With great sadness, I make this post. The GCGF's Sawman and my friend, teacher, and hog hunting partner Bill Stark passed last night at 9pm from pancreatic cancer. Bill had told me to keep his cancer confidential except for talking to 2 people about it. I was also to post after his passing, with him telling me I am free to say whatever I want to in my post announcing his death. I know he had several message on his phone of the type "where are you?"...some things he wanted kept personal...that was just Bill...we are all different in our own way.
I met Bill not too long after joining the forum when he had a 2-7x Leupold scope for sale. We met at his home. We got to talking about hunting, my experiences and how I loved going to my brother's Georgia farm every year to deer hunt and how I'd killed a couple of deer on my neighbor's property (with permission) to help feed a needy family. Apparently he liked what he was hearing, as he asked if I had any unmet hunting goals. I said to kill a wild hog, butcher, and eat it. He said there are hogs at his hunting club, and he'd take me hog hunting. That conversation was followed by a week or so in which we discussed and wrote out a set of safety rules for hunting at night. That was followed by daytime orientation at his club. Over the next year we went out 13 times night hunting until I finally got my first hog. OK, now here's how to clean one, preserve the meat, etc, as I did the cutting. Only an eighty pound boar, but it was my trophy! Over the next year or so, I killed 2 more at his club (those 2 were called in with Bill working his hog call). Slowly, over the years, tracking down every hog lead, practicing gentle patience, and befriending property owners, we had permission to hog hunt on 7 properties. We became a well-oiled partnership/machine. 100% trust. We'd take turns at shooting. Success for one person was success for the other. He sorta played the "bad cop" and me the "good cop" in interactions with or about others...we made a good pair and complemented each other. We certainly could and did disagree, but it was never got personal and never interfered with our friendship and trust.
The signs of early pancreatic cancer can be hard to notice so action can be taken early enough to make a difference in outcome. Night time hog hunting often involves walking. I have a leaking aortic heart valve, so my walking, if kept to a mild/moderate pace, is possible to go quite a ways without a break. If I push it, I get to where I just can't go further, so a mild/moderate pace in consultation with my cardiologist and heart surgeon works for me. Bill would have to stop about every 75 or so yards to rest. He decided to get in better shape and lose weight. About that time his appetite began to decrease little, but his goal was to loose weight, so the decrease in appetite was welcome, and the weight was coming off. He was getting his stamina back until the jaundice appeared. The tumor in his pancreas had grown large enough to block the bile duct. The tumor is what had reduced his appetite. Biopsy and tests confirmed the dx.
Last April I was at W. Fl. Hospital for the yearly CT scan of my aortic aneurysm to see if it has increased in size...if/when it gets too big, I have open heart surgery. So I'm sitting in the waiting room across from Bill and his wife. All were masked up for covid. He's looking at me and says Bruce? I didn't recognize him he'd lost so much weight and was so jaundiced. Right there he told me and said who I could only tell. No problem, I kept my promise.
This was followed over the next year with operations, chemo, and radiation, but by the time the cancer was found, he was given a 5% chance of surviving. Treatment shrunk the tumor a little and seemed to stop the spread, but not enough for another operation. We did go hunting a few more times with no walking, with him using his electric buggy when he'd recover from chemo. I was so happy he had some success hunting during this time. In the last hunt, his naked night vision (no lights or thermal) was so poor I had to say you cannot drive your buggy at night with no lights on, I will drive from now on. That was our last hunt as he continued to get weaker and weaker.
Ultimately, he went under home hospice care. A few days ago he went into respite care for a few days to give his wife a short break. He was in respite care when he died last night. He, being a retired Navy First Class Aviation Ordnanceman, will be buried at Barrancas. Any other plans are not firmed up yet. May be a small gathering at his home.
I will be posting and selling some of his things (reloading related, ammo, some shooting related items) on the forum and already brought a car load home. This is per his and Debbie's wishes. I'll set the prices on stuff I'm selling like I did for my other friend's estate, less than retail. I will be discussing pricing with my shooting group this weekend that helped me with pricing before. Powder will be weighed and pro-rated on price. I will be contacting Uber's regarding putting firearms on consignment so his wife doesn't have to deal with strangers in her home. A friend of their family may be buying one firearm. That same friend asked me to look for a particular reloading powder (none of that was there). If a forum member is interested in a particular firearm they remember, let me know, and I may be able to help on an item. Otherwise, I don't want to do firearm selling. I was asked and completed unloading and making safe some handguns Bill had loaded.
