Save The Earth, Check Your Kidneys

For those who don't know, my mom was only recently diagnosed with RAS - Renal Artery Stenosis. Fancy term for a plugging kidney artery.

I'll try not to get too opinionated here, however, it should be known that this doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen in a vacuum, and isn't nearly as rare as the doctors continue to state.

History
40 years ago, folks on dialysis were only those with known true kidney disorders. Not diabetes, not RAS. (check kidney.org, kidneyfund.org, niddk.nih.gov/for history of kidney disorders). Now, fully 1/3 of all dialysis patients are diabetics, and 29% (nearly a third) are RAS patients.
275,000 people are on dialysis throughout the US alone. The number of patients needing dialysis has increased 3-fold in 40 years.

To me, that's an epidemic.

And you know what?

29% are fully preventable. FULLY But because doctors are hiding their heads in the sand, quoting 40 year old statistics, these people aren't being treated appropriately, aren't being tested in a timely fashion, and are losing their lives needlessly to RAS. Sounds a bit like malpractice, huh?

So, how do you know if you have RAS?

Generally, people don't know they have it until at least 1 kidney has failed completely, and the other has only partial function. By then, the ability to treat RAS is limited at best, and the person's quality of life has been great affected, along with their positive long-term outcome.

You have to look at your health history and know a bit about your family's to get a firm handle on being your own patient advocate. This is one case that no one else is going to fight for you.

Blood Pressure
Do you have high blood pressure?
If so, do you take 3 or more medications in an attempt to control it?
Did you get high blood pressure when you were young?

The second question is the real sign. If you take 3 or more medications to control your blood pressure, you most likely have RAS. Whether the RAS or the hypertension came first is a moot point. You need to have your doctor order the tests.

Artery Disease
Have you had bypass surgery?
Has your doctor stated your carotids are filling up?
Do you have other artery disease (peripheral artery disease)?

This is the second key indicator you might have RAS. Couple this and the hypertension together, and you need to demand the testing.

Valve Problems

Many of us have a slightly prolapsed valve in our heart. The doctors can hear it when they listen, and is often caught at birth or after a major heart infection.

While this is not a key indicator directly, prolapsed valves increase the likelyhood of arteries calcifying, which can lead to RAS.

Miscellaneous
Have you ever had an episode of your lungs filling up for no reason? In other words - have you had a "heart attack", but never been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, or general heart failure?
Having an acute episode of severe pulmonary edema (sudden lungs filling up) with no history is being shown as a key indicator of RAS. Couple it with the hypertension and you've got an almost certain diagnosis.
Are you a boy or a girl? - Males tend to get RAS more often than females, but as the population ages, this is starting to even out.
How old are you? The older you get, the higher the chances of having RAS
Did you/Do you smoke? While there are no direct causal links between smoking and RAS, the majority of people who suffer from it have an extensive smoking history.
Do you have high cholesterol? Again, this isn't a key indicator, but is a risk factor.

Tests
So, how does a doc find out if you have RAS?
There are a number of ways to discover it. I'll try to list them from cheapest and least invasive to most invasive (but also most accurate).

Listening - The doctor can listen to your kidneys through your back just like he'll listen to your carotids. If he hears turbulence (bruit - brew ee), you have RAS. But this is not definitive. If he doesn't hear bruits, it does not mean you don't have RAS. It just means it isn't extensive enough for him to hear.

Blood work - there are indicators - such as very low potassium (hypokalemia), higher creatinine, higher sodium, higher phosphorous that indicate problems with the kidneys. If these items show up in your blood at bad levels, it means you already have kidney damage.

Urine analysis - protein in your urine, low or no levels of normal wastes. Your urine should always be pale and clear - not dark and/or cloudy. Pale yellow is best. But if it is completely clear, it means your kidneys are moving water, but no wastes. This is bad. If you have protein in your urine, you may have other kidney issues, but you have kidney issues.

Ultrasound with Doppler Survey - You know how pregnant women have ultrasounds? Same idea, but through your back. It can show if a kidney is smaller than the other - if so, this is a good indication that RAS has caused the smaller to atrophy. The doppler survey finds the pulse of the artery. If the pulse is weak or non-existant, you have RAS or another kidney disease affecting the artery.

