Hunting Buddies

The other night when I went into my son's room to tuck him in and tell him goodnight, I found him writing feverishly, his paper propped up on his school binder like a makeshift writing desk.  "Daddy, come back in a minute; I'm almost finished."  Perplexed, I agreed and left the room.  A few minutes later, I returned and he smiled sheepishly and said, "There.  Finished!".  He snatched his paper and ran past me.  "Be right back, Daddy!"

When he returned for bedtime, he allowed as how he had left me something under my pillow, and that I was going to like it.  I tucked him in, sang to him, hugged him, kissed him, and turned out his light.  I then went to my room where I found under my pillow the following story, written by my son's hand, on a piece of loose leaf paper.

I reproduce it here, verbatim, grammatical miscues and all:

"This is a story of hunting with my daddy.

"Theirs all sorts of names you can call your daddy in the woods, such as dad, daddy. But the main one is, hunting buddie. the reason why is, he'll look back, and remember it. Now my hunting buddie told me that your not always gonna kill something, its part of hunting. And he said when you do it's a blessing from God.

"Now their was a time when my daddy and I were deer hunting, and we got into a stand, and the wind was blowing behind us that means the smell is in the woods aka, no deer. So we got out and checked out a shooting house but it was infested with wasps. So we went through some really, really thick woods to see if a deer was going to bed down. It took us about 30 sec to get situated. We hear something walking, I said, whats that? My hunting buddie said probably a raccoon. But their was a 5 foot tree that got bulldozed over and my hunting buddie saw a tan saddle, and said get behind me. it was heading our way, so my hunting buddie threw up his gun, and, lights out for the hog. It was scary and fun. It was the best time ever with my hunting buddie. I love you daddy."

Now, I'm fully aware that each and every editor out there would go through two red pens correcting and polishing my son's story.  I am also cognizant of the fact that by reading the story as-is, one would have a hard time discerning that my son and I came face-to-face with a boar at about ten steps as we walked down what we thought to be a deer trail, but that proved to be a hog trail, and that I shot said boar before it got a chance to wind us, or see us, or charge us. It was exhilarating but dangerous just the same.

I am a long-time fan of the writings of Gene Hill, Tom Kelly, Havilah Babcock, Don Thomas, Vereen Bell, and many others.  But the short little story my 10-year-old son left me under my pillow the other night is far-and-away my favorite story ever. I can't wait to live - and read - some more.

"An Open Letter to My Son, From a Deer Stand"

My Beloved Son,

As you and I sit here in this two-man ladder stand overlooking a well-trafficked grid of bush-hogged shooting lanes below, I feel moved to write down some of my thoughts about the kind of hunter – and man – that I hope you will become, should you choose to continue hunting once you’re old enough to do it on your own.

First and foremost, I love you. Neither these words, nor any that I may come up with, will ever adequately capture or do justice to the depths of my love and pride for you.

When your mother and I learned that we were having a boy – almost ten years ago now, amazingly enough – I was understandably ecstatic. From that moment there in the ultrasound room, I began fantasizing about all the adventures I hoped we’d share. I prayed to God that you’d be healthy – ten fingers; ten toes – and then I prayed that you and I would have the kind of loving, respectful relationship that allows parent and child to enjoy spending time together without letting the necessary lines between parent and child to get too blurred by friendship. I am proud to say that I think you and I are doing pretty well in that department so far. Hunting and spending time outdoors together are two of the great rewards of such a relationship. One of my great hopes is that you will grow into a lifelong and ethical hunter who believes in conservation and gives back to the outdoors.

I have been taking you to the woods with me since you were a year old. You walked for the first time at a close friend’s hunting camp. Heck, when you were still in your mother’s tummy I was reading you Gene Hill stories, just to get a head-start on the debased culture into which you were being born.

You are eight years old now, and will turn nine in about six weeks. You are a fine shot with a BB gun and a .22, although, admittedly, I should do a better job of getting you to the shooting range. You have become the finest pick-up man to ever race across a Southern dove field (of course, your sisters are coming of age, too, so we’ll see how well they follow in Brother’s footsteps!). Last spring, you went turkey hunting with me for the first time. I must say, you showed great patience and enthusiasm for a young boy who heard, but didn’t see, any gobblers. You are ready to harvest your first deer. One might even call you overanxious to do so. Frequently this season you have asked me, “Daddy, how come when we hunt together we never see anything? I’m never going to get a deer!” Son, all I can say is that you need to keep at it and be patient. There’s an old saying that hunters use when they come out of the woods empty-handed: “That’s why they call it hunting, and not killing.” That old adage is true, so don’t ever forget it. And, as long as I am around and able, and as long as you show an interest, I will take you hunting, don’t worry. Someday, when I am too old and feeble to hunt on my own, I hope that you will return the favor.

Any time you’re hunting, take joy from just being there. Don’t fret over what and how many. Learn to love being there when the woods wake up in the morning. Enjoy sunsets; savor sunrises. Teach yourself different birds and their songs. Learn to identify the trees. Look for tracks as you travel down woods roads. Learn animal droppings, for they reveal much to the hunter.

Don’t tear up the woods and the roads by joyriding on four-wheelers, especially at night. Give the woods and the deer and the birds a chance to rest.

