These pictures are from several years ago, but bring back good memories spent with the truest friends. They are a good backdrop for the poem below.


I have killed a lot of doves over the years but none compare with those killed this day.



These are my great uncles, Maynard and Bill. We are 5 miles from the nearest road and had a day that will be cherished.

The past year or so has really brought this poem to light. Love those that love you.

Mending

by Henry Hughes

To be at joy's instant------
the blue-wing olive
free drifting
under a shady bracken bank
just before
your fat heart leaps.

Or doesn't leap.
Fly following its leader, green line
bowing wide with current
and the cost of long connections-----a bad marriage,
a friend who won't call back-----
drowning dun in a blue ripple
where no one believes you're real.

Unless you throw a mend.
Keep the river off your back.
Glide your sweetest invitation
unhurried
over the ones
who really want you.

If you properly respect what you are after, and shoot it cleanly and on the animal's terrain, if you imprison in your mind all the wonder of the day from sky to smell to breeze to flowers--then you have not merely killed an animal. You have lent immortality to a beast you have killed because you loved him and wanted him forever so that you could always capture the day.

--- Robert Ruark, The Old Man and the Boy




I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.

--- Stephen King, The Wastelands




...pick your gunning companion with the same care and forethought you would employ in selecting a business partner, except that in the testing, I suggest the employment of a finer mesh screen and a stronger acid.

--- John G. MacKenty, Duck Hunting




Hunting is a path, a muddy, brushy, dank, and spoor-written path along which the seeker, if his spirit is right, can truly feel the earth. If he is fortunate, he travels with a true dog and a true friend.

--- Charles Fergus, A Rough-Shooting Dog