MRA - an MRI but with a contrast that shows just the arteries. This contrast is not toxic to the kidneys, so is a lower risk imaging test.

CT and MRI with contrast - know up front the contrast that is used is toxic to the kidneys. This is why they make you drink a great deal of water after the CT/MRI is performed. These 2 imaging tests can show the arteries and the kidneys with great clarity and can diagnose very affectively whether you have RAS or not.

Angiogram - these aren't generally done until it is time to do angioplasty. It's invasive, moderately risky, and the dye used is, again, toxic to the kidneys. But it is what the doctors consider the golden standard for diagnosing RAS. Generally, if you're at this point, it's already been diagnosed by at least one of the above tests.

Why It Matters
The sooner you are diagnosed, the sooner treatment can begin. This includes changes in lifestyle - diet, smoking, exercise, medication. Medications may be changed. Some blood pressure meds have been found to actually slow the RAS process. And, controlling the blood pressure itself assists in slowing the process. Some medications can speed the process, so changing these meds is very important (and wasn't done with my mom).

When treatment is delayed, or ignored entirely, the possibility of angioplasty - placing a stent in the renal arteries, becomes minimal. At this point, you have 2 options - renal artery bypass or dialysis.

Bypass is highly complex, considering all of the blood vessels needed are IN the kidney, rather than outside like with the heart. Also, because RAS is a calcification problem, it usually means the bypass cannot be hooked directly into the aorta and must be placed in another artery - the one to the iliac crest, the liver or the spleen. Very few surgeons are capable of this surgery, which makes the outcome less than assured.

RAS patients on dialysis have a life expectancy of 27 months. That's it. Most dialysis patients live past 5 years, so 27 months is not at all positive, not to mention the quality of life during that time.

If you do have the angioplasty or the bypass, you can generally cut your blood pressure meds in half, your kidneys are far more likely to continue functioning until you die a natural death, and your quality of life is far higher than without.

It also means you don't have the burden or the cost of dialysis - which is an extremely harsh treatement.

Now - How does this save the earth?

You're not needing countless medications to maintain health - which means fewer need to be produced. You're not excreting byproducts from these medications into the water and thus into nature (earthworms have PROZAC in their systems!). You're not needing transport to and from dialysis, and no waste produced from the dialysis.

Multiply that by the 29% of all dialysis patients, and you have 79,750 people in the US alone helping save the earth.

That's a number to talk about.

Please - do you and your family a favor - get tested! The ultrasound is cheap, non-invasive and an incredibly accurate test for this. You do not want to go through what my mother and the rest of the family is going through trying to play catch up and not run out of time - for no reason other than every physician and surgeon she has been to is living in the past.

Her indicators are (And were for the last 6 years):
Family history of artery disease
High blood pressure with 3 meds unable to control it
Prolapsed aortic valve
Carotid artery stenosis
Smoking history
Dangerously low potassium virtually unhelped by megadosing potassium (hypokalemia)

Plant Based Meals

Can Peanut Butter and Jelly Save the World?
From Larry West,
Your Guide to Environmental Issues.
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Eating plant-based meals conserves natural resources and slows global warming

Looking for small ways to make a big difference for the environment? Why not start by making yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
As members of the PB&J Campaign(no, I’m not kidding) like to say, “You don’t have to change your whole diet to change the world. Just start with lunch.”

Eating a plant-based lunch (such as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a bean burrito, vegetarian chili, or a hearty salad) instead of an animal-based lunch (such as a hamburger, a tuna or grilled cheese sandwich, fish and chips, or chicken nuggets) will save water, preserve land and slow global warming.

How Eating a PB&J Sandwich Slows Global Warming
Every time you eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or other plant-based meal instead of an animal-based lunch, such as a hamburger, you save the equivalent of almost 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, including 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide.

That’s about 40 percent of the carbon you would save by driving a hybrid vehicle for the day instead of a standard sedan.
How Eating a PB&J Sandwich Saves Water
Growing plants for food takes a lot less water than raising animals. As a result, every time you substitute a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or some other plant-based meal for an animal-based meal such as a hamburger, you save about 280 gallons of water. Eat three PB&J sandwiches a month instead of animal-based meals and you can save as much water as you would by switching to a low-flow showerhead.

