Anxiety Attack

One of the biggest days of the elk hunting calendar is here, and as always I'm freaking out. Today I received my official hunting license application from the State of Colorado. It came by mail and Danielle called me at work today to notify me of it's arrival.

I immediately broke out in to a cold sweat.

The cause of my high anxiety and elevated blood pressure levels is that the Colorado Division of Wildlife holds a public lottery for anyone intending to hunt big game within it's state borders. Only a limited number of licenses are awarded each year and in order to be granted the right to hunt and kill an a wild wapati, mule deer or other big game animal, you to have to be selected. So essentially, my annual elk hunt rests firmly in the hands of Lady Luck. And some times she can be a down-right cruel, heart-breaking b**tch. A couple of years ago, I missed out on a hunt, simply because my name wasn't drawn in the lottery. Talk about a depressing twelve months.

As one might expect, I tend to get somewhat anxious and freaked out around this time of year. And to make matters worse is the fact that the process of filling out your tag application is just plain confusing. It's like taking the S.A.T exam all over again. I'm not kidding. You need a degree from M.I.T to fill out this thing. The application comes in a twenty page booklet, riddled with different regional codes and numerical sequences that you have to fill out perfectly with zero mistakes. One slip of a misspelled word or an incorrect number in the wrong box and you're screwed. You're immediately disqualified and your application is discarded. In the words of the Soup Nazi,"NO HUNT FOR YOU!"

Now that I think about it, maybe the bureaucrats in Colorado make filling out the application difficult on purpose, thereby weeding out all the idiots and mouth-breathers out there. The less morons we have running around the woods with high-powered rifles the better in my opinion.

As usual, Dad and I will fill out our applications in unison. That way we can check each others work for mistakes. It's sort of like the scene in Crimson Tide, where Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington both have to turn their launch keys at the same time in order to launch the nukes. Well, okay, maybe it's not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

Now how do I get my hands on some Xanax?