You will miss. The longer you hunt, the greater your chances of missing. It will happen, so don’t beat yourself up over it when it does. I have missed. Even the pros on the hunting shows miss (they just edit it out!). Prepare yourself now for the fact that you will shoot at a turkey that’s too close, and your pattern won’t have time to open up before it zings past his head. You will shoot over, under and behind deer. And, as you can already tell, doves on the wing are quite hard to bring down; lead them more than you think you need to, keep both eyes open, aim low, and follow through.

Take up spring turkey hunting and stay at it until you’re proficient. I don’t have to tell you how much I love and prefer turkey hunting. It will make you a better woodsman and a better all-around hunter, no matter what the season. Above all, be patient. Shotguns and turkey loads don’t kill gobblers; patience does.

Don’t ever pour out corn and hunt deer or turkeys over it. I don’t care that it’s legal in some states. It’s not the right thing to do, and it isn’t sporting. With today’s modern weaponry, camo, scent suppressants, and other high-tech hunting gadgets, we have enough of an advantage as it is. Don’t cheat yourself and your game by baiting it up. When it comes to turkeys, the decoy question I leave to you, and I will respect your choice. I choose to not use them.

Pick up your feet when you walk through the woods. Don’t trudge or drag your feet. Watch out for toe-grabbers and remember that they will pop the tires on the golf cart.

Always wear your hunter-orange hat and vest until you get up your tree, and put them on again as soon as you get down. Speaking of trees, always wear a fall-arrest device or climbing vest when you climb; going up and coming down. Someday I will tell you about my tree climber falling out from under me when I was twenty-five feet up a tree.

Don’t ever shoot a turkey out of a tree. If you find one roosting and you can’t call it to you fairly, move on. Don’t ever shoot one with a rifle or out of a shooting house, either. And unless you’re trying to take a gobbler with a bow, don’t use pop-up blinds after you’re old enough to hunt them on your own. Learn to properly set up on turkeys, to sit still, and to kill them the right way.

Never walk through the woods with a loaded deer rifle. If you were to trip or step in a stump hole, it could go off. Never climb a ladder or use a tree climber while toting a loaded weapon, either. Instead, use a pull-up rope to raise and lower your gun to and from the ground.

Watch for snakes when you’re turkey hunting. Never sit down to a turkey without checking all around the tree for a coiled-up snake. Learn to identify snakes and to distinguish venomous snakes from harmless ones. Even snakes serve a purpose, so don’t kill any that you don’t have to.

Coyotes are more scared of you than you are of them. Learn to appreciate their music.

Don’t kill things like turtles or songbirds just for target practice. A lot of your friends will do this, especially in high school and college. Nothing says that you have to, though. Shoot a paper target or a coke can instead.

Hunters are oftentimes their own worst enemy. Don’t turn an increasingly anti-hunting world against us even more by doing stupid things like killing non-game animals or leaving a deer carcass on the side of the road. Don’t ever trespass. Any time you see painted lines on a tree, turn around and go back.

Always call your mother when you get to camp.

Be a conservationist, not just a hunter. Give back, don’t just take. Join, support and get involved in organizations like the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited, and the Alabama Wildlife Federation.

When you’re old enough, vote your sport and encourage your friends to do the same. I only hope that when you’re my age you’ll still be able to keep and bear arms and freely enjoy the hunting sports.

Never kill an animal that you’re either not going to eat or give to someone who will. If you don’t feel like cleaning it, let it walk. Donate a doe or two to a mission or homeless shelter, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas. When you prepare wild game, remember that it will cook very quickly, so don’t ruin a good backstrap or duck or pheasant or turkey breast by overcooking it.

When you’re tired of sitting and you’re certain that you’re not going to see anything, give it another half-hour.

Invest at least as much in your scope as you do in your rifle, especially the ones you inherit from me.

Any time you find a facemask or a pair of gloves or a turkey vest that you really like, buy two of them. For whatever reason, they always stop making your favorite hunting stuff right before you need to replace it. Never fails.

Always praise God and thank Him for His wondrous creation, and for the freedom to enjoy it.

Finally, know that at this moment, as you and I sit and listen to the birds sing, and hear the distant reports of duck guns out on the Tensaw, I feel more humble and fulfilled than at any other time in my life, because you are here with me.

A little while ago, you climbed down to get a bottled water from the truck, which is parked close by. As I watched you walk down the trail away from our stand toward the truck, your bright orange outline getting smaller and smaller with each brave little step, I was so thankful that the dreams I first had in that ultrasound room have come true. You looked back at me every so often, just to make sure that I was still there. Eventually, when you got a ways down the trail, you looked back but couldn’t see me anymore. But that’s okay. Life’s going to be like that. Just know this, and carry it with you for the rest of your days:

Even if you can’t see me when you turn around and look back, I will always be there.

Love,


Daddy
January 6, 2013

(c) Roger Guilian 2013

"Home Alone"

“Bye, Honey, we’re leaving!” called out his wife across the house.

He flipped the switch on his electric razor to “OFF” and set it down on the bathroom counter. He stared for a moment at the face in the mirror. He recognized it, but was taken aback when he noticed how dark and sunken-in his eyes had become; the lines in the corners of his eyes; the amount of hair missing from some places, yet spontaneously erupting from others. He glanced down at his black and gray whiskers in the sink before turning to see his family out the door.

“You taking all the kids?” he asked as he rounded the corner from the dining room into the foyer.

