Not Just for Acupuncture

Pretty sure what the little round band aids that come in those variety packs from CVS are for!


I recognized the awesome capacity for nipple irritation to ruin my day early on in life at the beach. Those old (well, they weren't old at that time, they were cutting edge and all we had) canvas coated inflatable rafts mixed with salt water, cold, slightly caustic salt water, made for some scabby nipples after about four days at the beach with the folks. A cringe or two every time you took a dip until finally you gave up riding the waves on your corrugated air bag for some good old fashioned body surfing was the way to go.


I never thought about them much after that having learned to pace myself on a raft for the years after that. Until the raft and the venue changed that is. A few years later, I had to squeak into a wet wet suit on a crisp fall morning (I wanted to write mourning, because, if you know me, you know I can handle being cold, and I can handle being wet, just not both at the same time) just before risking life and limb going down the Gauley River. Did I mention the water in the river itself is released from impoundment through a giant gateway, from the bottom of a lake, where it's coldest?


The wet suit was a must. To not have it would have made the miserable trip lethal. Hypothermia (and butt-loads of yellow jackets too by the way) kills dozens of nervous paddlers every Gauley Season I'm sure, but the real victims here were, you guessed it, my nipples. The first day, packed into the already wet and uncomfortable suit, and then made to paddle furiously like a slave on a Roman galley, I wore the poor useless appendages damn near off. The second day, I groaned, hated life, and pulled the suit on not having any choice, nor any little round band aids. If I ever go white water rafting on the Gauley again (I won't) I'll be sure and pack a few of those useless-for-anything-else little bandages.


Lately, due to the weather being colder than I remember (I got a short memory I suppose) my nipples, once again, register a climate that is a far cry from the warmer globe everyone seems worried about. To stay warm, I've been wearing layer upon ridiculous layer and have been beating the cold, though messing up my hair in the process, but that's not really the problem with my nipples.


As a result of all the vestments, my tool belt will not stay put on my hips and constantly slides down to wrap itself around my thighs in an uncomfortable and awkward arrangement. The quickest and easiest fix is to attach good old fashion suspenders to my tool belt thus transferring the weight from my hips to my shoulders. This truss arrangement however, obviously cuts a path over my shoulder, right down over the twins and therein lies the rub. Nine hours trussed up (yeah, thirty minutes or so for lunch out of wraps) makes me painfully aware I have nipples usually being unaware of them.


For some reason though, I have resisted getting what I know would be a quick and easy fix (besides quitting work). I don't know if the shame of having Hello Kitty on my nipples is stopping me, or the sure fire knowledge that if I did sport the pink kitty, sure as the world,  I'd end up in the ER getting my clothes cut off by an eager, then startled staff. Even a regular straight laced normal band aid would fell better than nothing, yet I still resist.


It must be the redneck pride that keeps me from saving the nips from their daily brushing. I mean, who wants to be the only guy on the jobsite with sensitive nipples? It's isn't as if there are manly products, manly prophylactic stickers in the shapes of skulls and crossbones or some other macho icon just for suspender wear.


So I'll suffer alone, if not silently, and go on about my day. Remembering that it could be worse (and more scabbier) and that I'm probably not alone in my troubles. I imagine too, that somehow, suspender-nipple pain might have had something to do with Robin William's early problems with drugs.


-rbm

Oops (Part 2)

Everybody had to have heard me shoot. There was no denying that report. And if I said over the two way radio (or sent the info in a text message--21st century and all) that I had missed, someone would want to come to the spot and make sure there wasn't a blood trail...and I couldn't have that. Ray Charles (Or Marshall Westmoreland) could have followed that blood trail--.444 Marlin, remember?


No, I had to do better than that. I quickly sent a text to the host and fellow hunter there, "I fucked up."
Which, at first glance, looks like a confession, but is so open ended that I had plenty of spin room should I need it. I've been known to spill forth a passel of bullshit should the need arise.


