Unlucky Stretch

It happens to me.  It happens to everyone.  

An incredibly unlucky stretch of events was my plight over the weekend.  Fortunately most of the things worked out, regrettably not everything.  However I am still alive and not much worse for wear.

In no particular order:

Upon returning to our house our furnace wasn't kicking in and engaging properly.  It tried to turn over, but it wouldn't.  Despite it being unseasonably warm, the house was still cool at 58 or so degrees fahrenheit.  Being only 1 year old, I wasn't too pleased with its sudden break down.  However the place I bought it immediately came over, the owner of the business, and wrenched and tweaked and basically sorted it out.  He thought water wasn't draining out of it too well and trip up a switch and so on and so forth....  Not a big deal.  It got going.  And I will tell you reading this; buy local!  Buy from someone who will be over and stand by their product.  By from a small town shop.  It may cost a bit more, but dam is it worth it.  

My second stretch of bad luck, but was fixed was my truck wasn't working too great.  The thing sat for well over 35, or close to 40 days because I can't even remember driving it too much before I left on the holiday.  I had a weird rhythmic tapping noise, sort of like a knock, seemingly from the valves on top of the engine....  Lots of oil, lots of power in the truck, but a concerning noise....  Well dam if I hadn't been driving it for a day or to, then all of the sudden a spark plug exploded like a bullet and flew out of the socket it sits!  It smashed on the ground and ricoceted back up to and in the bottom of the truck.  That was a surprise.  But the truck still ran, not well, but limped on its 5 remaining cylinders.  The spark plug was found - hotter then you-know-what, and I got it to my trusty local mechanic.  Viola!  Put a new spark plug in it, reattached the wires, and it runs fine - who'd know?  

I had a stumble with my gun deer hunting on the weekend, but it isn't what you'd think.....

Driving around with my buddy Larry, we had disposed of our cases and locks in the back of my truck.  This is before the blown out spark plug obviously....  Anyway at the end of the hunt we packed up and left the field. Unlocked, yet legal, the guns were in the back of my truck and we drove home.  Larry took his items, I said good bye, and returned home.  While at home, I unloaded my things and locked and cased my gun until the following morning's hunt.  I get to the hunt, early the next morning, and went to the rear of my truck to get my things.  I tried my rolling numerical combination, it didn't work.  Perhaps it was upside down, or some other strange reason why the combination I had used for 8 years all of the sudden doesn't work....  There was a perfectly good explanation - I had the wrong lock on the gun.  It was Larry's.  And despite only having a 3 number sequence of 10 digits each, I didn't think I had the time to go through 000, 001, 002, 003, and so on to 999 and try them all in an appropriate amount of time before those waiting to go hunting would get fed up.  It was 7:10 in the morning - too early to call Larry.  Dam.  What to do?  A locked gun is certainly no good for hunting anything.  This may not ease any safety experts reading this, but the one guy I was hunting with flashed out his multi-tool knife and simply picked the locked = in like 2 seconds!  Third problem solved...

It was deer hunting that my final stretch of bad luck occurred.  On the Friday night I shot a nice sized doe about 10 minutes before the legal hunt ended.  I could not believe my luck as I am not a great shot, nor do deer usually walk out on me, and I was quite far away - 70 or 80 yards.  I took my time aiming, and after a squeeze of the trigger the doe immediately dropped and flutter quite convincingly on the ground.  I was shocked.  After a bit of time it managed to get up and unenthusiastically, head towards the bush from where it came.  Still in shock, but not worried, I thought it was simply taking it last few steps and then succumbing to the shot.  I get up from my spot and go to the the spot it hit the ground.  There was lots of hair, no blood, but an obvious path into the bush and sure enough there was blood within 10 feet from its initial drop.

To make a long story short we cased and locked the guns, got my truck (again before the spark plug blasted out of it), got some flashlights, and would proceed after it.  We clearly followed its path for about 60 or 70 minutes with flashlights and in the complete darkness.  But my buddy is an expert at stuff like this and he just took over.....  Anyway the path of blood just vanished.  Maybe it was the darkness?  But after 45 minutes to one hour we thought we'd give up for the night and retrieve in the morning = After a bit of hunting in the morning, we returned to our last trail tape/flagging, and still nothing could be found.  Footprints, rather hoof prints went everywhere, but there was no blood, hair or drag to indicate the direction the doe went.  She was gone.... Not retrieved.  The one guy I was with said it unfortunately happens regularly.  But I certainly wouldn't know that because in 7 years, and countless hours of deer hunting I have only every really seen a two dozen deer, shot at 4, and tagged 1 before this weekend.  So I was disappointed.  I can only now guess what became of the deer with the large coyote population and lots of cars on the road.  Every attempt was made to find it.  So what else can one do?

All in all I am a very lucky guy and bounces usually roll my way.  It seemed like a lot of unfortunate occurrences where more prevalent over the last week/weekend however.  Hey - that's fine.  If they have to happen, at least it is things that aren't really life or death or involve the kids.  Furnaces and trucks can be fixed, and locks get opened.  I hope that is it for a while though...