“Yeah,” his wife replied. She did not look up at him, but rather kept her attention and her hands inside her purse as she fumbled for something. “The kids all need haircuts and they want to go to the jumpy castle place when I drop off the deposit for Saturday’s party.”

He could not help but notice that she had not aged like he had, and that she only looked better with each passing year. He was jealous of her ability to defy the physical effects of aging and parenting and stress.

“Alright, well y’all be careful,” he said.

“Yup,” she acknowledged flatly, her head now almost buried in her purse. She popped up and rotated her head and shoulders all around herself, making sure she had everyone. “Okay, girls, let’s load up. Close the door quick so we don’t let in bugs.”

A high-pitched trio of “Bye, Daddy!” was cut off abruptly by the closing of the front door.

He watched through the beveled glass as the distorted images of his wife and kids climbed into her SUV and backed out of the driveway. After they’d driven out of sight, he watched waves of heat writhe just above the asphalt road beyond the mailbox. His lawn, he noticed, was dry, crunchy, and dotted with bare spots where it had finally succumbed to the heat and the drought. All the outside looked as if it could burst into flame at any moment.

He thought to himself how badly they needed rain. He checked the sky for any sign of hope, but nothing more than the same sweltering steel-gray haze stared back at him.

The house pulsed with an unfamiliar quiet. The air conditioner hummed outside and he could hear the hiss of cool air flowing through the vents in the ceiling above him. From another room, his dog whup-whupped and yelped from the unknown depths of one of his canine dreams. The dog’s nails scratched the linoleum tile, which meant that this particular dream involved running or swimming.

The unusual feeling of being home alone settled in. Usually, he was either at work or out in the yard or doing something with the kids. Even when his wife ran errands she usually left him with a kid or two, for her sanity’s sake. Today’s solitude was rare, and he didn’t quite know what to do with himself or his free time as he glanced around the silent living room.

He turned on the TV and checked the Weather Channel. His excitement rose when he saw there was a severe weather alert for the area, but sank just as quickly when he discovered that it was for ozone. He flipped over to the hunting channels but, as seemed to be happening more and more these days, he was greeted by infomercials peddling gadgets and junk, instead of hunting shows. He turned off the TV and flung the remote onto the couch.

A man left alone at home for any extended period of time struggles to decide what to do with his time, because he’s not used to having it. So there he stood, alone in his living room, free to do whatever he wished, unable to commit to one thing over another.

He thought to himself how much he wished it were winter so he could build a fire. And he wished it were hunting season. Yes, he thought to himself, if it were hunting season, he’d head off to the woods for the afternoon. Instead, it was summer; the temperature was in the hundreds every day and the thought of being in the woods was a grueling one.

Then he spied the long-neglected stack of hunting and outdoor magazines sitting on the table beside his leather chair. He sat down and opened the magazine that topped the stack. At first he leafed through it and checked out the photography and surveyed the titles of the articles. Then he flipped to the back page and settled in. He read the back page piece and worked backwards toward the front of the magazine. He did the same thing with the next magazine. And the next.

Before he knew it, he’d made his way through a half-dozen magazines and still his wife and kids had not returned. Next he retrieved a Tom Kelly book he’d been trying to finish for the past two years. He enjoyed a few chapters and then returned to his book shelf for another. Don Thomas this time. A few more chapters. Then Havliah Babcock. Then Gene Hill. Right about the time he was choking up over Gene Hill’s “Old Tom,” he heard the garage door begin to open, and saw his wife pull into the driveway.

A minute or so later, two of his girls ran through the living room on their way to their room, new toys in hand. Then his wife walked in, carrying their youngest.

“Hey,” she said with curiosity in her voice. “Whatcha been doin’ this whole time?”

“Not much,” he replied. A contented look came over him as he closed the book in his lap.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Stage Fright"

Think back to when you were but a young student in school. Your American History teacher assigns you the task of articulating the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence from memory. In front of the entire class. Think back to those timeless words: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary. . .” If recalling Thomas Jefferson’s world-changing text just now made your tongue swell up, your mouth turn instantly dry, your temples break out in a cold sweat, and if you could visualize a room full of snickering, pimply-faced kids in front of you, then you know what it means to suffer from stage fright.

Stage fright is the stifling sensation of apprehension and self-consciousness that washes over someone appearing before a large group of people or performing some act on his own in front of others. High school debate team members may feel it before clashing over politically important issues. Musicians may feel it when performing a solo in a packed concert hall or on the 50-yard line during halftime. Salesmen may suffer from it during a sit. Actors can be crippled by it onstage.

Indisputably, the outdoors is a place folks go to relax, get away from it all and put the troubles of every day life behind them, if just for a couple of days or so. But even out here under the pines and the hardwoods, on the lake, and among the woods and the wildlife, stage fright can affect us, too.

I don’t know about your friends and hunting buddies, but the guys I hunt with can be downright merciless when it comes to dishing out grief and trash talk. As one of my hunting buddies recently understated their propensity in this regard, “Rog, we can be pretty irreverent some times.” We pick on each other under the best of conditions, and really savor those moments when someone misses, falls down in the muck or gets his truck stuck.

You really have to be on your guard to avoid getting picked on and run through the ringer in most hunting camps. Yet, inevitably, we all face those situations when we’re ushered out onstage and thrust into the spotlight, whether we’re ready for it or not.

