Opinion

As I approach my 80th birthday, I have become increasingly aware that my hunts and fishing trips won’t go on forever. I’ve already slowed down more than I let on, and from time to time I’ve alluded to this in past columns.

Food intolerance and food allergy are common these days. When I was a kid, no one asked about nut allergies or gluten sensitivities when inviting you to a birthday party. You could bring homemade snacks to school. Peanuts were served to everyone on airplanes.

For the past three months, I have had the opportunity to help coach Avon School’s Oral Interpretation team.

For Christmas, I’m going with something on the lighter side this week. The old school teacher in me surfaced recently. I once thoroughly enjoyed putting evaluation instruments together, and I just had to “scratch that itch.

Some good friends returned recently from a very successful hunt in Africa, and they told me that because of the virus, Africa has never been more affordable. If an African hunt is a personal consideration, plan to attend the Dallas Safari Club Expo January 6-9, 2022.

Last week’s column brought you up to a point where I took an early morning stand on the southeast corner of a meadow in Wyoming’s Shoshoni National Forest. I would sit there for the day as it was a likely spot to encounter the cow elk I was hunting. I was ably guided by Joe Hargrave of Dubois.

As a family physician living on the upper Great Plains, I have many patients of Norwegian and German descent. Thus, I am familiar with some diseases that are prone to affect people of northern European ancestry. One such example is Dupuytren’s contracture.

There were always cookies at Grandma’s house. I remember dunking a fresh sugar cookie into a steaming cup of coffee long before most parents let their children anywhere near that amount of caffeine. The cookies were a little extra special at Christmastime.

Because I have reached a point in my hunting life where antlers have become of secondary importance, a quality hunt at an affordable price is more important to me.

With the SD pheasant season running through January 31st, 2022, my thoughts on those guys/ gals who block at the end of fields is still relevant. As these folks tend to be the seniors in the hunting party, it is especially important to me. Let’s first consider the birds.