Valentine

I was never one for a hunt camp. Found out that I was a lone cook and cooking for a camp held absolutely no appeal. I was there to hunt. A lot of hunters were spending time looking for something to eat.

Not only are camp leases getting expensive, the leased hunting ground is getting crowded. I always had this strange feeling, that lease hunting appealed to hunters, just so they wouldn't get lost, or that someone would be there to find them, if they got really lost. Besides, I don't want to be volunteered for farming the food plots. I'm getting too old to do any more farming. Let the deer find their own food. I'll just hunt them.

I can now admit, openly, that I don't do farming food plots. And pay money to belong to a lease to do it.

I always liked to go to big forests. A lot of fellas didn't seem to like it, 400 yards from a trail or road. A ranger, I knew, would sometimes get pestered by newbies about trails and the use of trails in his area. I was his fall back on trails. When they'd wondered if I really knew the trails. "Know the trails", he'd say. "He knows the trails by crossing them in the forest, from mountain to mountain." That usually ended, questions about hiking. They really didn't want to spend any time off a trail and in the woods with the timber rattlers.

Besides, I use to be young. Now I'm getting up near Bear Claws' age in Jedidiah Johnson. Hard for me to believe that Robert Redford, the actor, in now near 75 years of age. I remember when he was young as the movie.