All good advice and thoughts fellas. This spring my wife, friend and I all wound up getting skunked (for the first time ever) at my "honey hole" (in South Dakota)!! I went out about 12 different days, busted my wife's car, got my truck stuck so badly I needed a 4-wheel tractor to pull it out, in general had a miserably wonderful time!!!

Days without gobbling, birds that go the other way, "henned up" birds, toms strutting and/or gobbling "out-of-bounds"--- I've seen it all. And when I get beat and bummed and worn out and ask myself why I do it, the answer is not for the kill, but for the chance to get away from "the real world", from work and from all the stresses of life. Nothing more, plain and simple.

As a matter of fact, my best hunting day this year (in Kansas)--the textbook hunt--roosted the night before, set up, flydown and strut over, shot by 6:00 a.m.--was, in many ways, unsettling and unsatisfying. Just killing a bird. Over way too quickly, now what are you going to do with the rest of your day?? Ho-hum.

But what I remember best so far was a pre-season scouting trip where I had a tom 15 feet away, spitting and drumming, in the sunlight, in all his glory, for about 20 minutes, me leaning against a tree and watching through half-closed eyes, not daring to move or blink. I didn't have to kill that tom to find fun and excitement. Or maybe it was the hen that stood by my decoy for almost an hour--no gobbler came that day, not even for my "live" decoy. Still, watching her feed and preen and walk around the area of the decoy was neat. (I was in my Doghouse blind.) So I can say I was skunked, but then again, I had some really neat "adventures" to make the spring, 2005 in South Dakota memorable.

Find the pleasure in the moment. Relax and enjoy!!
So look for enjoyment in small things. Don't put all the pleasure in the kill. Find the beauty of the season, the day, the woods.

(And if you really want to kill a roosted gobbler, get out in the woods earlier, in the dark dark, so that you can be comfortably set up at least an hour before legal shooting time. Then shut up until you hear tree yelping if there's hens, or the tom gobbling if not. Never hurry the hunt.)