earth that could overpower my addiction to the antler. I watched with joy when my daughter brought down her first mallard from the deck of our duck boat. I marveled when my son insisted that he had to gut his first whitetail kill or he wouldn’t be a real hunter. It was a time of serenity for me as a hunter. But as the kids grew I could see the addiction on the horizon. They discovered the opposite sex and soon boyfriends and girlfriends and universities took them away from me and my seasons.

The post children seasons brought new challenges. Somehow the strength and youth portions of my seasons got lost. Had the hills and hollows become steeper? Had they started to make tree stands heavier? And I can’t understand why they can’t make boots that fit like the boots I used to hunt in when I was younger. But none of these flimsy excuses would fool the monkey. He was still on my back. He didn’t care if my body was complaining. He would not listen. And like the addict that I am, I resumed my quest for the whitetail buck. I would make up for my new physical shortcomings the only way I knew how. I would use technology! It was exploding around me. Deer cams, compound bow cams, here a cam, there a cam, everywhere a cam cam. Red dot scopes, illuminated scopes and distance compensating scopes. Scent absorbing clothing and more camo patterns then mother nature herself has to offer. The list was endless.

And then it happened. I reached the milestone. Number fifty starts next month. Fifty years of hunting whitetails. I for the life of me can’t think of anything else I have done for fifty years that does not included bodily functions! Hunting has been one constant in my life that has shaped me. Of course many other things have as well, but this constant is a primal constant. It is something that I inherited from my forefathers just as you have. It is something that we were born to do. I know that now. It only took me fifty years to figure it out. I always was a quick study.

“Put your tray tables and seatbacks in an upright and locked position” says the voice from the small speaker above my head. And as we land I know that the monkey will be waiting for me in the baggage claim area. The new season is at hand.

[hetichunter]

Wow

Mike I know you wont write for other forums but is it possible for you to PM me with permission to repost this at some of the other non crossbow forums. I would give proper credit to you and the Excalibur forum if you would grant your permission. thanks............

[sumner4991]

Good one Mike. Upon your 50th anniversary, maybe you should take a deer the same way you took your first. Non of the tech . . .ooops, probably too late.

Great read!

What happened to the King? Is he still out there?

[saxman]

I really enjoyed that Mike.
When did you come through Chicago Mike?
I flew into O'Hare Friday and out on Sunday.

[wabi]

Good read Mike.
I sometimes have a hard time understanding and relating to your writings, as I have never had the "antler addiction". To me just getting within bow range of any adult whitetail has been rewarding enough. I think of the meat as a well appreciated bonus, and antlers as something to make coat & hat racks out of.
I'm 57 and my son is 8. He frequently hunts with me, and he usually instructs me before the hunt to shoot nothing less than an 8 point that day. Then when a deer - any deer - shows up, he will nudge me and whisper, "Shoot it dad - I'm hungry for a mess of fresh tenderloins!".
Thats the whitetail hunting I enjoy! No self-imposed pressure to pick the biggest rack in the woods, just the accomplishment of outsmarting an adult whitetail and getting within bow range. I've done it countless times, and I've passed far more shots than I've taken simply because I didn't need or want the meat, but any time I can get within mere feet of a whitetail I'll guarantee you my heart rate and blood pressure are at a point that would make a doctor tell me to give up hunting!

[MNDeerHunter]

Mike - I have only read a few of your postings on this forum but I have to say you always hit a home run for me! Wish I could lay out everything I think like you put into words. Keep'em coming

[HW]

Great read, I hope you had a great time while you were there.

[FredBear]

If your wrote a 1,000 page novel about drying paint.I'd sleep outside in the rain to be the first to buy it. You have a true talent Mike. Thank you for another great read!

[Wayne B]

Great read Mike. One thing really caught my attention. UNITED AIRLINES SELLS DOUBLE SHOTS FOR ONLY FIVE BUCKS?? They don't fly to Cuba do they? I have a trip lined up.

[dick195252]

Out Standing as usual

[bradm]

Thats some deep words, hits the soul. Great read!

[mikew]

Great read, I hope you had a great time while you were there.

Ditto & what HW said too.
-Mike

[curmudgeon]

KEWL