When you're stuck in the no-man's land between the whole country's opening day (yesterday) and your own (Saturday) and it seems there's nothing to write about but your own bitterness, the innate stupidity of certain Americans comes to your rescue.
Seems three old boys in Major County, OK, just couldn't wait another two days til dove season opened, so they set up a blind and some mojo decoys in a field and started hunting. The creative juices didn't stop flowing there, either. Anyone can build a blind from branches and weeds, so why not step it up a notch and build one out of weed.
Sunday morning, August 30th, did not start out like a normal day for game wardens Phillip Cottrill (Garfield County) and Lt. Frank Huebert (Major County). A passer by called in and reported seeing some mojo dove decoys spinning in a field. The wardens arrived to find 3 guys dove hunting over bait. Strangely, they were using dove blinds that were built out of marihuana* plants. The dove poachers were in possession of 45 dove, marihuana buds and a pipe.
But the fun didn't stop there. Wardens accompanied one of the boy geniuses to his residence to obtain ID where they found hawk and owl fans and talons. And yes, they also found the requisite meth and needles and more pot.
While most of the day would be labeled what my kids call an "epic fail", there was one bright spot. They all shot a limit.
Here's to your opener. This year, don't settle for the same old same old.
* After several vigilant spellers spoke up, The OK Dept of Wildlife noted in a later post that the laws in OK spell marijuana with an "h", so that's how they wrote the report.
As the first season wears on, turnout at the hunts drops to predictably low levels and Saturday wasn't the first time I had the field to myself on the closing day. My ancestors had their Glorious 12th of September, opening day in the isles, and this year I had my Glorious 11th, the last chance at shooting dove for the next five weeks, not knowing exactly what the day would hold but knowing I'd kick myself if I didn't at least show up.
It's been a lackluster season up to this point, the resident doves having moved on shortly after opening day leaving us to scratch out a living on scant gypsy populations. Week before last we killed a grand total of two birds in the whole field, so optimism is not exactly abundant this time of year. Most of the guys I shoot with opted for the Clemson game and several others were out of town or just had better things to do. Perish the thought.
The field is spent
Experience teaches that you'd better bring along something to do when the birds aren't around so I packed the camera, figuring I could at least count on some leaves and dead sunflowers and stuff. When I walked into the field a dozen or so birds got up, which means one of two things will happen:
the birds scatter and never come back and you don't see another bird all day (9 out of 10 times)
this is an omen that there are still birds in the area and maybe, just possibly, this could turn out to be a decent afternoon (1 in 10)
So you settle in, snap a few pics and see what happens..
Leftover from opening day
Sign of the times
Sometimes they're hard to find
Sometimes they're not so hard
Sometimes they leave a trail...
A dozen birds in the bag, a few photos, one fire ant bite and everything a fall afternoon has for the taking. While it wasn't perfect - 85 degrees and far more gnats than birds - it handily beat all expectations, reminding me why I show up against the wisdom of the crowd. And why I'll do it again.
Our dove haven't gone away completely but they haven't spread the word to their friends, either. Yesterday, during another session of long pauses between shots, several things occurred to me that might take dove hunting to the next level. Feast your intellect:
Some well-heeled individual or his namesake charitable trust should fund the genetic development of a dove that, when mortally wounded, turns a shade of bright red or orange. This would eliminate quite a bit of poking in bushes, staring at patches of weeds, walking in ever-increasing circles and generally wasting my time. Time that could be better spent thinking up brilliant improvements to the sport such as this.
Dragonflies, tweety birds, and butterflies should stay the hell out of a field when there is a hunt going on. Peripheral vision being the imperfect sense that it is, all you creatures that resemble a dove in flight over in the corner of my eye do nothing but raise my heart rate and interrupt my otherwise tranquil mood. Fair warning: on slow days you are quite a temptation.
If we can put a man on the moon we ought to be able to figure out a way to keep gnats out of my general face area. Bug spray doesn't work. Ditto Thermacells, in spite of what people keep telling me. If the well-heeled individual in #1 is looking for another project, possibly one with commercial appeal, this would be it. I know gnats are part of the food chain somewhere way down the line, so I don't want to kill them, I just want them out of my face. They can hang out on the other side of my head or around my knees even. Anywhere but my face. And while we're genetically modifying things, let's tweak the gnat and remove whatever it is that attracts them to eyeballs.
