The long beautiful weekend is about over; thunderstorms are rolling in as if to punctuate the end of this holiday. Son in law and granddaughter hunted for a couple of the days. She bagged a good size buck, he blanked as did I on my one day in the stand on my property. They hunted with my neighbor on his 500 + acres. We hunt only large bucks and so the 40+ doe and smaller bucks we spotted (4 separate hunting sites on one day) are safe for now.
As I look out my window right now (it is a few minutes shy of noon) I can see three on the hillside about 100 yards from my cabin. We’ll have a doe day pretty soon and thin out the herd. The meat generated from this hunt goes to a local food bank.
We had friends up Thursday before festivities to familiarize with their new home defense shotgun. I’m not sure they are any better equipped to defend their home now than when they arrived. I guess that my years in the military give me both confidence and a dose of respect for safe handling that these folk clearly lack. Just standing near them and trying to provide some semblance of caution and restraint had my asshole puckered so tight you couldn’t drive a 10 penny nail up it. The shotgun ended up being a production shortened, pump action 410 with a pistol grip and no stock. No way to aim it, just hold it somewhere between hip and tit level and let the shot fly.
We’ve put some hay and protein tubs out for the 17 cows, 8 calves, and one loaner bull. The kids went up on 4 wheeler’s yesterday with 50 lb bags of corn to give them a treat and pet them: both the kids and the cows seem to like that.
We’ve had some remote acquaintances touched by the virus. A friends of our daughter and son in law has been on a ventilator for awhile. He is slated for ‘unplugging’ tomorrow. I can’t help but believe that his underlying condition (or lack thereof) was to blame. He was a full blown diabetic that stood about 5’8″ and weighed in excess of 300 lbs. But that’s as close as it’s gotten to us.
My daughter told us that the guys wife, a good friend, kept wanting to come over to her house while here husband was hospitalized. She was seeking a comfort that just could not be provided to someone who should clearly have been self isolating.
Fingers crossed out here in the hinderlands of Tennessee.