Friday 14^th December will be remembered for many things. Let me share with you a sequence of events quite disconnected from the grievous shooting in Sandy Hook.

I currently served in a church in Newtown and one in Hamden. We were schedule to have a management meeting on Friday 14^th in the afternoon and evening. At 48 hours notice the meeting was canceled, and I was left with a four hour 'hole' in my schedule, which I decided to fill by going hunting with my Hawken muzzle loader. I arrived at the hunting land at 2:30 in the afternoon, and tried to turn my cell phone ringer off only to find that the phone had been off all morning. Turning it on I received various texts about the shooting in Sandy Hook; disturbing given I was sitting on a log some 4 miles south of Sandy Hook Elementary School. After several rapid phone calls it was evident that no one I knew was directly involved and there was no assistance that I could provide that was not already being given by others.

I hiked a couple of hundred yards to my deer stand and waited. From 3 PM until sunset, there was a complete absence of any animal activity-surprising and frustrating, no squirrels, no birds, no turkey and certainly no whitetail deer. Plenty of time to think about the massacre 4 miles away, and then on gun control la ws. My mind wondered to politics and religion, I'll spare you the latter, but did you know that Calvin Klein donated $78K, 100% went to Democrats while WalMart   donated $467K, 97% went to Republicans . I know where I will be buying my briefs. Hey, the things you end up thinking about when in your stand.

Dusk fell and the light faded, so I discharged the musket into the ground, waited for the smoke to clear and returned through a copse of swamp maples to my car. The land owner was waiting for me at my Santa Fe, his home being close by. We talked briefly before I had to take a pee. You all know how it is, I'd been in a car or up the tree for 4 hours, so with his permission I retreated behind one of many log piles back in the copse of maples.

As I stood there enjoying the momentary relief, I reflected on the fruitless 'hunt'. In 2010 my son, then 5, would often greet me on my return home with the words, “Daddy have you been hunting nothings again.” Apparently I am highly skilled at hunting 'nothings', but that's why it is called hunting not catching. As I stood there in the post dusk gloom with such recollections mocking me, I farted with force and volume. Two seconds later a 'grunt' of similar tone rang out from deeper in the maples close to my stand. I turned to look, hands still on the old crown jewels and there 45 yards away was a deer! My silhouette was masked by the large wood piles, so he had not seen me though he had evidently heard my 'grunt' and responded with his own. Inevitably my movement caught his eye; he looked over and then turned and trotted off right across the shooting lane I had so attentively guarded just 25 minutes earlier. To say I was frustrated would be a gross understatement! I had no idea how many points his antlers totaled, so for the sake of this yarn I speculate in the double figures. At the time all I could say was, “Well the blast of my Hawken musket did not scare him off, but the blast from my but drew him in.” May be there is a place for CK briefs!!

Did I ever deserve a pit stop at Dunken Donuts!