My dad passed away last night. This year we got drawn for doe tags. The hunt was going to start Nov. 4th. He hasn't got drawn for twenty year. We were going elk hunting together Oct. 26th. This year and many more hunting seasons there will always be something missing. So this year I will dedicate this hunt to my dad. I deeply miss him. Mark

Sorry to hear that. Be strong!

Regards,

Buell

Sorry for your loss. My thoughts are with your family.

My thoughts are with you and your family.
Take care and enjoy the hunt later this month as I am sure your dad will be with you!

Mark,
My deepest regrets to you and your family. I lost my dad last year. We had been hunting and fishing buddies for nearly 40 years. Treasure the memories you have and his spirit will always be with you.

Jeff

Thoughts and prayers to you and your family.

I guess at sometime most of us have or will loose our fathers who got us into this in the first place - I thank god for that - and the memories I have shared with my son. Walk proud Mark Kimmell - your dad will always be with you.

I too lost a hunting buddy, my father some years ago.
Time will soften the pain and you will still have some wonderful memories.
My father taught me to hunt and fish,some of our most memorable outings were the unsuccessful trips where we just talked and enjoyed each others company.
Now I take my son fishing and hunting and he has a son of his own.
I guess a fitting tribute to a lost buddy is to pass on what you have learned from and with that buddy.
I am not a religious man but will say a little prayer for your dad, I've been there and it isn't easy.

Sorryfor your loss also, may this years hunt be a fruitful one for you and the memory of your Dad.

I too am sorry to hear of your loss. I'm fortunate to still have my dad, but from time to time I think about what it will be like when he passes and boy I sure dread it. When you go on that hunt this year and you feel the gentle breeze in your face, you'll know the spirit of your dad is with you. Be safe and good hunting.

I lost Pop about six years ago, and I can't pick up a flyrod, shotgun, or rifle without thinking about how grateful I am to him for giving the outdoors to me. You have my deepest sympathies, but remember that he will always be there when you're doing your thing in the outdoors.

I know what a great loss you are suffering...I will say a prayer for you both.

I know exactly how you feel.

Exactly.

Some of my earliest memories of this life are of fog and mist in a cornfield. I crouched down next to Dad and learned to be totally still while we waited for ducks to fly in as dusk approached. I remember putting out my tongue and tasting the air.

And there were odors. Smells of the moment. Damp earth. Musty cornstalks. Hoppes Number 9 on the Model 12. And if we were in the right cornfield, the smell of burned powder. I gathered up the shells and sniffed them. On Dad, the odor of corn silage and cow manure. It was all a delight for a 4 year old tagging along with Dad. At least I think I was that old. Exact time is lost in the mist of memory. But I was young and recall little before those moments.

Dad passed away an old man. He was holding my older sister�s hand. He finished a happy story about her when she was a little girl, smiled at her, then closed his eyes forever.

Dad wasn�t a big game hunter. Waterfowl, Upland game and fishing were his passions. Nobody we knew hunted deer.

Two of my older brothers started hunting deer when I was about 14 or 15 and one of them returned from his stint in the army with a high powered rifle. I got to tag along and watch. Too young for a license. Those years were the longest of my life.

Dad never got into big game hunting. He left his sons to develop a passion for big game on their own and develop a passion we did, even as we hunted waterfowl and all the rest with a fervor equal to the zeal my father poured into waterfowl and fishing.

Of the two older brothers, one moved to the West Coast, the other stayed. He and I became hunting buddies chasing deer and learning what there was to learn by observation and experience. And we learned a lot.

We both hung trophy quality deer on the side of a machine shop on our farm early in our hunting careers; mine when I was seventeen, he the year before. In a way I take credit for both those bucks because I spotted his first. It was one of those dream �flicking of the ear� I read about in a Jack O�Connor story, or maybe John Jobson, or Ted Trueblood, or one other such scribe that I started reading in an effort to learn more about this game of hunting. I saw motion, that motion was an ear and that ear attached to a deer laying in a harvested wheat field. I stopped my brother and told him what I saw. Or thought I saw. He suggested we walk to the spot where I saw the motion. We walked to within forty or fifty feet of a buck and doe. The buck was a monster and my brother was quicker that I was. We learned two important lessons that day: A whitetail buck sporting an enormous rack can hide in very short wheat stubble, and Prairie whitetails hold fast before breaking cover.

