The following story is Pedro's recollection of a morning T-Zone Hunt with Barnacle on December 13th, 2003. For some reason Pedro agreed to sit in a "double wide" ladder stand with Barnacle that morning...and survived the laughter to tell about it. The story is true, uncut, uncensored, and totally Barnacle. Enjoy!
Last Saturday (12/13) was our day to cut wood for my Uncle Jerry as a way to thank him for letting us hunt his property, so we decided to get up early and T-Zone hunt with our rifles for a couple of hours. Well, Barnacle and I decided to sit together in the Hwy 10 stand, which is a two man stand I built this year. It was hilarious right from the beginning! I had Barnacle climb up first so I could help push him up the ladder if need be. When he got to the top of the ladder, he reached in to clear off the seat and was greeted with a face full of snow...and it was cold! I was on the ground laughing as he cursed at both the treestand and me multiple times. Of course, he was all decked out in his blaze orange "Santa" suit complete with a backpack so full of junk that he couldn't fit under the rail to get into the stand. So...while hanging onto his gun AND the ladder, he had to try and free himself from the backpack so he could climb in. After a few tense moments and more cursing he was finally up there. I thought I was going to have to climb up and push on his butt to squeeze him in there but luckily he got in by himself. Finally, I got to climb up and sit down next to him. After watching the field in silence for a few minutes he says "Hey, we are sitting on the wrong sides because I'm left handed and you're right handed". So...without even questioning him we proceeded to change places and then pass each other's guns over. Two big guys with all kinds of clothes on and a layer of crunchy snow on the floor of the stand, well, you get the idea...it was NOISY! Now we were ready to hunt!
After another short time of sitting Barnacle started to get cold. First he had to stand up for a while and then he sat back down and decided to have a cup of coffee. He had to dig into is "Santa Bag" to find his thermos and was, amazingly enough, able to cleanly poor himself a cup-o-joe. When finished, it wasn't long until he was cold again...so he stood up. This time he was shaking so bad that it made the whole stand shake too! After another little bit he sat back down (again) and decided he needed to smoke a cigarette...which he did. When finished (again), we were intently looking out over the field and I said to Barnacle "Hey, since I'm right handed, if a deer comes out over there, I'm going to have to shoot right over your shoulder...you big dummy, we were in the right spots to begin with!" So...we once again switched spots (quietly of course...NOT). This time, however, we said SCREW IT and just left the guns where they were. We sat quietly for a few minutes and then all of sudden I hear this super LOUD and long, squeaking, gurgly, dry at first then turning sloppy, FART! It was just NASTY!! I immediately busted out laughing as Barnacle looked at me with a face of total relief. We, of course, didn't see any deer but neither did anyone else. It was BY FAR the most entertaining hunt I had been on all year...and we weren't even there 2 hours! Leave it to Barnacle...
