Weekend Party
Weekend Party
By Allan Olson
This weekend was busy
Saturday was the big day to celebrate Alivia’s 8th
birthday she invited everyone in her class – whoops, thankfully not all showed
up but those who did including a former classmate who moved about 80 miles faway
had a great time. The kids and adults who attended the party all had the
opportunity to make some “mad hatter” party hats as some party favor. My wife
did 98.9% of all the work in preparing for this party she mad the hats, found
all the pieces of scraps in her collection and purchased a few other items to
make the hats festive. The remaining 1.1
% was comprised of a variety people pitching into to make this party a fun time
for all. The kids had a great time making them and playing with each other for
over two hours. The casualty of the days festivity –was the loss of Marcus’
retainer – he apparently took it out in the morning and it disappeared in the
chaos that consumed the rest of the day.
That evening we abandoned our three youngest children at
home – leaving them in the hands of my cousin and took off with a vehicle load
to attend my nieces first band concert at Bemidji State University. I can
honestly say I’m not a music connoisseur – especially when it comes to band
concerts. The first piece they performed was rather to mild for me and almost
soothing enough for me to feel sleepy, they woke me up with the next piece with
a fast and upbeat pace and the pattern continued throughout the 40 minute
session. Nikolai however, had no problem falling asleep and dozed off sometime
after the second piece until he was nudged awake by his mother.
After the concert we returned home to find our guests had
cleaned up our kitchen and we ready to play a game and enjoy some adult
beverages for the evening. The five adults played two games of Sequence and
both times I managed to be the runner-up instead of the winner – which for me
it isn’t uncommon to find me on the 2-5 spot in any game. Sometime around 1
a.m. we all finally retired for bed, many hours past my bedtime.
Sunday was another busy day and the most gorgeous November
day a person could ask for, since I wasn’t out deer hunting, I was going to go
geocaching, even if I had to go alone. Thankfully that wasn’t the case as my
cousin and family wanted to grab some before they headed home. Our first stop
was a multi-cache west of Bemidji, we attempted this as a family once when we
first started caching but we didn’t know how to enter the other set of
coordinates so we abandoned our search. Today, we re-solved the puzzle and went
for a short hike before I made the find. We followed that with a couple that my
cousin wanted to find that I had already, teamed up on one more and then parted
company. My group – consisting of my niece along with Marcus and Alivia teamed
up to find five more caches before we made our home for the evening. It was truly
another great day to be outside and enjoying the fresh air.
Hunting Update
Nikolai and I continued our hunting success on Monday, Nov.
9 with each of us harvesting a buck. That morning before 8 a.m. I lined up on a
nice buck that snuck out of the woods in search of food and crossed my path. I
squeezed off my round and it made its mark as I watched the deer crumple to the
ground I was elated, I was certain it had a large rack and the size of him was
definitely my largest. When I went to clean my kill, I discovered that I was
over estimating the rack of the deer but not the size of the body. Reality was
that it was only a spike buck, but my dad and I couldn’t lift him in the back
of the ATV for his final ride easily, it took Nikolai to help us out to finally
get him in the machine.
That afternoon, I pleaded with Nikolai, I was tired and
wanted to go home, I didn’t want to post for the evening, however, my eager
hunter had other plans. “Dad, you shot two deer, I want to shoot another one.”
Disappointed that I didn’t get to go home, but happy that he was still enjoying
the season we headed out once again. We were in the stand by about 2:30 p.m.
and 20 minutes later we were both lining up on another buck. “You shoot first,”
I said. He squeezed off his round and it struck true as we both saw the deer
jerk in reaction to being hit by the lead. For some unknown reason, my round
wouldn’t go, I pulled the trigger and was offered nothing in return, I cleared
the round from my chamber and slammed in another one and pulled the trigger as
it was plowing its way into the woods from the field – a clear miss, I was
sure. Since we were both sure Nikolai’s shot was true the only thing that
remained was proof. My dad came to assist in the tracking process about 30
minutes later and since that was proving useless, I made my way towards where
the buck entered the woods and from about 75 feet away I saw him laying on the
ground motionless. I shouted my discovery to my dad and to Nikolai in the stand
and started approaching the deer. “Be ready Allan,” my father said, cautioning
me to approach the deer with caution. I knew why, and while I might be a
‘veteran’ hunter of 20+ years my dad has more than twice that experience and I
found it funny that he was telling me that, knowing full well that if it had
been Nikolai and I looking for it, I would’ve said the same thing to him.
Since we took the week off from hunting only one more tag
has been filled – another buck for our hunting party. So unless those that are
hunting during the week prove fortunate we will be heading back north for one
more try to fill the two remaining doe tags. Of course, since we were hunting
the wolves have also moved back in the area, so we might not be fortunate again
in our hunting endeavors.
Area
hunters are invited to share their success at the Cass Lake Times, by sending
their photos along with pertinent information to cltimes1@arvig.net.
Please
remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a
photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a
great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the
office for a visit.
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