First Snow, oct 22! ITS DEEP!

Things have been flying along.  Life is just happening, no time to stop or steer or control anything.

Here is all the snow that is falling this morning.  Two children so far have come up and both have gasped in surprise as their little eyes finally look out the front window of the house.  

Betty and Michael are very interested in when a) hot chocolate and b) apple cider are available.  "if we go play in the snow can we have hot chocolate?" 

Before going outside for the snow, Michael and Betty were asking about snow pants, trying to find their winter gear that we haven't brought out of storage yet, and at one point Michael said "I can't put on snow pants because my snow pants are at Meighans house".  I don't know how to express the levels of dopamine that this causes, but I don't think that a more beautiful label for that house could have been used.  Meighans house.  Maybe one day someone will point out that our cousin lives in the back yard.

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There is a taekwondo tournament in a month, and we'll be travelling to attend.  The children were signed up for 'extra' lessons and training to prepare for the tournament.  The first lesson was yesterday.  quite long!  6-8pm.  it's supposed to be 1.5-2.0 hours I think...

Here is a video of Michael and Betty doing "patterns".  Taekwondo is two parts.  One is taichi ... like patterns.  The other is kicking each other (sparing).

I was rushing home from work, got home at 5:53, grabbed two children in taekwondo uniforms and one in a sweater and tears.  We rushed to get there, only a few minutes late.  On the drive I found out what Alice was mad about.  She was scared, and she didn't like that she wasn't consulted on whether she would agree to this new class.

It was a good class, I sat by Alice the whole time.  I enjoyed hearing her say "i'm bored" beside me.  Yes, it is boring to not participate, but she's also learning all of the 'tips and tricks' told during the class, even if she isn't getting muscle ememory experience.  Two days ago I got an email saying that Richard/Mirandas season tickets to the Calgary Opera would produce tickets to Carmen on the night that we leave for the tournament.  I called to beg for a change and they promptly changed our tickets to the Wednesday before.  They "remembered" us when asking if we had particular request for seats on this change.  I said the isle would best and she said "OH!, you're my giraffes!".  I had put in the application for the season tickets that we were giraffes and would prefer to be on isles for all three sets of tickets that would result from buying the season pass.

So thank goodness the taekwondo tournament will not be affected.  We can still drive down the night before and stay in a 'water slide' hotel before the tournament.  Why are some of these things the anchors of life.  A water slide in a hotel.  WOW.  It was the same when I was a child.

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My father in law and I went hunting for antelope (prong horn) this year.  It was a 5 day hunt.  We were priority 10 which means that we'd asked to hunt these animals for 10 years.  Finally they have granted us a ticket.  After 10 years you start to wonder if you'll ever get a ticket for something.

The hunting grounds granted were for Taber to Medicine Hat, and down to the border.  So far away from Calgary that Chris booked us a hotel in milk river (south end of the hunting area) as a staging point while hunting.  That seemed excessive to me.  When we arrived there were parking lots full of wind mill blades.  Kind of neat, and to see up close shows how truly long they are.

For months I've been telling other major employees that this week I will be gone.  I usually hunt by taking a friday or a monday.  So full stretches of days are unheard of as a requirement for hunting.  I'd told them repeatedly so that I wouldn't feel guilty when the day before hunting began someone would say "WHAT,".  Well, no, no what....  it's either I'm on vacation or I'm fired.  You choose.

The hunting was warm.  Short sleeves, air conditioning, it is all very uncommon.  We usually hunt in knee high snow and layers.  Hunting for deer and elk is a month, or two months.  So there is relatively low pressure to produce and many days in which to perform.  Not so in this situation.  5 days, and if you've got nothing you'll have to be disappointed.

In this photo from the Milk river area, there's one white dot.  Thats an antelope!

All of the land down in 404/406/410 is different.  No fences along the roads which is peculiar.  

We drove down on sunday to 'scout' before beginning the monday to friday hunt.  On sunday night we drove about 20km east of Milk River and started seeing the pronghorn everywhere.  A very different experience to when we hunted antlerless pronghorn in 2017.  The raymond magrath area was much less populated.  Maybe that has changed but maybe not.  Certainly this land 150km east of raymond/magrath is much more densely populated with pronghorn.

