After a long winter of giving this some thought (at times)..
can you tell?My recipe for camp dogging would go like this...
1).
learn to give the impression you can play an instrument, (this one is paramount to a Biblical Decree).
It also of course has it's downsides...
After a few years of being the
only one in camp to actually eat and drink my fill by using the above technique, others are catching on real quick.
Gone are the days when I had the market cornered on whailin away at a geetfiddle an howlin at the moon to the delight of an enraptured audience,
(enraptured due to over indulgence a pullin on a liquid container).
The upside to the above is, also gone are the days when I was the only one in camp to go totally overboard in the "really-shouldn't-have-done-that" department, which usually ended with a loud "OOPS!" and/or "OWCH!"..
2).
Leave everything needed to actually DO anything at homeNeeded to do anything that is, other than wander aimlessly through camp looking hungry, and thirsty...and
above all thirsty.
No longer am I the only one giving the impression that I need a meal and a drink..
Nowadays there are miriad souls traversing the length of camp, each with the look of the damned, a veritable parade of pale, ragged, over-the-hill trick or treaters..
3).
Frequent the booshways lodge.This allows you to gather information on who is setting up and where and what and who they have with them.
Again...gone are those days. The available space in the booshways camp has gotten progessively smaller and routinely contains more people than the lobby at the Hilton Hotel. His lodge has grown comparably to the size of a condominium, but there is no "plus side" to sitting inside the lodge while, (contrary to popular belief), the outside is where the real action is.
4).
Host a "blind-silent" auction.This is the first in a series of nefarious undertakings I personally have considered but not yet tried. Thus, no one else has gotten the idea...yet.
The reasons why this
may work are many, the first of which being that word "blind"...No camp is familiar with this term when used in conjunction with "auction", you make the rule that it's over when all the items have been traded for.
In other words no-one may look at the actual item you are placing on the trade blanket untill the end of the auction and each item
must be enclosed within some sort of container...the bigger container, the better.
Another reason to applaud this rather new camp event is that others may not legally say anything to distract from your ruse....(your ruse of course is that there is nothing of value in the container).
Most camps these days have had so many "silent" auctions that there are few (if any) new items to be found on the blanket at any given time. Therefore, another reason this little ditty fits your basic camp dogging category is, by bringing nothing but large empty containers you will invaribly leave with more than you came with...hopefully nothing dibilitating or painful.
Of course the down side to all this is that there may be another camp dog just itching to get his/her hands on a new "fleece for the sheep" and again you will lose the element of surprise.
I hope all this has helped another potential "doggy" to become as successful as have I. Should you come away with just one thing to comfort you on a cold dark night, alone in your camp, hungry, thirsty, out of breath, and crippled from running from an angry mob of buckskinners it would be this that I leave you with....download and open
this thought..(24K) audio file.
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