When to Retire from Huntting ???

[Hoyt]

I'm 66, been hunt n' something ever since I could walk good. Hunt alone, a long ways from a road and up steep ridges, behind my house on National Forest now days. Haven't seen another human back in the areas I hunt in the 6yrs I've hunted it.

Had my first serious health problems 25yrs ago with heart by-pass surgery, then, 4 angio plasties..balloons, major knee and back surgery, another 5 by-pass heart surgery in 2001...cost me 6wks of gun season and all the by-passes blocked back up before I finished deer season out. Had to sign a waiver from my cardiologist for refusing to go back in hospital before deer season ended.

Soon as it was over I went back in and started on heart stents. He said I'd have to have up to 13 as needed. Got number 7 this August had my appendix removed two wks later and since had two minor strokes, two minor heart attacks, a stent put in carotid artery in throat, a hernia I'm seeing a surgeon for the 24th of this month to see if he will operate with me on blood thinners..lots won't and I can't get off of them and stay alive.

Packed two bucks out from over a mile, up and down ridges this season I killed with my recurves...so I would say I have really been blessed. Wasn't all that long ago when heart problems put many men on the couch for the rest of their lives and open-heart by-pass surgery survival odds weren't very good.

I've had heart attack alone deep in the woods, made many slow, scary walks out when I'd have to just lay down in a damp creek bed or mud hole to try and cool off and get myself together to get out or keep moving to stay warm. But, I don't know how not to hunt and don't have any plans to try and learn.