Hunting is a year-round job. Not the actual walking and stalking. That just takes a few weeks here and there. What extends across seasons is finding suitable land to lease, exploring it, sizing up the wildlife population, cutting a deal and constructing a semi-permanent hunting camp when it's allowable. OK, my wife doesn't buy the year-round argument either, but I do my best to sell it.

The theory took me in late February to west central Missouri in the company of two construction workers. I've been hunting with them since we were kids. Both have admirably expanded the construction stereotype. Blunt, aggressive and argumentative are words their wives use to describe Dale and Woody's social skills.

Because we live 100 miles apart, we met at Woody's, which is centrally located. We all had four-wheelers, another necessity--not for hunting, as I explained to my wife when I sheepishly returned home with one, but for blading the driveway. I won't print her response.

Woody has a flatbed trailer. Dale has a V-10 extended cab three-quarter-ton Ford. I had a desire to go exploring. It seemed like the perfect arrangement until we went to plug in the trailer lights. The plug-ins were incompatible--both male, ironically. Alpha, probably.

The situation necessitated a quick trip to town. We pulled into the parts store. Woody and Dale described the situation. The salesperson walked to an aisle and handed Dale an adapter. Dale tried handing the adapter to Woody who kept his hands in his pockets and stared intently at a nearby electrical part like he'd never seen one similar, and it was interesting.

"What? I'm supposed to buy this?" asked Dale.

"Well, yeah. It's your truck," Woody replied.

"And it's your trailer."

"But you can keep the adapter."

"Why? So I can pull your trailer around some more?"

"No. So you'll have it handy next time you pull a trailer that's wired correctly."

The discussion lasted 50 miles as I tried to get comfortable in the back seat. I could have done it, had I been four foot two. I could manage if I swiveled my upper body to the left, my legs to the right, held my mouth dead center and looked only straight ahead.

"I've got shotgun on the way back," I demanded.

Both guys ignored me in favor of the wiring discussion that was still in full bicker as we pulled up to a locked gate just off a gravel road, just off a blacktop, which was conveniently located just off two other blacktops.

"I can't feel my right leg," I moaned.

"Will you guys quit whining?" said Dale.

He was fumbling in the truck's console with a look that flickered back and forth between anxiety and confusion. He stopped fumbling and stared at the gate.

"Don't even tell me you forgot the key again," said Woody.

Dale was dealing with the landowner and had been issued the key that fit the lock. He'd forgotten that key on the trip three weeks ago. It hadn't been pretty. They'd had Keith with them. Keith, an engineer, had a new-fangled GPS gadget he'd wanted to play with. Engineers are unforgiving of less-than-precise habits. They get fussy about details.

"You'll be all right," Dale replied, slurring the four words into one and keeping his eyes fixed on the gate or the woods behind it. I wasn't sure which. "Guy lives close," he said. "He'll have a key."

The guy turned out to be the owner. He also turned out to be the only one home and the only one taking a nap. And that goes a long way toward explaining why hunting for leases is a year-round job.