What's Up With Me?

1997  

• January 9-12 1997 exhibited Bowhunting.Net at the Bowhunting Trade Show in Indianapolis, IN. The show was very poorly attended.
• January 13-15 Chef Paul at Bogart's asked me what he could make me, I said, "bean soup." (He makes the best.) It was snowy and cold in Chicagoland. I was going to hang with my writers group bud, Peggy B, and catch up on all the latest happenings with her, but she got the flu.
• January 16-26 exhibited at the AMO Archery Trade Show in Louisville, KY. This new show was jammed with dealers. I talked to people non stop and got orders for over 50 new web sites. We went to the Safari Club Banquet. It was nice but man was their auction a long drawn out affair. Dave Watson did a gig there and he was righteous, I mean real good. Saturday night Rich Walton and I attended the Bowhunters Hall of Fame banquet. It was impressive.
• January 28 back in Texas and a steady diet of HTML and web site creation.
• January 29 Bowhunting.Net grows every week. I get my butt worked off every day doing web sites and updating the site daily.
• Feb-June the days are becoming the same. I drill html code all day building web pages. I stay up late and get up late. Larry Anglin, Rich Walton and I work tightly together growing the site. It is skyrocketing every month. By April it reached 3-Million hits a month.
• June 15 Peggy B, my writer friend from Illinois, stopped by to visit me on her way to Austin. Good conversation and a nice time.
• July 11 Rich Walton came to Pancake, TX and we made plans for the future of Bowhunting.Net. Lots of surprises coming for out net community. We went to the Horseshoe (Texas honky tonk place) on Saturday night. Holly cow, can Rich play pool. He is awesome. All the local sharks were wide eyed in amazement.
• July 27 In the Live Chat, at 8:00 pm today (Sunday) we had the ground breaking ceremony to open the bowhunting.net Residents area. SusieQ officially opened the area by uploading her personal web site and becoming the very first resident.
• July 30 Norm Johnson and Tim McKee invited me to go night bowfishing with them in Lake Belton (about 40 miles away.) I went. Teresa (Norm's wife) shot a gar right away. I missed probably 20-25 gar and buffalo. I guess it takes some getting used to, but it was an absolute ball. I returned home at 6:30 in the morning. Slept like a log.
• August 1 (Friday) Dick Pippenger became our inaugural EZ Home Page resident. (You know him as Pip in the live chat.)

• January 5-6, 1996 exhibited at the Bowhunting Trade Show in Indianapolis, IN. Good show. 
• October 7-15 held design and content meetings for the annual bowhunting publication Bear Tracks. I did the layout and graphic work then prepared the computer files for publishing.
• January 11-13 chased business at the SHOT Show in Dallas, TX.
• January 21-28 exhibited at Chicago Sport Show.
• February - I authored the web site for the 1996 Mid America Hunting & Archery Show. 
• March 8-10 guest speaker and exhibitor at the Mid America Hunting & Archery Show.
• March 14- Back in Pancake. Webicizing, writing, taking care of business.
• March 15-30 completed arrangements to become an internet service provider. Registered Bowhunting.Net with the InerNIC and downloaded Bowhunting.Net to our server and hung my shingle out on the World Wide Web. 
• June 1-6 Bear Hunted with Fred Lutger's Wilderness Bowhunts at Hollingshead Lake, Ontario, Canada. Another one bites the dust.
• June 26-30 board of directors meeting for Camoclan2, Inc. in West Palm Beach, Florida.
• July 11-14 Met with my long time friend Rich Walton of Hawk Associates in Tucson, AZ. Hawk is an advertising and marketing agency that handles top accounts in our industry. AND a whole bunch of them are coming online with web sites at Bowhunting.Net. Rich is excited about Bowhunting.Net and will handle the sales for it.
• July 31-Aug 15 back to Chicagoland consulting with Freddie Bear Sports for their new catalog and mailings. Plus, work on web sites for bowhunting companies. (Isn't this computer thing awesome. It doesn't matter where you are, as long as there is a phone jack to plug into. I can upload the web sites and daily Bowhunting.Net updates to Larry in Texas -- from anywhere.)
• July 30 and Aug 6 Tinley Park Writers Group Meeting. This is cool. Everybody reads their latest stuff and we talk about it. Then we go out for pizza.
• September 1 Back in Pancake, TX. Working up October's web sites and updating Bowhunting.Net every day. Also getting ready for Whitetail season. 
• October 11-Dec 30 bowhunt whitetails at home with my buddies. Going away to hunt is always exciting, but nothing beats bowhunting with these guys every year. There are bigger bucks other places (although we have one real monster and a half monster--that keep giving us the slip, but I don't care. This year makes 13 years we've bowhunted the same land together. I wouldn't miss this for anything--we're talking about serious bowhunters also who know how to cut up pretty good, too. I'm talking two laughs a minute, minimum. Bowhunting with these guys is absolutely the most fun you can have. 
• October 11-Dec 30 deer hunting in between long bouts of html sessions for Bowhunting.Net. I work late and miss a lot of morning deer hunts. But I make it out almost every evening. My email volume begins to be a problem. In November it gets totally out of control. At the peak I get 1,180 in one email download. I ask Larry Anglin for help and we get more sophisticated in our email distribution procedures. It's a big help. 
• December 30 Larry Anglin informs me that Bowhunting.Net is already over 1,000,000 hits for the month of December. The Clubhouse got 75,000 hits. Our Live Chat is plagued with some operating problems but it is a big success. Bowhunters are chatting from all over the world. How sweet it is.

• Ferbruary I put up a bowhunting site on AOL called bowhuntwww and work on it, trying to find other bowhunters on the web. I add a site for my camouflage, Sticks N' Limbs and put the url in my ads. Sticks N' Limbs starts getting hits.
• July I put the Sticks N' Limbs email address in my ads. Bingo, when the ad comes out in Bowhunter magazine I get over 350 in one day.
• August14-23 arrive in Montreal in Quebec and then on to Shefferville to meet Arthur Talion of James Bay Adventures. Then Fred Lutger and I fly into one of Arthur's camps and bowhunt Caribou as guests of the Quebec Ministry of Tourism. Tough job, but somebody's got to do it. Click here to see the story I wrote about the hunt.
• October 1-3 catalog photo shoot and graphic arts design meeting with Clarkfield Outdoors in Clarkfield, MN. I designed and produced their catalog.
• October 7-12 bowhunted at Wells Creek Whitetails in Cramer, IL. Click here to read the story about this super hunt.
• October 17-28 at home in Pancake, TX. The rest of 1995 at home, bowhunting Whitetails on my deer lease Pancake, TX.