How Eating a PB&J Sandwich Saves Land
Raising animals for food takes a lot of space. For example, animal products require 6 to 17 times as much land as soy to produce the same amount of protein. Eating a plant-based lunch like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of a hamburger, ham sandwich, or another animal-based meal saves anywhere from 12 to 50 square feet of land from deforestation, overgrazing, and pesticide and fertilizer pollution.

How Eating One PB&J Sandwich Helps the Environment
By eating lower on the food chain—plants instead of animals—you also consume fewer resources. Why? Because, basically, everything you eat comes from plants. You either eat plants directly—in the form of fruits, vegetables and plant products such as peanut butter—or indirectly after animals have converted plants into meat, milk, eggs, butter and cheese.

The problem is that animals are not very efficient as living food factories that convert plants into food for humans. Animals use most of the plants they eat to produce the energy they need to walk around and keep breathing. To stay alive long enough to become part of your lunch or dinner menu, every cow, pig and chicken has to eat much more protein, carbohydrates and other nutrients than it will yield once the ax finally falls. As a result, it takes several pounds of plants to produce one pound of beef, pork, chicken, eggs or milk.

Inevitably, that means it also takes a lot more land, water and fuel to produce one pound of meat, milk or eggs than it does to produce one pound of edible plants. Not only do the animals need food, water and room to roam, but growing the plants to feed the animals that will, in turn, become food for you requires even more land and water as well as fuel for farm machinery and irrigation pumps.

To help provide some context, the PB&J Campaign says the water required to produce the beef in one hamburger could grow enough peanuts for 17 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And the land required to put that same beef patty on your bun could produce enough peanuts for 19 PB&J lunches.

How You and Your Diet Can Make a Difference
Basically, this all comes down to your power as a consumer. Every time you choose a hamburger, omelet or grilled cheese sandwich over a plant-based meal, you’re telling your local restaurants and supermarkets to buy more meat, eggs and dairy products. By choosing more plant-based meals, you’re asking for less meat and a more efficient use of resources. Either way, your unspoken but unmistakable messages are received by your local merchants and conveyed to wholesalers and farmers.

Want to do more? Share this information with your friends, coworkers and family members and urge them to take action. Urge your school or office cafeteria, or the local restaurants you frequent, to offer more plant-based dishes. Organize a weekly PB&J lunch (or other plant-based meals) at work, home or school and calculate the positive environmental contribution you’ve made.

A Special Word About Seafood
Often, when people start thinking about reducing their meat consumption, their thoughts turn to seafood. Unfortunately, if your goal in consuming fewer meat-based meals is to eat more efficiently, reduce your carbon footprint, and free up more resources, then seafood is no better option than beef, chicken or pork.

All seafood arrives on your dinner plate from one of two sources: it’s either caught by commercial fishing boats or raised on fish farms. About half of the seafood we eat is wild-caught, but commercial fishing creates a lot of greenhouse gas emissions because fishing boats use a lot of fuel.

There are also other environmental problems with wild-caught seafood. First, 69 percent of the world’s major fish species are endangered and in decline, according to estimates by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Second, many commercial fishing methods do a lot of environmental harm. For example, trawling scrapes up everything in its path, turning delicate marine ecosystems into undersea deserts, while long-line fishing results in a tremendous amount of bycatch, fish that are hooked unintentionally and discarded in pursuit of the target species.

Aquaculture, or fish farming, poses many of the same problems as the process of farming other animals for food. If farmed fish and shellfish eat grain and soy, then raising them commercially is as inefficient as fattening cattle or hogs. If the farmed fish eat fish meal, which is made from wild- caught fish, then they contribute indirectly to the environmental problems caused by commercial fishing: greenhouse gas emissions, over-fishing, bycatch, and environmental degradation.

The next time you go grocery shopping or order a meal in a restaurant, don't think exclusively about flavor and price. Give some thought as well to the long-term environmental effects of the food you choose to eat. It makes a difference.

Sources:

Global warming statistics: The global warming calculations are based on information from “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming,” by Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin of the University of Chicago.
Water statistics: The water figures are based on information in “Water Footprint of Nations,” a report by the 2004 UNESCO Institute for Water Education.
Land statistics: The land statistics are based on information from the “Quantification of the environmental impact of different dietary protein choices,” by Lucas Reijnders and Sam Soret, which appeared in a 2003 supplement to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and on the protein output per acre for soy and peanuts reported in the 1996 edition of Food, Energy, and Society, edited by Pimentel and Pimentel.

