Top_Heavy's World

"When is anything ever easy?" Quote from Jody Chalupa December of 2008... a statement that would set the stage for an interesting opening weekend!

Thursday night found me doing laundry, packing and loading the truck for my annual trek to SW Iowa to joing friends for opening weekend of 2nd shotgun deer season. Being overly busy, I didn't watch the weather reports and found myself in the unusual situation of being ill prepaired for a hunt... but I am getting ahead of myself.
Friday the gun was ready, the truck was fueled and I picked Jody at his place. He was as tired of work as I was, and we actually "high fived" as we headed towards the interstate. I was still making work calls, answering questions, checking on payroll... whom ever said an "Operations Director is an easy job" should try it, your days never end! We hit the road, turned South and set the cruise control, Hwy 380 South, Hwy 80 West. It is amazing, all of my good stories involve going North or West...
I called good friend Doug Graham on the way into Des Moines and we all met for dinner. Doug was gracious enough to bring a bucket... no a really big plastic TUB, of huge shed antlers he has found over the years. I could write books on Doug, the stories and monster deer that he has harvested are several average hunter's lifetimes worth, and yet Doug is in his mid 30's!!! We snarfed down the subs and I showed him the Moose Buck I took this year. He then 1 upped me by pulling the HUGE 9 pnt he shot on video this fall. I know the buck will make the Whitetail Freaks video, and this deer is worth watching for! Doug jumped in the truck with Jody and I and we ran a short distance and hooked up with IowaDeer.com owners John Sable and Brian Sykes.... These 2 crazy outdoorsmen had the dream of starting the best Iowa deer hunting forum and blog, and I think they have done it. The stories told in that cold parking lot were amazing, 4 overly macho men telling about heartbreaks, loves, harships and passions. The hours raced by and we all had to get moving so we dropped Doug at the sandwich shop and we got back on the interstate.
As Jody so properly mentioned at the beginning of this tale, when is anything ever easy... making the sweaping left turn by the Urbandale water tower and the truck downshifts and about puts my face against the windshield. Traffic was weaving around us, several accidents were barely avoided and I tried to speed back up. I would slowly get the truck to 2000 rpms and it would dog out. It was 37 degrees, so how could it be the fuel filter? I pulled into the truck stop there, tried everything I could to locate a new filter, hit Walmart and when I was out of options, I got back on 80 and gently continued on our way. I was able to maintain almost 65, so it wasn't so bad... we arrived at our destination after midnight. The house was dark, but warm as we brought in our gear. The floor was very hard as we finally crashed for the night... 5:00 am will be here very soon...