(This is a repost of one of the first stories I ever posted here.I lost the original story some time ago and I heard something on the news the other day remembering our great blizzard of 1982.I thought I would rewrite it with some details that weren't in my original)
There was a time in my life when nearly every free minute was devoted to hunting. Deer hunting,turkey hunting,rabbit ,squirrel,and perhaps my favorite -quail hunting. My father had loved quail hunting-a gentleman's style of hunting involving fine shotguns and quality work from champion dogs. Dad always favored English Setters and trained many of them. I was raised tagging along with him on fall and winter days watching the dogs work the fields and anticipating the explosive covey rises and the acrid smell of fired gunpowder from the barrel of his Browning Sweet 16.
Quail in my part of the world have been nearly gone for the last 20 years or so - victims of several hard winters and several successive overly wet springs in the early 1980s that nearly wiped them out and the quail population has yet to recover from. But on a January day in 1982- just over 25 years ago- they were still plentiful and a long time friend and myself set out for a all day hunt for them that nearly cost us our lives.
Bill and I had been friends for as long as I could remember-even though he was several years older than me. When I was a boy he was our neighbor and I must of nearly drove him crazy begging him to let me go hunting and fishing with him. When I was 12 years old I fell out of a tree deep in the woods near our home badly breaking my right leg. I was alone when it happened and laid in this woods for hours screaming for hours before Bill found me and hauled me out on his back. After that and in the years that followed and I grew into a man we became close friends often hunting or fishing together.
On that Jan. day in 1982 Bill and I set out to walk the
There was a time in my life when nearly every free minute was devoted to hunting. Deer hunting,turkey hunting,rabbit ,squirrel,and perhaps my favorite -quail hunting. My father had loved quail hunting-a gentleman's style of hunting involving fine shotguns and quality work from champion dogs. Dad always favored English Setters and trained many of them. I was raised tagging along with him on fall and winter days watching the dogs work the fields and anticipating the explosive covey rises and the acrid smell of fired gunpowder from the barrel of his Browning Sweet 16.
Quail in my part of the world have been nearly gone for the last 20 years or so - victims of several hard winters and several successive overly wet springs in the early 1980s that nearly wiped them out and the quail population has yet to recover from. But on a January day in 1982- just over 25 years ago- they were still plentiful and a long time friend and myself set out for a all day hunt for them that nearly cost us our lives.
Bill and I had been friends for as long as I could remember-even though he was several years older than me. When I was a boy he was our neighbor and I must of nearly drove him crazy begging him to let me go hunting and fishing with him. When I was 12 years old I fell out of a tree deep in the woods near our home badly breaking my right leg. I was alone when it happened and laid in this woods for hours screaming for hours before Bill found me and hauled me out on his back. After that and in the years that followed and I grew into a man we became close friends often hunting or fishing together.
On that Jan. day in 1982 Bill and I set out to walk the
