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I kept a log for about 10 years: weather conditions, times, places, game seen, shots taken/not taken ..... the whole nine yards ...... I wrote it down because Jeff Cooper wrote: "If you don't write it down, it did not happen!"
....then I started taking the kids .... first my nephew, then my daughters .... The Boy starts next year, and I have promised to take my cousin's daughter and a friend from the VFD's boy ..... We got skunked a couple of years, as kids and all their foibles and impedimentia (bringing your sleeping bag out to the stand is just lugging a big human scent bomb out with you..... but OK, if it'll keep you out here.....) are not exactly conducive to success..... but we had a good time, and the kids learned to appreciate the successes we had. I think if it come as easily as it did for me when I was a kid, whe permits were harder to come by, they may have gotten bored..... as it is, my nephew has taken 3, Eldest 4, and my girliest girl Jac* took a shot this year (missed, but nephew dropped him) and wants very badly to get her own..... I have taken around 2 dozen deer, but I will remember the ones taken by my "apprentices" more than the ones I took ..... there is nothing like it the world: Watching your kids do something, with skill and confidence, that you taught them to do. Even better: Listening to them tell their friends about it ..... Nothing like it in the World, I tell you!
*Who fusses with her hair on the way to the stand in the pitch dark ..... "I'm not looking like a bedhead goofball, EVEN OUT HERE!"
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