ATTENTION:THIS IS PART 2 YOU SHOULD READ PART 1 FIRST
Some how, some way I was able to doze off and fall asleep amongst roaring nostrils and the erupting sphincters. It seemed as if I had just dozed off when I was thrust into the state of awareness by clanging pots and pans. Yeah, you see they have this little tradition at camp that on the 1st morning of the season all the "regulars" stand around the sleeping newbie and on the count of three bang the shit out of some pots and pans. Of course this isn't a tradition I was aware of until, oh let's say about 3:30 that morning!
As I sat at the kitchen table, again asking myself WHY, I realized that my body didn't care if we were in the woods or not ... it had some dinner from the night before it needed to vacate. It was at this point that I noticed the lack of a bathroom in this hell they call camp. However next to the door is a 5 gallon pickle bucket. Yes I said PICKLE BUCKET! At one time this bucket held pickles ... at one time. I know it is no longer used to hold pickles because there is no longer a bottom on this bucket! This, as I was informed, WAS the bathroom! You take the bucket out into the woods, find a spot and pop a squat. The purpose of the bucket was so you could sit and "relax". No bottom allowed your ... uhm ... "contribution" to fall to the ground. This, my friend, is how you shit in the woods!
It's about a quarter til 4 in the morning, pitch dark out and I'm tromping through deep snow with a flashlight and a bucket with no bottom looking for a spot. Yes the thought did enter my mind that this is just another "pick on the newbie" trick and there was, in fact, a Taj Mahal of a bathroom back at camp. The truth is there wasn't any Taj of a bathroom and this wasn't any "pick on the newbie" trick. As I said before ... this, my friend, is how you shit in the woods!
As I sat on the pickle bucket I once again began to swear at Al Gore and his "Inconvenient Truth". The only Inconvenient Truth was the fact that I am sitting on a pickle bucket in the middle of the woods, in the pitch dark and it's about -20 degrees. I actually yelled out "Fuck you Al Gore and your global warming bullshit". I may have been sitting on the pickle bucket but I WASN'T relaxing!
Back in camp all I wanted to do was crawl back into my bunk and go back to sleep. What kind of people get up at 4:00 in the morning to go sit out in the cold ... I mean besides homeless people. You can't go back to bed, that's not allowed at hunting camp. After all this is the manliest-man sport of all manly-man sports ... "YOU'RE HUNTING for shit-sake" is what I kept being reminded. Besides, it was breakfast time and I had to clean up, after all I WAS the newbie. Yeah, another "tradition" I wasn't aware of until it was too late.
Breakfast is done and I'm ready to head out and find a spot to hunker down at to await the almighty buck. I have a gun on my shoulder, an ear piece in my ear so I can hear my fellow hunters communicate via two-way radios. I am dressed in a borrowed camouflage outfit, I have a bright orange tuke on my head ... what more do I need? FOX PISS! Yes I said FOX PISS! See, deers have a VERY keen sense of smell and you must mask your "human" scent when you go out into the woods. The best way to do this, I was being told as I was getting doused in fox piss, was to cover your clothing in "nature scents" ... i.e.: fox piss! Let me tell you how bad fox piss smells ... it's bad. There was something else I could use if I wanted to ... Buck semen! Who the hell collects this shit? How do you get a fox to piss into this little bottle? And the buck ... who has to "aid" in the collection of that? Maybe my jobs not that bad after all, you think?
4:30 in the morning and here I go ... gun on my shoulder and covered in fox piss. Dammit I'm going hunting (insert Tim Taylor "argh argh" effect here) does life get any better? I'm walking with the guy who invited me on this adventure and I'm guessing he's regretting inviting me just about as much as I am regretting the fact that I said yes ... two weeks huh?
We have been walking now for about 20 minutes and I'm ready for a break. This was back in the day when I still smoked and I was ready to sit down and light up. Guess what? Smoking isn't allowed! Deers can smell it and will vacate the area! No smoking? No bathroom? And I only have 12 beers left ... again I start crying!
My "friend" finds me the perfect spot. Tells me to bunker down and just hang out. He reminds me that you are not allowed to shoot until day break so if I see anything I should just keep an eye on it until the suns up. That's fine if it's a cute little deer ... but if it's a bear or coyote I'm shooting the fucking thing and I don't care if the suns up or not. You can bet your ass on that! Of course I didn't tell him that, I just nodded and smiled ... the "sure, everything is just fine" kind of bullshit look. With his final words of advice, which were "don't shoot yourself by accident", off into the darkness he disappeared, leaving me there to wonder if it was OK if I shot myself on purpose!
It's only about 5am and I've already had a full day. I woke up to pounding pots and pans ... I've shit through an old pickle bucket ... I've bathed in fox piss ... I've hiked in the woods ... and now I'm sitting in the dark waiting for the sun to come up so I can shoot the 1st flipping thing I see so I can go back to bed. As I sat there I became Ghandi like ... not being all peaceful and shit, more like the trance shit ... just staring into space. I went from leaning back on a tree questioning my ability to make decisions to waking up about 10 feet from my gun with the sun beating down on me. It was now 11 am and the only thing that was going to make this worse was opening my eyes to see a big steaming pile of deer shit right next to me. Luckily there was no deer shit, but I had been asleep for about 6 hours. The gun was still resting on the tree much like I was before I rolled away from it in my slumber.
Yeah, this hunting thing just wasn't going to be for me, I could tell.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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