I left Kentucky when i was twenty years old and moved to New York City to help manage a relatives construction business. I spent 12 hour days six and seven days a week for 25 years climbing and walking steel and looking out across a big city that faded into a blur in the distance. I worked with people who had never sat on a horse, spent a night camped out in a cave during a thunder storm and never listened to a hound on trail. Twenty five continuous years of concrete and steel under what used to be this small town boys feet had begun to take its toll on me physically and mentally. So i decided a couple months ago i had better to come back home to Kentucky and save what i had left before i got any older.

First thing i did on my way home was to purchase a canoe so i could put in on some of the local creeks and rivers that i used to fish when i was a teenager. I was aboslutely shocked that everywhere a person could have launched a boat was cabled and posted like crazy. Trees were cut and laid down across dirt roads that led to the rivers and back hoes had ditched out a lot of the access areas. The places i remembered having public access were now loaded with hunting club posted signs and some had plackards informing me that cameras were installed on private properties and boat traffic up and down the river was being monitored with cameras. I noticed there was a sign that read something to the effect of "Please be informed there are posted signs and cameras located at intervals and all license numbers of vehicles parked near the river are subject to be recorded and etc". And it was true when i would stop and look long enough i could see there are cameras in the trees recording who was on the river. The creeks that were home to me as a teenager now have signs out in the middle of them informing me that i will face criminal tresspassing charges if i were to float a boat in them.

And i noticed the deer are now much larger and more numerous than they were 25 years ago but they are all what appear to be private herds. Ive read hunting club literature stating "Our trophy deer herd this" and "Our trophy deer herd that" where 25 years ago a person would be laughed at or thought to be a fool if he claimed to own a trophy deer herd. Ive talked to guys i went to school with who were some of the most "on-fire" outdoorsmen that would have ever walked the earth and most of them have told me they had sold just about all their guns and they hadnt deer hunted in over ten years. Some of their sons have never hunted simply because there are no places available to hunt.
On several occasions i have been parked on the side of a public road with my spotting scope set up watching deer where someone would pull up and jump out of a truck and talk to me like a dog and accusing me of being a poacher and some would write down my license plate number.

And i had thought NYC with all its hustlers, pimps and pushers was bad???

There was this one preacher in NYC who from time to time i would hear on the radio. His name was Wilkerson i think and he claimed the second coming was near and that people had become so greedy and wicked that there was little hope for most of them. I thought that this man was only going by what he saw in the city where i was sure he didnt know things werent like that in other parts of America. Now im wondering if the man was right because i never dreamed i would be coming home to find a mess like this. Things are really twisted up when a teenager has every opportunity to get drunk, get hooked on cocaine or end up pregnant but that same kid doesnt have the opportunity to spend a day in the woods. To be honest i dont know if ill ever be able to understand it.

Maybe ill take a short trip up to Alaska and see if things are better up there.