Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: JW_Halverson on February 28, 2013, 12:22:11 am
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I've been doing a lot of phone calling to folks I have lost touch with in the last few years to make sure they all know a common friend of ours is in Hospice Care and is on his way out. Jerry is 78, has squeezed three good men's worth of living into his 4'10" tall body. He grew up in a rough neighborhood with plentyof rough characters to run with. He was wild, and many a guy twice his size realized what a bad choice it was to step into a fight with Jer'.
When he was 40 he started chasing a 18 yr old college freshman. Or maybe she was chasing him, they have yet to settle this arguement 38 years later. When the engagement was announced his best friend went looking for him with a gun. It seems his best friend was the father of his bride-to-be. It was years before the bad blood between them was allowed to seep into the ground.
He and several drinking buddies were in Murphy's on Main Street in Rapid City, SD one day when the blizzard had shut everything else down. Skilled and talented barstool drivers to a man, they hung on when lesser men would have succumbed to the alcohol and gravity. But between them they pounded out the bylaws and started the very first muzzleloading club in South Dakota. I am honored to twice be president of that group.
He hunted years with an original French trade gun, built several beautiful flintlocks to his own exacting standards, and eventually found an original Belgian 16 guage side by side flintlock shotgun built some time around 1790. He's taken only one big game animal in his adult life with a modern gun and is still ashamed of his actions! He's even doubled on giant canada geese with that double smokepole!
But he's run his last trapline in the shining mountains and the route to his Last Rendezvous is mapped out for him. Despite the strokes in the last week, he is lucid enough to know what his options are...none and nothing. And he's ok with that. He's made his peace with the Great Booshway long ago and his conscience is clear.
So I was talking with one of our mutual friends and he said he's been to too many funerals of good men this year. He asked what's the point? I told him to look at Jerry's life. THAT'S the point. Pack every bit of living into this life you can, make good friends and take good care of 'em, help others, love every one you can, and forgive those you can't.
Yeah, that's the point.
When you get to the Great Encampment ahead of me, Jerry, save me a prime spot for my tent, I'll be there soon enough. I'll bring fat buffalo and you can tell me more of those stories of the sod house in Nebraska and runnin' nekkid into the blizzard with those other hivernants on the great Winter Hunt.
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Sorry to hear about your friend JW. Beautifully written sir. Thoughts and Prayers with family and friends
Matt
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You really put it in perspective. He sounds like a great guy and a heck of a man. My thoughts and prayers for all the family and friends
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Sorry about your friend JW,sounds like my kind of people.Great story.Thoughts and prayers with friends and family. :)
Pappy
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sorry to hear about your friend Jw.he sounds like a great guy.
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Sorry to hear about you're friend JW I got one sorta like him on the way out too. Be strong for him. Ron
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Sorry to hear, JW. Your friend sounds like a good man. Hopefully we all can leave a legacy like that.
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Thank you for sharing this! I'm sorry for upcoming pain and sorrow for the friends and family of Jerry. You have given us a good lesson on life and its sounds like your friend lived it to the fullest. "Point" well taken. Prayers sent up for you and all who are blessed to know and love Jerry.
Matt
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I'm sorry for the rest of us JW, because we didn't live the life Jerry lived, the adventures that carried him to where he is now. Its hard to say good bye to old friends but their memories keep them alive in our minds and hearts forever. Hospice will help him with the transition from this world to the next.
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Forgiving, the most important part of our later life, something I thought I would never be able to do but learned I could a couple of years ago.
Once learned, forgiveness will unshackle oneself from a tremendous burden we think we have to carry through life.
I started with my ex-wife and her adulterous behavior, then my mentally ill parents for the abuse and progressed to every boss and bully that made my life miserable.
Then, I took a deep breath of the fresh air I created, savored it and thought,"why didn't I do this sooner".
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My Prayers for Jerry and Laurie, they are two of the best people you could ever meet.
I was fortunate enough to have Laurie as a supervisor. I was already making selfbows at the time and when she learned of this a dinner invite was extended. It was there I was introduced to Jerry. You couldn’t help but like the guy, I could sit there and listen to his stories for hours. He has a charisma you could feel.
We weren’t best buddies just acquaintances with similar views in conservation and fair chase. I was in Rapid City for a period of 2 ½ years before I returned to graduate school. Over the years we lost touch. Now I sit here with tears in my eyes and a smile in my heart, thinking of my friends and the stories of Dirty Pierre, Patsy Cline and Ambergris.
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Dirty Pierre, an original French trade gun, belongs in a museum....but got carried hard in the field. How many people do you know got a double on rooster pheasants with a single shot original black powder trade gun???
