Rick, thanks for bringing this up. I've kept a log/journal since my second season following a Gordon Setter (and for about 7 years before that from my experiences sitting in a tree stand, bowhunting). You are so right about what your old notes can do to add to/subtract from your perceptions about things -- from bird numbers, to temperatures, to a pup's development. I'm always surprised, and often chagrinned at how my memory changes the past. I've also been blessed that my hunting partner for all this time has carried a camera and not a gun, so I have both photos and "word pictures" to connect me with the past. I've been spending the last few (bad weather) days scanning old Kodachrome slides to my computer. It's like going back 30 years when things seemed so much simpler than they do now.
I'd be interested in reading more about your journal entries...and anyone else's who might also add theirs to this thread.
I've attached a few of the slide conversations I've made. They include my first two bird dogs...and a much younger me.
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"Doubtless the good Lord could have made a better game bird than bobwhite, and better country to hunt him in...but equally doubtless, he never did." -- Guy de la Valdene (from A Handful of Feathers )
"'I promise you,' he said, 'on my word of honor, I won't die on the opening of the bird season.'" -- Robert Ruark (from The Old Man and the Boy)
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