Grin And Bear... Hunting

The Fabled PC and Your Humble Obdn’t &tc just got back from 8 days of travel and bear hunting. The Dainty One stayed in Charlie and Sandy’s cabin, and did not actually take part in the mountain festivities, but instead opted to spend the last of our retirement money on endless bargains at Mennonite Places Of Fleecing Visitors.

Bear hunting is NOT what you might think, Gentle Reader. PETA would be proud. Nobody does anything at all to the bear.

The reason? I quote: "Well, if we shot the bear, we wouldn't be able to chase him."

Here's what happens, and TIG***: ***This Is Gospel

About 20 guys in $45,000-plus pickup trucks, each with three or four stupiddogs in a cage in the back show up at an agreed on spot in Dogpatch, Virginia. In the bleedin' dark. It is so dark back in the mountain forests of Virginia that it looks like a total eclipse at midnight in a coal cellar. Oh… and it is perishing cold!

All the stupiddogs are "Oh-wooo-woooooing" incessantly. Each of the pickup truck drivers is going around, smackin' the heads of the stupiddogs where they stick out of the cages with their camo hats, and shouting:

"Ah TOLE ya ta SHUT UP!!"

Now, why they would have to all wear regulation camo hats escapes me. At no time are they going to sneak up on anything at all. But, back to the racket at the trucks:

Charlie, my hatchet-faced buddy that continually gets me into fine messes, and Your Humble Obdn’t &tc were watching the backwoods types smacking the dogs, and commenting how it seemed to make absolutely zero sense. I mean, how the heck is one stupiddog s’posed to remember to “Shad-DAP!” when forty-three others are hoo-hooing excitedly? It escaped us both, but was quite entertaining. This hat-whacking, rhythmic cussing activity goes on for a half-hour, until at some unrecognizable signal, all the Cadillac-costing pickup trucks begin to wind their way up the vertical dirt road of the mountain.

There is relative silence for about six minutes, when suddenly, all the stupiddogs go absolutely bonkers.

The trucks all stop (15 or so of them). And the owners get out and enthusiastically shout at the stupiddogs to be quiet “I tole ya!” while they unlock the cages and take out one of the three or four stupiddogs in each cage. That is, they try to. The problem is that since ALL the stupiddogs want to go play, it is carnage -- and about half of them escape in the darkness, "woooooo-hooo-woooing" off the side of the road and down the near-vertical mountainside.

All except one inevitable stupiddog, which invariably runs up and down the road with five camo-hatted idjits tryna catch it and send it the right way. The dour-faced and evil-demeanored leader of the men studiously looks away as the embarrassed stupiddog owner tries to get his stupiddog caught. Nobody says anything about the ONLY dog that does not go running to chase the bear. It is safer to malign the guy’s wife and kids than to mention that his dog is a jerk.

Back to the chase.

All the stupiddogs have radio collars on them. Within five minutes, the "woooo-hooooooing" is no longer audible, and the radio direction-finders come out.

"There's Darla, over in the holla past the turnoff.” "Daisy and Buck are above the sod ridge." “Poke an’ Bingo look like they’s are follerin’ the cutoff to Mankey’s Bluff. Dang!”

And so on; all the guys compare notes. (Stupiddogs are all over the state by this time.)

After four hours -- and the release of ALL the stupiddogs piecemeal -- they begin to try to catch the dogs. This takes...

...TIG!!!! (see above for TIG definition)

...several DAYS.

Never saw a bear. Nope. Not one. I got to drive a gazillion-dollar brand-new pickup truck that positivelyretched of wet stupiddog odor, in order to save a guy from having to walk from Utah (or maybe somewhere in the Sierra Madres) to Virginia. It was fun, once my nose was dulled and my stomach was emptied at the side of the road.

Bears 3, stupiddogs and mountain men 0.

On the positive side, The Fabled PC managed to fill up the car with wood carvings and kettle-popped corn to bring back home to the wonderfully flat ground of Florida.

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