Friday Night Musings

My brother and I are having a very abbreviated discussion (due to my inability to read long articles) regarding The Future.

We tend to be fatalists - he says realists. Whatever. Half-empty kind of folk anyhow.

But the issues with subsidies to every millionaire in America - did you know that something like 90% of all monies from farm subsidies end up in Manhatten NY? Big Farma. Meanwhile, his neighbor got rained out of his dairy herd that was about 3 generations in the family, and got a whopping 2400 bucks in subsidies. He ended up selling the herd for meat. Tragic at the very least.

Anyway, subsidies led to energy discussions (along with Medicare costing us 10x what SS does and will due to inability to negotiate prices with Big Pharma).

Corn as ethanol (etoh for those in the know) and the cost upon cost upon cost of using corn - the article he sent outlining this issue very clearly:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/cooke/2007/0202.html

That always leads to weather issues, other energy issues.

Energy - China is taking the entire earth's coal. The nation can't get enough of it (meanwhile, they're trying to clean the air in Beijing for the summer Olympics - the sun never shines in that city, air is too foul).

This means coal prices go up in North America, making both oil and natural gas more equitable as energy sources for our electric companies. Oil is expected to hit and maintain 100/ba this summer - due to China, global demand increase and the drop of value in the US dollar (which could be dropped as the currency of favor by OPEC, making price even higher). And that makes Natural Gas even more equitable.

If I remember right, NG was around $2/unit wholesale back in 2000. It's sitting right around 8 as of 2/14/08. It hit record highs right after Katrina, which was 13ish, but then dropped back to between 6 and 8 bucks per unit wholesale.

Guess what? If coal is so marketable to China, oil going up to 100 and now NG being the 'final' fuel, ETOH is going to be the 'next big thing'.

Which brings us to the weather. The mid South is in moderate to extreme drought. Corn is a very high water needing plant. They can't consider growing it with how severe their water restrictions are.

The Great Plains are in a moderate drought right now. Water run-off from this winter's extreme snowfall will help, but most of those farmers irrigate from the Great Plains Auqifer - completely unaffected by surface water. And the GPA is running out of water. So, if they don't have the perfect rainy season for corn, they aren't going to do so well growing it. Plus, if the deep south and Gulf Coast has anything to say about it, they won't be able to fertilize they way they are used to and most likely won't be able to grow corn well.

So, corn will go up that much more, making NG prices go up as well. It's that supply and demand thing. Plus, other energy companies are catching on to what Big Petrol has long known - push the market until the consumer backs off buying, and then pull the price back about 10%. Pull back in 10% increments until you find what the market will actually support directly.

What people don't understand is, this affects ALL aspects of life. The graphics in that article are pretty explicit in that. And when the ecomonists discuss "adjusted" inflation - they take out all aspects of the cost of energy. So yeah! Inflation is only 3% or so. But, adjust it back to include energy prices and it's double digit. Last I heard was about 11%. And they wonder about consumer confidence.

I have a saying that most people don't quite get - but hopefully they will very soon:
Wise is the man who recognizes our landfills as our greatest natural resource. (Leslie Holly, 2002)

If we "mined" our landfills - the composting would allow for the return of inches of topsoil. Convert the heavy metal laden compostables into methane. Chip the wood materials for either ETOH or pellet fuel. Reclaim steel to eliminate the need for Japanese steel. ReMine copper so we don't have to go deeper and deeper into protected lands for an ever increasingly expensive metal (25% increase in the last 18 months - being stolen everywhere). Recycle plastics to reduce needs for petrol imports (did you know fleece fabric started out as recycled bottles?).

It can ALL be reused.

We just have to find a way to mine it all. And for the first time - strip mining wouldn't be a bad thing - it would actually RETURN land to the landscape.

Here's a quote:
This is due not only to the machines' increased efficiency but also to plain old supply and demand: Countries such as China are desperate for raw materials and are finding recycled U.S. trash to be a good source.

http://www.wildcatmfg.com/images/E0094901/626good.JPG
This is a picture - and I don't remember my html right now to just post the pic.