It wasn't dark yet, or even very near it. In fact, having seen a smallish deer that early in the afternoon hunt should have rung the look-out-it's-a-baby-buck bell for me, but it didn't. So just after 4:00 or so, I had to get him out of there. And I had to be quiet because I didn't want to call attention to myself nor spoil someone just over the way's hunt either. It's easy to sneak around in the woods like that, I mean, I was wearing camo'. Save for the state-mandated orange hat, I was a ghost.


I was a ghost with a diesel truck, however, which meant that its guttural knocking and hacking noises wouldn't do for the others' hunt. So happily driving down to the creek bed to pick up Bambi wasn't going to happen. And, for the second time in a week, I was going to have to drag a deer up hill, for a quarter of a mile. Though not because of the snowy weather this time, but because I wanted to be sly.


And really, that's all the plan I had hatched: get him out of there. Since he was kinda small, I tried the old grab him by the front feet and drag him, my rifle, my poncho (in the stuff sack) and my little stool post haste...but that wasn't working. Where was all the snow of last week? It was gone. Amazing how grabby a dirt road is (without some slippery snow) when you're working hard to go up hill.  So I got to make a trip back to the truck, off load the gear, and half of my clothes, and then head back down to the deer.


A quick lasso later I was dragging this poor little guy through the dirt up the old logging road orange hatless the whole time lest the others see me! And for those who are counting, yes, that's four trips, and that's one mile. Penance I suppose. At any rate, I got him into the back of the truck, and climbed inside and sat behind the wheel. Now I was about to play my hand, about to announce to the world that I had something to do elsewhere.


I didn't want to get busted with Bambi, so I snuck to the old "cleaning" spot where deer were delaminated in years past.  The big oak tree at the old spot had fallen over, and the location of operations had therefore changed, but at either spot, deer are butchered, tucked into a cooler, and carted home. The rest, the offal I think it's called (better than gut pile or carcass) is left there, though off the beaten path for the lazy raptor types--circle of life stuff. It was a quick job, and it was easy to manage alone. The quartering shot had hit slightly back, then diagonally pushed through the diaphragm into, yes, the intestines, so to say the job was pungent is poetic license. But I took my medicine.


This whole operation, coincidentally, had taken until the last legal shooting light, and when I snapped the cooler lid shut on the meat, it was time to rally with the others for show and tell. No one else had shot so I couldn't hide in the background while others retold of their shot and sightings. Everyone would want to hear what I had done, well maybe not everyone, but the host would.


The gang was parked at the new cleaning post by then, and I pulled up. The three others were talking rather quietly amongst themselves as I strolled up. When I got within ear shot, Lowell, the most jocular, asked, "Did you get something?"


"No," I quickly lied. I was out of my camo', and he looked at the blood stain on the left pocket of my khakis.


"Well, what's that? Are you bleeding?" he asked, pointing at my crotch.


By then, Tay, the host, walked up half smiling, thank goodness. "Yeah," he said, "What do you mean, 'I fucked up?'"


"What'd you shoot?" asked Lowell again?


And my whole plan fell apart. I have an uncanny inability to lie to anyone but my wife ('Is that a new gun, brett?' 'No, Lisa.') and cops.


"Uh," I started, "A deer."


"What kind of deer?" asked Tay.


"The kind that you see at four in the afternoon?" I asked, wanting to spill my guts, but still not.


Anthony, the quiet carpenter, spoke up, "A young one." I visibly cringed, and he noticed the grimace in the spreading darkness of night. "Oh, a spike," he concluded.


Busted, I said, "He would've been..."


"Oh man," said Tay, "That explains seeing your truck backing up the hill so early. Did he all fit in your pocket?" He too pointed at my crotch.


"Naw, he was bigger than that. Not much. Here, look," I offered, popping the lid off the cooler. 


Tay looked in, and wasn't too awful disgusted, so I figured I would get an "invite" back. He didn't have too much to say.