We saw a couple of groups of antelope around sunset, and we saw one single buck by itself that was stunning.  Just incredible.  We marked all of these locations down in the gps and went back to the hotel to get some sleep.  It was a bit like christmas eve sleeping.  Both of us were ready to get up early, and ready to get out somewhere way before sun up.

We started monday morning 7am sitting in the field that the big antelope had been in.  Didn't see anything.  We might have scared it out of the bushes because we drove into a grove of trees and grain bins to park the truck before walking to the field.  We might have just drove right into it's sleeping grove because as we got out of the truck something ran like hell out of the area.  After sitting there for 2 hours I said lets move east Chris.  This photo below was where it'd be on sunday.  it was not in this field monday morning.

My hunt was quick.  I shot my antelope at 9:30am on monday.  The act of killing my antelope was like I was a new hunter.  I shot it in the guts, it suffered, the field dressing was the worst I think that I've ever done.  I cut my hand while having two hands deep in the chest cavity covered in antelope blood, and lastly I drug it out 500 yards and rubbed the shoulder so the taxidermist said that he'd have to replace my skin with a replacement one or the final mount wouldn't look good.  So my antelope experience was full of mistakes and heart ache.

After getting my antelope Chris said "lets go back to see if that big ones there".  We were going to drive my antelope right to the taxidermist in Coledale east of Lethbridge.  Low and behold he was one field north and really close to the highway.  As Chris was getting out to shoot it, a little baby/teenager buck came from the north after this monster... and the monster turned and ran.  Weird, why is the big one getting pushed around by the small one?  

I said Chris, get in the truck, I'll drive, and we get ahead of it right now.  It was the most perfect antelope shoot that has ever happened.  We drove 100 yards south, up a lease road, and in front of that monster.  I let Chris jump out of the cab, drop into the ditch, and I drove past and out of the way.  He shot that antelope at maybe... 50 yards.  maybe less. it was soooo easy.  Nope, 60m/60yards.  I just measured on google maps.  I gutted that antelope, and it was like I was a pro.  I did everything right and I was great on this clean up. 

Just as an interesting aside, Chris shot his antelope buck with his 257WBY.  That was the gun that I was rushing to load, reload, and have bullets ready for before we'd left on the sunday.  I included Alice and Betty in the process and here's a video of Betty loading the bullet after the case had it's powder and primer already assembled.

So back to driving towards the taxidermist.  Now we have two antelope.  But before that, we called the hotel and said that instead of staying 5 days, we were going to catch the checkout time for the first day....  wow.  We only paid for one day of hotel, packed up the truck, and started driving north.  

We dropped off the antelopes at the taxidermist, paid our deposits, and were told that we'd have our mounts in early spring.  $1,600 each.  Not cheap but this is not a time to worry about the cost.  Just put it on the credit card and worry about it later.  This was such an amazing adventure.  I circled the mount style that I chose.  It's the cheapest version.  I don't need those fancy wooden holders, and I didn't even want to hear about how much more it'd be.

I'm just now realizing that this report is for you.  I'm also realizing that hunting will not be the same without you.  I had a particular bond right to Doral Pilling with you and with hunting.  I could tell you these stories and it was like I was with you in 1950, 1960, 1970 while hunting was being talked about by Doral and you were around and listening and maybe chiming in.  I'm going to miss that connection.  I don't think that I'll ever have that back again.

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quick last report.

They pulled out a house across from the ishakowas.  hasagowas?  ishakowas.  Betty and I ran over there in the evening.  They'd put up no parking signs all down the road so nobody could park in front of 2427/2423 because in the middle of the night they were going to be driving that house out of there.  Not a big report, but an interesting event.

Someone else also told me that they might change our neighborhood from R2 to R2-C, so every lot can do a 3/3 apartments style build.  Or two side by sides WITH two legal downstairs grandmother suites.  That would change the lot cover from 40% house max, to 60% house max on the land.  An interesting idea.  I don't care either way.  The city sure does want to focus on densification in the neighborhood.

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I also now realize that I haven't even reported on the salmon run from a month ago.  Three weeks ago?  I'll have to save those stories for another post.