SELT Hunt 2003

The killing tournament of 2003 has come to a close. This was the 4th Annual S.E.L.T. Hunt (Shoot Every Living Thing) that my brother and friend hold each fall. Now, before you all call us a bunch of baby killing monsters, we only shoot/score legal animals taken in season – no white buffalo were injured in the making of this post.

Here’s the SELT rundown. This is a one day hunting tournament with a scoring sheet where certain animals are worth various points and if the animal you bag isn’t on the list, the scoring committee will determine it’s point value. Example a pheasant is worth 35, and a squirrel is worth 10 – you shoot a squirrel with two heads, you’ll probably get bonus points. Creativity or a good story counts for something, but most points wins when it’s all said and done.

Now, due to alcohol carryover from the pre-homecomming festivities on Friday night, I was a bit late to the event – but I’ll save that story for another post if those brain cells ever come back.

Anyway, I missed out on the morning hunts and also missed much firing of pistolas into the air in celebration aeeiaieieia-eieiaiaelelala-llalalala (you kinda had to be there). With my late start I had some serious making up to do. I covered my parents 80 acres looking for grouse, because that was the highest valued creature on the list. I didn’t see a damn thing. In a last minute desperate attempt to not get skunked, I popped a couple of little birds and hoisted them in the back of my truck. Knowing my death pile was not up to par and the fact that I missed half the day due to liver inadequacies, I had to come up with a better story. I managed to convince the guys that I was in fact hunting very early – say just after midnight – for an elusive breed of (mom quit reading now) beaver. That saved just enough face, and my tweety birds assured I didn’t get last place.

We had to rendezvous at Base Camp Alpha, aka the garage, for scoring at 5:00. 300 points took it all, I had whopping 10 points – as I said I wasn’t really in contention.

In kill it and grill it fashion we then had a barbecue and played an old school drinking game called 3-man. After playing 3 man long enough, many had trouble adding two dice together, and sitting in chairs. We eventually quit playing 3 man, because most of us were plenty “full”. The dice was followed by an on the spot invention called red-neck shuffleboard. Chalk, a broom, and clay pigeons were the equipment. The games lasted a solid 3 hours; scoring and competition was intense. I should have took pictures.

From there we headed to an outdoor keg party in celebration of Doc turning a quarter century old, were there was more firing of riffles into the air.

I don’t know how we managed to pack so much into a single day, but it was a ton of fun. See you all there next year.