I was angry last week when I couldn't start my lawn mower.

I fumed, pulled the cord, fumed more when the mower started but alternately sputtered and roared.As I worked to correct the engine miss, it struck me how badly I'd overreacted to such a small thing.I thought of my hunting buddies in Texas, and wondered how they fared through the hurricane. I'd often enjoyed hunting Rio turkeys and hogs on a sprawling ranch near Palo Pinto, which is northwest of Dallas - I called, and was glad to learn that the storms hadn't bothered them.Still it was nice to reconnect, and as our Pennsylvania hunting season approaches, I felt lucky to have been reminded of a lesson I learned in Palo Pinto.I'd been resolutely hunting all day, even though it sometimes felt as if I were broiling my brains in the hunting blind under the relentless Texas sun.I was also hoping that after the turkeys roosted for the day, during the last hour of light, hogs might come.I'd shot hogs in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, but I'd never shot one that weighed more than 250 pounds. The tracks I'd seen in the soft sandy dirt near my blind were huge, and deep.I'd only seen one turkey all day, shortly after midday, but it hadn't worked out. The turkey had responded to my box call.As he continued to gobble I'd replied with a mouth call, "Hi honey, I got a little something for you." The "little something" I had for him was a Grim Reaper broad head.Suddenly he'd gobbled from right next to me; he'd skirted the field around the edge to my left, where my view was blocked by a gnarly tree.Through one of the two shooting windows, I could see one of his legs below brush.I knew without looking, because I'd practiced drawing and aiming my bow out each window, that I didn't have a shot from either window to the turkey, which was gobbling and demanding that my hen decoy concede and come the rest of the way to him.Then I didn't realize that the turkey had sneaked behind brush to the left of the blind. I couldn't keep myself from turning my head to look and he caught me doing it. I heard that dreaded putt sound and knew it was over.As the day waned, I began to console myself with the hope of hogs. Finally, the long afternoon cooled into evening, into that last hour of the day. I grinned when I heard grunting and some dislodged rocks, high on the hill. The hogs were moving my way.Then I also heard a slight sound of stones crunching on the path below me - more hogs? No, my ride back to the house had arrived, virtually soundlessly because they were driving a Bad Boy Buggy, an electric, four-wheel-drive ATV.One of the other hunters in camp and a guide hadn't realized that I was also hunting hogs, and they'd decided to come get me as soon as "turkey roost" time had passed.Frantically, I stuck my arm out a blind window and tried to wave them away, soundlessly. But "See anything?" they yelled and I got mad.I knew those hogs were now headed the other way; I could hear them running."Why are you here?" I hissed angrily. "I can still see my pins for 20 minutes, and hogs were coming!"I got in the buggy with them but I was feeling terrible. In my desire to shoot something, I'd been incredibly rude and unkind to people who were only making an honest mistake.I apologized; they apologized.Last light time had turned into reality check time.Why had I gotten so ticked off about something so minor, in the grand scheme of things? I did get a turkey the next morning, but my elation fizzled because I couldn't forget my meanness from the previous day.Suddenly the shininess was gone from the turkey's feathers and I felt quite alone.Last Light comes in all hunts, and in our lives.Time grows short, and the shorter it gets, the more I hope to live what hunting teaches me - that the tally of kindnesses given and received, and friendships made, matter more than any list of animals taken.