That's as far as I got, three flashes of genius in a day being at least two more than I'm normally good for.
Dove season interrupted the summer nap on Labor Day, as usual sporting heat and soul-crushing humidity. But the birds were there and we were too, hoping for a barnburner, always hoping.
And as always, some higher power insists on turning everything fun into a learning experience. When the heat index approaches triple digits wearing short pants seems like a bright idea until a bird goes down in the trees and weeds. Teeth clench as the briars pick at bare skin, etching red lines that sting when the sweat finds them. About ten feet into the thick stuff that thought about poison ivy materializes. Remind me again why I think this is fun?
Date #2 came the birds stood us up. Never seen them disappear so early in the year, seemingly without a reason although that's never the case. Weather, lack of food, and hunting pressure are just about the only things that will move them out and other than a frog strangler of a thunderstorm none of these were in play. I'm still waiting for the "It's not you" phone call. Or text.
Some guys can't take a hint. Back at it again on Sunday..
Earlier this week the results from the first ever national dove hunters survey were released. A collaborative effort between the USFWS, the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies and the National Flyway Council, the study appears to be a stab at taking the temperature of the dove hunting community. You may have received one of the questionnaires (I did, and yes, I did fill it out). Approximately 30,000 were mailed and about 12,600 were returned. Those targeted were selected at random from state HIP databases.
Most of the reported results fell short of anything shocking, not that there was a reason to expect otherwise. There were a few interesting bits, though. The average age of respondents was 45, which could mean that teens and early twenties hunters didn't get the survey or didn't have time to fill it out (kids lead such busy lives these days), or it could mean that there just aren't many younger dove hunters. One of those would be bad.
More than half filling out the survey travel at least 50 miles to hunt. That's either a lot of dedication or a way to stretch the time out of the house a bit longer.
And to quote from the FAQ, "More than 85% of respondents “mostly” or “always” use lead shot to hunt doves, and the majority believe that lead shot substitutes are too expensive." If you don't think lead substitutes are expensive, you're probably hunting in Argentina anyway. The switch to non-toxic shot for dove is out there on the horizon somewhere and in the meantime I'll either become a better shot or figure out which day of the week I won't eat.
Last week California passed a ban on lead ammunition for hunting purposes. It's not the first state to do this - other states have banned lead in certain areas and for certain types of hunting - but I believe it's the first to issue a blanket prohibition.
I haven't read the research and won't venture to debate the validity of it, but given that lead is generally accepted as toxic it would be hard to say it doesn't have some detrimental affect on the environment. It would be equally hard to say that a lead ban won't have some detrimental affects to hunters' wallets, and possibly to the sport itself.
At this point in my life if I had to pay $12-14 for a box of steel shot to shoot dove it wouldn't be the end of the world, but there was a time when it might have been the end of the sport for me. As you get older you realize that there are a handful of things that give you great pleasure and, through years of accumulated wisdom, you figure out ways to make sure you always have enough time and money for them. As a youngster, however, a lot of what you do is dictated by what you can afford. Doubling the cover charge may be a great way to help the environment but it might not be the best way to bring the younger generation into the pastime. Conspiracy theory alert: This might be what certain legislative factions have in mind.
The issue isn't just about wallets or the environment or endangered species or the future of hunting any more than stream access issues out west are just about water rights or landowner rights (for a spot-on piece on this topic, see Miles Nolte's column in the Nov/Dec '13 issue of Gray's). It's a combination of all of these and just as quick as you see yourself in one camp you'll find another that maybe isn't completely wrong.
I still find myself squarely on the fence, and a fencepost in your butt isn't the most comfortable perch. From a personal standpoint I haven't made a voluntary switch to no-tox yet. Hell, I still shop for the best deal I can get on lead. Steel shot, next in line from a cost perspective, is not the most user-friendly load. Its ballistics tend to give a bit on the longer shots, as most duck hunters know, which leaves the more exotic loads such as tungsten, bismuth and medleys of these brewed with copper, iron, tin and nickel. While the ballistic performance is superior to steel I've yet to find one that is cost-competitive.
For what it's worth, the demand for lead overseas is increasing at a surprising pace, and there's a chance that it won't be too long before lead shot is in the ballpark with no-tox. In the meantime I guess I'll continue buying lead shot until I'm overcome by wave of extreme guilt or the state outlaws it, whichever comes first and can't be cured.
