Christmas came early for me this year, though it was preceded by a visit from the Grinch. It turns out the Grinch didn’t want me to get a new elk rifle or a fancy over-and-under shotgun this year. Instead, he made sure I had a catastrophic brake failure on my truck, which then required a visit to the repair shop to make the truck roadworthy again.
I feel like I need to give a big shout out to ARS of Cheyenne for getting my truck in on the same day I called and getting it fixed before the end of the day. It normally wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but my wife’s 4Runner is in the shop right now, too, as the result of a deer deciding to play chicken with her one afternoon. I don’t have a spare vehicle anymore, so if both rides were in the shop more than just that one day, I’d have had to resort to driving the tractor to work, or saddling up one of the horses.
So it looks like a new set of rear brakes for the pickup is all Santa’s bringing me this year. I was really hoping for a nice pheasant gun, but I’ll be fine for another year with my old pump Browning BPS. I’ve carried that shotgun on nearly every pheasant hunt I’ve ever been on, and it has served me well. In the last several years, I can count on one hand the number of pheasants I’ve drawn a bead on that made it past that old Browning. If I got a new shotgun, it’d probably take me a few years to get comfortable enough with it to limit out on a hunt. At least with Old Reliable, I know if I see some birds, I’ll have meat for pheasant chili that same night.
Here’s hoping you don’t have any unexpected automotive issues this season. Even though I know I’m not getting a new shotgun this year, I hope several of you out there are. Merry Christmas to you all.
