Photo by Andrew Coop on Unsplash
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper regretfully turned down an invitation from son Larry to join him, grandsons Nick and Tony and other assorted riffraff at their woods cabin in the beautiful southern Minnesota driftless area for a weekend deer hunt.
With other matters interceding, the keeper was left to paw through the mountain of memories from a long life of hunting—first kills for adolescent tribal members; the hijinks of friends Bob Williams, John Lawton, the Ryan gang, Bob Shephard and many others; waiting on a deer stand on still, breathless mornings for the rustle of leaves to turn into a buck and not a squirrel; and now the old song—“Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end,” plays like an anthem in the keeper’s woodland orchestra pit as he surveys a once SRO hunting crowd edging toward the exits.