Why is it that the best stand in the field is always the least comfortable? During these first two weeks of our unusually slow dove season I've been taking mental notes about where the birds are coming in and out of the field and who's leaving with the heaviest bags. On opening day the only guy who shot a limit sat underneath a power line near a pole with a transformer on it. But that kid paid for his limit.
Not only does this stand lack any usable shade, it sits on the east end of the field, meaning that as the hours tick by you stare more and more directly into the sun. Ever try to shoot a dove that's using Japanese Zero fighter tactics?
Today only five of us showed up, hardly enough to cover the field effectively but few enough that nobody was stuck with a really bad stand. I'd decided before I left the house that after two weeks and only a handful of birds in the freezer I was ready to pony up, and when no one volunteered to sit under the wire I eased in that direction.
I lost about 5 lbs of water weight and still see lots of pink and purple and white when I close my eyes, but after three hours I managed to scratch out an old school limit. Worth it? Oh yeah.
Labor Day was our dove opener this year and I can finally talk about it, all 102 degree heat index and no birds of it. That's a bit extreme, actually. We had a few birds.
As openers go, though, the dove were sparse. They just weren't there in the numbers we typically see in early September. This was more like a third or fourth week of September shoot, birds drifting in two or three at a time with maybe one or two flurries during the hunt. Those big flurries, the ones with birds coming from every direction, so many that you can't decide which one to shoot, having three birds down at one time and yet another flies over while you're picking the first one up? Didn't happen.
Statistically you're bound to have a slow first day once in a while and we were probably due. Whether it was the oddly damp year we've had so far - we hit our annual rainfall average in late July - or the mild summer temps, at least until Monday, something kept the birds away. At least the beer stayed cold.
And this....
...this is sixty one dove wings in a cardboard box. A friend of mine at the DNR asked me to collect these for their annual study on brood hatches or molting or something and I happily agreed, certain that I'd gather a metric ton or so of wings from the opening day bonanza. At this rate it'll take a season's worth to get him a valid sample. One thing I didn't realize about dove wings: there are these tiny little feathers that you don't notice until you're riding home with the window down and they take to the air but somehow stay inside your truck until you're choking on them and swatting at them while they're sticking to your eyeballs. So you roll down a back window hoping it will suck them out and instead it makes more of them take flight. So you pull over and roll all the windows down and get out and cuss a few times and wait.
Eventually you get back in the truck, this time with the lid on the box closed and weighed down so it won't blow open, and then you realize that all the tiny feathers didn't blow out the window, they settled down to the floor, only to go airborne one more time. So then you do what you should have done in the first place - roll up the damn windows.
Earlier today I came across this article in the Idaho State Journal. It tells the utterly sad and yet completely believable story of a serial poacher and his latest bout with the law. From the story:
"The charges against Pierce stated that he had illegally killed a number of ducks and geese with a .22 caliber rifle both during the legal take season and after the waterfowl season closure.... Some of the geese recovered at Pierce’s residence were extremely rare, naturally occurring only once in tens of thousands of birds."
His penalty? Loss of hunting privileges for 15 years. While this sounds severe to people like you and me, my guess is that it amounts to doing him a favor. This is a guy who takes game out of season, with an unapproved weapon, with a history of game violations dating back to 1998 when he was 15 years old. Is he really going to let something like the lack of a license deter him? All they've done is save him the $60 each year that he paid for it. It would've served the state better to make him buy the license but arrest him if he was caught using it.
Wait, they did fine him $1175. Yeah. He could find enough crap in his garage to pawn and pay that by Monday.
My prediction? They'll end up catching him again, maybe he'll go to jail for a month and then get out with a stern "Next time you're caught you'll do the full term, I promise," and then he'll pick up and move to another state and do it all over again. The most pathetic aspect of this tale is that after 15 years he still sucks at it. Yes, he will get caught again.
Here's the line that really got me:
"The system worked in this case exactly as it should have..."
The word they left out was finally. A well-functioning system wouldn't have let it get this far.
Ok, it's easy for me to sit here and armchair quarterback a judge I've never met without offering any suggestions, so I'll throw out what I feel is an appropriate penalty for a serial poacher: make him live in Manhattan (New York, not Kansas) for 15 years. And tell him that rat season is only open on July 4.