Take turkey hunting, for example. Anyone new to turkey hunting goes through a prolonged period of doubt and apprehension about the quality of his turkey calling. Anyone who says otherwise has either just overdosed on Beta blockers or is a complete liar. When the novice is alone in the woods, his only critic is the turkey itself. Certainly, the goal is to get the turkey to gobble back at your calling, but if your calling stinks when you’re by yourself, the damage to your ego is manageable. After all, if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, who cares whether a turkey gobbled back or not?

Now, take the novice turkey caller and sit him down fifteen yards from a very experienced hunting buddy whose calls sound better than the hens themselves. Chances are, he won’t do too much calling on his own, out of fear that he won’t sound good, or that he’ll screw up the hunt. Asking for advice back at the camphouse and getting an impromptu calling lesson is one thing; retching out an imperceptible squawk that sounds like a diving pterodactyl and runs off a gobbler that was moments away from stepping into gun range is quite another. No one wants to be singularly responsible for ruining a hunt. That’s stage fright.

It can happen anywhere in the woods or on the water. When you set the hook on that lunker bass, all eyes are on you as you land that fish and get it in the boat. No pressure.

Walking up behind a pair of bird dogs on a perfect point. You know, the kind of point that’s worthy of being the subject of an oil painting hanging from a stone fire place in a south Georgia plantation. The point is perfect, the weather’s perfect, the day is perfect. Unless you miss when the birds flush. The look of disappointment and judgment in the dogs’ eyes is far worse than anything you’ll suffer from your friends. You’re on stage and it’s all up to you.

I’ve felt that sense of stage fright in all of those situations. I really feel it when I’m cleaning a deer and all my buddies are standing around watching. But I remind myself that everybody misses on easy singles going away from us from time to time; we all leave some choice tenderloin on the bone; most of our friends can clean a deer faster than we can; and everybody thinks his purring and clucking is better than the next guy’s. So on those rare times when we do come through in the clutch and call up that gobbler or bring down that crossing double, it feels that much better to have overcome our own personal sense of stage fright.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Work Weekend: Part Two"

Later that night, the group sat down to dinner together in the makeshift dining room just off the camp house’s living room, around a table fashioned out of a hefty old red door. It was encased in a thick coat of lacquer that resembled heavy ice.

Dinner consisted of rib eye steaks, instant mashed potatoes, microwaved steamed vegetables, and bag Caesar salad, all served on paper plates. Richard cooked the rib eyes over charcoal, as the rest of the group leaned against porch railings or perched atop the assembled four-wheelers and golf carts, and supervised. During dinner, most continued to drink beer; Wayne had sweet tea. Don drank red wine from a bottle he’d brought with him. Just like his motorcycle outfit, he caught hell from the rest of the guys for his wine, too.

After dinner was complete and the kitchen was cleaned up, everyone gathered in the living room. Chris fired up the 20-year old big screen TV, adjusted the rabbit ears and pulled in a snowy broadcast of a major league baseball game. Two-and-one-third-innings later, Bill got up out of a recliner, stood in front of the brick hearth and said, “Okay, y’all, let’s figure out what we’re doing tomorrow.” Immediately, the TV went off and the group reconvened outside around the firepit which, by now, was burning with steady blue flames and almost no smoke.

“We’ve got a lot to do, but I think if we get an early start, we can get most of it done before it gets too hot. If so, we’ll spend the afternoon working around the camp house.” Bill walked them through his list of chores, and they discussed and debated which ones warranted the highest priority and which ones they could skip. Eventually, everyone agreed that the shooting houses needed to be sprayed for wasps and swept out; firewood needed to be located and cut; tree limbs and brush needed to be trimmed back along all the roads and around all the shooting houses; the fields and some roads needed to be bush-hogged; poison ivy around ladder stands and other high-traffic areas needed to be sprayed with Round-Up. The moving of shooting houses, creating of new openings for food plots, and cutting of new roads would have to wait for the time being. Bill could go a little bit overboard sometimes.

After the business portion of the evening was concluded, everyone sat around the fire and shared stories, told jokes, recalled memorable events in the camp’s history and made lofty predictions about the upcoming deer season.

By the time the fire died down well past midnight, the top of the stone firepit was littered with empty bottles and cans, a pair of flip-flops, a Skoal can, a cell phone, one of Don’s wine bottles, and a crumpled-up cigarette box. The fire slowly burned itself out while the men snored inside the camp house.

Around 1:45 the following afternoon, Chris pulled up to the camp house on a four-wheeler. A few minutes later, Pete and Lester, the fellow who’d ridden up with him the day before, arrived in Pete’s truck. Both the truck bed and the trailer behind it were full of freshly sawed water oak. They began unloading and stacking it in the wooden racks just off the back door to the camp house.

“Man, I sure don’t remember it ever being this hot up here before,” Pete said.

“Gets worse and worse every year,” Chris retorted.

“At least this year maybe we’ll avoid our usual work weekend calamities,” Pete said. “I’m ready for a cold beer.”

“Don’t jinx us, Pedro,” Chris said in his slow, syrupy drawl.

The three were still unloading and stacking the logs when Richard pulled up on his four-wheeler. Round-Up sloshed inside the white opaque sprayer tank attached to the back. The three men working on the firewood looked up to see Richard help Don off the back of the four-wheeler.

“What happened?” asked Lester.