But it's of a trommel. A drum sifter basically. You can get different screens for them - and thus, sort by size of object. Place magnets underneath and get all of the smaller steel out. Do you have any idea how much flatware gets thrown out on a daily basis?

Add a sifter that shakes the fill, and the lightest stuff comes to the top - plastic - literally skim it off like those new fancy but stupid litter boxes for cats. Flip it and skim what was the bottom - most likely glass and other metals - and you have the majority of non-compostible stuff out.

Basic sorting can and is automated. Chop the rest and composte it for methane to fuel the sorting machinery or sort it further to compost into topsoil and methane production. Either way will work.

Have you asked what your county is doing about the trash issue? And are we going to let our last 'natural' resource be exported as well?

Autism Theory That Doesn't Include Vaccinations

Many people are blaming the countless childhood vaccinations for autism. While I have no doubt there is a connection for some cases, I am not convinced it is the root of this evil. I'm more inclined to blame Modern Autism on the chemical warefare being waged against our bodies in the name of convenience and safety.

Chemicals And Fat
http://www.autismfries.com/
The human brain is composed primarily of fat, specifically Omega-3 fatty acids which are commonly referred to as "good fat".

Many chemicals in our daily lives are found to be fat soluble. This means they are stored in our body's fat throughout our lives and even transferred to the baby as it develops in the womb. More is transferred through breast feeding, skin contact, and inhalation. This is a recipe for disaster.

This chemical deluge could also account for the almost exponential increases in ADD/ADHD as well as modern autism (is there a link between the two syndromes?). Our culture relies almost entirely on chemicals over natural substances for convenience and through the brainwashing of companies stating they are for our safety and well-being. If this chemical/ADD/ADHD/Modern Autism link is real, it is safe to assume there is a cumulative affect (through the fat soluble/stored chemicals). This is why the fat soluble transfer is the most troublesome.

Fire Retardents
www.thegreenguide.com/doc/26/home A century and a half since Thoreau built his little cabin on Walden Pond, our poet's ethic of simplicity and harmony with nature has been displaced by the typical American dream house: a multi-thousand-square-foot suburban palace with a three-car garage. If we took Thoreau on a tour, he'd be surprised to learn that today's building products and furnishings emit gaseous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as the known carcinogens formaldehyde and benzene, and trigger respiratory, allergic and neurological reactions. He'd see bulldozers mow down trees to make room for a house--built with scarce hardwoods from far-flung places--and construction crews filling dumpsters with enough scrap wood to build another Walden cottage.

Moving on, many chemicals that are used in the US are banned in most of the world - primarily fire retardents used on furniture and carpeting. The use of these chemicals is questionable anyway, since studies through fire safety organizations prove they do not inhibit the spread of fire, particularly when compared to untreated natural fibers (cotton, wool, silk, wood) - CNN ran a story in fall of 2007 regarding this. I'm still searching for it.

Many of these fire retardents are also used in the manufacture of childrens clothing.

Pthalates and BPA
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/viewpoints/mvoice/070502voices.html
BPA was originally used as a synthetic hormone. Today it is mostly used to make polycarbonate plastic, which is used in hard plastic products, including baby bottles and some of popular water bottles. Remarkably, BPA is also used to make coatings that line food cans.

More info - http://kermitsteam.blogspot.com/2007/08/chemical-bpa.html

There is mounting evidence of phthalates, found in baby hygiene products, causing hormonal disruption. Also, BPA is found in the plastics of baby bottles, water bottles, canned goods and hard plastic toys babies so love to teeth has questions being raised regarding hormonal disruption and brain development.

Disposable Diapers
http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/diapers/diaper-asthma.html
Harsh perfumes and chemical emissions have long been known to induce asthma-like symptoms in children and adults. Now, researchers have found that disposable diapers might be a trigger for asthma. A study published in the October, 1999 issue of the Archives of Environmental Health found that laboratory mice exposed to various brands of disposable diapers suffered increased eye, nose, and throat irritation, including bronchoconstriction similar to that of an asthma attack. Six leading cotton and disposable diaper brands were tested; cloth diapers were not found to cause respiratory problems among the lab mice.

http://diapersafari.com/diaperinfo/whyclothdiapers/
BABIES POORLY DEVELOPED OUTER SKIN LAYER ABSORBS ABOUT 48 CHEMICALS if you use disposable diapers & wipes and standard baby products. This can be greatly reduced by using cloth diapers and natural baby products.
Very few people discuss the use of disposable diapers when it comes to the developmental safety of infants and toddlers. Considering your baby will wear between 5000 and 6500 diapers 24/7/365, it's worth taking a look.