Looking back, from a few days before this whole episode, I am reminded of something Lowell had told me: "It's supposed to be fun." And of course he's right. When it isn't fun anymore, I'll go back to grocery shopping and eating at Church's Fried Chicken for all my predatory needs.


But that sinking feeling, when I'd made the mistake of shooting a young deer, will stay with me the rest of the season, but will probably be forgotten after a long hot summer of shooting new rifles and many a clay target. But for the rest of this deer season, I'll be carrying the Leupold 10X50mm's religiously.


And I never regret having lower power scopes than most folks like on my rifles , but the binoculars will certainly make decision time easier. Nothing's funnier than seeing a short action rifle hindered with a 6-20x by 50mm super scope, and nothing's worse than seeing a new shooter (or an old hand shooting awkwardly or quickly) getting dinged in the eyebrow by a less than ideally powered scope with minimal eye relief. 


It almost goes without saying, that mistakes afield are lessons. And the more you hunt, the more you'll make, but all the time, remember, as you freeze to death or carry a wounded deer that you didn't mean to shoot to the veterinarian's office, it's supposed to be fun.


-rbm

Oops. (Part 1)

You can't take a bullet back. Once the hammer falls, it's gone, and whatever is in front of it, is going to be gone too. You just hope it's what you wanted to shoot.

I killed a button buck yesterday. Yeah, I killed Bambi.

The only excuse I have is that I left my binoculars in the truck because where I was sitting had a limited range, and therefore, or so I thought, I wouldn't need them to discern the sex of a questionable deer at hundreds of yards with the 10X50's. Besides, I had the Marlin .444 topped with a Vari-X III 1.5-5x scope, so If I needed to, I could check the head for nubs, and count tines, whatever.

Well, I checked the head for antlers, and didn't see any. I know that. At 5x, there wasn't a thing showing. At 10x, I know I would've seen the little brow buttons, but "the twins" were in the truck. So, I settled the cross on what I thought was the doe's shoulder, and squeezed the trigger.

At that moment, two unexpected things occurred simultaneously. One, the hammer dropped, clicked loudly, and nothing happened. The "doe" looked up and stared at me. The other unexpected thing was that I flinched like a beginner anticipating the recoil. Two things I couldn't believe would happen to me, brett mothershead, had just happened.

I thought I had forgotten to chamber a round after pulling the rifle from of the truck to hunt, but I knew I had. So I levered the rifle open and out spilled a .444 cartridge, with only the slightest dent in the primer. So I quietly levered a fresh round in, all the while watching the chamber to ensure a well fed cartridge and the "doe" making sure "she" was still there.

Of course, by now, "she" was aware of the big, clinking bush I was trying to be, and was acting flighty, as if "she" were about to raise the white flag and bolt. So, now, quartering to me, I put the cross on her shoulder/armpit area, and this time, ignoring the impulse to hurry, slowly pulled the trigger, took the recoil like a man, and was amazed to watch "her" run off into the woods.

My Marlin's hand-loaded .444 cartridge is topped with a 265 grain hunk of lead-jacketed copper with only the metplate still showing lead. It shucks out at about 2200 feet per second at the muzzle, and if I had hit "her" where I thought I was going to, "she" should have dropped in "her" tracks. I knew something else was up, so I muttered to myself and made a decision.

Rather than sit until the last legal light, I decided to get up and make sure "she" was squarely hit, find "her", and make sure we could get "her" out quickly after the other guys were done hunting as well so we could all get home before 8:00 pm--a must for the hunter with a wife and kids.

And at the point of impact, Instead of bright pink lung tissue and rib bone, all I saw was meat and hair on the ground, and my heart sank. What that meant was I hadn't put my bullet through the "boiler room". I hadn't done my job like I'm used to doing. I visualize the shot again, sitting here at the keyboard, and the only thing I can figure is that quartering to me, a hair's width to the left or right, line of sight, translates to a couple or more inches on the deer's body, fore or aft.

