I can never come up with a good Halloween costume

If you’re like me, you spend most of your spare time every October getting the kids’ costumes ready for their big night. That doesn’t leave much time for you to work on your own Halloween outfit. But if you hunt, there’s hope.

Between all the usual obligations and the added hunting-related activities you need to juggle in October, there isn’t much time to put together a Halloween costume. That’s no big deal, at least until your better half informs you that you’ll be going to a Halloween party tonight.

Every year, on Halloween night, I accompany my kids on their annual candy-collecting foray in a very lame costume. I dress as a harried father. It’s not much of a stretch, and it violates all the rules of Halloween costumes. You’re supposed to dress as something completely unexpected.

That means if you want to do it right, you can’t go with the obvious last-minute “elk hunter” or “duck hunter” costume. That’s just too natural. You have to shake it up a little bit. But if you have a garage filled with hunting gear, you have plenty of options.

You could go with the “Zombie Hunter” look. If you don’t have time to make a quick trip to the costume section of your local department store, maybe you can raid the makeup supply in the bathroom, if there are any makeup users in your household. If that makeup isn’t yours, though, a word of warning – you might want to ask before you use it, or the blood on your costume won’t be the fake variety. If you have any old-school hunting gear, you might be able to pull off the Elmer Fudd look. Or if you have a giant landing net you’re not going to need anymore, cut some holes in it for your legs and go as a netted fish.

Shake it up a little. You don’t need to work hard to have a good Halloween costume, but you ought to be a little creative.

For my part, I think I’m going to go as something as far from normal as I can get. I’m going to dress as a successful fly fisherman.