My first hunting season was in 1962. I was 16, finally old enough to get a license.

We had 14 seasons of hunting together, my brother and I.

He died in a freak accident on the family farm after he took over the operation from Dad in June of 1976. A fire that took the machine shop and our trophies. By this time I was living on the West Coast pursuing a career in law enforcement. Every fall I managed to make it back for at least part of the deer season. That fall I loaded a backpack, shouldered my 270 and walked into the Warner Wilderness in North East California on my first deer hunt away from North Dakota. For the first time I hunted alone. I was out a week.

Finding new hunting partners isn�t easy, but it happened to me. My sister and her husband lived in Colorado. Her husband had a brother who married my niece. The brothers grew up on a farm not far from where my sister and I grew up. The two brothers worked with a guy that met and married another niece. And then they all decided to become deer and elk hunters. Starting in the late seventies, I hunted Colorado with them. Every year I made the trek from California to Colorado.

But that isn�t the end of the story. In 1994, a few months shy of my 48th birthday, I retired and moved to a shack in Wyoming. That proved to be a temporary stop. I met a woman on a trip to North Dakota. My bachelor days ended four years ago. I moved to a farm two dozen miles from the farm where I grew up. That was fortuitous in more ways that one. I hooked up with a cousin that I grew up with. After many years of working construction all over the West, he was back. We started hunting together. I invited him to Colorado in the fall of 2000, for an elk hunt. He fit in with my Colorado hunting partners. They took to him and he to them.

When my cousin and I weren�t hunting, we spent days and weeks in an ice house fishing for perch and pike and walleye.

In 2001, he and I hunted deer here in Dakota. We each had two doe tags. He filled one and didn�t want to fill the other. His two sons each bagged deer and the freezer was full.

I put off filled a tag the way a kid licks an ice cream cone slowly to make it last longer. I filled one of my tags the last weekend with the last shooting light.

That was a Saturday.

My cousin died 10 days later. He was my age. Too young to be dying.

His family picked his three brothers and three of his hunting and fishing buddies to carry the casket. I was one of the hunting buddies so honored. A doubled honor; a blood relative and a hunting buddy.

With each loss, I learned and then reinforced, that I can�t love a dead father, a dead brother, or a dead cousin, but I can love the memories they left. Each of them became a part of me, in many ways, the better part of me. I�ll never watch a duck fly into a field without thinking of the evenings I spent sitting and freezing in a field with my father.

I will never see a whitetail flag wave without thinking of my brother.

I�ll never drop a line through the ice and pull out a perch without thinking of my cousin and the time we shared.

We who meet here are heirs to a heritage that includes life and death; the life and death of the game we pursue, the life and death of those we stalk with and B. S. with over a campfire. That is the bitter and sweet of what we choose to do in the field, and were it not for the bitter in life, the sweet would not be as sweet.

I�ve learned a long time back never to trust a man that can�t or won�t shed a tear. There will be many and they will come at unexpected times. Odd to say, but enjoy them; they are as much a part of your father as anything of his you can hold or touch.

Mark- I know how you feel. My dad died 18 years ago and I still think about him almost every day. The best days of my life were spent hunting with him around Llano, Texas. Hang in there.

Mark,
Sorry to hear that your father has passed away. Remember the good hunting times. Hunt Elk this season and remember him. My thoughts are with you.

/ JOHAN

Mark,

I am sorry for your loss. You and yours are in my thoughts and prayers.

MARK,

I TOO AM SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS. I LOST MY BEST FRIEND AND HUNTING PARTNER 2 YEARS AGO. IT WAS UNEXPECTED AND VERY HARD ON THE WHOLE FAMILY. MY DAD WAS ONLY 58 AND SEEMED TO BE IN PERFECT HEALTH. THERE ARE NO WORDS THAT WILL HELP EASE THE PAIN OF YOUR LOSS, BUT TIME WILL HEAL, IT JUST TAKES TIME.