Looks like another state is inching closer to a dove season, and chiming in this time is none other than the Nuge:
I haven't vetted his statistics about dove being more numerous in Michigan than pheasant, quail, grouse and woodcock combined, or about dove hunting providing more recreation than fishing for bluegills, but he's probably not too far off the mark. Making this situation even more curious is the fact that in 2005, Michigan had a dove season. A single dove season. And then anti-dove hunting factions managed to place a referendum on the ballot that effectively scrubbed it.
Part of what brought voters out against dove hunting is that the dove is - get this - Michigan's state bird of peace. What? Isn't that about as necessary as a state corn flake?
What Ted's so giddy about is a piece of legislation recently signed into law that places the ability to designate game species in the hands of the state Natural Resources Commission. Where did this control previously rest? Within the immense pit of knowledge known as the state legislature. The same governing body that felt there was a justified need for a state bird of peace.
I'm pulling for you Michiganders, and if they take your season away again, come on down to South Carolina. We let you hunt dove, our winters are warmer and we have no shortage of embarrassing politicians.
Opening day of dove season is different. People show up in droves, bring friends, kids, preachers and some guy who called them out of the blue because he was visiting his mom at the lake and heard we might be shooting (mind if I join you?). College boys appear between the trees like those baseball players from the corn in Field of Dreams. There's a cookout, beer, good to see you again and by the way, what have you been up to? Everyone goes home grinning.
Then starts the great decline. The crowds get thinner every week regardless of whether there are birds. The only exception is that if you have a really hot shoot and go home and call everyone who wasn't there and rub it in, the next weekend the field will be packed with your boys and the birds will have packed up and headed south. You shoulda been here last week...
This year the decline has held true to form. Fewer and fewer hunters each week while bird numbers have been pretty steady. You'd think this would be good for the few of us remaining, but as anyone who's hunted dove knows the birds get substantially smarter once the first shot is fired. They have an uncanny ability to divert flight paths through the parts of the field where the guns aren't. Which means you generally need enough guys around a field to plug the gaps and keep the birds moving, and if you're lucky there are a few guys who fidget and walk around and cause the birds to flare and fly toward you, the stealth hunter sitting motionless in the shadows, agent of death from below.
Last weekend Bob - one of the hard-cores - and I showed up. Way down on the other end of the field was a guy I knew but had never seen in the dove field and he brought along a friend visiting from Israel. And that was it. Just the four of us. And some birds.
So Bob and I rimmed a corner within earshot of each other, sipped a few beers and drew on the occasional kamikaze. Mostly we watched the birds drift right through the big open spaces in middle. When we left, the Israeli was still at the far end of the field, alone, and might still be there for all I know.
It's not that people don't like numbers, it's more that they can't always get comfortable with the stark certainty that comes with them.
"I was only late a few times."
"Fourteen out of twenty days last month? I'd say that's more than a few."
"Shut up."
As is often the case, the numbers tell the story, the real story. Educated as an engineer and currently responsible for the dollars and cents and operating metrics of several decidedly unsexy businesses, I live and breathe numbers. It's a language I speak better than English and it makes me the unpopular winner of many an argument. If anyone knows Huey Lewis, ask him if it's still hip to be square.
Being number-oriented is an affliction of sorts; people without it generally think things are either better or worse than they actually are while the rest of us are constantly hazed by the bare burden of reality. It comes with a reflexive urge to count, to track, to analyze anything and everything. It has its pluses and minuses.
When I lived in a ski town the magic number was 100. Ski 100 days in a season, a season holding roughly 150 possible days, and you'd done something. You were legitimate. Women would swoon, bartenders would give you drinks all over town, you'd get a $5 an hour raise, Hollywood A-listers would invite you to parties. No, not really. A couple of your boys would say 'way to go, dude' and you'd most likely be a better skier than you were in October but that's about it. But that would be good enough because you'd lived it. It's not the number, it's everything that happened along the way to the number.
If there's such a number for bird hunters it's less an accepted standard and more of a personal thing. Last year I shot dove 9 or 10 days, hunted quail 12 or 13, didn't make it pheasant hunting at all. And I fancy myself a bird hunter? That's only 6% of the year spent doing what I enjoy most. Even if I stack the deck in my favor and consider that I can't (legally) hunt birds but six months out of the year, I still took advantage of barely 12% of the available opportunities. I should call myself a grass cutter, or a trash taker outer, or bill payer. Problem is that I have about, oh, zero passion for any of these.
