This man wasn't a hunter and really didn't understand my fascination with firearms. It was hard for him to understand why I wold sit in a tree for hours on end and try to shoot a deer. I think he would have said "defenseless deer", but we will not go there. He was however an Outdoorsman. He loved to fish but I believe his greatest love was for golf. He enjoyed playing golf, talking about golf, watch golf of TV, and buying stuff to play golf better------------------WOW if you changed golf to deer hunting then it would be me, haha. I always told him that he should have tried to do the senior tour. He always said he wasn't good enough and couldn't have afforded it. I told him to buy a RV and see the world, haha. He was also a very accomplished baseball player and even played minor leagues in his younger years. Sportsman and outdoorsman are not always synonymous but they do often go together.
Another outdoorsman that loved the outdoors but wasn't much of a hunter was my father. He enjoyed his gardening, his yard work, and was a logger and forester who lived and breathed the outdoors. Like my father, this outdoorsman kept a heck of a yard in his day. Before his retirement, the man was a fanatic on keeping his yard up. I love to work in the yard, but admit that other things take priority at times :) But to each his own.
"To each his own" is I believe the moral of this story. This short story is in remembrance of Jordan Duick my father-in-law. He passed away last year on my birthday. I am sure that he is somewhere laughing about that one. But in remembrance of him, I want my son James Jordan Arnold to love the outdoors. I would love for him to love to hunt, but more than that I want him to love and respect the outdoors. I do and both of his grandfathers did in their own ways as well.
As I write this on my birthday, I remember a good man who was a lover of the outdoors and left his mark on about everyone that met him.
