This is how I want to be!!!!!
Still hunting for supper at 89
January 3, 2006
- BAKER CITY, Ore. (AP) - Harry Galloway says you're never too old to get your winter's meat. And he's not talking about taking a bus to the supermarket.
The avid hunter from Baker City celebrated his 89th birthday this fall with a few presents and a hug from his wife. The icing on the day was a whitetail deer he spotted that morning in Wallowa County.
The whitetail was more than 100 yards away, and Galloway put the bullet right behind the shoulders. Since it was his birthday, he allowed a friend to dress the doe and drag it across Cow Creek.
Galloway, who has one of his original hips and one fewer heart valve than he was born with, still spends much of life in the Eastern Oregon backcountry with a rifle draped across his shoulder.
If he's not hunting, he's fishing. Last week, he endured a snow storm to reel in some few rainbow trout through the ice at Pilcher Creek Reservoir.
The rod should get a rest this week, though, because Galloway wants to head out with his black-and-tan tracking hounds, Sport and Jack, and tree a bobcat. And there's still another month left in chukar season, so his shotgun won't stay long on the shelf, either.
Galloway, who started hunting 77 years ago in his native Pennsylvania, has shot almost every species you can hunt and caught almost every type of fish you can hook in northeastern Oregon since he moved to Baker City about 35 years ago.
"Someone once asked me how I know all the roads," Galloway said. "Well, I've worn out two pickups and a Jeep learning them."
And his exploits in these parts represent just a smidgen of Galloway's career as an outdoorsman. Galloway worked on petroleum pipelines and he hunted in almost every place he worked - 43 states and countries as varied as Australia, China and Saudi Arabia.
As the years and the miles have accumulated, Galloway's contemporaries have either died or been forced by their frailty to stop lung-straining hikes in the mountains.
But Galloway's still out there, rifle or fishing rod in hand.
A younger friend, Todd Callaway, wondered last week if the secret to Galloway's long-lived stamina is his diet. Galloway, 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds, shrugged his shoulders. He doesn't know for sure, and doesn't much care.
"I eat a doughnut and drink a cup of tea for breakfast," he said. "I never carry a lunch with me, and if I do end up eating lunch then I don't eat supper."
That lunch or supper, of course, entails wild meat that's rich and protein and poor in fat. He mixes it with countless miles of walking on steep, heart-pumping terrain.
Byron Henry, 66, of Baker City, a longtime hunting partner, said Galloway has an inner drive that never seems to fade.
"I can remember when he was 60 he could stand beside a 55-gallon drum and hop right on top of it," Henry said. "And six weeks after he had hip-replacement surgery (about 15 years ago) he was out killing a wild turkey."
And never, Henry said, did Galloway beg off a trip the pair had planned.
"When we say we're going to get up at 4 in the morning, he's ready to go," Henry said. "It's the people who sit around on the couch all day that don't live as long, I think."
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gottafish
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....except my nurse would be about 25 years old and hot :grin:
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