I don’t wear any ink.
No tribal tattoo encircles my bicep.
No initials decorate my neck.
The likenesses of my children don’t grace my scrawny chest.
Not that I have a problem with those who are all tatted up. It’s a generational thing.
I’m old enough to remember when tattoos were pretty much reserved for servicemen and bikers. Being neither, I never felt the urge or the peer pressure to get one.
I did used to have long hair, and my unshorn locks marked me as an undesirable in the eyes of mostly older folks who told me to get a haircut.
Now I’m one of those older folks and I wear my hair short, but it’s for convenience, not to make a statement. And I try hard not to judge others by their appearance, especially the heavily inked.
Chances are good they’re basically regular folk, not Honduran gang members, rocks stars or NBA point guards.
Seldom, however, are they antelope hunters.
Rarer still is the antelope hunter who wears his passion for pronghorns in colored ink on his forearm.
But it’s a passion I appreciate and a tattoo I admire.
Lots of hunters chase antelope, but few of them consider speed goats their No. 1 quarry, a position more commonly occupied by bull elk or whitetail bucks.
Most hunters invest little time filling their antelope tags. A few hours on opening day are usually enough to bag the first critter within range, leaving the rest of the fall to chase the more glamorous species.
I always felt like the only guy out there who spent weeks hunting antelope. The solitude, however, is one of the reasons I love pronghorn season. Following the opening-day barrage, the prairie is pretty much void of hunters until the general big game season opens.
Now I find I’m not so alone after all. I’ve recently become acquainted with a few other hunters who share my passion, including one with the tattoo of an antelope buck on his massive forearm.
He’s a bit younger than I am and he may wear other, less visible ink, but the buck is prominently displayed for all to see.
It’s one of the few tattoos I’ve seen that prompted me to consider getting one myself.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen. My skinny forearm hardly offers the epidermal canvas for any ink, let alone a pronghorn buck in full flight. There may be enough space on my arm to depict a bedded fawn, but who wants a baby animal tattoo?
I’ll stick with scars and age spots and leave the ink to a younger generation.
And on second thought maybe I will judge by appearance, especially when the tattoo is really cool.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net