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Jesse's Hunting > Hunting Articles > Hunting Articles Archives > Counting Blessings - An Editorial Slant
Counting Blessings - An Editorial Slant
Phil Loughlin - JHO ProStaff
- Bay Area, CA
December 15, 2006
California's wild bounty
We're blessed more than we sometimes realize with a bounty of outdoors opportunities. All jokes aside, we've got it pretty good. |
For me, it can go either way. But this year, as another Thanksgiving dinner fades to a hazy memory (martinis and Turduckhen… who would’ve thought it?) and Christmas rears its over-commercialized head, I have to sip a little eggnog and consider my own blessings.
First of all, of course, there’s my family. Having someone to love, and having someone who loves me is a good reason to be thankful. Heck, just having someone who can put up with me is a pretty big deal.
To begin with, I’m never home. I’m gone most weekends to hunt this or to shoot that. When I am home, I’m usually preparing for a hunt by doing stuff like practicing with calls. I’ve since been forbidden to blow, scrape, shake, or squeeze any game call in the house, but before the ban I drove three dogs, two cats, and a parakeet out of their minds.
On top of that, I leave big piles of hunting gear all over the house. Even though I claimed half of the garage as my “hunting room”, decoys, camo, ammunition, archery tackle, etc., seem to overflow into the rest of the house. It’s been compared to the hunting aisle at a Wal-mart. Funny then, that I never seem to have exactly the piece of gear I need, which means another big hit on the credit card. See all those new Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops stores springing up? I financed those.
Now that I think about it, I suppose I should be thankful I am that I even still have a family.
Because I live to hunt, I’m thankful for the outdoors opportunities that are open to me here in California. True, I have to drive three hours or more just to get to a place where I can uncase my rifle without having two SWAT teams, the National Guard, and 500 PETA members swarming my vehicle. But once I get there, I have some awesome opportunities. For example, just the other day at my favorite hog hunting spot, I had the opportunity to collect a Hefty™ bag full of water bottles, beer cans, food wrappers, spent cases, cigarette butts, and other assorted minutiae. It was exciting like an anthropology dig.
I was very thankful… that there wasn’t more garbage. I’d used my last bag.
Despite the nuisances of modern life, though, I do feel blessed that I can still go afield with my gun in any of the 50 states in this great country. I can fulfill my special role in the predator-prey relationship… entertaining the animals with my efforts at marksmanship. It’s a challenging role, but I’m good at it. Very few animals have been hurt during my performances.
I’m pretty darned thankful for modern technology too.
As Christmas comes closer with the associated shopping and mall-madness, I’m so thrilled to have the Internet at my fingertips. With the click of the mouse and a few keystrokes, I can wipe out my bank account. Not only that, but I can send my account number, social security number, password, and compromising photos from my college days to a million hackers, all at the same time as I order some really cool, useless hunting gadgets that will be back-ordered until the dot-com I ordered from goes out of business. This is so much better than fighting traffic to get the mall, braving the demolition derby they laughingly call a “parking lot,” hiking 18 miles across the asphalt desert, and then being mugged by a couple of 14 year-old gangsters as I return with my booty. Actually, I guess I should be thankful that, after a trip to the modern shopping mall, I still have a booty.
Holiday season is also goose season
I'm blessed to live near some of the greatest goose hunting in the lower 48. |
But I do love this time of year they call, “the holiday season,” from November to New Year’s Day. It’s a wonderful time of year for the outdoorsman. For many deer hunters, the season is at its peak. Waterfowl season is well underway, and the birds are beginning to get serious about moving down with the winter storms. Upland bird hunting is fully in stride. Sea trout, flounder, and red drum are moving inshore along the southeast and Gulf coasts, while stripers and chopper blues are hitting in the surf from Cape Hatteras to Nantucket.
Of course, if you’re like me, while all this is going on, we’re shuttling our wives and children to office parties, shopping malls, holiday concerts, and family dinners. Our exposure to the “great outdoors” is that brief period between the front door and the front seat. If we’re lucky, while we struggle across some windswept parking lot, our arms full of packages, we might hear the distant honking of geese.
Thank goodness for the Outdoors Channel!
Oh, and happy holidays as well!
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