It was the third week of October. The leaves were in full fall color, and I thought it would be a great time to bring my pregnant wife up to Buffalo County Wisconsin for a taste of what I experience on my many weekends away each fall.
My friend, Lee, has a couple of his own farms in the area, so our plan was to meet up each evening and compare notes. Saturday night, Lee arrives to chit-chat about the action thus far….he leaves his dog, Haley, in the truck while we commence to talk hunting for an hour or so…..
Strategies set, Lee departs camp and heads back to his place…or so I THINK!
“Knock Knock” …goes the door….
“Lemme Guess….Chevy won’t start!????” I chuckle…
“I don’t know how this happened, but my keys are locked in the truck!” Lee whimpers.
I’m thinking, “Man, this Lee will do ANYTHING to get to stay and hunt my spots!!”
Lee feeds me some line blaming his DOG for pressing the button on his keyless remote, but I’m onto him. He’d just seen the footage of a 155″ 10 point my wife videoed that evening and he was wantin in on the action!
“Man, I’ve GOT to get into that truck so he can get home to his own land!”
An hour into the “break-into-the-truck game” we were still scratching our heads. Apparently Chevy’s designers focus more on keeping the coat-hanger trick from working than on making an engine that runs!!
Finally, we’re able to pry open the extended cab window about an inch….progress! Now we’ve got to find something to string into the cab and either hit the unlock button or fish out the keys.
We head for the farmers tool shed….I need to McGuyver a tool for getting me those keys and getting Lee home!! ….there on the wall….BAILING WIRE!!!
So I proceed to straighten out about an 8 foot piece of wire and fashion a hook at the end. We quickly assess that the “hit-the-unlock-button” trick isn’t going to work….BUT…the little loop on the keychain in the console is sticking up just a tad!
Now here’s where my walleye jigging experience comes in….I deftly approach the loop with the dangling, wobbly bailing wire, knowing that if I knock it the wrong way it may fall and ruin my chance of me hunting by myself in the morning! Steady….steady….steady….GOT IT!!!! I carefully twist the wire just a bit to catch the keys and begin to lift them up and slowly back then out towards our little window opening.
Lee, seeing his chances for staying dwindling, decides holding the flashlight is no longer important and rushes to “help” me pull the wire out. “He wants to shake my catch!” I’m thinking…
Lee tells me to bend the wire up to release it from being “caught” on the seat. But I’m onto him. I can see that would only dump them down onto it and screw my chance to get him home again. So I go the opposite way with it….
The keys rise up over the seat. My heart starts to pound as the dangling keys make their way closer and closer to the window. Lee makes one final attempt to grab the wire and knock them off but it’s too late! I back them out the window and fling them to the ground! Whew!! The things a man will go through to hunt another man’s spot!! Lee grumbles some misdirected words at the dog like she was the cause of all this, as he drives away in the darkness of Buffalo County. I may not have shot a buck on this weekend, but at least I caught those keys!!