“Ol’ Evel Knievel here got attacked by wasps when he was cleaning out the shooting house on the Horseshoe Patch, and he ain’t feelin’ so swooft.”

“Jeez, Don, you alright?” Lester asked.

“He’ll be alright,” Richard interjected. “But that ain’t all – check this out: Bill got into some poison ivy when he was weed-whacking around a ladder stand, and he’s blown up about as big as a sumo wrestler. Said on the radio that he can’t barely see to drive back in.”

“Damn,” offered Chris. “Seems like he gets into that stuff every time we’re up here. Why doesn’t he let somebody else crawl around in that stuff?”

“Get this,” Richard continued. “Tom and Wayne are way up by 34 on the tractor – stuck as hell in that drain off the back side of the field. Tom was turning around and totally sunk both right side tires. That thing’s leaning over 45 degrees; left side tires are barely touching.”

“Damn gumbo mud,” muttered Pete. “How the hell are we supposed to get them out? Just when I was starting to look forward to plopping down in that chair right there with a cold beer.”

“Well,” Richard offered, “I’m gonna get Don situated in the house; y’all load up a cooler and let’s get back out there and see what we can do.”

Pete, Chris and Lester looked at one another as the camp house screen door slapped closed behind Richard and Don. Pete hopped off the wood pile inside the trailer. Chris threw down the log he was holding in his hand.

“Told ya,” Chris said, disgustedly.

“Well,” Pete groaned. “Just your average work weekend at the camp, I reckon.”

With that, two of the men began loading a cooler with bottled water, ice and beer while the other filled up a four-wheeler with gas from a red plastic five-gallon can. Then they headed out into the heat and the critters and the woods to help their friends.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Work Weekend: Part One"

The temperature gauge in the top right corner of the pick-up’s rearview mirror read 99 degrees. As the truck turned off the blacktop and onto the dirt-and-gravel road, dust and sand flew up behind it the way a contrail follows a jet as it streaks across the sky. The ground was arid and dry. Weeks of no rain combined with 100-plus degree temperatures had turned the countryside into a tinderbox. The two men inside the truck peered through waves of heat that throbbed and radiated off the hood.

When the truck passed through the open gate and rounded the only curve in the road, its occupants saw two men standing around a 55-gallon drum, leaning on long poles. The poles – old-fashioned wooden crutches with metal caps on the bottom – were used as fire pokers. The older of the two men wore khaki pants, no socks, boat shoes and an old golf shirt, through which he’d sweated completely. The younger wore a tee-shirt, camouflage shorts and hiking boots. A jet of flames shot up from the drum. Black smoke rolled and tumbled overhead, batted randomly about by what little breeze there was that hot afternoon. Thirty-or-so feet away sat the firepit, already loaded with wood for the evening’s social agenda.

“Figures Bill and Richard would be the first ones up here,” muttered the driver. “They’ve already cleaned out the camp house and are burning last year’s leftover trash,” he added. “Now we get to hear about how much they already done before anyone else got here.” The passenger chuckled quietly. The truck lunged to a stop as the driver threw the gearshift into Park while the vehicle was still moving. They flung open the doors and walked over to the fire.

“Damn, Bill, y’all trying to set fire to the whole place?” asked the driver. Everyone shook hands.

“It’s alright, Pete,” Bill said. “Besides, the landowners have been promising us they were gonna run a fire through here for years. We’d be doing us and them a favor.”

Bill, the club president, started the hunting camp with Tom, his longtime friend and co-worker, more than 18 years ago. He was mildly obsessed with the camp, worked harder than anyone else at keeping it up and epitomized the role of benevolent dictator.

While the four men were updating one another on how their families were doing, what their kids were up to these days, what vacations they’d taken and how their jobs were, another truck pulled through the gate from the asphalt and wound its way toward them. Soon, two more members had gotten out and were exchanging handshakes and good-natured ribbing.

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by a loud whine screaming down the road outside the gate. Everyone looked up the road as a shiny, jet-black Kawasaki Ninja sport bike came zipping down the road toward the camp. The machine nose-dived to a stop in front of the six men as a cloud of orange dirt caught up to the bike and shrouded it and its rider. The man straddling the bike pulled off his helmet without flipping up the mirrored face guard. He swung his right leg over the seat and then plopped his helmet on it. With his back to the group of men assembled by the burning trash, he slid a pair of aviator sunglasses onto his face and then snapped around and walked toward them. Despite the heat, he was wearing a black Kevlar motorcycle jacket with patches sewn all over it. Fingerless leather gloves still adorned his hands. He smiled a wide, toothy smile as he stepped over the neck of a trailer and squeezed between it and the pick-up to which it was attached. He stretched out his right hand as he approached the group. “What’s goin’ on, guys?” he asked.

“Not much, Mav. Where’s Goose?” chided one of members. Everyone except the biker in the black jacket laughed.

“Very funny,” he said, trying to mask his insecurity. “How y’all been?”

“Good,” answered a heavy-set man who had been poking the fire more than anyone else. “Splash any bogies on the way up here?”

“You just wish you could fit on one of those things, Chris,” came the retort.

“When’jya get that thing, Don?” asked another man.

“Right after the divorce,” he answered. “She got the kids, so I got myself a toy.”

“Ellie would kill me if I came home with one of those things,” Bill interjected. “Alright, who’re we missing?”

