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A Father and Son hunted our Farm with Scott, our dogs Rip and Chance. It was one of our typical hunts. The dogs were pointing and the birds were taking flight. The guide was as silent as his own shadow, when the two men started speaking. It turns out the father had an illness. The kind that brings into focus lives high lights and missteps.

We approached the stream at the back of the farm. The son now 6’ 4” with 280 pounds of muscle; says to his father, “Remember the time we were hunting and you carried me across that River”? His father replies with a fondness in his voice, “Yeah, I was a much younger man then”.

At this point, both men made an attempt to leap across the creek. Two full grown men, larger than life landed square on their feet in the middle of the creek; knee deep, in ice cold water. Gleefully laughing like two little kids. The trio of men followed the creek for about 100 yards or so. Ole Rip had disappeared, as he has the tendency to do. The bird had flushed behind us. As the bird crashed through the brush and ricocheted off of the tree’s branches. It finally flew directly in front of the pair. Naturally, the dad put another bird in his pouch. On we went, bird after bird until the last tangle of brush. Just then a bird bursts out of what looked like a bamboo thicket fit for a Panda Bear. Full after burners engage, No way that this bird wasn’t going down. Just as soon as the son twisted into a pretzel, his feet cemented to the ground, shouldered his shotgun and made a Hail Mary Shot. The bird then tumbled to the ground.

The Father and Son looked at each other, then the son remarked gently and sincerely, “I’m glad you taught me how to hunt as a kid”. The father responded with a look in his eye that displayed a fathers’ lifelong love and said, “I’m glad I had the chance”.