Thanks for the kind remarks, I appreciate them. As to your comment:

My friend admitted to me he didn't feel any exictement on the eve before the hunt - to him it's just another day hunting....Obviously that's not the case with you. I'm glad you still celebrate such occasions....

After 40+ years of hunting I still get excited about Opening Day. Autumn always seems to me to be the start of the year, not the end of it. The September squirrel season is the beginning of my calendar, and there are several other "High Holy Days" in it, Opening Day being one of them.

In years past Virginia had muzzle-loading rules that prohibited scopes and in-line rifles; you had to use a sidelock gun with iron sights. That Opening Day was always a great time because it was so quiet and there were so few hunters in the woods. The Opening Day of the rifle season two weeks later had its own excitement. Since the rules change some years ago, the deer season now opens on the first day of the ML season, and the "old" Opening Day has lost its magic and symbolism. Maybe that's why your friend didn't think of it as special, I suppose too many Opening Days sort of dilute the excitement.

I have no quarrel with the abundance of game we have today, but one thing that's also been lost is the introduction of new hunters with small game, especially squirrels. Nowadays the deer hunting is so great that kids start out with deer and turkeys, and bypass the art of squirrel hunting altogether, which is a shame. They don't know what they're missing. I even had a kid in a Hunter Ed class (I'm an HE Instructor) ask me WHY I hunt squirrels, as if there were no reason to do so! As in other aspects of life some of these kids "mature" a little too fast and don't ever savor the initial phases of any activity and the learning process that goes with each new discovery and success.

Another thing I wish would change is the emphasis placed on getting the biggest, baddest buck with the largest set of antlers in the woods. I've heard stories (I hope they're not true) of headless carcasses being left in the woods, the hunters having shot Old Mossyhorns, and taken the head to the taxidermist, leaving the rest for the crows. I'd turn a man in to the DGIF for that if I saw it happen. When I did my first African hunt last year, I told the PH that I didn't give a damn about Rowland Ward or SCI or any other "book," and all I wanted was any legal animal. He was a little nonplussed, I don't think he'd ever encountered an American before who felt that way.

I have no objection to trophy hunting as such, but I'm a self-taught hunter. I had no instruction whatever. I worked so long and hard for my first deer that even now, after having killed dozens of them, I regard ANY deer as a "trophy," whether it has antlers or not. I eat what I kill and I can't eat horns anyway.