I know where I’ll be tomorrow…what about you?
It’s “Opening Day” weekend for the lower peninsula of Michigan.
A friend recently bought 20 acres down by Hillsdale with a 2-room shack on it. He’s fixed it up and we’ve all helped out some. Tomorrow SEVEN of us are converging on it for a real hootenanny.
Pictures to follow.
We’re all sportin’ 12-ga slug guns, I suspect. My 1970’s Remington 1100 puts them into a 3″ group at 50 yards out of the smooth-bore. At 100 yards they’re about 12″ so I won’t be taking any shots past 50, really. I look forward to finding a secondhand rifled barrel and seeing what sabots will do. I dislike a wide pattern very much. I was thinking of using my .45 Pennsylvania smokepole but didn’t get in enough shootin’ for confidence — besides, it might go with an overall quieter approach to the whole thing, who knows.
Good luck, wherever you’re doing your Opener!
***
Thinking back to Opening Days of yore…
My grampa used to take his 7 boys up north to state land for a week or two every year. This was back when kids didn’t show up for school for either pheasant opener or deer. (I caught the still-lovely tail-end of all that era. Back then we brought our guns to school! I kept mine in my locker! I’d clean steelhead in the science lab sinks during class, standing in the back, steaking and taking notes.)
They’d head up to Onaway, drive off onto a two-track, drop a tree across the road behind ’em, then go another mile further in and set up a big ol’ canvas army surplus ridge-pole tent and thimble a woodstove thru the side. They’d turn the boxes and cases they hauled their stuff up in into closets and tables. They’d fluff up a half dozen hay bales into the back corner and sleep like critters in a row.
I never met my grampa but my uncles carried on exactly as they were taught, same tent, hay bales, and all. They let me and my teenage cousins come along. We’d drive into the same old plot on the state land (up by Onaway) and drop a tree behind them onto the two-track.
Hardly anyone ever got a deer.
Except one year our foster brother went along for his first legal opener. He saw a big one and shot at it then went walking back to camp to get help. He saw another on the way and shot at it, too. When the uncles met up after the morning hunt then went out to see what he’d done they found two 10-points. That was the most antler anyone ever saw in decades out there. All from one boy first-timer in his first half hour.
