Speaking of hunting video games, I’ve been real hunting several times with my late step-dad. He was an avid deer hunter, and when we boys were younger, he often took one of us with him. Although I went with him on occasion, I never came to enjoy hunting — but not for the reason you might first think.

To go deer hunting required that we wake up at 4:00 a.m., in the fall and winter, get dressed, pack up, and drive out to the wilderness of the next county over. I never was a morning person; I never liked getting up two hours before light. I’ve never been a fan of cold weather; I never liked standing patiently in the 25-30 degree climate.

My step-dad would be talking with his fellow hunters over the CB radio, handling his dogs at the back of the truck, standing on the back of the truck, on top of the dog box, scanning the fields for a target. I would usually spend my time sitting in the cab of the pick-up truck half asleep, shivering in the cold. Now, once noon came, and the sun was high and the air was above freezing, I was ready to hunt. Unfortunately, the hunting day was winding down about that time.

Although I went hunting probably over a dozen times in my youth, I never killed a deer. I think I’m the only boy in the family (1 full brother, 3 step brothers) who never did. I’ve shot squirrels, birds, and many paper targets, but I never bagged a deer. I never even fired at a deer. That’s kind of pathetic for a boy growing up in a deer-hunting family.

I’ve seen my step-dad shoot deer. I’ve helped drag carcasses back to the truck, I’ve watched as he cut a deer up, and I’ve carried the fresh meat. I always wanted to shoot a deer (or at least shoot at one). I did have two distinct chances, though, but I failed.

Once, I was hidden in some tall grass and weeds in the middle of an otherwise bare farm field. I had gotten tired of standing in the cold, so I was sitting on the ground. I couldn’t see out of the grass, but I didn’t care. I was cold, tired, and just damned unhappy. I could hear the dogs barking and howling in the woods to the south of the field I was in, but I never see a deer anyway, so I didn’t really pay attention.

Suddenly I heard what sounded like a horse galloping, and then a second later, a deer burst through the grass and weeds. It passed in a zip just three feet beside me — I could have reached out and touched it. It happened so fast, and seemingly out of the blue, that I just jumped and gave a shout. I was so surprised and startled that I didn’t realize what had happened for another couple seconds. By the time my mind had registered the event, I saw the deer bound into the woods on the other side of the field. My shotgun was still lying on the ground.

The other time, I was sulking in the pick-up truck, hating the cold and early morning. We were parked in an empty field on one side of a big, long dirt windbreak (about 10′ high). My step-dad was standing a few yards behind the truck listening to the dogs in the distance.

Someone several hundred yards away, on the other side of the big mound fired a shot. The pick-up truck rocked as my step-dad leaped up onto the back. I was fully alert by then, and getting out of the cab.

Three deer ran around the end of the dirt mound, maybe 30 yards in front of the truck. There I was, standing ready with my shotgun in my hands. I threw the gun to my shoulder, leveled the barrel on the lead deer — I could see it’s antlers — and aimed for a moment, then squeezed the trigger. Nothing. I squeezed again. Nothing.

Just as the deer jumped into some tall brush, I heard the boom from my step-dad’s rifle behind and above me. He fired three times but I couldn’t see the targets from my level, standing on the ground.

What the hell had happened? I checked my gun and realized I had forgotten to turn off the safety. Dammit. You have got to be kidding me, I thought.

My step-dad had killed one of the deer, and I helped him bring it back out of the brush. I was pumped up on adrenaline for a long time, even forgetting about the cold for a while. But once I had come down from the excitement, I was so very disappointed.

That was the last time I went deer hunting.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

One of Calfgrit7’s friends had a birthday party at a new small amusement park. For the party, the kids — 6 boys, 1 girl (the sister of the birthday boy) — road the bumper boats, drove go-carts, and played minature golf.

After pizza and cake, the party ended and most parents and kids went away. CG7 and I toured the huge arcade area. I haven’t been in an arcade that big in years. They had everything from the old classic Donkey Kong and Galaga to new, high-graphic games I hadn’t seen before.

Instead of quarters or tokens, this arcade took swipe cards. You can get a swipe card at the counters or at self-service machines — I used a machine, and I put $10.00 on a card. I figured that would give us plenty of game play even if the games were 50 cents a play.

I quickly discovered most of the games were $1 a play. Well, okay, we’d get 10 games on the card. Calfgrit7 got to drive in a NASCAR race, I flew a WWII fighter plane, and we hunted deer and buffalo together. This was Calfgrit7’s first time playing a shooting video game. I was hesitant at first, but I’d rather him have his first shooting game experience with me than with his little friends.

I’ve always had a draw to shooting games; I like to shoot real guns, and I’m a pretty good aim. But arcade shooting games have always been frustrating. The guns are always badly aligned, and my first quarter (or dollar) is always wasted on trying to figure out how the gun is aligned — a game gun’s alignment can vary greatly depending on distance from the screen, closeness to the edge of the screen, angle to the screen. (And sometimes I think they have some random variability.)

We played the hunting game three times, and Calfgrit7 loved it. After the first game, I had figured out the alignment of my gun, and I was racking up the hits and trophies. We chose team play, so my shooting could keep us both in the game for a decent amount of time.

One thing that quietly tickled me about this game was the eye-candy girls that came out on the screen and posed between the hunting rounds. Totally unnecessary for the game, but completely playing to the target demographic (no pun intended). It was a different girl every time, but they all wore the same outfit and held that gun like the plastic prop it must have been.

I would love to have been in the game development meeting where the idea to put these girls in the break scenes came up. How hard or easy was it to convince the producer to allow the extra budget to pay the models and video photographer. I mean, the girls add absolutely nothing to the game play aspect of the program, but they probably do draw in more eyes from male players looking for the next machine to slide a buck in. (Was that a Freudian pun?)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

There’ve been some “weather events” in our area over the past week or so. We’ve had some heavy rain, some strong winds, and then five minutes of intense hail one night. The news warned of tornadoes, but none appeared in our city.

The hail came down with a roar in the middle of the night, and it woke our whole family up. I’ve only heard hail like that one other time, about four years ago — and it then only lasted about five minutes, too. It’s kind of cool to hear that sound. It’s a steady drumming and thrumming all over. If one didn’t know what it was, I could imagine it sounds like some kind of rapture.

The first thing I did when I could get outside the next morning was to check for any damage, but there wasn’t any. There was no evidence that it had hailed at all. Hail is pretty rare in our area. I’ve only seen it, that I can remember, that one time before, four years ago.

If you’ve seen the news last week, you’ve probably seen the reports of tornadoes in some Southern states. I remember the “night of seven tornadoes” around my hometown, back when I was in high school. Our school was closed for a couple days afterward while they checked for and fixed the relatively minor damage. Fortunately, there was very little damage in our town, but several areas in the county were severely torn up. We drove around and looked at some of the damage, and I can still remember seeing a car upside down in the woods just off the road, a roof torn off a house, and many trees (mostly pines) snapped like toothpicks.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ve complained in a previous post about how fast food restaurants give tiny little cups for water but huge barrels for drinks. Here’s Hardee’s caught in the act:

Water in the left cup, drink in the right cup — notice the larger cup is labeled “SMALL.” Although, I’ll give them credit for at least giving me a solid cup rather than the flimsy plastic thing that some restaurants give for water. Those things sometime collapse if you don’t handle them carefully.

But to be fair to the restaurants, they don’t usually charge for water, so the cup is basically for free. I’d be willing to pay for water (and I have a couple times just to get the decent cup). I don’t want to pay full drink price for water, but half price might be fair. If a small drink costs a dollar, an equal-size water could be 50 cents.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com