Thank you for reading this long post about Sawman. Since everything about Sawman revolved around firearms, I thought general gun talk would be the place to post this, If it is felt it is better moved to another sub forum, please do. I got the phone call last night at 10pm. Even though I knew it was coming at any time, my sleep last night sucked. Bruce
I met Bill not too long after joining the forum when he had a 2-7x Leupold scope for sale. We met at his home. We got to talking about hunting, my experiences and how I loved going to my brother's Georgia farm every year to deer hunt and how I'd killed a couple of deer on my neighbor's property (with permission) to help feed a needy family. Apparently he liked what he was hearing, as he asked if I had any unmet hunting goals. I said to kill a wild hog, butcher, and eat it. He said there are hogs at his hunting club, and he'd take me hog hunting. That conversation was followed by a week or so in which we discussed and wrote out a set of safety rules for hunting at night. That was followed by daytime orientation at his club. Over the next year we went out 13 times night hunting until I finally got my first hog. OK, now here's how to clean one, preserve the meat, etc, as I did the cutting. Only an eighty pound boar, but it was my trophy! Over the next year or so, I killed 2 more at his club (those 2 were called in with Bill working his hog call). Slowly, over the years, tracking down every hog lead, practicing gentle patience, and befriending property owners, we had permission to hog hunt on 7 properties. We became a well-oiled partnership/machine. 100% trust. We'd take turns at shooting. Success for one person was success for the other. He sorta played the "bad cop" and me the "good cop" in interactions with or about others...we made a good pair and complemented each other. We certainly could and did disagree, but it was never got personal and never interfered with our friendship and trust.
The signs of early pancreatic cancer can be hard to notice so action can be taken early enough to make a difference in outcome. Night time hog hunting often involves walking. I have a leaking aortic heart valve, so my walking, if kept to a mild/moderate pace, is possible to go quite a ways without a break. If I push it, I get to where I just can't go further, so a mild/moderate pace in consultation with my cardiologist and heart surgeon works for me. Bill would have to stop about every 75 or so yards to rest. He decided to get in better shape and lose weight. About that time his appetite began to decrease little, but his goal was to loose weight, so the decrease in appetite was welcome, and the weight was coming off. He was getting his stamina back until the jaundice appeared. The tumor in his pancreas had grown large enough to block the bile duct. The tumor is what had reduced his appetite. Biopsy and tests confirmed the dx.
Last April I was at W. Fl. Hospital for the yearly CT scan of my aortic aneurysm to see if it has increased in size...if/when it gets too big, I have open heart surgery. So I'm sitting in the waiting room across from Bill and his wife. All were masked up for covid. He's looking at me and says Bruce? I didn't recognize him he'd lost so much weight and was so jaundiced. Right there he told me and said who I could only tell. No problem, I kept my promise.
This was followed over the next year with operations, chemo, and radiation, but by the time the cancer was found, he was given a 5% chance of surviving. Treatment shrunk the tumor a little and seemed to stop the spread, but not enough for another operation. We did go hunting a few more times with no walking, with him using his electric buggy when he'd recover from chemo. I was so happy he had some success hunting during this time. In the last hunt, his naked night vision (no lights or thermal) was so poor I had to say you cannot drive your buggy at night with no lights on, I will drive from now on. That was our last hunt as he continued to get weaker and weaker.
Ultimately, he went under home hospice care. A few days ago he went into respite care for a few days to give his wife a short break. He was in respite care when he died last night. He, being a retired Navy First Class Aviation Ordnanceman, will be buried at Barrancas. Any other plans are not firmed up yet. May be a small gathering at his home.
I will be posting and selling some of his things (reloading related, ammo, some shooting related items) on the forum and already brought a car load home. This is per his and Debbie's wishes. I'll set the prices on stuff I'm selling like I did for my other friend's estate, less than retail. I will be discussing pricing with my shooting group this weekend that helped me with pricing before. Powder will be weighed and pro-rated on price. I will be contacting Uber's regarding putting firearms on consignment so his wife doesn't have to deal with strangers in her home. A friend of their family may be buying one firearm. That same friend asked me to look for a particular reloading powder (none of that was there). If a forum member is interested in a particular firearm they remember, let me know, and I may be able to help on an item. Otherwise, I don't want to do firearm selling. I was asked and completed unloading and making safe some handguns Bill had loaded.
Thank you for reading this long post about Sawman. Since everything about Sawman revolved around firearms, I thought general gun talk would be the place to post this, If it is felt it is better moved to another sub forum, please do. I got the phone call last night at 10pm. Even though I knew it was coming at any time, my sleep last night sucked. Bruce
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