But it's unavoidable. I'm gonna count, and then I'm gonna compare and rate and rank based on that count, and then I'm either gonna smile or think it's pathetic and swear to do better next year. What I should do is look past the number. Ten more days this year would be great, but it's not just "10" at all. It's knowing that I spent those ten days - days I can't ever get back once they're gone - carrying a gun or walking behind a dog or both if I'm really lucky, about as happy as this boy gets.
The count currently stands at zero, but come tomorrow I'll be on the board.
Blair Witch or GoPro? Either way, he was on to something.
Sometimes I focus way too much on the things I don't have instead of enjoying the things I do. The Syracuse Post-Standardreported this week that a bill was introduced in the New York State Senate that would re-classify dove as "migratory game birds" from their current classification as songbirds, opening the door for the Department of Environmental Conservation to implement a full-fledged dove season. I don't know why but I just kinda thought that the only places lacking a dove season were places lacking doves. It's as much of a given down here as fried food and embarrassing local headlines that make national news.
I don't know whether there's a powerful songbird lobby in the Empire State or whether change is just glacially slow in such a "progressive" place. Either way it seems strange that grouse, pheasant and even bobwhite quail are fair game during the season and dove get a free pass on their way south. Hell, California has a mourning dove season, for crying out loud.
Part of the problem may be that almost half of the population lives on a strip of land 13 miles long and 2 miles wide, a place where shotguns are are either offensive or defensive weaponry and millet fields are, umm, completely nonexistent. The other part of the problem, whatever it is, evades me. Dove hunting is one of fall's finest diversions and there's no practical reason to deprive any sportsman of its rewards. In both solitary and social forms, it is bargain recreation for any who enjoy a gun, a dog, fresh air or any combination of these. And it's an excellent way to get a kid off the couch and hooked on something good.
New York doesn't just deserve a dove season, they need one.
I've been an analytical sort for a long, long time. I studied
engineering, I work in the financial side of a decidedly blue collar
business, metrics, analysis, measurement, comparisons, reporting,
scorecards .... all tools of my trade and fairly ingrained in my
approach to just about everything. I even keep track of the books I
read and listen to. We all have our demons and this is one of mine, somewhere between compulsion and affliction.
Today was the last day to shoot dove until September. The funky weather patterns since Thanksgiving have thrown long-held expectations for the third season out the window (translation: everybody sees birds around, calls a hunt for the next day, shows up and the birds are gone). I've shot a limit on the last day of the season before but I knew when I left the house today that it wasn't in the cards this year. The worst part? This is the first season since I started hunting that I haven't managed a limit of dove. At all. Not even on opening day.
And there's something wrong with that. Not with the fact that I didn't get a limit, with the fact that I know I didn't get a limit. This isn't a competition, it's something I supposedly do for enjoyment. You don't get some rodeo-sized belt buckle for shooting limits. Once it's over you get an ounce of boost to your ego and have a serving of satisfaction and that's it. Why not get that satisfaction from something else, and get it every time?
Easier said than done for an analytical type.
The splash of cold water in the face is that it's time to let go of a few things I've held close for many, many years. These things have provided some measure of comfort, most likely through a perception that if I kept track of the numbers I'd maintain control. What gets measured gets done, right? Not necessarily. And not if measuring takes the fun out of it.
I've been pecking away at this since early September and during that time I came across this post on The Drake's website. Bruce Smithhammer hit it pretty solid and while he was talking about fly fishing instead of bird hunting and anger directed toward others instead of toward yourself, he makes his case exceptionally well: never forget that this is about fun.
Without dessert a great dinner is still great, but dessert leaves nothing unfinished. This is kind of the way I felt about shooting a limit of birds. I always had a great time in the field, but leaving with six or nine or even twelve birds had a loose end feel to it. To have fun every time this loose end has to go. I'm not talking about clipping it. I'm talking about not acknowledging its existence. I'm talking about looking at it and not seeing it at all.
Somehow, some way, this calls for a shift in consciousness. I don't know how it plays out, but I know it's time. There will always be occasion to celebrate a double and be thankful for a limit, and those limits will come. I haven't completely given up trying to hit birds. And my guess is, for a while anyway, there will still be those nagging numbers in the back of my head. But it's time.
