Maybe its a redneck thing, maybe its just me. Maybe its a slow day at work and I'm trying to make up things to talk about now that the season is done for most of us....

So, if you spend time out in the woods or brush and see game, maybe you see the same animal multiple times. Maybe he shows up on the trail cam regularly and on some level, you build a bond with them and often that entails giving them a name.

When I chased ol Whitey around the pastue all season, everyone knew who I was talking about. Now that he's nailed to the wall in my brother's office, he's still Mighty Whitey....certainly not a 160 class trophy but a pretty awesome 13 pointer with very light colored antlers.

On my wall is ol Gutshot. /shame, he was quartering away and I drilled him but it took out lungs, heart....and guts. Messy.

This year on my trail cam there was 'Quatro' a nice little 4 point that will probably grow up to be a good sized buck. He was always there when I pulled the card and loaded it onto the computer and earned the nickname by being such a regular.

I got a subscription to Texas Trophy Hunters magazine for Christmas....eh, its alright. The stories are pretty nice, ranging across all different types of hunting but alot of the ads are for the big-mega-commercial-super-trophy-crap stuff.....you know, breeding, AI, stuff like that and they all have pictures of absurd freakish deer with equally absurd names.

Firearms? I try to lovingly take care of them and make them special. Sadly, I'm 35 years old and I've never picked one out and decided to purchase it and take it home. My father has always maintained an aresenal and I've used his, been given some as gfts, etc.

Even so, most of them earn names.

Remington 700 7 Mag was the 'Hammer' and was a great gun. Nothing fancy, just deadly and effective and hit like a truck. It was stolen when my house was robbed.

Also stolen was 'Tiger', a Remington 740 semi auto .30-06 with a short barrel. It had my grandpa's initials engraved on a little brass plate underneath the forestock and 'Tiger' was his nickname. The gun was locked away in the barn for 25 years after he died and I fished it out, cleaned it up and made my favorite shot ever with it, an offhand 125yd kill shot on a buck we had rattled up.

I'm currently using my uncle's gun, a FN/Mauser .30-06. My uncle is ill and has been since he was in his early 20's. He's quite a character, to be sure, but is no longer able to hunt and his physical ailments have begun to catch up to his emotional/mental ailments.

When we were kids, he gave us 'Indian Names' and his name for himself was "Crazy Horse' so now, the gun shares his name. We used to always plan hunting trips to Alaska for "when I get well" that's not going to happen now but he asked me a couple seasons ago to get his gun cleaned up just in case he got out to hunt. He was thrilled when I told him I took a deer with it this season.

I've thought about getting myself a really nice rifle but as a friend put it, why? Hard to beat an FN/Mauser set up and the gun has a ton of character...and in .30-06, hits like a truck.

To me, being out in the wilderness gives me time to think and part of that is making connections both with my surroundings, the game, and my equipment. From there, its not a very large step to giving familiar names to places and things and even the game that are all part of the experience.

Maybe that's why for me, hunting > fishing. I mean, a fish is a fish. A buck has character.