Man, you guys are making me cry and my dad is still around.

Hunting with your dad has to be the BEST experience in the world. I too have been VERY lucky to have a dad who will take me hunting every chance we get. (This has been going on for a while now, I am nearly 54 and my dad is 73 years old.)

Seriously, there is nothing finer that hunting with your dad.

Mark, hang in there, I know it is tought right now, I lost my wife a few years back, but it will soften with time; and you will always have the memories.

R F

I'm real sorry, Mark. You have my sincerest and deepest condolences. I'll say a prayer for you and your Dad and all concerned.

If you think about it, take something along of your Dad's, something you're sure he would have taken himself if he'd gotten to go. Maybe he had a favorite knife or hunting cap, or something alone those lines. I'm sure he'd appreciate that.

I wish you peace, strength, and comfort at this time in your life.

Godspeed, sir.

Russ

Mark,

Our most sincere condolences ... our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Mark,

I'm so sorry for your loss. I believe that I can relate to what your feeling as fate left me to inform my father that his dad had passed away several years ago and it was painful. They were close hunting buddies as my dad and I and my brothers are as well. I dread the day...................

My Dad just had his 70th birthday recently and his birthday wish was that my mother and all his children outlive him. Maybe your father had these thoughts at sometime as well. I lost someone very close to me 4 years ago and I know real pain and I'm here to tell you that things will get better and the memory of your dad and your times together will help inspire you to pass on the same values to your own. We pray for you in Montana tonight.

I've started to write this several times but stopped, just couldn't find the words.

Mark, I am so sorry for your loss. I know how you must feel. Three years ago I almost lost my father/hunting buddy to a hear attack. Luckily I got him back and we have been hunting like mad since. But, I think everttime we head to the field, "What if this is the last trip we get together?" Mark you will always have the memories and those are so important.

RogerK, that was a fantastic post you made. Thank you.

CA Mike

Mark,
I too am sorry for your terrible loss. I sometimes wonder what I will do when I loose my father. It's a thought that weighs on my mind quite a bit, but hunting seasons like this year give me good memories to dwell on when that time comes.
Opening morning, for the first time, my father and I filled our tags together, dropping two twin forked horns not 25 yards from each other. No, they weren't record book, but they left me with good memories that I'll have forever. That's what lifes really about, the good times.
In the months and years to come, dwell on the good times with your father, both in the field and out of it, and may your hunting season be successful and fullfilling.

God Bless

There is nothing in this world like a Father who loves the outdoors and passes this passion on to his children. The bond that forms out of this passion. I know that these special times with my father are also becoming very limited and it saddens me beyond words to think about it.

Remember always what hes taught you and pass it on to his grandchildren, what better way to honor and remember him, and in doing so a part of him will always live in you.

Our hearts go out to you Mark, be well.

[ 10-09-2002, 05:47: Message edited by: Wstrnhuntr ]

No man is truely gone as long as there is one person who remembers him.
Let your Dad laugh, hunt, sip coffee and chew the fat in your memories. You Dad is as close as your memories.
Jim

[ 10-09-2002, 05:36: Message edited by: arkypete ]

Dream Hunt

The worn old stock of that rifle he loved
holds deep in its grain
the oil of his hands

The soft leather sling
seems darker these days
hanging aside
reaching

A spent shell case
beneath his chair cushion
hides in tarnished silence
his thumbprint

They tell me he's gone...

But the woods and the fields
in my dreams are so real
where he hunts with me
teaching me
still

Dan Newberry

Mark,

May your father rest in peace. I can understand your feelings and loss.

[ 10-09-2002, 13:04: Message edited by: Saad ]

I am so sorry for your loss. Time will dull the hurt some but your memories will make you smile.

