OutdoorMissouri.com

...to our friend Scott Whitman, who had triple bypass surgery last week while we were all gallivanting at the PWT. He's doing okay!!!

Hang in there, Scott--we need your money at Stockton!

Powerdive: Tell me something. Every time I look down here I see something about one of you guys going under the knife. Is this something that we young whipper snappers should just come to expect? Or, have you boys been living mighty hard for the last 80 or so years? PS

Living hard the past 52 years.....

PS, you need to come walleye fishing with us! It's a whole lot more involved than staring through a scope and blasting some unsuspecting critter into smithereens from half a state away. It's hand-to-hand combat on the fish's home court. Lose a biggun, and your heart thunders in your ears. Catch a biggun, and your heart forgets to function.


Oh yeah, besides, we're not all young bucks anymore. Chure as chit, your day will come, bud...unless you're Ted Nugent!

Thanks Mike
It looks like I'll be down for 4 to 6 weeks or so. It seems like every time I get in line to do a Tourney something happens.... I had a heart attack the Wed night before our club Tourney thats why we didn't come down, we were packed and ready. Then had the bypass 4 days later.
Anyway it will be a while before Im ready for any rough boat rides.....

No need for Scott to be concerned....Regina can drive over and catch a ride with one of us. Shucks, Table Rock has been kinda shaky lately, and he might fall out of the boat, leaving an open seat.
Seriously though, this is news to us. Glad to hear that the recovery is coming along well. Don't be like Mike....take care of yourself now and it will pay dividends on down the road. PD was back on the evil tobacco before the stitches were out....guess we'll draw straws for his walleye gear one of these days. We'll be looking for you at Stockton. Your secret is out, and those little yellow floatie things with the red flags are now standard equipment in all the boats....so now you gotta come up with something different to win the big fish money!

PS....be glad it's us the doctors are practicing on. By the time they get around to you young bucks, they should have it down pretty good. Many of us have more stitches than Carter has little pills, but the alternative really sucks.

Fellows: At my young age of 36, I have been under the knife more times than I care to remember. Of course, my surgeries were the direct result of trying to do the impossible with either a basketball, baseball, or softball in or out of hand. These days, I can feel the pain of those twenty somethings. I hope Scott gets to feeling better as well. BTW Powerdive, I don't kill many deer with a rifle. In fact, I'm bow only this year. Unless, however, I draw an Iowa ML tag. PS

I vaguely remember 36. I'm 55. Only my liver is 80.

Scott, glad you made it through the worst part OK. Get well. See you at Stockton.

It doesn't get any better, really.

TR, your liver was 80 last year. This year it's at least 95...

oops....My calculator batteries went dead.

I've gotta tell a family story here. My ambition is to be just like my great-uncle. He was a tall Scotsman, a carpenter, and he enjoyed great health - built a new house for himself and his wife, from the ground up, when he was 85.

He had his "final illness" at 93. He was in bad shape and in the hospital, so I went to see him. As I entered the room he weakly motioned me over to the bed. He said "Sam, I've drank whiskey, smoked, and chewed tobacco for 80 years, and it's dam* nigh killed me!". I had to laugh, and he saw it was funny and had a good laugh, too. He died in his sleep that night.

You can't do much better than that, and in the meantime there's a lot of fish that need catching.

A class act OZARK....hope I can go out like that.

TR....double check and make sure those batteries are not for your pacemaker...I'm a "year or two" ahead of TR in the chronologically challenged game, but I'm here to tell you guys that it is starting to hurt just to get up in the morning. I have to take an aspirin at night along with the cholesterol pill, the diabetes pill, and the prescription allergy pill, so the idea of more pills is not in the game plan. I figure my karma was set a long time ago, and when my number comes up, ......well, it's been a fun ride. If that happens tomorrow, I can go out happy. At least I got PD's money one time in the 2005 walleye get together pot.
On the other hand, I think I will come back and let my ghost haunt the OMC outboard factory that made my GT 150 on the Express. The "final solution" may be close at hand, so I am putting everything back together today if I don't get stormed out.