5th Prize
Weatherby Soft Side Gun Cases (10 awarded)
Gilbert Boeglin, New Mexico
“My dream hunt would be a reunion of three old friends…friends who for 15 years never missed a deer hunt together. But all of us have grown long in the tooth and changing life circumstances have separated us so that too long a time has passed since we hunted together.
The hunt would be in the expansive sage brush, pinion and juniper country of nortwestern Colorado. It would be during a rifle season in early October when the mornings are cold but the afternoons are warm and the occasional aspen cusp that dot the landscape would be brilliant with their fall colors.
It would be a tent camp affair with a meat pole hewn from a lashed up mix of standing and fallen aspen. There would be morning and evening campfires and each of us would be responsible for providing the food menu and doing the cooking for two days of the hunt. Each would do a specialty meal_steaks by the grill chef, enchiladas by the self-anointed gourmet of the group, and Dutch oven biscuits by the one who fancies himself a cowboy. However, the main course of the meals would be conversation to rekindle the embers of those things that once bound us so tightly together.
There would be heated, late night conversations that echoed our past times together when we spiritedly disagreed about our favorite gun calibers. One forever evoking that the legendary outdoor writer Jack O’Conner was in his corner with the .270, another who will never be far from his .257 Weatherby and the last saying a magnun .30 was the gold standard.
The quarry would be mule deer. There would be hopes for a 30 incher, but we really would seek trophies that mirrored us…old specimens with distinct character. A big three point with a grizzled face that showed he had endured life’s triumphs and hardships would be a true prize.
We would hunt with intensity reflecting the awareness that such times may not be there forever. But we would drink of the experience far beyond the taking of an animal, savoring the beauty of the country and valuing the opportunity to be together once again.
When we folded the tent and packed our gear for the return to our daily lives, we would share a moment’s appreciation of how fortunate we were to have a chance for a reunion hunt. We would speak of our genuine aspirations to do it again at a future time, knowing full well that was unlikely. But we would move apart with an indelible memory moment of a reunion hunt that was a fitting capstone to our times together.”