Ouch!

Just about the time I thought I would have something good to write about bird hunting, I don’t. I woke up this morning and I was prepared to hit the sloughs and then the pain hit me, in my shooting shoulder. Man! It hurt! Like the preverbal dumb ass, yesterday I tried to climb a ladder carrying a bundle of shingles for my office/garage roof. It is bad enough that I’ve got to put these shingles on (You should see me, I scoot around on my butt because my sense of balance is so bad I keep losing my balance and try to fall over!), trying to get them up there is an exercise in stupid! When the second round of pain pills finally took hold I drove to the lumber yard and asked if they would bring a fork lift for me—when the weather clears.
The weather was my whole point in going today. It was dreary, foggy and wet, the kind of weather when I really like to sneak up on the sloughs. I’ll give Cookie a signal and she will gladly bound into the water and flush the ducks so I can get off a couple of shots. If I knock one down she seems to know where it lands and quickly returns with it. We have great fun but it only works on these gray days with scudding clouds, wet grass and muddy roads. I don’t know if the ducks feel that only an idiot (like me) would dare go out or they are just hunkered down against the weather but we can usually creep up to the very edge of the slough. But today was out. I guess sometimes I just have trouble reconciling my health issues with reality. Sort of sucks, you know. I’m going to try again in the morning, which means it is now midnight North Dakota time, the dogs are smart enough to be in bed and that’s where I’m going. This time I’ll drag my carcass out of bed and go hunting when the alarm goes off. I know Cookie is starting to wonder if I’ve turned into a pansy over the weather.
Best, glg