Mike

Mark,
My deepest sympathies for the enormous loss you have suffered. Do think back on your most pleasant moments together - they will help you gain strength and help in bearing with this irreplaceable loss.
In friendship,

Mark.
This got to my heart.
My deepest condolances, man.

This is a day we all have to meet, but I sure not looking forward to it.

Hang in there!!!

My father went to his reward almost four decades ago, and I still think of him often. My condolances and sympathy to you, as well as thoughts and prayers. - Dan

My prayers are with you. My Daddy is still around and I have only learned to really appreciate him these last few years. My loss...

I am so sorry to hear about your loss. My family and I will keep you in our prayers.

I know this is a tough time but it will get better with time.

I lost my Dad 12 years ago. He was only 63 when died of cancer ( it was a very sad slow death). The very thing in my life that I remeber is is athe autum afternoons when he would come home from work( dad worked a shift that started at 4:30 am and ended about 3:00)and take me and my older brothers "down in back" to a old farm that was a short walk from our back door. We would likely see anything from rabbits to deer on these outings( some times we didn't see anything at all but that never bothered dad), he just wanted to be OUT THERE enjoying the natural world.Though he owned several guns that he could use his favorite by far( except during deer season) was old stevens .22/410 over and under. Dad had painted this little gun a drab green for fall use then he would paint it white for the snowy season, the gun never looked the same from season to season. Dad was a VERY good shot with this or any other shotgun, and he rutinely took what ever game happed along wiht this .410. The .22 was used for squirrels, the .410 took rabbits, pheasants( we still ahd a good Pheasant population then)grouse, and the odd crow for to help out the farmer.
The last thing we had any real discussion about was 4 days before he died, and he was confined to his bed ( to week to get up) but he still wanted to make plans with me for the upcoming deer season!! That talk was the hardest thing I have ever done, I knew( and so did he) that death was immenant and he would not live to see the deer season!

Well for a long time I hunted alone after that( my brothers had quit hunting before dad died), and that was a tough adjustment. Then 2 years ago my wife and I adopted a wonderfull little boy( he was 9 at the time) and now I ahve a NEW hunting partner and I am trying my best to give him the same things Dad gave me. I am loving every minute of it too.

My son Anthony doesn't really understand though why I tear up when I take the old ".410" out of the safe, I try to do this as often as possible too. It gives me a connection to Dad that is even stronger than when I am in the feild with any other gun. Soem people see it and laugh at a grow man(very grown@ 6'6" and 300+ lbs) carrying what they consider a "little kids gun". Some even tell me this old girl isn't ethical to use for rabbits or grouse. And as pheasants were allways dad favorite i make a point to hunt them at least once every year with the.410( sadly though today finding pheasants in my area means going to a preserve), But when the little gun goes BOOM and the feathers fall, they are shocked to see how effective it can be when you shoot it well.I am sure on those days, Dad is smiling down and giving me encouragement to teach my son properly. I guess in the end that will be the legacy I can give him.

I love you DAD and i MISS you more than you could ever know.

Tom

[ 10-09-2002, 22:59: Message edited by: Tom ]

Mark
That is a tough one, sorry to hear about your loss.Been there done that.

[ 10-09-2002, 20:44: Message edited by: Jay Johnson ]

Mark,
I am sorry to hear of your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
HBB

Thank you all. Your kind words have helped me through the bad times. Today is his memorial,so today is going to be a sad day for me. Monday is his birthday and I am going on a buck hunt and hopefully his spirit is with me to celabrate his birthday. Thanks again you have all helped me through this. Mark

Mark,

My condolences to you and your family. I lost my dad when he was just 59. My prayers are with your family.

Bob

Mark,
This has hit me pretty close to home as I just returned from a hunt with my father who is very ill and has but just a short time left. I am so sorry for your loss.

My prayers to you and your family,

Jason
(JAG)

Hood River, OR

Mark, I was deeply saddened to hear of your loss. My wife and I will keep you in our prayers.

Mark Iam very sorry to hear that. I went through the same thing in 1990 & it still hurts. You have my deepest sympathies.