GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE FOR SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

I hope this morning finds you well, as am I and the boyz. I do believe I am going to fix some old time stone ground grits a friend brought me last week, along with some nice sausage, for my breakfast. I might cook an egg, but grits and fine pork sausage is a meal fit for a Kang, and as Kang Wade 1st, of Garfield, I may decide to forego eggs today, but will not decree that my subjects likewise refrain from eating eggs at breakfast.

So, carry on as you will. It would be hard to enforce such anti-egg edicts anyway. But, I might go online and order a couple of ravens, like the Norse king/god Odin did...I don't think he ordered them online, but you know what I mean...his were named Huginn and Muninn. They flew over his kingdom each day listening and watching and returned in the evenings to sit one on each shoulder and whisper in Odin's ear, the things they saw and overheard that day.

Amazon probably has a pair, they might be factory remanufactured but as long as they can do the job, and have a factory warranty it would be fine. If I had a pair of good ravens, I could get a lot done each day. I would know who was naughty or nice just like Santa Claus. Okay, let us move along from this topic before y'all call the guys with the butterfly net to capture me and remove me from the throne.

With the gun season for deer coming up in a couple of weeks, I will tell you of a buck that I and a friend hunted for several years. This buck was a big boy, and this was forty or forty-five years ago when our region had poor whitetail genetics and few very nice bucks. My buddy who lived down the road from me, and I hunted deer with a passion back then. Their land joined ours and we were the only ones who hunted what was a large tract.

The buck was a fine one, he was seen often crossing the road at night, and folks were constantly telling us of seeing that big buck coming from our woods. We saw him too, but like everyone one else, we only saw him at night as he crossed the road. For three years we saw him in our headlights, we saw his tracks, his scrapes and rubs, but we never got a glimpse of him from any of our many stands.

Tommy and I both left early for work, and one morning as I was about to leave for work, in the early morning darkness, he called me and told me to come to his house, he had something he wanted me to see. I drove down to his house and to pull into his driveway, I had to drive around the carcass of "our buck!" He had been hit by a car and fell dead just out of the highway in Tommy's driveway, sometime during the night.

It was a sad sight for each of us, our buck was no more, the end of an era. We hacksawed his skull cap off to take his antlers and we moved him into the edge of the woods so we did not have to look at him any longer. A few days later on Saturday morning after hunting the morning, we went to a friend's deer processing place, to visit and see what hunters were bringing in. While we were there, an older couple drove up with a buck that was about a twin to "ours."

Yep, they could have been brothers, but were from opposite ends of the county. Their buck did not have any bullet holes either. The deer was wet, and had not a mark on him, when they were having him unloaded they told us the story of how they got this fine buck. They were in a rowboat in a large mill pond in our county, I won't say which mill pond, fishing early that morning. Their deer was sighted a lot at night like ours, but no one got a shot at him.

While out in the pond that morning, they heard a pack of dogs were on the scent of the buck, and running him, so the buck jumped in the pond, which covered close to two hundred acres, to escape the dog pack. It was a long swim, and when the old couple saw him, he was swimming slowly and was tired after running so far and then swimming. They wanted that deer, they had no gun, but they improvised.

They rowed over to the buck, tied the anchor rope around his antlers and he drowned. This was a long, long time ago, so please don't get bogged down in sympathy for the deer, he would be long dead by now anyway, so work with me here. The old folks had to call some younger guys to get the buck out of the water and load him in their truck. They asked our friend to save his antlers for them and they would pick them up when they picked up the meat later in the week.

They did not want the head or cape, because of the expense of having a taxidermist mount it. They wanted the deer for food. We got the head and cape from their buck, took it home, got the antlers from our buck, and Tommy had a taxidermist put our buck's antlers, on the head of the deer that had drowned, yes they can do that and you cannot tell it was not the mount's natural antlers. Tommy has on his wall, and everyone who ever saw it said, "that's a nice buck, who shot it?"

He would always say, "it's a long story." He was the deer made from two bucks that no one ever did shoot. Bless you all for coming by, I pray we see you back here tomorrow.

NUMBERS 6: 24-26 KJV

we boys three, babee conway, lil merle, & me