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Casino Royale

Not more than 15 minutes into my arrival at deer camp, a vote was taken and the group consensus was to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening at the casino. Now, mind you, the "casino" is roughly 2.5 hours away from deer camp, and is a bit seedy. But, most in the group were itching to go to whittle the night away before getting up at dawn to hunt again. So, off we went in a long caravan of trucks. Since I had only just arrived, I was happily offered the chance to ride in with another driver and was not to be a driver myself.

Now, truth be told, I am most definitely NOT a gambler. Sure, I enjoy playing nickle/quarter poker with the guys at deer camp, because that is fun. But being at a casino and dropping $200 or $300 in a couple of hours... no, that is not me. The idea of buying a lottery ticket feels frustrating to me (I am a bit of a penny-pincher), let alone playing other high stakes games of chance. So, at the casino, I had my fun through people watching, drinking beer, meandering around the place looking at all the lights and sounds, and spent a platry $5 playing nickel slot machines. Because of the ever changing and tightening rules on smoking in my state, at first I stepped outside to smoke my pipe (oddly, some establishments allow cigarette smoking which was evident at the casino, but they ban cigars and pipes), but after about an hour, I noticed a few other guys were smoking cigars and pipes and then knew it was acceptable inside as well.

By the time the evening drew to a close and we headed back to the cabin (left the casino at roughly 3am), I was pleasantly tipsy, a few of our crew won big (one fellow came out $200 ahead, another $150), but most lost their shirt (the worst, one guy lost $450). I much preferred my sudsy feeling, and the simple enjoyment of observing the various people at the various tables and machines. We arrived back at the cabin at around 5:30. Some of us staggered off to bed, forgetting about hunting, others sat around taking brief catnaps until it was closer to dawn, and a few of us geared up and went out to find a place to hunt immediately upon return.

My hunting efforts in tomorrow's essay.

PipeTobacco