If memory serves, my first "Bird Hunter's Diary" column appeared in 2002. That would mean I've written almost 50 of these for a total of somewhere around 70,000 words.

The author and Rascal share a contemplative moment.

Looking back now, every word has been worth the writing and some of them perhaps have been worth reading. With mixed feelings, I now turn the last leaf in a book that has gone tattered, because it has gone exposed into many a thorny place.

You have been good to me, so I feel that you are owed an explanation for my departure. That may seem like a funny thing to say, since we have not even been formally introduced. But more than a few of you have, over the years, contacted me by phone or letter to express compliments and gratitude. Some of you have invited me to hunt with you, and your invitations I still keep in a special drawer in my desk, even if I have not been able (yet) to take you up on the offers.

A few more have been less charitable, but at least they were honest. Anyway, I suspect that we may in fact have met without knowing it. If you've ever arrived to hunt on public land in Iowa or Minnesota, and got there just in time to see a skinny fellow walking away from a dented old Dodge Neon--parked in your favorite spot--with a little black dog in front of him, well, that was me. Sorry I got there first. If it's any consolation, I never took too many.

For several years I have made a little bit less than a living as an outdoor writer. Little bits can accumulate over time, however, eventually amounting to quite a bit. So there is a bare, pragmatic, financial reason for my departure, but that is not finally the deciding factor. (You don't need to worry about me, by the way; I recently landed a "real job.") John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Time has crept up on Rascal and the author, and it has done so stealthily.

That's one of the few things he said that I agree with, and somewhere in those words is the reason I cannot write any more stories about hunting, at least for a while. About the time you read this, I'll wake up one morning and turn 40--not old, by any means, but older than I've ever been.

A week before that, my oldest daughters will become teenagers; the week after, Rascal will turn 77 in dog years. Nobody is quite sure what happened to the years between these momentous milestones and the time Rascal and I went dawn-to-dusk in steep, slippery, snowy country on six young legs. Some time has gone missing, and stealthily so.

Other changes too have come upon me unaware, riding as stowaways on the years. At age 12, I bought my first outdoor magazine at the IGA Foods store in Greenville, Kentucky, and read it cover to cover. From then on, an outdoor writer was all I ever wanted to be.