It Was Thaaaat Close

Defeated, MS> Hershel Howell came thaaat close to a perfect weekend and walked away with nothing. It started Thursday afternoon when he reached camp and decided to go up to the lake to see if the crappie were biting. He stood on the pier and in about 15 minutes had caught 6 slab crappie, enough for dinner for he and Trigger and Dad headed back to camp.
The next morning at daylight he was sitting in his blind at the Double Whiteoak field. He put on his earphones and holy crap!, he was surrounded by turkeys shaking the trees with their gobbling. It wasn't long 'till three of them came into the field to check out his decoys. They wandered closer and closer, then hung up at about 35 yards. He picked out a really gigantic gobbler and pulled the trigger. Bl-Plattt! Bi-Plattt? the bullet misfired and the 14 inch gobbler hopped into the woods and was gone.
I have very seldom ever heard of a shotgun shell misfiring but it was terribly bad luck at the most inopportune time. Dad headed back to camp and decided to go fishing again that afternoon.
He launched the boat and started easing around using his jig pole. He caught a couple of crappie and then hooked what he thought was a stump, a stump until it started towing him up the lake. Dad worked the fish for over an hour as it pulled him all over the lake and each time it swam under the boat to break his line he was lucky enough to spin the boat around. Most of the time the tip of his jig pole was almost bent double into the water. Finally, the big fish rose. He could see that it was a giant catfish of between 40-50 pounds. The fish stayed up for just a few seconds then dove straight under the boat. The hook finally gave out, snapped, and the big fish was gone.
He came thaaat close to a perfect weekend.