Milt
Marty never sprung for any of the critter. You’d be lucky to get 40# of meat off of what he collected out there that night. He did sling beer at our local watering hole though (we didn’t pay technicians that well).
The young officers were allowed to frequent such establishments while doing Squadron Duty Officer, just for the SAR call-out function; not the Station Orderly Officer. The one golden rule was that you had to be sober enough to initiate a call-out if stuff started to happen.
I was sitting there one night chatting up the lassies of the local education community (‘toolscreachers’ in the vernacular of the time), and as Marty plopped two more draft in front of me, he advised me that ‘Vancouver Rescue’ wanted to talk to me. I had left the “Elks” phone number with the Station operator, this being eons before the advent of cellular telephones.
The duty wonk at the Centre told me that a light private airplane had turned up missing, that the Comms search was nearing completion with nil results and that I should call the standby crew to the hangar for probable launch.
I essentially started a search from the local hotel pub before heading back to Ops to brief the crew.
It just isn’t that laid back anymore I don’t think.
Ciao
Madtrap
PS. I just marinate venison, elk or young moose in red wine and a lot of fresh herbs laced with garlic. Liquid smoke sounds like something that will eventually be found to be an environmental hazard ;o)