Before I got medically banned from hunting my best hunts, for many years, were between Christmas and closing day. I didn't even get serious until Christmas. Everyone else was either tagged out or more into football, or both. North breeze is reliable, freezing most mornings, chance of snow at any moment. Woods were nearly deathly quiet. Cardinals and robins everywhere. An occasional puffy little sparrow would share my stand. I saw deer that nobody had seen all season. I loved those end of season hunts, but closing up camp alone at sunset at the the end of the season always made me sad.

By golly, there's a writer in there somewhere. You've been in nature in a way not many modern men are. No doctor can take that away from you.