“Just Tom and Wayne,” one of the men said.

“Alright,” said Bill, “I know it’s hot as hell, but we have a lot of work to do. We need to clean out all the shooting houses and we need to move some of them. We gotta do some bushhogging, cut and stack firewood, spray some Round-Up, fill the feeders, edge around the camp house, cut some new fire lanes and trim around all the ladder stands and probably a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting. I have it all written down inside. Y’all get your stuff unpacked and let’s sit down and figure out who’s doing what.”

Everyone started unloading their trucks and taking their stuff inside the camp house. A few minutes later, a maroon F-250 Powerstroke towing a medium-duty tractor on a gooseneck trailer rumbled onto the dirt road and pulled toward the camp house.

“Good. There’s Tom,” smiled Bill. “Now we can get to work.”



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"The Show"

If you don’t hunt turkeys, you may not appreciate the next thousand or so words. If you do, however, you’ll no doubt relate.

To the casual observer and the non-hunter, a turkey is a turkey is a turkey. A dead turkey is nothing more than the opposite of a live turkey and little consideration is given to how it ended up that way. To those unfamiliar with the sport, it doesn’t matter how a longbeard winds up getting hoisted up by the legs; hence, little appreciation is shown by those not anointed when one of us actually harvests a gobbler.

Those who don’t turkey hunt have virtually no appreciation of the tactics and accoutrements of the sport. Such is not the case, however, with deer hunting, fishing, bird hunting and other outdoor endeavors. One does not have to hunt deer to know that, for the most part, deer are shot with rifles from some distance up a tree. And one does not have to fish to know that fish are caught on hooks which are tied to the end of a line that is extended from a pole.

How many times has an aunt or a co-worker or a cashier asked us, “Did you catch any turkeys last time?”

Likewise, how many times has someone you’ve been talking about turkey hunting with expressed surprise at the discovery that turkeys are not shot from hundreds of yards away with long rifles, and that we don’t sit in shooting houses to do it?

“Really? You just sit there on the ground and try to shoot them up close with a shotgun? Aren’t their heads really small and hard to hit? Wow. That sounds hard.”

Yeah. Tell me about it.

But like most things in life, turkey hunting comes in layers. Regrettably, not every turkey hunt which is prosecuted in the spring woods is honorable, or even difficult. Lots of turkeys die just moments after flying out of their trees or after strutting for an hour for a harem of hens as they scratch up a chufa patch. And as much as it pains me to say it – again, regrettably – mine appears to be the extreme minority view.

For not all turkey hunts are created equal. The beginner takes what he can get, even if that means bushwhacking a gobbler he sneaks up on as he rounds a curve in a winding woods road. Some beginners get lucky and call up a nice gobbler that cooperates. After dropping the hammer on the unsuspecting tom, these hunters immediately lose respect for the sport and take it for granted. “How hard can this be?” they think to themselves. “Why are those old-timers always going on about how difficult this is? I must be a natural.”

These fellows are cursed, and most usually don’t hear another gobble or see a turkey track in the dirt for at least ten years.

Some kill jakes. They even go back to work and tell people about it.

Then there are walk-ups which get killed in the afternoon. These unfortunate birds are not relegated to being harvested by beginners; the truth is, a hefty percentage of turkey hunters who have a longbeard just appear within gun range are going to line up their bead on its neck and make it do the upside-down bicycle. I’m not necessarily faulting anyone for doing this. But there isn’t much pageantry to the spectacle.

There are turkeys that die after being intercepted on their way to roost. While blind luck can produce this successful result, it is usually the result of some modicum of scouting and understanding of the bird’s tendencies. This certainly makes it more honorable than ambushing one over a chufa patch at 4:30 in the afternoon, but it’s just a hair above bushwhacking at the same time.

Moving up the scale, calling in one or more hens with gobblers in tow is a respectable tactic, and one which requires an understanding of turkey behavior and how to hunt them. Hen eyes are arguably more acute than gobbler eyes and calling up a handful of hens and still harvesting the gobbler that walks in after they’ve entered gun range is a feat.

No one should ever be faulted for killing a stupid two-year old. These new recruits almost always exhibit an eagerness and determination that make the whole day seem sunnier. They gobble good. They come to the gun good. They prance and strut and do their thing. In fact, the real challenge with a two-year old gobbler is not making the shot, but avoiding getting run over by the bird in the process.

While all of the above are examples of common types of turkey hunts and dead turkeys, none of them typically involves a longbeard putting on “the show.” And regardless whether folks agree that these hunts are lacking in some respects, most will agree that they lack the ultimate prize of any turkey hunt: Watching the gobbler put on the show.

When a longbeard puts on the show, he just acts right. He does it all. He struts. He drums. He blows up like a big, black basketball and does pirouettes in the dirt until breaking out of strut, extending his neck and hammering a gobble that turns your hat around. He may be hung up at 80 yards or he may be well within gun range. He may never close the distance, or you may be so enraptured that you can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger. No matter. You did it. You called up a gobbler and he put on the show for you. When that happens, you’ve had yourself about the greatest day outdoors that can be had.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"A Case of the Veterans"

The day seemed hell-bent on being a total bust. Despite ideal conditions, the morning was frustratingly slow. By 7:15, my friend Jackson and I had not heard a thing, unless you count the lone gobbler that sounded off from a neighboring property. Yet the weather was absolutely perfect: cool morning; no humidity; high pressure; blue bird skies. We couldn’t understand the turkeys’ lockjaw.