You gotta hear this one! Jerry and his young wife, Laurie, were over in the eastern part of the state for a pheasant hunt. Everyone is carrying pump shotguns and semi-autos. They were hunting in large parties, everyone abreast 25 yds apart marching down cornfield after cornfield. Nobody had a bird yet. Everyone was looking at Jerry and his "stupid" antique gun with an eye fulla stink. He'd had enough of these military maneuvers and decided they'd bug out. So he and Laurie went to a small piece of public land to try puddlejumping ducks. As they were walking up on a puddle he sees something odd popping up out of the tal grass and falling back down. It repeats over and over. When they were close enough, it was revealed...two rooster pheasants scrapping with each other. And they were like clockwork, popping up every few seconds. He just gets in the rhythm of this and when they popped up, he popped a cap (literally, this is a caplock gun!) on them! DOUBLES! Later they came back with the two roosters and a couple of ducks he'd shot. No one else in the modern brigade had yet to hit anything!
As for Ambergris, she's a beautiful flintlock .54 cal rifle he built with a moosehunt in mind. He inlaid a gorgeous silver moosehead silhouette in the stock for "medicine", and later added several silver sperm whales in the forend. I have a collection of photos of that gun resting against large whitetail deer. It's a proven meat-maker. Always in fairest possible chase, no camoflauge, no cover sent, no bait, no elevated shooting platform, just a man and a gun sitting against a tree or a rockpile. "The secret is to spend most of your life sitting on all the wrong places to hunt deer until you have weeded them out. After that you will always kill your buck, " Jerry says.
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I'm sorry to hear of your friend. I am sure you were lucky to have him as a friend, and I am sure he was lucky to have you as a friend as well. I wish him only the best.
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Prayers offered!
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Sorry to hear that JW. He sounds like a heckuva guy. I know you'll miss him.
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The best of times , the worst of times !
Life is both of them all rolled together !
Sorry that I did not get to know your friend !
Sounds like a good one !
I look forward to meeting you soon !
Ask me about Smoke on the water when we do !
I will take time out to pray for your friend and family !
Take care !
Guy
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I have two older friends in similar situations right now! I take comfort in knowing that they have lived to their fullest, as it sounds Jerry has. Prayers offered to all.
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Beautifully written, John. Brought incredible imagery to my mind. If you can dig up some of those pic's you mentioned some time, I think there's more than a few on here that would love to see them.
May he pass peacefully, surrounded by loved ones.
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I know there are legions of angels standing around hoping to be the ones picked to wing him home.
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Don't be sorry for Jerry sound like he's the type of person that would'nt want that. I've been around a lot of death some volent. People that are truely ready to pass on. Do so with no fear. Sounds if JERRYS READY IF HE'D LIVED 3 LIVES.
My granddad told me as he dieded. Don't be sorry for me.
I'M NOT ,HOW COULD I BE HAVEING LIVED THE LIFE I HAVE.
I want you'll to have a party instead of a wake. Sounds like Jerry would want the same.
THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN SAY OR DO TO EASE THE PAIN OF LOVE ONES
JUST REMEMBER HIM THE WAY THE WAY HE'D WANT YOU TO.
No disrespect to you or him if I don't feel sorry for you or him. I have total respect for older poeple thats lived the lives the way that they wanted to. A thing not many can say they've did when the come to death.
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Boy you got it figured out, Roy. And no, I sure as heck don't feel sorry for him. He told me the other day that one way or the other he will witness a miracle soon. He either walks out of the place or he sees his Master face to face, and he's ready for both.
No. I feel sorry for myself. For all the times I talked on the phone instead of going out to coffee with him. For not taking a day off (or quitting the job altogether) to go hunt turkeys with him. For not just spending the whole afternoon shooting the breeze with him when we met on the street. Yeah, I am ate up with feeling sorry for myself. It's like I have learned nothing from him.
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Death is the most intensely personal experience a living thing faces.
Jerry doesn't sound like the type of man who willingly suffers fools.
He calls you friend so you did good in his eyes. And John, that's all
that counts.
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well said....
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So shortly after Jerry's move to Hospice Care, his pastor visited him and said he was about to witness a miracle one way or the other. He would either leave Hospice or else he would see his Maker face to face.
The other day he was moved to nursing care facility and started rehab.
Some folks just don't know when to give up!
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Great news JW!
-Dan
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Great news! I hope he gives them hell at rehab! They won't be able to keep up with him
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Sounds like someone I would have liked to hang out with. It always sucks losing the good ones, sorry to hear it, JW.
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NO JW I only wish I had it all figgered out.
And it's sad you'll lose your friend I lost a few friends and family members to cancer. But theres a lesson to be learn from his death when it happens.
My GRANDDADY told me one day when I went to see him in the hospital. Roy I must have gotten couple dozzen calls from old freinds the last couple days. And I'm as guitly as those people that called me. Roy don't wait to call and stay in touch with your old friends untill their on their death bed do it while there still alive.
So I make it a point to stay in touch with old friends when I can.