Halfway through a box of lavish bismuth shot, watching yet another rooster soar (unscathed) into the sunrise, I began to question my devotion to the idea. The echoes from the peanut gallery didn’t help my confidence in the matter. Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the truck and swap out guns? I worked the bolt and dismissed the notion of swapping guns. To do that would be to quit, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Standing in between the edge rows in a field of standing corn, I loosely grasped the wooden forend of the mid-1970s-era shotgun. The shotgun felt strange in my hands. Unorthodox. Yet, the connection had been in the making for over 40 years. The same amount of time had passed for the slightly tight-fitting “brown duck” (think Carhartt) colored game vest I had donned that morning. Yellow shells sat loosely in the outstretched dark brown shell holders on the vest. Was I grasping at memories?