"My Crazy Kids"

Track Soup Once Again Here I am, bundled up in my deer stand on Sunday morning, and not a deer in sight – the story of my hunting season for 2013. Maybe I’ll bag a couple next year to make up for being skunked (at least) two years straight. By Allan Olson It was off to the hunting grounds again late Friday evening. I was really hoping that finally, this weekend would be one when I could finally pull the trigger on something. It was not to be. Before my departure, I debated over and over whether to leave Friday evening or get up really early on Saturday morning. I don’t enjoy driving late at night, but then I don’t enjoy getting up really early in the morning either, so my options weren’t that great. I finally decided at about 7 p.m. to pack my bag, gather my hunting gear one last time, load it all in the van and head for the hunting grounds one more time this season. That decision wasn’t made any easier by the fact that I knew that my cousin his family w...

A New Generation – of hunters By Allan Olson I headed back out to the hunting grounds this weekend in pursuit of the wary whitetail. I hunted Friday evening and all day Saturday and Sunday. In hindsight, I guess I could have stayed home and enjoyed the warmth and comfort. All I really got was plenty of exercise and fresh air. Okay, I admit I could use the exercise, but I would have been better off geocaching – at least those I can find. I stood in my stand on Friday and watched a deer sneaking through the tall grass, but it was across the road on someone else’s property. A couple of hours later, I watched a doe sneak into the woods across the creek from me; however, since I had no doe permit and my niece and her dad were much closer, I let it go. Unfortunately, they didn’t see it, and it didn’t stick around for a chance to meet up with flying lead. That was the last deer I saw while hunting – except for the “pets” in my parents’ yard, a pair of fawns that e...

Track Soup By Allan Olson Well the first weekend of deer camp is over, and I have done nothing to help fill the freezer so far. I did freeze myself, however. By this time last year we had almost filled our limit of tags; I had attempted to fill mine twice, to no avail. All we had to show for our hunt this year was track soup – and that doesn’t taste very good. The call to rise came early on Saturday morning, as my dad woke us up at 4:30 a.m., long before the crack of dawn. We devoured a hearty breakfast of French toast and sausage along with some wake-up juice. Soon it was time to don our hunting gear for the first time in a year. Several layers of clothing later, it was time to head out to the stand. I chose the stand where I had ended my hunt last year, just to see if maybe I could get lucky and the buck that I shot at last year might return for another dodge-the-bullet party. I finally left my post for the morning at 9:00, figuring my horned friend wasn’t keen ...

Adventures in Geocaching By Allan Olson I think that the real reason the weekends seem to go by so fast is because we simply have too much fun. If we sat around bored all day, perhaps then our weekends would last longer. This past weekend I managed to sleep in on Saturday, about 90 minutes longer than I normally do on the weekdays. It was not near long enough in my opinion, but since I couldn’t sleep, I got up and did some reading. Before long it was time to get moving for the day, since we had company coming in the form of my brother and family again. We picked the kids up at the store and headed out geocaching, aiming for the goal of reaching our 600th find. That goal was achieved, but not in our usual fashion – as an entire family. This time we split into two teams – the girls and the boys. We needed seven caches, and whoever got to three first and back to the designated spot would win. From there we would go together to find #600. Well the boys’ team – my...