From the pages of Swine Hunters In Texas.

When you live 167 miles from your ranch traveling to and fro goes from a hap hazard collection of stuff thrown into the back of your truck, to a highly choreographed exercise in trip management.  Well at least you like to think so. Sometimes it seams that your trips never gets organized and you always are kicking yourself in the rear for forgetting those items that you felt were so necessary for your trip into dark territory. Have you ever arrived at your final destination to realize you have 4 bottles of mayonnaise and no lunch meat or bread?  Or you open your ice chest to find your eggs are now all scrambled in the carton, and you spend the next 20 minutes picking shells out so you can salvage them. These are the joys of the trip.

Countless hours are spent gathering, purchasing, packing, and loading your precious equipment.  Your head is swollen with items that need to be serviced before packing.  Then you go over the infamous check list that Satan himself wrote!  You know this list, it is the one that grows everyday you plan for your trip. You keep checking things off, and when you look at it again you have added two more items.  My beautiful wife and queen who supports these matters has 24 years of military organization firmly implanted and in place.  She just looks at me and just wonders how I pull it off.  To be sure the normal outsider would look upon this operation and think that a fire ant nest had just been stomped on!  My retired sergeant has decided that for the sake of our marriage she just bites her lip and stands to the side and laughs at me.  She laughs, but I know when she goes to the ranch it just multiplies the packing to the point that I need a semi-rig with a 45ft flat bed to get all the stuff to the ranch. (for 2 days)

Guns stacked up over there, dry boxes with food and supplies pushed up in the corner.  Trailer and Speedy Monkey (the jeep wrangler used for transport on the ranch) in the driveway, driving my home owners association crazy yet again.  They can not stand for such unsightly clutter in their neighborhood you know.  I swear every time the trailer comes into the subdivision you can see them scurrying to their computers to pound out yet another letter of chastising words to the redneck down the street. The large collection of these letters makes great kindling for the campfire at the ranch.  So being the friendly neighbor, I thank them every chance possible for their contribution to my war effort.

The challenge for me is interesting in that once your at the ranch you better have everything you need.  The closest store is roughly 40 miles away and closes every evening at 6 when the sidewalks are rolled up for the night.  Electricity is a luxury provided by a 13000 watt generator and at today’s prices about $200 worth of 5 gallon gas cans, all packed neatly on the trailer. Drinking water, and 4 large ice chests filled to the brink with ice, food, water, and beer also need filling and packing. I use the large ice-chests for the game that you hopefully shoot.  There is no running to the cold storage out here.  You have the matter of all the corn and feed needed to refill the feeders. Various dry boxes filled with everything from food to batteries.  Separate dry boxes for your dry hunting clothes, wet weather gear, and cold weather gear. It does not take long before your head is spinning and the tires on your trailer on getting flatter on the bottom from the weight put on them. Oh yeah guns where to put them. I have actually pulled out and realized that the ammunition was still on the table at the house where I left it.

So if your like me you go over and over this mess till you have loaded the entire contents of your garage up.  For me the sight of my fully loaded 16ft trailer and full size pickup brings relief.  It is short lived though when you realize you have to unload all that stuff when you get to where your going.  Does this madness ever end?

The madness started out innocently enough with only a small Ford Ranger pickup and nothing else.  Soon a small utility trailer was added to the ranger pickup.  It was not long before the new full sized Chevy truck came on the scene and I thought all my loading capacity problems were cured.  Well the small utility trailer was added to the Chevy and it took only one trip to realize that still would not be enough.  Well know there is a 16ft dual axel trailer added to the mix.  Now every trip fills both the Chevy, and the trailer to excess.  The worst thing is that I have been contemplating if it would be possible to put a hitch on the back of the 16ft trailer so the small utility trailer can be added on the back.  Soon they will have to put up crossing guards when this land train goes by.

Ok, now your loaded up and ready to roll down that highway.  You go by your local store to be robbed of your money to fill up on gas, and those last minute road snacks.  You pull out and in my case fight the city traffic till all you see is the big city in the rear view mirror.  Once your on the road you have some time to think about the excitement of being in the country with friends and family.  You hope they have arrived safely and they will be there to help you unload all this stuff!  There will be 3 and half hours to think about it every trip. My truck knows the way there it seems like. It just follows the groves in the highway that I have run into the pavement.

It is all worth it though. I would rather be in the middle of nowhere, watching the stars at night anytime.  I thank the man above for all he has given me.  My ranch is my church and my solitude.  You could not ask for any better therapy.  Then you wake up and realize that you have to repack everything and to come home to unpack and start this vicious cycle again another day.

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