When I was younger I used to treat the Elder Sportsmen with a degree of respect.
On the last couple of hunts, I suddenly noticed that I Am the Elder Sportsman.
Just how the heck did that happen?
It seems like it was only yesterday that I was “The Kid”

And what the heck happened to the respect I should be due?
On the last hunt, I saw a couple of young bucks on the road while I high stepped it in the briars

I became a bit melancholy while I was at Seale looking for Lucy Lu.
I had hunted the Seale pine plantation lease since I was 17. I’m 57 now. It hurt when Cuz refused to renew the lease at the ever climbing prices that Plum Creek demanded.

While looking for Lucy Lu, I passed the spot where 2, my father, killed three 8 points one morning.

The mudhole where my X sank my cj5 when she gunned the motor and suddenly took off. I asked her why she did that while I was yelling “Whoa” “Whoa”. She said, “ I thought you were yelling “Go” “Go”.

There was the campsite where I examined my life several years ago and realized I didn’t like what I saw.

My life had pretty much fallen apart; no Small amount of blame should be assigned to me. Instead, I would have to say it was, on reflection, mostly mine.
I camped often on that hillside. First when the pines limbs were barely above the top of my tent. At night, I was lulled to sleep by the soft rustling of pine tip to pine tip in the night breeze. As the trees grew older, the rustling of the pine needles, so reminiscent of the sound of rushing water, came instead to sound like sabers being rattled in their scabbard as bare branches dueled in the winds.

That period of introspection led to profound changes in my life. And all were for the better

Time passes and things that once seemed so permanent are proved to be but a vapor. So it is with Seale and my youth.
So it will be with yours.