Dear Hunters,

As hunting season is upon us, I know that I'm going to be spending X number of hours in the woods or on the water this January with a SAR team looking for a hunter that went missing at about 4:00 PM, and now it's getting dark and he's kind of overweight and wearing blaze orange and oh please hurry it's so cold and he's not really dressed to spend the night outside....

I also know that most of the time, if he's not lost, we'll find the guy dead of a heart attack, sometimes hanging from a tree by a lanyard, sometime crumbled up at the bottom of a tree stand because he fell out after his heart exploded, sometimes at the top of a hill he just climbed. But long-dead is the typical situation by the time we get there.

I don't really mind dragging a body out of the woods as much as you'd think, but I could do without looking at the wives and the sons and the daughters crying on the side of the road as we put the body bag in the coroner's truck.

If the only exercise you get all year long is three weeks in deer season, please take a moment to realistically assess your fitness level before you hike 4 miles in and try to drag a 150 lb deer out.

Please don't split up from your hunting buddies.

Please carry a GPS and know how to use it.

Please leave your cell phones OFF until you NEED them to call for help (if your phone works where you hunt).

Please carry the basic stuff you need and dress to survive the night with a broken ankle when it is 30 degrees (-1 degree C) and sleeting.

But most of all, please take care of your body.

Maybe this year you skip hunting and take a year to get in shape a bit. Maybe this year you walk a bit more all summer long, visit the woods where you plan to hunt when it's the off-season, perhaps - gasp - put a little muscle mass on.

I'll be out there hunting with you and I hope if I bump into you out there we will have a chance to chat about the hunt, the weather, our guns, our lunch, our kids whatever. I'd rather that than our meeting being because the SAR captain told me where they found your body and it's my turn to help carry.