Then around 7:15 or a little after, a gobbler within an approachable distance decided it was time to end the silence. He fired off a nice, long gobble and our hopes were restored.

We trekked up a steep road and listened for another gobble once we reached the top of the ridge. After a few more gobbles, we were able to pinpoint the towering hardwood from which the roosted bird was trumpeting his pronouncements. We snuck down the road about ten yards and then skulked our way across the back side of a ridge that jutted off the road and into the woods.

Steep hardwood ridges rose and fell all around us. I took note of a thin drain or stream that meandered along a bottom where the many ridges ended their sharp descents. The ridge we were dissecting came to an abrupt end and we mused about needing to rappel down to the bottom if the gobbler pitched and began working the drain instead of the ridges. It was a straight drop of at least fifty feet.

We set up within sight of the crest of the ridge and began calling. Each of us had to find oaks with wide bases, as we would have fallen backwards and tumbled down the face of the ridge had we not had trees against which to lean.

We called sparingly at first; mostly clucks and purrs as we raked our hands through the oak leaves to mimic the sound of hen scratching. The tom all but ignored us at the onset. After fifteen minutes or so, however, the gobbler became a little more interested and before too long he was pretty fired up. Soon, we were enjoying the age-old game of getting the gobbler excited and then frustrating him by shutting up for long periods of time. It worked well and for a minute there, I thought we’d drive him crazy enough that he’d pitch down to check us out.

Right about that time, however, we heard a gaggle of hens on an opposing ridge break out in a cacophony of yelps, clucks, cutts and purrs as they made their way toward the gobbler in front of us. It wasn’t long before we heard the gobbler fly down and then lead away his cackling harem several hundred yards away from us.

We thought we were finished. We walked up the ridge – this time along its crest, in full view – and out of the woods to the road. We began walking back toward the golf cart and strategizing our next move when, lo and behold, a turkey gobbled from the very same spot from which the first turkey had gobbled.

At first we thought our ears were playing tricks on us. But sure enough, the second tom fired off again and we were certain he was near the same tree in which the other bird had roosted. We raced back up the road, ducked into the woods and scurried down the back side of the same ridge we’d worked minutes before. This time we descended all the way down to the bottom and set up along the drain.

We captured this gobbler’s attention almost immediately upon calling, and soon discovered that purring and scratching in the leaves was his preferred dirty talk. After a few minutes, he began cutting us off and double-gobbling. When we’d go silent on him, he’d become unglued. It was just a matter of time before he lost his composure and flew down to find us.

Or so we thought. As it turns out, that stubborn ol’ longbeard sat in that tree until 8:25, gobbling at every single call we threw at him. When we finally saw and heard him pitch, we thought we’d sealed the deal. Heaven knows we were patient enough. After he pitched and sailed to the earth on the other side of a ridge about 70 yards in front of us, I raised my gun and settled in for the shot.

Moments later, we heard another bunch of hens start cackling and cutting up precisely where we’d seen the gobbler fly down. That wily rascal wasn’t coming to us at all; he’d stayed in that tree gobbling (at us, mind you) until he finally called up some hens, and only then did he fly down.

Later that afternoon we tangled with a longbeard we heard drumming behind us off-and-on for two solid hours. When he finally gobbled, he was about a hundred yards to our right, around a curve in the road. He’d gobble. We’d call. He’d gobble. I’d cutt. He’d gobble. We’d call some more. Every time, he’d answer us with a little more enthusiasm than the time before. His gobble rattled like a lead weight shaken in a rusty can.

We called up two hens that pecked and fed and meandered in front of us for a while. Once, I saw the gobbler’s big red head at the end of the road, but he soon ducked back around the curve and resumed gobbling. He was either indifferent to the hens or insistent that they come to him.

The longbeard carried on like this until we heard him fly up to roost close by at 6:35. We were pinned down and had to sit there until it was pitch black. Finally, we were able to sneak out of there at ten minutes after eight.

As we approached the golf cart, we noticed strut marks and tracks in the road not far from where we’d parked it. “Son of a gun,” Jackson said. “He did everything to us but steal the golf cart.” I chuckled at his folksy humor as I unloaded my shotgun and set my turkey seat in the basket. As Jackson climbed in behind the wheel he sighed and said, “Well, Rog, it looks like you’ve got a case of the veterans.”

When I killed that gobbler the next morning, I remembered my friend’s observation from the night before. He was right. And that gobbler’s veteran status made the hunt and the harvest all the more meaningful.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Right Down Peachtree"

A few years ago, a friend and I were sitting in a box blind on an unseasonably warm January afternoon, wishing some deer would visit the green field over which we were hunting. It was a slow afternoon, like so many hot ones down here tend to be. About twenty minutes before dusk, a few cautious does stepped out of the treeline and walked gingerly into the field.

“Who gets to shoot?” I whispered as we watched the deer alternate between eating and scanning the woods for danger.

“You take the shot,” my buddy replied, “I already have a couple deer at the processor.”

With that, I singled out a fat, bottle-nosed slickhead that didn’t appear to have any fawns in tow, and settled in for the shot. It crumpled stone dead at the bark of my .270.

“Nice shot,” he offered.