A Child's Brain
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/famsci/fs609w.htm
By the time a child is 3 years old, a baby's brain has formed about 1,000 trillion connections — about twice as many as adults have. A baby's brain is superdense and will stay that way throughout the first decade of life. Beginning at about age 11, a child's brain gets rid of extra connections in a process calling "pruning," gradually making order out of a thick tangle of "wires."

http://www.autismfries.com/
From birth to 24 months is the time period when most of the neural connections in the brain are made. This is when the brain is wired. Anything that interferes with the wiring of the brain will cause a "developmental disorder". Autism basically means that a brain which would otherwise be normal failed at some point AFTER childbirth in developing all the normal neural connections.

How can a child's brain not be affected by this deluge?

What Can You Do?
Dress your baby in only natural fibers - unbleached cotton is obviously the best choice, but that can be boring. You make the decision on how "natural" to be.
Make your baby's clothes. It's time consuming, but they won't have the fire retardents soaked into every thread.

Use cloth diapers. You can buy a bolt of good cotton flannel to make your own, or use a diaper service. The choice is yours.

Use glass feeding bottles when not breast feeding. If you breast feed, consider converting to a plastic-free environment during your pregnancy and time you are breast feeding your baby. Cover your funiture with cotton sheets, dress in only natural fibers, use no perfumes, use unscented everything to reduce your chemical exposure.

Air new furniture in a hot location for a few days to accelerate the out-gasing process. If you live in a new home - take a day or tow away and super heat the interior - with the furnace for 24-48 hours. Then air and clean every surface to remove the chemicals that were super out-gased.

Only let your baby lie on cotton blankets or quilts. This will avoid contact with chemical laden upholstery fabrics, regardless of your home or out socializing.

When bathing your baby, use natural soaps. Castille soap - made with olive oil, is a great choice. But again, you choose. The soap will work just fine for shampoo for at least the first year. There is no need for perfumed soaps/detergents or shampoos on your baby.

If you use a moisturizer on your baby, consider a natural oil like cocoa butter, olive oil, etc. I personally don't advocate soy oil due to the genetic engineering and phyto-estrogens natural occuring in the beans.

Wash all clothes/diapers/bedding with the mildest unscented detergent available. Double rinse to assure all residue is gone.

A Near Record Buck

I have to talk up my cousin.
He hunts. He eats it, processes it himself, does it all as humanely as possible. He's a good guy.
Well, he saw NO deer throughout the season, so finally decided to come up and install our new floors (he's a carpenter).
He got one floor done and 2 days later, shot a doe. Big doe! He was thrilled!
Finished butchering her and came to install the second floor.
Finished the second one and shot another deer. A Buck. A Big Buck. A near record buck.

156# field dressed.

Here, in his own words, is the full story of the hunt.

THIRD TIME’S A CHARM

It was December 15, 2007; a day that I thought would be the last good day to hunt the NY muzzleloader season, with a nor’easter moving in the next day.

My season had been poor, having not seen a buck since the beginning of regular season a month before. When the alarm went off, I toyed with the idea of staying in bed, but forced myself to get up. While eating breakfast, I still thought about staying in the warmth of the house. Instead I went to my hunting room, loaded the muzzleloader, and started putting on layers of clothes.

As I started up the driveway to my parents’ home where I hunt, I tried to decide what stand to spend my last hunt of the year in. Bringing the truck to a stop and shutting off the engine, I decided to sit in the brush lot below the house where I could overlook a creek bottom, and deciding not to climb the hill above the house. “What’s the difference?” I asked myself. I doubted I’d see a buck anyway.

I made my way to the stand and climbed the ladder to my perch above the creek. Soon after settling in I saw two ghostly shapes running through the brush in the creek bottom below. I grabbed my binoculars and locked on the shadow that has halted in the gray pre-dawn darkness. It looked like it could be buck, I thought, as the deer turned its head scanning its surroundings.