It happened and I'm finally at a point where I can bear to talk about it. Laws of nature and physics and statistics dictate that it wouldn't go on forever, the last fifteen or more years notwithstanding. What I'm referring to is the annual Saturday before Thanksgiving dove hunt. You see, for whatever reason or reasons this particular hunt has always been the closest thing to a done deal in terms of being a barnburner. I've walked out of the field in twenty minutes with a limit. Most years it takes between thirty and forty five, but still...
Almost always a cold morning, the dew frozen on the grass so that your feet don't get wet walking in but might on the way out. Watching your breath slip from your face it's like duck hunting, waiting for legal shooting time as the light replaces the dark, except you aren't standing in cold water up to your waist. The birds have had more than a month of rest and peaceful dinners since the first season closed and they're drifting in to what they think is a sure thing. And they drift in and cruise in and dart in and rocket in and keep coming in like bargain hunters overrunning a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. At one point last year I shot a bird, shot another on the way to pick the first one up, shot another while I was still looking for the first one, and shot a fourth before I finally got to the first one.
Word started catching on a few years ago that this hunt was a hot one. The day of the twenty minute limit only four of us cared enough to get out of bed. By the time we finished we were giddy,
punch drunk on success and good fortune and laughing just as hard at the suckers who stayed home. Lately more and more guys have been showing up cloaked in anticipation.
This year the birds just weren't there. High man in the field might have killed eight when the few that were around quit flying. My bag was loaded down with exactly one bird. I don't know why I felt so dejected. Beyond mere disappointment, I actually felt let down, and with no legitimate reason. It's not like I'd been offered a guarantee somewhere along the way. There's only one explanation: somewhere along the way I'd been.......spoiled.
I suppose some UCLA basketball fans were disappointed in 1974 when they didn't win the NCAA championship. Too much good fortune and you start to expect it and then it's only a matter of time until good fortune becomes entitlement. And entitlements are rarely appreciated. Shame on me.
Change is up there with bullfighting and oysters: you either love it or don't care much at all for it. Compared to the others, unfortunately, it's several degrees harder to avoid. File it under Life's Not Fair.
Somewhere in the laws of physics must be a formula explaining why so few things in this life are static. Particularly the good stuff. Just when you get it right, just when it's all tweaked the way you like it and the planets line up and all is good with the world, something changes and before you know it you're back to square one, trying to make it right and good again. Einstein should have calculated the energy wasted trying to stop, undo or otherwise negate change.
Earlier this season I finally gave up shooting my standby 870. It is the first shotgun I ever owned and it's brought down just about every winged species of game in the lower 48, yet this fall I found myself (again) unable to hit much of anything with it. I left it in the closet a few weeks ago in favor of my "walking gun", a lightweight 20 gauge that I carry on extended hikes, and quickly started dropping birds again. Change. I could get all maudlin about it but what's the point? The 870 will still be there in the closet when I can't hit the ground with that 20 gauge.
Sitting under a pair of trees in the dove field last weekend I looked up at the branches of one, already mostly bare, and fought off the slightest bit of chill from the shade of the other. Undeniable, unstoppable, once again fall is coming. Change. Maybe file it under Sometimes Life Ain't So Bad.
Any time you get a sub-70 degree day in September (in South Carolina) it's hard to complain. If you can spend in it a dove field, all the better. This is almost like getting a foot of snow in these parts and we took full advantage. Beautiful day to be outside.
Oh, and there was this:
He's two months shy of his fourth birthday and this was his first hunt. No, he didn't shoot it. That gun is a Daisy that doesn't load, just cocks and kicks and makes a pop. But he went after it like he did, complete with the universal kids arm-extended-tip-of-the-wing hold. I showed him how to fold the wings against the body and carry it and he was fine with that right up until the next bird went down. Then it was back to the wing tip. A couple of them got poked with the butt of his gun. Kids are funny.
I'll admit I was a bit worried how he would handle the noise given his aversion to vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers and the like. A pair of orange ("No! Not the yellow ones, Dad") plugs coaxed into those tiny ears and he never flinched. Small victories.
There's a lot that can go wrong in a kid's lifetime. As a parent you do everything you can to put the odds in their favor, but there's still so much beyond your control. I know how I'd like him to turn out. I'd like to be sitting in a field forty years from now watching him watch his son do the same thing, but there are no guarantees. So you take days like today and enjoy the hell out of them.
