JAN-A-3
THE VISIT AT DERWOOD WITH THE KILETTS,
THE HUSBAND AND WIFE MASTER MEASURERS TEAM
FROM SCI
WHO LOOK OVER THE TWO SHEEP AND SCORE THEM
OFFICIALLY,
AND SWAP ALMOST HALF THE STORIES WE CAN
COME UP WITH
IN THE OPENING ROUND OF OUR EXCHANGE OF
VISITS—
WITH A PLAN TO RETURN FOR THE ANTLERED
GAME,
AND A SPECIAL VISIT TO THE SCI CHESAPEAKE
CHAPTER ON FEBRUARY 8
December 29, 2002
I was called when I was at breakfast, since Joe was not feeling well and his nephew Michael had run hard in his cross country and track meets this weekend and was sore, so they would not be running this morning as planned. But they definitely wanted to test their ability to oxygenate blood, and hoped I would come over to test their pulse oximetry. I made a couple of calls I responded to, and then went to Needwood to make a very cold morning run of my own, and return to shower and get down to Joe’s house on my way to DCCRC church. I tested their oximetry—among them I had the lowest pulse—and then went on to church which was near empty because of the holiday wedding of John Heetderks in New York.
I was still at church when I got a phone call from Bob Killett who said, “I am over hear in your driveway!” so I scurried back to get there as he and his wife Mary, and son Robert from Phoenix drove around getting acquainted with this piece of Montgomery County, since they live in Sykesville, a farm area which has changed dramatically to fill with development. They are still living in the sawdust and boxes of his own Africa room of Big Game trophies as he is now concentrating on Asian speices. He is very active in the SCI having gone to every convention since 1984, and even Mary his wife got herself certified as a Master Measurer. Only the SCI-designated Master Measurer can score trophies in the top of the books, and my snow sheep fits well up there. He also scored the Dall sheep, and Mary worked right in there with him, as she had also taken to hunting with him, collecting trophies of her own, and being active in the sables.
They were especially impressed with Derwood’s location. He envied the woods and streams and the ability to remodel the house into this woodland secluded view. He looked at the plans for the game room, but not the architectural plans which are in the hands of Gardeners’, getting the estimate and appraisal made for the overhaul of Derwood, which will probably require my moving out of it, and now I have no other place I can move into, during the half a year it will take to do the job. So, I may have to look around for a place to rent or otherwise be out in the era of maximum sawdust.
Bob had been in Mongolia, hunting Moral, and Tajikistan, hunting Marco Polo sheep. He never saw any Moral the equal of mine, and is planning to come back with his kit and the books for antlered game to go over the Moral, elk and caribou at a later time to enter them into the record books. He did get a magnificent trophy Marco Polo ram, but subsequently, the officials in Atlanta have impounded it where the hair is slipping and the cape is simply salted, with no improvements in this very pricey and special trophy. Bob is 64, retired from the owning of nursing homes which he sold about 1995, and Mary is a nurse, interested in going along on one of my medical adventures.
We told stories and showed off trophies, with a new set of stories for each new game head, and by that time, it was dinner time. Their son Robert has been out hunting in many exotic locations and so has Mary, who has actually shot some big game with the 340 Win Mag Weatherby Mark V which I have just now left with Reg Franciose in Colorado until the next elk hunting season.
They had an interest in going to O’Donnell’s
Seafood Restaurant, formerly on Wisconsin Ave in
Bethesda, but now moved to Kentland’s in Gaithersburg. So, they invited
me to dinner, to continue swapping hunting stories.
I had mailed them by email a few of the stories
about the hunt in Kazakhstan for example, and we
had enough for a full evening and a plan for several
more. There will be a Chesapeake
chapter of the SCI special affair on February 8
near them at Paul Malloy’s Game Room, and I was
invited to join them.
Since Craig Schaefer had just joined the
Chesapeake Chapter, while I had been only an SCI
National member, I called and arranged that we would
all go to this special affair in another hunter’s
game room: who knows, I may be able to host a similar
affair someday next year if all comes together to
allow the reconstruction and remodeling at Derwood!