Savor the moment.
On opening weekend of pheasant season in Minnesota, this seems to be especially good advice.
In the autumn of 2007, state hunters are expected to find more ringnecks roaming the state than was thought possible only a few years ago. Ain't that grand.
So, savor the opportunity. Savor the anticipation of the hunt. Savor the grassy haunts. Savor the robust cackle of a cock bird. Savor it all.
Why? Good times don't last forever.
The lesson has been on my mind, of late, on subjects ranging from hunting days to family ties.
These days I am blessed with a 3-year-old grandson who, for now, seeks my company like a thirsty pup. "Will you play with me, Grandpa?" he asks, melting my heart.
I savor the moment. I know my time is limited. The day will come when new playmates will come into his life -- school buddies, neighborhood kids ... and later, girlfriends ... who will, and rightly so, require his attention.
Yes, I am a playmate on borrowed time.
Just like pheasant hunting.
My early memories of Minnesota pheasant hunting only three decades ago involve a sea of plowed cornfields and fence lines no wider than sidewalks, and pheasants down on the farm were rarer than dairy bulls.
Many hunters, including me, thought Minnesota's pheasant hunting couldn't get much worse and wasn't likely to improve much, either.
In South Dakota these days, the pheasant hunting mood is downright giddy. For many years now, ringnecks have been flying over the western prairie like autumn blackbirds.
Yes, there's unabashed joy in the nation's Pheasant Capital.
But I remember another time in South Dakota. It was 1966, and the pheasant population had crashed to lows never seen by South Dakotans.
As usual, the hunt was on for something to blame -- everything from too many predators to too many nonresidents shooting the birds.
When I was a kid growing up in Iowa, the state's pheasant heyday acted like a roller coaster. Bird counts crashed in northern Iowa and, meanwhile, surged upward in southern Iowa. Pheasant biologists from Iowa State made careers trying to answer the puzzle of the missing ringnecks.
That's what I mean: Savor the moment.
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