Suitcase Nuke

Up at somewhere around 4:30, in the mountains by 5:30, sitting in the cold, dark wasteland until the sun was up, with the misleading hope that warmth would follow. Then, the real fun begins. The kids, carrying weapons as long as they were tall were send dutifully through brush and rhododendron over twice their height and as dense as the forests along the Ho Chi Minh trail. I didn't realize it until many years later, but I was never expected to see a deer, let alone kill one. With my .444 Marlin lever-action rifle strapped to my back as I struggled to get my 120-pound self through the thick, I was building character.

This is without considering an even more fundamental flaw: I didn't know how to shoot. Perhaps it's because my progenitors never received any formal training either, but aside from showing which button or lever did what, it was just, "point and shoot." Without any extensive time to practice (.444 shells were expensive, even a decade ago.), there was no confidence or experience to guide me. Of course, I never saw anything anyways. . . 

But now, having been trained in marksmanship on you, the taxpayer's dime, and outweighing my rifle by a factor too embarrassing to display here, I'm headed out tomorrow to "get myself a deer." And I sure as hell won't be marching through the brush either. I'm not a young'n. I get to stand and shoot.