Life changes you. I can remember one of the highlights of my life was being taken to the 1970 All-Star game. I heard as well as saw Pete Rose bowl over Fosse at home plate. To this day, I can close my eyes and see Pete and Fosse like it happened last night. I always mark my year as before the All-Star Break and after. This year, I didn’t even know the All-Star game was played– can’t tell you who won. It came and went and nothing happened.

For nearly all of my adult life, I always waited in the week after the All-Star Game for the Cabela’s Fall Catalog. It marked the beginning of a cycle that usually ended with tag soup and a wounded ego some time before Christmas. In the meanwhile, my life became wrapped around deer hunting. The catalog was a start of something big.

Cabela’s Catalog

Sometime last month the catalog showed up, and it really did not impinge on my consciousness until this past weekend. I saw it on the front all table, picked it up, flipped through it a bit and put it aside, not realizing how great a threshold I crossed. I was stuck in traffic this morning, and it hit me.

It was mid-July when I posted last. A lot has happened; I’ve been down to the farm a couple of times. I injured my left foot and it laid me up for a few days. Work has been demanding a lot of me. It’s been a busier-than-usual summer. Still, I’m fairly sure the Cabela’s Catalog would have found its way into my consciousness. Something important has changed. This is like forgetting Christmas.

I always railed at that 4 stages of a Hunter nonsense that was making the rounds over a decade ago. I thought it was silly– still do. However, I’m sure I’ve changed since I first looked at a Cabela’s Catalog. It not only doesn’t thrill me, it does not even register. I still spend most of my life concentrating on deer and turkey hunting. It is just that the acquisition of cargo associated with the endevors is no longer an issue. I can look back now and see somewhat of a progression.

Up until 2001, shopping for stuff used to occupy a big part of my life. I was looking for that “Winning Edge.” In 2001, we got the farm, and I was too busy getting things ready to worry about kit. I deliberately simplified things and went with as little as I could. I filled both tags and had more venison than I ever dreamed of having. I have been keeping it as simple as possible ever since.

In 2007 my shoulder went bad and I had to give up bow hunting. Archery, I found out, had been not only a huge time sink, but I was spending gobs of money on archery-related cargo. When I put down the bow, I stopped being a cargo junky.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve continued to buy stuff, but it has been a matter of replacing things like clothing that has worn out or replenishing stocks of consummables. Over time, the importance of a catalog has waned. New product issues of magazines have become irrelevant. I don’t need any more stuff. I just need time to hunt.

My one vice, it would seem, is deer rifles. They seem to follow me home from the gun shop. I’ve now pretty well filled every possible niche, and frankly my recent acquisitions from Big Bob’s estate were more a matter of honoring a friend’s memory and not a real need. Truth is, I could have stopped with any one of a dozen deer rifles and been a happy successful hunter. However, even this mild obcession has been tempered over time. I now have to really sit down and decide which rifles to break out of the safe in the summer. It is becoming a burden. I want to hunt them all, but rifle season is still only a couple of weeks long. Every rifle that comes out of the safe has have ammo loaded for it, and has to be properly tested at the bench and cleaned and put up after season.

Before I started to write this, I deliberately went on Amazon and tried to buy one thing that would make me feel like I’d started the yearly ritual of hunting cargo acquisition. I wanted to test myself. I found a Lee Collet neck sizer for 308 WIN. It was just $23 and I’ll have it tomorrow. Did I get a thrill? Did I feel success? Did I feel like I was one step closer to Opening Day? Did I feel like I was acquiring that “Winning Edge?” Piffle. I’m well stocked on 308 WIN ammo. I probably won’t load any this year. I’ve got at least 25 rounds left from the last batch I loaded 3 years ago. It’s just the one chambering left for which I don’t have a neck sizer die. The one rifle that shoots 308 WIN is my Savage 99, and I take it out less than 5 days a year. I felt a little silly ordering it.

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