Thanksgiving week of 2011, after a long path of elderly family care, my wife and I agreed that I should take a hunting trip and enjoy myself for a week. And so the story goes-of course I picked Saskatchewan.
2011 was the last year that the outfitter had a full hunting season, after that they cut back in an attempt to sell the property and turn it over to the new owners. I planned the trip to coincide with some friends and then at the last minute I moved the trip a week so I could be there over Thanksgiving week, my personal favorite. Long story short-I harvested my buck on Thanksgiving morning.
Outside of that story is an underlying story, of family. A year or so before the trip we put my Mother in Law in a care home. Resting and cared for through the final stages of Alzheimer's. My wife and Father in Law were diligent in her care and visited to feed her every day that she was in the care home. Nanny passed the day after Thanksgiving 2011-while I was in Saskatchewan.
I told you that story to tell you this one-The wait is over. From childhood I've been an avid deer hunter. My issue has always been that I'm a dollar short and a day late. I couldn't afford to go on paid hunts or to lease land so I hunted state grounds and whatever land I could beg for. I've had a great time over the years but there's one thing I know-if you want to shoot big deer, you have to go to where the big deer are, and thus Saskatchewan.
It was the fourth day of the hunt, I hadn't seen one shooter in the previous three days. As you can read in a previous post, I was on stand about 10 minutes and had to wait about 10 more for it to be legal shooting time. A moment passed and I harvested a 155 class buck that came in early to visit.
The wait that the title refers to all started when I returned to New Jersey and sent my antlers and cape to my taxidermist in Ohio. After a long wait I contacted the taxidermist only to find out that his freezer gave out and he had lost my cape. I called the original outfitter and he was able to get me another cape from a big buck in Saskatchewan that had just been harvested. I sent it to the taxidermist and we were once again on our way-not quite. After about 6 months of waiting I called the local Sherriff's Dept. and asked them to pay a visit to the taxidermist. They did and about 2 weeks later the antlers (broken in half) and the cape arrived on my door step. I was referred to a local taxidermist and paid him a visit. Four months later-The wait is over!
I've spent most of my life dreaming about the day that I would hang one of these on the wall, yesterday, Aug 8th, 2013, that dream came true! He's not a Boone and Crockett record book buck, but he's the one I've longed for most of my life.
It all seems like a blur now, almost two years later and the wait is finally over.
Kevo
