Hi and welcome, glad you're visitng my blog!
About me, when I was little, my father would take me fishing and hunting when he could (we have 5 kids in the family, so this wasn't an easy task for him!). My dad was a cabinet maker in Detroit, and sometimes, game lets call it (pigeons for regular folk), would get into the buildings, and he would take me there to "hunt" them. I was a little boy with a single-shot 22, with dreams of being a hunter. He did whatever he could to get me hunting and fishing. The neighbors who work different shifts would take me hunting and fishing when one of them got home form work in the morning. I would go with one, and when another got home in the afternoon I would go with another (in the summer, of course). I have had a love of the outdoors as long as I can remember. My mom still complains every great once in a while about a dagger my dad bought me in Memphis when I was 11 years old. I still remember it, it was grand in my eyes! Real fake rubys and other fake jewels in the handle. It was the best ever, as I recall. My mom told me I eventually traded it for a hunting knife. She said I was to young to have it, and as I said, still complains once in a while. Moms are that way( that was over 40 years ago). Since then, I have fished and hunted, and my love and respect for the outdoors just keeps growing. I hope that some of that shows in the pieces that I make.
Randy Caballero
My Take
I had been working very hard on my house a lot this year and was very anxious for the upcoming hunting season. Just as I always am, I suppose.Opening day was finally here and you could smell the excitement in the air. Maybe it was Buck sweat…as I too knew this would be the year.It was me, my two brothers in law and a bud of mine on opening day. The excitement is a mixture of hope, joy, and can’t stand it all at once. Why, I don’t know…just is!
Some people, I’m sure, think this is foolish but it isn’t of course, if you’re a hunter. It’s something that triggers some kind of primal instinct. Seems somewhat unnatural in today’s world doesn’t it? There’s something…something about the gathering and harvesting of food. Sure, we can all get by just fine buying our meat and vegetables from the grocery store. But there is something that makes it so much better when you garden your vegetables by hand and hunt your meat by gun.
To me, the link between the farm, grocery store, and the table, does involve work of the hand and skill of the mind and of course, the animal’s life. At the grocery store, it just doesn’t involve my hand. I know…not the normal thinking pattern of folks today. For some, it is much more pleasant to sit down to a nice T-Bone steak without seeing the cows face isn’t. Perhaps that is just it, consuming what you worked hard for. It makes you think a little more, and appreciate a little more.
I feel that the food truly is a blessing from God whether we realize it or not. The ability to harvest your own, well, it just makes it that much more precious. I am, beyond a doubt, blessed by being able to hunt. It is more than just the pursuit and the taking of the animal’s life; it is the innate quest for internal survival.
For me, it is all about being able to inhale God’s very own breath; just sucking in as much as possible before this season too, is gone forever. Plus, a big ole Honking Buck makes me breath reeeal nnnice!