What's on your mind?

[shaman]

What has gone through my mind on the stand has varied a lot over the years.

There was a poster on here a while back that reminded me of where my used to be. I was beset with a massive case of second-guessing. It was not just over issues like where I should put the stand, but even second guessing my participation in the sport in the first place. I spent the better part of the first two decade I was hunting with that voice of doubt running through my head. I cannot count the number of times I became so distracted that I missed a deer coming in.

Another part of me, however, could see that this was something I had to work out of myself. I slogged on, season after season, until that voice of doubt left. I think back about what made it go away, and all I can figure is that I wore it out. For one thing, I started becoming more successful as a hunter. For another, I stopped worrying about whether I was right or wrong in my choices of where and how I hunted. I realized that the primary reason I had chosen deer hunting was to go out in the woods and decompress from the rest of my life, and once I realized that I the best thing I could do was just let it go, the rest came a lot easier.

So what goes through my mind now? The older I get the less seems to go through it. If you remember Blazing Saddles, thirty years ago, I was Hedley Lamarr: "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. " Today? Most days, I feel more like Mongo-- only a pawn in game of life.

[Ohio farms]

Perhaps to sum it up, "Sometimes I sits and think and sometimes I just sits."