It meant I shot "her" a little behind the heart lung area. It meant I had better start tracking "her" before the sun settled behind the hills along side the Dan River. It meant "she" could run for days perhaps. Luckily, I found a bright red blood trail that was indicative of eminent death if not a well-placed shot. I knew "she" couldn't have gone far, and sure enough, piled up in the bottom of a creek bed, there "she" was--little over thirty yards from where "she" took the bullet.

Only problem was, "she" was rather small. And, of course, "she" had a raised eye-brow look to "her" that only meant one thing. I muttered, "Fuuuuck," under my breath and rubbed the hair out of my eyes, and hated the feeling I had. Now I was the shit-heel.

I hated that I'd killed a future monster buck. Especially since the unwritten rule for the land I was hunting on was "no little bucks". Had he been the tiny doe i thought, I could have chuckled it off with the rest of the guys, but this was serious. A button buck...I don't even like writing it now.

Right then and there, I hatched a plan...

Nothing to Prove

I spent the day, and yesterday with four guys who will never have to prove their manhood to me ever again. I mean, to say it was cold outside would be an understatement. And the low temperature coupled with the wind that blew for two whole days meant that it was even harder to take with a smile on one's face.


In the morning, at seven, getting out of the truck might have been the hardest thing I've done in a while. But Marshall had a(n illegal) fire going. And I was bundled up. So I stepped out like I have since the eighties when I quit lying to myself that I'd be going back to school some day and thought that maybe swinging a hammer wasn't such a bad thing. At least when skies are sunny...and the temperature's mild.


Did I mention that there's still snow on the ground from a few days ago? It's not deep, but it won't go away! There's a scattering of ice cubes from a drink someone poured out over the weekend while we, the construction crew, weren't there, and it too remains...three days later! I think the high was freezing today, and just a tick above yesterday.


So when the day's high temperature doesn't climb much above freezing, one would think there's the advantage of no mud, and it's true, there isn't, until the ground thaws out a thin skin of mud with the same viscosity as k-y jelly. Since it's good old North Carolina red mud, it'll stay with you until you cut the legs off of your jeans for next summer thus finally removing the mud stains once and for all.


Well, the days can't all be dry and dusty and warm. If they were, the world would be a great place to live and work outside, but then, we'd have no way of proving how tough we are. We wouldn't have an excuse to scream and holler at every gust that sneaks up our backs and pant legs. We wouldn't have license to wander around with snot dripping from and drying on our noses. Try doing that working at Big Blue.


So tomorrow, since it's forecast to be just as cold, and windy, I'll sit there in my truck like the grunt in Apocalypse Now sitting at the door of the Huey screaming, 'I'm not going! I'm not going!" until someone else shows up, builds a(n illegal) fire, glances at me through the glass, walks past and starts unloading tools...in that order.


-rbm 

Bird in the Tree

You think deer hunting is getting into a tree stand and sitting on your ass waiting for the ambush, waiting for the deer and then shooting it?
Shit.
You're right.

This morning I took a shot
At the doe
Just out of ear shot, crossing.
I used a huge caliber
From so far away,
Yet,

She took my hit,

But ran all the same.

I knew where the cross was,
I knew I was still.
I knew I had practiced
At paper until,
I knew I could kill.
But,

But I couldn't know,
She wouldn't say,
If now were her day.

So I sat,
Wrung my hands,
Sweated my sweat,
And waited with my pride.
And hoped and waited
Then happened to see,
Smatterings of blood in the weeds.

To some, the finest,
Not knowing.
Not seeing it, death,
Is good enough.

For me though,
I need to know,
She's just not here;
I want to know
I did that--
That I made her mine.



