king' s outdoor world - Index

king' s outdoor world - Best of 2007 Feb-March 2008 - Index

forever and I found myself wishing
away the summer.
Early August brought
about an unbelievable chain of
events. My wife threw me the first
curve when she was told she had to
go to Washington, D.C. for training
the week of my hunt. She said she
would go alone, but the look in her
eyes told me that she needed me
to go with her. I told her I would
turn the tag back in and go with
her if she needed me to. To my
disappointment, she promptly said,
“Thank you, thank you.” I went so
far as to call the DWR to find out the
process for turning back in an elk tag
and the last possible date to do so.
After sweating it out for a
couple of weeks, my wife was able
to postpone the trip to Washington.
The decision was made; nothing was
going to stop me from going on this
once-in-a-lifetime hunt. That was,
until I received a letter a week later
requiring my presence at Federal
jury duty in Salt Lake City the
week before my hunt was to begin.
“What is going on?” I said. “Am
I not supposed to be going on this
hunt?” “Could a person’s luck really
be this bad?” I learned quickly that
elk hunting was not a priority to
the court system. They showed no
sympathy to my situation, and my
only hope was that the case would
be settled without going to court. Of
course, I would not know that until
the day I was to appear. Another
week of blood, sweat and tears
passed (well, maybe not blood,
but definitely sweat and tears) and
I made the phone call to learn that
the case had, in fact, been postponed
and I did not have to appear for jury
duty. The hunt was on again!
The opening morning
of the hunt turned out to be quite
uneventful. My son Zach, brotherin-law
Steve, his two kids Shelbee
and Hunter, and a friend Darrin and I
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