1st time in many many years without a lease. For many reasons, I opted off my lease, and it's driving me crazy. I miss my friends, I miss the campfire, I miss the daybreaks in the blind.

With all the crazy shi* in today's news....now more than ever, I want to be in the woods...and I'm not there.

Thanks for listening......

Chucky

Right there with you buddy,

The good thing is I have great friends and family

Get ya a Type II permit and hunt some public land. If I didn't have family land to hunt for free, I'd be there myself. I could not go cold turkey on hunting. I know I'd go crazy.


Jay

I'm truly sorry......I couldn't even fathom the idea.

I'd let you hunt my place when I'm not hunting if you wouldnt shoot at my 14 point. Hes my breeding buck.

Where you located Chucky?

"A BUCK THAT SMART, YA DONT EAT ALL AT ONCE"

LAMO

I'm in Sugar Land, SW of Houston. Beyond this year, I need to start looking now for next year. I'd like to find someplace within three hours drive of Houston, that's kid friendly, with good folks. Wait....isn't that what everyone wants??? LOL

I FEEL YOUR PAIN.... WHEN I COULDN'T AFFORD A LEASE FOR A FEW YEARS, I HUNTED WITH A CAMERA IN STATE PARKS AND NATIONAL FORREST. IT WASN'T QUITE THE SAME BUT IT DID GET ME OUT THERE AND KEPT (EVEN IMPROVED) MY SKILLS.

I am in the same situation. The lease I have been on for 12 years got bought in August. I did not find another lease so I will be hunting public land this year. It will be different but at least I can get out and go. I don't think I could just stop going.

Sorry to hear of your situation.

After my first wife and I divorced, I ended up having to sell off several of my guns, and I was out of hunting for 3 or 4 years.

I was able to get back into it a little before Lora and I married, but she is really understanding and as long as I can figure out how to pay for it, and we have a place to go with the meat, she does not really care how much I hunt or fish.

That does not mean however that I don't look back with regrets over those years I was not able to hunt.

Maybe some of the folks down in that part of the state will work out something with you for a chance at a doe or two at least, or maybe someone will have a cull hunt that you can get set up for.

Best of Luck and hope you are able to get a few hunts put together.

Let me clarify a bit. Not for sympathy, but because life often presents a crossroad, and we must choose which path to take. I am confident I took the right path, and while I miss my time in the woods, I know I'm where I should be....regardless of where I WISH I was....

In June of '07, my wife got a phone call "your mammogram came back and we've looked at it, and we've determined that we'd like you to come in for an MRI". Then, after the MRI a biopsy. The next phone call was "come on in, and.....bring your husband".

My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and surgery was scheduled. Surgery went well, and pathology confirmed the surgeon got it all, so onward she marched to radiation treatment. That ended in September of '07, and she began a drug regimen that she will probably be on for years to come, if not forever.

The last year has presented several health issues for her, and as we all know, the aging process compounds the issues. The drug regimens fight one thing, only to cause a problem somewhere else. We've had more tests, and recently emergency surgery for yet another growth, which has come back benign.

So my decision to opt off my lease was so I could be by her side, and not be gone every third weekend.

My time in the woods will come back soon enough. My reward comes when she lies in bed next to me at night and whispers "I'm glad you're home".

Priorities.

Hope I haven't been "Danny Downer". Not being in the woods this year has been tough, we all know that's what we're about. Make no mistake, I miss it, but I couldn't be happier.

Chucky

I don't think you are being "Danny Downer" as you stated.

Life hands all of us some really bad hands from time to time and we have to play them out.

Sometimes to play the hand and stay in the game, we have to make choices, sometimes hard choices.

As you said, Priorities, and family, especially in a case like this must take priority over our own/your own personal wants or desires especially of material things.

You, and your wife and family are in mine and Lora's thoughts and prayers, and we hope that things turn out the way you describe them.

May you and your wife have a long Happy life together, and may you get to return to the hunting fields, with your wife waiting for you to come home at the end of the day.

I pray everthing goes well for your wife and you. And whenever you get to go hunting it will be soon enough.