I stayed locked on the deer as it stood like a statue; just its head moving as it continued scanning the area. After 10 minutes, with the coming dawn pushing back the darkness of night, I could make out the spread of antlers silhouetted against the snow left from the last storm. My breath caught in my throat as its head turned back and forth. This was the widest rack I had ever seen while hunting. Minutes passed and soon it was light enough to see the long tines moving against the white background. Now, my heart was pounding!

It had been almost one-half hour since I saw him moving down the creek, and it was now legal hunting hours. He hadn’t moved 30 feet in this period of time and continued to check his surroundings. I estimated the yardage at 120 yards and, as I looked through the scope, agonized over whether I should try to get down and move in closer. “There is too much brush,” I thought. As I continued to watch him, I hoped he would bed for the morning so I could move closer. After what seemed like hours, he moved about ten feet into an opening, and I brought the gun up again searching for a clear shot through the scope.

I had it, a clear shot! I pulled the hammer back on the Winchester Apex and settled the cross hairs just behind his shoulder, slowly squeezed the trigger and …. click. Nothing! “Did I forget the primer,” I curse myself, as I dropped the breech. No, there was the primer with a dent in it. I closed the breech and pulled the hammer back again. Resting the gun on the netting in front of the stand, I put the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger again … click! Panicking now, I dropped the breech and wondered … “Is it so cold the hammer is frozen and not striking the primer hard enough?” With my eyes locked on the buck, I dug the primer out and put a fresh one in its place. He had still not moved. For the third time I rested the gun and put the cross hairs behind his shoulder. I closed my eyes and prayed, “God, please let this shot go off,” as I pulled the hammer back. I tell myself, “This buck has not moved in a half hour, you have a great sight picture, don’t jerk the trigger, squeeze it!” My mind wills my finger to gently touch the trigger and begin slowly squeezing it. This time there is the loud report of the muzzleloader going off. As the buck disappeared in the cloud of smoke, I thought I saw him hunch up as the bullet hit him.

When the smoke cleared, I looked to the spot where he was standing and saw only empty snow. There was a deer running through the brush and I thought, “Did I miss him?” I began reloading and saw a buck coming to the edge of the creek looking as if he wants to cross. “You and I are getting on the same playing field,” I thought as I climbed to the ground hoping to cut him off as he crossed the creek. I crawled to the top of the cliff overlooking the creek where I could be 50 yards closer to him than in my tree stand. When I got there, I peered over and scanned the creek bottom. From my vantage point, I saw a buck trying to mount a doe and yanked the gun to my shoulder looking at the deer through my scope. I could barely make out antlers and thought, “This is not the buck I shot at; I must have hit him. There is no way he would have let that rag-horn breed that doe if he was alive.” Slowly I made my way down the bank and found a spot to cross the creek.

Getting to the other side, I looked back up trying to see my stand and get a shot path. Even with my binoculars, I cannot find my stand against the background so I began zigzagging the narrow strip of land between the creek and the mud-bottomed channel running parallel to it. Soon I found huge buck tracks with slushy mud sprayed in the snow around them, but no blood. My heart sunk as I thought I must have missed him.

Continuing my search, I decided that I should get someone to help. If I sit in my tree stand, I could direct them with radios to where the buck was and figure this out. As I turned back to the creek to go for help, I saw flecks of bright red blood sprayed across the snow and my spirits soared as I thought, “I did hit him!”

I began tracking the blood and, after 30 yards, the tracks led me to the channel. I scanned the snow on the other side looking for the blood where he exited. Then I saw him, lying in the middle of the channel with half of his rack protruding out of the water, his 10-inch G2’s look like thick daggers coming off the massive beams. My aim had been true, the bullet entered just behind the right shoulder, went through both lungs, and exited at the center of the left shoulder.

“I knew he was a good buck, but I didn’t know he was this good,” I thought! He is a 140-class buck, which is pretty outstanding for my area of New York State. He is the buck of my lifetime, and he will have a place of honor on my living room wall. I have been hunting for him all my life.

Leslie here again,
This buck was large enough, that as word spread, hunters from all over the region came to see for themselves. Being a small town, the traffic was a bit much for the roads, and believe it or not, the county sheriff's department came and directed traffic!

This was a pretty big do for the area.