So let me thank you one and all for it. Especially to those who kicked in with their bodies and wallets to carry the workload. To Jamie Miller for helping with wood cutting, and for shuttling people and trailers, and for tending to a hunnert details. To Ron Thompson for the effort that went into the dozen clout arrows and the contribution of the Amish bread that we ate. To Rob Flinn for his GORH-Tex beans. To Jeff Strubberg and his able assistant, Dave Long, for perfect hog meat.And to Jeff and Dave for running airport shuttle, too. To Flint Chip Archery for Ben Fleming's youth archery clout prize and Ben Fleming for going toe to toe with the big guys. To Magnus Archery and TBM for clout prizes. To Spike, for donating a hunnert-some barred fletching, ground, for the clout shoot, and then having the audacity to win the event, grinning. (Wait till you see pictures of him and the other winners, reminiscent of the Olympic medal presentations.) And to Marc at HW who, in addition to the donation of a jacket and a vest for clout prizes, donated 25 dollars of every 100 dollar pullover shirt sold at GORH to the WLFA and thereby helped push our contribution to over 450 dollars for the WLFA once the final tally was made. To Tom for the bow donation that Spudley carried back home with him. And to the Delaware Park for turning on heat and showers for us and winterizing the place again after we left—what a welcoming gesture, I thought. And to Mimesius, who shamed the National Weather Service Chicken Little Naysayers with his bodacious and prescient mid-winter prediction for perfect balmy weather. We had it all!

I think I worried overly about the quality of our rabbit hunt. Led me to last minute decisions to go off state land and onto private land, and to lean on some friendships to welcome the horde of GORHphers. Worked out well enough, and we saw plenty of rabbits, many of us the same one over and over again, especially through the gauntlet along Wendell Calhoun's pond.

Rabbits or no, the clout event alone packed plenty of drama and laughter into little space. The only man who had a clue what he was doing was Larry Yien. He alone hit the bale three times. The rest of us went up winging and praying. Some prayers were answered. God apparently came to Larry and told him, "Larry, today is a day for celebration. Step aside for now and let's put the circus spotlight on a few clowns while we all have a laugh." Larry did and we all laughed hard.

In a final accounting for the extra meat, let it be known that Mussatto kept the cake that no one would eat, that I kept a ham, made Jamie take one home, toted one over to Wendell Calhoun, who insisted that we come back any time, another to Helen Honeter, who did the same and promised next time not to turn Mussatto's license plates over to federal authorities investigating rural U. S. Mail delivery violations, and a last to another neighbor who had given us hunting permission on some mighty-fine briar patches, promising to reserve them for "2001: A GORH Odyssey"

On a personal note, thanks to Licoriceman, for the wooden Dutch shoes that everyone signed, and to Will, who made my nice Nissan stainless insulated coffee mug a perfect companion piece to the Nissan stainless steel thermos that jumped off a Montana mountain top on one of Gordy Mickens' mules two Septembers ago. The mule survived.

We all had our personal notes. Our special remembrances. And we will surely share them with a retelling every time an occassion prompts it. One of my favorites was Mussatto complaining about how dull a (very sharp) fillet knife was during his fourth or fifth slice across his Spam Retirement cake, until he finally realized that his cake had some meat to it below the icing. Heck, everyone knows nothing cuts Spam, neither sharp knives nor concentrated dishwashing detergents—and most certainly not the chemical thinning agents naturally found within the body's bloodstream.

A final personal observation. I've worried for a while that we've forgotten how to have fun hunting with sticks and strings. Even when it became apparent to me that men and women were rediscovering stump shooting and traditional archery and the joys of making their own tackle, I still worried that we were too much taking our cues for its hunting use from serious big game bowhunters, both traditionalists and mechanists—from the professionals. I feared we might be guilty of betraying the legacy of such hunting archers as Howard Hill, Chet Stevenson and the Thompson brothers, among others, who thrilled to the joys of the simple chase—even when it included "lesser" game.

Because of GORH, because of everyone's reaction to GORH, down to every last man, woman and child participant, I don't think any of us really have to worry about that for a while.

Rabbits be toast.