What makes a hunter special?
Well, I shot a doe through the falling snow this afternoon too.
I am five foot eight and a half and weigh 137 pounds.
The doe I shot is seven hands high, and weighed, oh, 125 pounds.
And that's what makes a hunter "special."
I dragged *that* doe to the truck, in the snow, after sunset, all by myself.
Tethered to a rope, behind me through snow, creek, and mud, I pulled her to the truck.
She weighed 90% of my body weight.
More or less.
That's what makes it a sport I guess.
Could you drag yourself a quarter of a mile?
Your spouse? Girlfriend?
With an eight pound rifle over your shoulder?
Bundled from head to toe in green polyester?

The whole time I was dragging her I was thinking,
"This is what no one sees or thinks about,"
The thirty minutes of torture,
The burn in the legs,
The bite of the rope over my shoulder,
Wrapped around the off hand.
Burning lungs, chapping lips.
And hating that shot.
That made me hump,
Made me schlep
And sweat in snow...

Say What?

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible.    --George Orwell

Arrogant?


"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks."


This, of course, is as true as true can be. And nothing is ever "his" fault, so that not only can he fail and give to drink, he can be driven to drink by the outrageous behaviour of others...like when we say, "You're fired, Rummy."


"It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."


Now wait a minute.


The English language is as fluid as blood coursing through our veins given to pick up the detritus of cellular life and cart it away, and to deposit fresh oxygen to replenish the same cells as it passes by. The blood is a language, an exchanger of "information,"  that while doing so, doesn't degrade the system it services, but enhances it. The surrounding cells change as needed, and therefore, too, does the language, the blood.


So English, as a language, that is, a handy way to exchange ideas, arguments, assertions, or even memes (*gag), stays surrounded by, well, us, a society that quickly changes and evolves (and devolves) very quickly these days. So it becomes necessary for language to change right along with us, society.


It doesn't mean we're foolish when we "weed eat" the mailbox post, it means we have over come a handful of words that would mean the same thing. It isn't ugly, it is inevitable, and in some respects, even accurate. 


"Oh, honey, I'm all sweaty because I just trimmed the grass around the mailbox post with a two-cycle-engined, rotary-headed, string-bladed trimmer that resembles the type patented by the WeedEater Corporation."


Adapting language to fit extant needs is, of course, nothing new, but decrying the act of doing so as slovenly smacks of arrogance. I'm all for adapting language into more manageable forms.


Reminds me of my first and last Latin professor who responded to my question, "Why doesn't anyone speak Latin anymore?" with a wry smile and raised eyebrow and the swift reply, "Who says we aren't?" Well, indeed, I reckon we are!


So letting a language follow its course, to oxbow slowly, or run roughshod through a tight valley is only natural and only crabbed about when it suits pontificating authors...perhaps anyway.


"The point is that the process is reversible."


Which is true, of course, but how many people know that aqua bonum est?  Where would G. Orwell have our foolish society stop the cleansing backtrack towards enlightenment? Until we're conjugating Latin verbs and forgetting everything we know about syntax? No, of course not, but he should have remembered that language is a dynamic system given to change, has to change, to keep pace with a people that are no more foolish (though maybe not much smarter) than those before us.


After all, his masterwork, 1984, has given us many shortcuts in language that are as mainstream as my pet project word "alot" will be, some day, when the grammar nazis lower their standards!
(That's a pun, by the way.)

Another ten minutes.

• Algae isn't diesel fuel, and neither is old french fry grease.
• Vegan isn't green.
• Just because the food you eat didn't have a soul doesn't mean the planet didn't suffer for it.
• Vegetarians eat their prey alive a lot of the time, when they're not skinning it, dismembering it, or boiling it...alive.
• Deer ain't always as good as Walt Disney says they are...he thought Hitler had it going on too.
• Happiness isn't something we're entitled to, just like wages, or a job. It's a goal, to be sure, but for me, it's more like a drug or a bottle of really sweet wine, that when I do get a taste of it, I take the time to savour it, share it, and sometimes photograph it!
• Some days we just are.
• Cheese really is just sour milk.
• Rifles, especially old rifles, really are artifacts of engineering and time tested technology that have to be held, and fired, to appreciate the elegance and ergonomics. They aren't always ugly killing machines.