I’ve decided to drink only Mexican beer this year. Because after stumbling around on the Mexican border with my two thousand dollar dog, my five hundred dollar boots, my fifty dollar jeans, my fifteen hundred dollar shotgun, and a whole bunch of other shit like a forty thousand dollar pickup truck, I feel a little bit like a pansy. Ask yourself, could you head out into strange desert country in a pair of Chuck Taylor-knock offs with a piece of black plastic for a tent-sleeping bag combo, a gallon jug of water and a few cans of food? Could you dodge God knows what, God knows who, sleep out in strange territory, go miles without water, slip into a foreign country where you don’t know a word of the language and they are gunning for you 24-7, and survive? Hell I sure as shit couldn’t. So, I’m drinking Mexican beer. Because I like the idea of supporting those kinds of people. Because bettering oneself should be toasted. Gente valiente.
Mouthful of Feathers 
Don’t forget a few bales of mexican green. Or better yet a few compadres that are paying their entire life’s savings to get them to the promised land that are probably just passing through from Honduras. I do enjoy a good cold Modelo Especial, made in Mexico by Mexicans.
We need you in Congress.
Loved the post and the thought…I couldn’t agree more. Maybe that’s why the wife and drink Mexican beer exclusively after hunting with our 10 purebred mutts (we rotate them…if we hunted all ten at the same time I’d drink straight tequila before, during, and after the hunt), our $2000.00 dollar over unders (went twelve for thirteen roosters in North Dakota…came home to Arizona and I maybe averaged 4 to 6 shots per Mearns…really, extremely pathetic, Filson booots, ditto…ditto…ditto.
Well good for Mr. Reed. I live in Arizona for most of the year and while I drink Mexican beer it is not to salute the illegals flooding into our Country. From the LA Times, February 17, 2017 ” 117 bodies have been recovered from the Arizona desert since January 1st”. Apparently, either the illegals are dying in small numbers and huge numbers making it in, or large numbers are dying in the desert and few are getting in, your call. My take is that most of the people crossing the border are ill prepared for the journey. Once they cannot keep up the coyote smugglers take the remainder of the group on and tell the stragglers to walk to a road and the border patrol will take them back to Mexico. Some percentage don’t make the trip out. If Mr. Reed wants to salute the foolhardy then that is his choice. If you want to engage in risky endeavors’, the devil waits in the desert. Personally, I don’t take my wife down to Southern Arizona Quail hunting (she and I hunt a lot of quail) as I deem it just too dangerous. Anyone who hunts quail down in that part of the state would be blind not to notice the backpacks, empty food cans and water jugs lying in the very remote areas we hunt.
Mark; I understand the concern with the wife hunting near the border, but my wife and I hunt some 30 plus days a year within a,few,miles of the border and we’ve never had an issue. We have as you note seen backpacks, blankets, etc., but if you talk to Border Patrol agents they’ll tell you that for recent years there are virtually no backpacks or trash left as it leaves a trail for the agents. And I’ll tell you that in my five years of living and hunting within miles of the Arizona/Mexico border there are virtually no substantiated reports of issues with illegals taking actions with Americans along the border. But I do understand some people have concerns.
Mark,
If I couldn’t feed my family or send my kids to school or if I feared for their safety, you can be damn sure nothing would stop me from providing the best way I knew how. Calling them foolhardy fails to consider that most of them are good people with motivations no different from our own. We were just lucky enough to be born on the north side of the fence.
We are a country built on Sooners and rebels and setters of all kinds. If anyone should understand the inclination to break the rules and push the boundaries to find opportunity, it’s Americans.
Greg I absolutely agree with your last comment , I work with these people every single day , and you know most are just as you say just trying to make a dollar for there family , but the problem is much greater than that on many levels . And I sure as hell don’t want to a have a knew wall in my sights as me and the mutts are cruzing the Coronado ! I have spent most of my adult life sleeping on the boarder with not a single problem . Those mnts and canyons are a huge part of my life . I’m a lucky guy , but ya know I’ve never had a family member die from drugs,that cross over that boarder , or family member harmed in any way from one in a million persons who come from Mexico . Just think there is no easy fix .
Best
I can understand that perspective. But another part of me wonders what would happen if I wandered across the border in a southerly direction and pledged to only drink coors or better yet Shiner (brewed by Texicans…remember Goliad and Gonzalez ). I bet I would get quality time federales and maybe some time in the clink…
…great read…thanks.
Great post. As public land hunters, we shouldn’t be pissed at people trying to better their lives. We should be pissed at a bunch of jackwagons trying to steal our public land and erode protections that make them possible. Trying to stop people in desperate situations from doing what any of us would do is like trying to hold back the ocean. Instead, why don’t we tell these good-or-nothings in Congress to stop undermining public land and the protections that make our days in the field happen? Otherwise, we’ll be “hunting” our birds in Cabelas on video games as they will have locked us out from our birthright or destroyed it with oil rigs and gas wells. Thanks, Tom, for a great read.
Good thoughts Tom. Tho situations are made complex, some answers are simple.
Well, I can say that I have had more guns pulled on me in Montana and Idaho while out hunting than all the time I have spent along the border in Arizona. At least the locals who pistol whipped the 70 year old a few years ago in the Wyoming Range for infringing on “their” hunting area are still in the pen. I’ll take AZ along the border over some of the idiots around the intermountain west.
Tom, it might be the piss in that Mexican beer that you are subconsciously craving. Isn’t urine the secret ingredient of Mex brewed beverages…or was that just for Corona?!
Love it Sir.
Sometimes I wonder if the Mouthfulloffeathers crew need to get real jobs. Meanwhile, drinking that piss-enhanced Mexican swill will probably have to do
Well said. Salud!
Good read … one side of the plight of our southern neighbors.
BUT for the life of me, understanding how the US should be an open arms country to people who won’t fight for their own country/countries is hard to comprehend.
Mexico and most of South America are ripe with corruption, crime, and drugs, all of which leave few opportunites, thus the reason there is little to no hope there …
Just like this country would be if not for the brave men who fought and died for the freedoms and opportunites we all have.
Coming here is the easy option and will not fix these countries problems … I’m sure this seems a daunting task for these people … just like declaring independence in 1776, seceeding from the union in 1861 and sending troops across both oceans in 1941 … We believe in our country and feel the need to defend our liberties …
My thoughts are it is time some of our Southern neighbors did more to make things better in their own country instead of risking their lives to come here illeagly !?!?
Be Safe All, Jimmy B.
There are lots of collisions between what the law says we must do, and what we must do as human beings. Arizona belonged to the Mexicans (and/or Spanish) for a long time. Here in California I often say that I live in ‘Occupied Mexico”. I won’t bother with the political blather and bullshit, but perhaps we could find just a little bit of tolerance in our hearts.
Mexican Beer? Hell yes! Carta Blanca, Oso Negro, Modelo of both types. Waaaay better than Budweiser.