Recently @tuck-fheman claimed that he was getting too old for this, as it pertains to STEEMIT. One of his complaint was that men who liked “sports, guns, hunting, cars, or anything that my generation considered to be laced with testosterone” were few and far between. He also said that anyone who produces great, original content in “those 4 basic man groups will rarely, if ever, be rewarded for doing so.”

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In honor of @tuck-fheman and with great hope that he may one day return, I present to you TESTOSTERONE, & All the Macho Manliness that I can Muster!

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Here is HIS NAME IN PEPPERS (I didn't have enough lights)

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Disclaimer: I was born as a male and plan to be one until I die. If this offends you, please just walk away, as I plan on discussing sports, guns, hunting, and cars in the next few moments.

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SPORTS

Now, @papa-pepper has never been a sports fanatic, and though I never played in Junior High or High School, I’m always up for a good game. In fact, I broke a pretty good testosterone-laced sweat last night playing some half-court, 4 on 4 basketball last night. I played good and I played hard, and no one got hurt.

Basketball is a sport played by men

Sports for me started out as a family affair, or just with the kids around the neighborhood. Eventually I did some pee-wee soccer and little league baseball, and eventually led up to playing softball as a man. That was an interesting time, because we played for a bank and a Classic Rock radio station, and played in a rural league with a bunch of farm boys. Since we were mostly drunk and high, tie-dyed stoners, we pretty much got whooped every game, thought we did have a lot of heart and made some great plays. Plus, we were a colorful enough bunch to work a crowd pretty well, so we quickly became fan favorites.

Football is the English word for "Testosterone Sport"

I was often in the outfield or 2nd base, but I did get put in as a pitcher for a while. Bill, our “regular pitcher” took a line drive straight to the shin, so I got volunteered. When they asked me if I wanted to sub, I said “**I SAW THAT!” I figured that they thought I was messed up enough that I may have missed it, but I wasn’t that messed up. I saw that! However, I guess I was still messed up enough to agree to it.

Here's a Scorpion - Real men may handle them unsupervised

So there I was, a drunken, tie-dyed spectacle on the pitcher’s mound awaiting my first massive farm-boy of a batter. Also, I had no real experience pitching softballs, so eventually the Umpire was giving me pointers. As I began to practice my pitching, you should have seen the crown go wild when I would actually drop one on the plate. Thankfully, I never got hit by a line drive!

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GUNS

Growing up, I only had BB and Pellet guns. My dad used to hunt deer and such, but when we kids were still little, he sold his deer rifle and his .22 rifle in the classified ads for $25.00 each. Yeah, $25 per rifle. Well he got his $50 for them, and a couple hundred phone calls seeing if he still had them.

50 cal Black Powder Rifle - Smell the smoke and manliness!

After I got married, I picked up a beautiful .22 revolver, figuring that my wife and I could practice some shooting together. That didn’t work out, because my wife was afraid of it, but I still got to have some great fun with the gun. It was a Rexio Pucara, made in Argentina, and was a 9-shot revolver. That gave me 3 more bullets than the guy with the 6 shooter! Eventually, I sold it though.

Works boots and real pants - not short shorts or tight pants, just like back in "tuck's" day

Now, however, as one attempting to move towards a more agrarian, self-sufficient, homesteading lifestyle, I wish that I still had it. Thankfully, a friend gave me a 50 cal. Black Powder Rifle before I moved to Arkansas, so that should come in handy.

@papa-pepper in the bathroom not doing a "male make-up tutorial"

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HUNTING

I’ve never actually been deer hunting yet, but I definitely want to go this year. My brother once shot one with a bow off the front porch during season when we were growing up, but I never really had friends or relatives that went gun hunting, so I never went.

Even this giant hotdog knows papa loves meat!

With six of us already in the @papa-pepper family, we’ve got some mouths to feed. Since I would rather get my meat from the woods than the drive-thru anyways, I’ll be sitting in the woods with a gun this fall. Between rabbits, squirrels, deer, and turkeys, I’m hoping to put some food on the plate. I know that some may not like this mentality, but if I can accept that you don’t want to eat dead animals, I only ask for the same level of tolerance in return, and that you accept that I want to eat meat. One way that I plan on getting some of that meat is by hunting.

Another wild hand-caught hopefully-not-leprosy-infected Armadillo that I manhandled

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CARS

Now I am not a mechanic or a car guy, but I’ll drive them. My first one was a 1986 Ford LTD Crown Victoria. Now that was a car! It had bumpers that you could actually bump things with, because it was made of metal. What a concept! They sure don’t make cars like that much anymore.

@papa-pepper manhandling another venomous Copperhead snake

It may have been one of the over-sized, gas-guzzling beasts of the past, but I sure did like that car. My brother once “borrowed it” to give some guys a ride home from a party, wound up falling asleep at the wheel, and parked it in the river! Man, was I surprised when I woke up. The best part was that we got it running again after that! It had been parked in the river with only the trunk sticking out, and it even had aquatic insects still swimming in the puddles on the floorboards, but it actually fired up and rode again.

A waxed mustache - I'd like to see a woman do that! - wait... no... I don't... please...

Unfortunately, I eventually hit a 4-point Buck with it, and that ended both of them. Neither the car nor the deer made it through that.

Another great ride that I had was a dropped down Ford F150 with a system, tinted windows, and extended rims. Yeah, that was a truck! Now, I would never make a truck like that, and I wouldn’t even buy one like that, but this one was given to us as a wedding present.

2tuck-fheman is from Texas, so here's a manly Texas Longhorn Skull

The beast of a truck we got these days is just a GMC Suburban, but it’s got a bit of a lift and some bigger, tougher tires, which work great on the gravel and dirt roads we often travel.

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Only time will tell what will happen with @tuck-fheman, but personally, I hope he returns. Though I didn’t always agree with what he was up to or how he was doing it, I appreciated his contributions and his periodical upvotes on my posts as well, if I going to be honest. I think that he was a great member of the steemit community, and believe that he will be missed if he remains absent.

I definitely understand some of his points and concerns, and agree with some of them. Hopefully this attempted display of testosterone won’t scare too many of my followers off, but I know that you weren’t following me for pointers on wearing tight pants or how-to makeup tutorials for men.

As always, I’m @papa-pepper, and here’s the proof:

proof-i-am-missing-tuck-fheman

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Awesome Handcrafted @papa-pepper logo kindly donated by @vlad - Thank you!!