"Some Folks I Know"

I am two glasses of pinot into trying to conjure up something to write about, and it looks like glass number three is imminent. Turning over the thoughts in my mind like a tractor and disk till up the soil, I have accepted the fact that I do not have a linear stream of thoughts worthy of committing to paper right now; rather, I have settled on the notion that, instead of writing about sporting things this time, I’ll write about sporting people. So here now, in no particular order, are three unique hunters I’d like you to meet.

Buddy the Barber. The cruelty of Mother Nature’s sense of humor can be subtle sometimes. You see, I am losing my hair despite my relative youth (mid-30s), and I am convinced it is not from stress, parenting, marriage or heredity, but turkey hunting. Regardless, having less hair means having less need to frequent my barber, Buddy, who, curiously, still charges me full-price for what is clearly half the work it once was.

Buddy was once one of the most accomplished turkey callers around. In his youth, he competed against – and routinely defeated – none other than turkey calling legend Ben Rodgers Lee. Over the years, he and Ben Lee got to be good friends and spent a lot of time in the turkey woods together.

I always enjoy Buddy’s tales of his times on the stage and under the dogwoods with Ben Lee; but I don’t get to hear them as often as I used to, thanks to Mother Nature. Lucky for me, this has been the worst part about going bald . . . so far.

Dr. David the Dentist. My dentist is an avid duck hunter. Avid, hell, he is fanatical. So when I mentioned to him during my most recent visit that I was scheduled to hunt ducks in Clarendon, Arkansas after the new year, his eyes lit up like a tourist in a foreign country who’d just run into someone from his own neighborhood back home. His back straightened up and his eyes twinkled a bit, and he settled in to talk duck huntin’. He revived some of his more memorable Mississippi Delta duck hunts while he scrutinized the work of his dental hygienist (she always does an outstanding job of tolerating the two of us when we get to talking about hunting during my twice-yearly visits). Soon, wings were whistling and flooded fields were cackling with cup-winged waterfowl as my dentist’s enthusiastic words transformed the exam room into a frigid duck blind.

Suddenly, however, an unwelcome sound emanated from his probe. The reassuring metallic scraping sound the probe had been transmitting was interrupted by a thick, dull sticking noise as it repeatedly adhered to a dark spot on one of my lower teeth. The abrupt alteration in the instrument’s timbre disrupted Dr. David’s whimsy and snapped us both back to the matter at hand. His hook-like probe scratched and scraped all around the suspect tooth, but each time lodged itself dishearteningly in the same malleable spot. A cold sweat broke out on top of my head as he focused on the mischievous molar; he had inspected almost all of my teeth and I thought I was going to get off scot-free before the probe was slowed by the abnormality.

Please just move on, it’s nothing, I kept thinking to myself, trying not to let my imagination run too wild with what might be wrong. “Mmm, we’ll have to keep a good eye on this one,” he finally offered, “but I think it’s okay for now.” I don’t know whether he was clarifying some obvious orthodontic observation for the sake of his hygienist or trying to reassure me after noticing the perspiration on my scalp, but I didn’t care; I was being paroled for six months.

I am certain that my upcoming Arkansas duck hunt saved my tail feather that morning, and is the reason he granted me clemency and sent me on my way without insisting that I make an appointment to have the dark spot corrected. Birds of a feather indeed.

Ed the Engineer. My friend Ed is a career engineer and businessman. But those are mere vocations. Ed is a rabid sportsman who, apart from marriage and work, is consumed with two things: turkey hunting and duck hunting. Each year, Ed hunts every day of Tennessee’s turkey season; then later, Ed actually moves to Arkansas for the duration of the Natural State’s waterfowl season, and hunts daily until it closes. I don’t know how he came to procure such an arrangement and remain happily married (and employed), but if Ed ever writes a book and shares his secrets with the rest of us, he will become so rich that Warren Buffett will call home all atwitter to tell his wife if Ed ever speaks to him on the street.

These are just a few of the warm, generous and unique hunters I’ve gotten to know over the years. Their tales are singular, but their passion for the outdoors and their eagerness to share some stories – and in some cases their duck blinds and bourbon – are common to sporting gentlemen everywhere. Come to think of it, I need to give ol’ Ed a call to see how his turkey season went. Then I’d better make my next dental appointment with Dr. David so I can hear how he fared on his duck trips. After that, I need to head downtown so Buddy can trim up my hair. He’d better not charge me full price, though.



(c) Roger Guilian 2009

"Fooled Again"

In my humble and novice opinion, there are few aspects of deer hunting more enjoyable than stalking through the woods, despite how altogether poor at it I am. I get bored easily, and don’t learn much about the woods I’m hunting by sitting in a shooting house for four hours.

The objective of stalk hunting, of course, is to read and interpret deer sign and to stealthily hunt the deer where they bed down, travel between bedding areas and food sources, lay down scrapes and check rub lines. A good stalk hunter can slip into a bedding area undetected and hammer off a twenty-five yard shot at an oblivious wallhanger before it has time to blow at him and disappear into the brush. A good stalk hunter can spend twenty minutes poring over a topo map of land he’s never set foot on before and roll over a 225 pound cull deer before I have figured out how to work the latch on my shooting house door, the way my buddy Dru did a few years back. A good stalk hunter can locate an inconspicuous deer trail in December and a month-and-a-half later, set up an ambush on a rut-mad monster as it mindlessly saunters after a hot doe.

Despite the knowledge that I do not fit the classification of a good stalk hunter, I nevertheless climb down from ladder stands and alight from shooting houses quite often to do my own stalking. I see a great deal more wilderness and seldom-trodden trails by stalk hunting than by walking to a stand or sitting over a green field all afternoon. On one recent and unseasonably warm November day in the whitetail woods, I became convinced that stalk hunting was about to finally pay off.

My scouting a few weeks before had revealed a fresh rub line meandering through a hardwood bottom for about a hundred yards. After fruitlessly hunting over a green field, I decided to stalk to the rub line bottom I’d found. Believing at one point that I had spooked a deer up from its bed, I positioned myself at the base of one of the few pines in the bottom and waited and listened – the way I do when turkey hunting.

Roughly twenty minutes after setting up, I heard the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs. Just then, the forest floor thirty yards to my left came alive with the unmistakable crunching sound of something approaching; it seemed so loud, like a buffalo trouncing on broken glass. Moments went by. There! A flash of gray! My temples pulsated and blood coursed through my veins as my thumb flirted with the safety on my rifle. My neck tingled. The back of my tongue watered and then went instantly dry. With a pounding chest and shorter breath, I focused my eyes on my elusive quarry as the movement which had caught my eye emerged from behind a small thicket – a large gray squirrel scampering past me at about twenty yards. The monarchal buck that was already well on its way to adorning a wall in my guest room revealed itself to be nothing more than a common squirrel.

My imagination is pretty active - and pretty gullible. I am fooled time and again by the possibilities stirred up by my imagination every time I listen to the woods’ mysterious and hopeful sounds. Seems like I can always convince myself that the buck of a lifetime is only a few steps ahead of every crackling oak leaf and every snapping twig I hear. That’s why I appreciate my imagination and its boundless optimism; it’s part of what drives me to swing my legs out of a warm bed hours before sunup on twenty degree mornings; to drive twice as many hours as I’ll get to sleep in camp; and to endure all the hardship, discomfort and humility that are such an integral part of spending great days outdoors.



(c) Roger Guilian 2005