Story by Tom Claycomb III

My wife and I had an old buddy that was a grand old guy. Katy loved him like her own dad and would go read to him as he got older. One afternoon he told her to come over and look out of the kitchen window. He lived on a few acres and one of his sons lived a couple of hundred yards away.

He told her to look. His son was running around in a frenzy packing to head up elk hunting the next morning. Jack then looked at Katy and said “I guarantee you he’ll be out there packing until midnight and hit camp tired out and discover that he’s forgotten half of his gear.”

Then he took Katy into his office and pulled a sheet of paper out of the file cabinet and handed it to her. He’d drawn up a gear list for elk hunting. Over the years he had perfected it to fit his desires. She gave me the list and it was a good, complete one. Of course, I’m a “list guy”. I write out a list one to two weeks before a hunt and carry it with me at work. That way if I’m setting in a meeting and think of something I’ve forgotten I pull out the list and write it down. My boss conducting the meeting thinks I’m writing down his words of wisdom so everyone is happy. That is until he reads this article.

Don’t wait until the day before you take off for the deer lease or any hunt to throw all of your stuff together or you’ll be sorry. And if you wait until the night before to think about hunting, you’re really going to be sorry AND unsuccessful.

So, with all of the above said, let’s list out some pre-game activities so we’re hunt prepared and battle ready when D-Day hits.

BLIND PREP

How many times have you crawled into a blind to hunt only to discover that the wasps have built a nest in the top right corner? Or, the sliding glass window is broken or the wood frame has swollen up so that it can’t be opened or maybe it creaks when you try to open it?

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