It was a good day. I left work an hour and a half early to stop by and drop my bow off to get a new string and cables put on. We drove home, stopped an got the mail and there is a big manila envelope sent from the United States District Court, Western District of Tennessee. Yep, for those of you who have gotten something similar before, you know what it was and I was afraid to open it. It was a summons for jury duty for the month of October. I have never been summoned for jury duty before, primarily because up until the end of 2008 I was always on active duty. Now that I've retired they finally tagged me. Okay, I understand and I'll be happy to do my part, but couldn't they have at least waited until March? Sheesh, this sucks. According to the letter I have to call EVERY day after 5:00 pm to check and see if I have to report the next day. That'll put a damper on my October hunting, but at least it won't stop it. Just no long road trips that month. Oh well, there's always a bright side, and it could be worse. It could have been for the month of November.
Hopefully it will be early in the month so that it doesn't affect your hunting during the rut! I got summoned for jury duty when I was 16...needless to say I was exempt.
There are many ways to get out of it but when duty called I couldn't bring myself to fabricate an excuse and bit the bullet for a 3 day traffic injury case that was ridiculous. Had to take off work and got paid $15 a day by the government for my duty... I think it costs that much in gas to make it to the court house each day.
I have a summons for State Court for the first 2 weeks of October (only have 2 weeks of jury trials a month in my county). Since I am a licensed attorney, I don't think I will get picked - I know I wouldn't want to try a case with someone like me on the jury :p. But it is still a pain to have to check in.
Don't you get to defer it to another month? It seems I got tagged every year for about 5 years running. I recall that I could defer it one time to another month if it was a hardship to attend the month I was picked for. Say I got picked for Sept., I could defer it to Feb.(or any other month of my choice within 1 year), no questions asked, but then I was stuck with Feb. no matter what. That might just be something specific to here though since we have such a big transient population of commercial fishermen who may have to be at sea making a living in the month assigned.
I saw that I could have requested another month, but in order to do that I would have had to justify why doing it in October would create a hardship for me. Somehow I don't see them accepting bow season as a valid reason or deferral.
You'll be traveling a lot for business during the month of Oct. Just don't tell them it's the business of bowhunting.
Of course it is a valid reason. All you have to tell them is that you had vacation planned for that time and request a deferral. They will have plenty of people to cover that month, and you will still be doing your duty at a later time.
When I got summoned 2 yrs ago it was for the week I was going to be in Colorado on vacation. I called told them I would be out of town the whole week and they said ok. They told me they were going to defer it to next quarter but I never received another notice. If I were you I would take my long drive hunting trips and simply tell them I had to go out of town. Its really none of their business why.
$15.00 BUCKS we get $30.00 here in ga. plus paid at work and most of the time in the stand for the aftrenoon hunt. Then we just call the recording after 6:00 pm. 9 times out of 10 your back at work the next day.