I threw open the action and ejected the casing. It bounced off the side of the blind and clunked to the floor between my feet. “Thanks,” I said. “Right down Peachtree.”

“Do what?” he asked curiously. He squinted his eyes like I’d just suggested we go grab a couple of champagne coolies to celebrate.

“Right down Peachtree,” I repeated. He just looked at me. “Come on,” I urged. “Atlanta Braves? Ernie Johnson? The Eighties? That’s what Ernie would say any time a Braves pitcher threw a called strike right down the middle. You know, Peachtree Street. Atlanta. Surely you’ve heard ‘Right down Peachtree’ before.”

But he hadn’t. He allowed as how he’d heard of Chipper Jones and knew that the Braves were “really good or something,” but had never been much of a baseball fan. I couldn’t believe that something so iconic and pervasive from my youth was totally foreign to him. I mean, “Right down Peachtree” is as ubiquitous a phrase in my dialect as “Like it had eyes” and “Bullseye.”

I pondered this as we cleaned my harvest. As I did, it dawned on me for the first time just how much those three seemingly obscure words mean to me.

The Braves I grew up idolizing in the 1970s and ‘80s were far from the powerhouse teams of the 1990s and beyond. They were a perennial National League doormat, with the exception of the anomalous 1982 season when Joe Torre – yes, that Joe Torre – led them to the NL West Division crown. I can still name the entire starting lineup from my youth. The men who made up “America’s Team” were – and still are – the heroes of my youth, winners or not. With all due respect to Cubs fans, the Braves were my loveable losers. And despite the Braves’ smashing success over the past 20 years, it is the cellar dwellers of my youth that hold the spot nearest my heart.

Looking back, it seems that Ernie Johnson and the other Braves’ announcers weren’t just providing analysis and commentary on the games, but on my very youth as well. And that which has stuck with me most over the years, dating back to when the Braves wore those putrid powder puff blue uniforms on the road, is Ernie Johnson’s signature call, “Right down Peachtree!”.

Something else that dawned on me while my harvest twisted on the gambrel from the tugs and pulls of our primitive processing job was that the outdoors have provided me with some unforgettable “Right Down Peachtree” moments, too. Like the outstanding shot my wife made to take her first deer a few years ago. My brother-in-law’s awesome shot to take down his first buck. The first time my son hit the can with his BB gun and landed his first fish.

And, of course, the shot I made on a doe back on that warm January day, when the simple act of explaining to a friend what I’d said, and why, connected my past and my present in such a poignant way.

So now if you and I are ever together in the outdoors, you, too, will know why on those rare occasions when I connect on a long shot at a whitetail, make an impossible crossing shot on a green wing teal or thread my fishing lure perfectly between two rotting logs, I utter, “Right down Peachtree.” It’s a not-so-minor tribute to the Braves, my family, and all the other memories that walk quietly alongside me, so many years and miles from my youth.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"The Other Fifty"

My phone rang on the second or third evening of turkey season. My friend Jamie was calling to invite me to meet him the next morning to hunt on a small local tract to which his family has had the turkey hunting rights for longer than 20 years. I believe he said it totaled 160 acres. He laid out the basics for me and made it pretty clear how the hunt could go, depending on the circumstances.

“If we have a hunt, it’ll be a short one,” he said. “Assuming there’s a gobbler in there, we’ll get him. There’s usually birds roosting in there, all along that basin. We need to get in there real early so we can be sitting down while it’s still dark. We could end up sitting under a roost tree if they’re in there. Or, there might not be a turkey in there at all. This place is hit or miss, and we’ll know pretty quick. Let’s meet at the catfish house at 5:15.”

Never one to turn down the opportunity to see a new piece of property or learn from another turkey hunter or make new memories with a friend, I eagerly accepted and told myself that the bird I’d heard gobble on my own lease that morning would have to wait.

The next morning, Jamie and I met up and I followed him the short drive to the property. I never would have thought that decent turkey hunting was to be had where he took me; it was a small tract of timber nestled between a basin and some residential subdivisions. I’d driven past it hundreds of times but never knew it was there.

Jamie led the way in his truck and I followed closely behind with my headlights off. We stopped a few hundred yards past the gate and donned our gear. As we set out into the darkness, I fretted over every dark shape on the ground; it has been unseasonably warm this spring and the snakes have been out in force for weeks now. I distrusted any object that looked coiled or curved.

We covered a lot of ground quickly until Jamie stopped a few feet ahead of me and pulled down his face mask.

“There’s a food plot right down this road where they like to go in the mornings,” he explained. “They might be roosted on the back side of it in some hardwoods. We’re going to ease through these pines and sit down on a ridge on the edge of that bottom.” With that, he turned and pried himself into a young pine thicket overgrown with choking underbrush.

It’s a good thing Jamie’d been hunting this parcel for the better part of the past 20 years because I never would have found the narrow trail down which he led us. I trudged along with one hand out in front of my face to keep from walking eyeball-first into thorns, vines and pine boughs. We often had to duck under low-hanging limbs and climb over downed pine trees.

Finally we reached an opening and Jamie stopped. It was still quite dark and I could just barely make out the tops of the trees against the indigo sky.

Jamie stood silent for a minute or so before turning to me and whispering our next move.

“We need to sit down and set up on this ridge. The backwaters are only a-hundred-fifty yards out that way. They roost all in these tall pines. If they’re in here, it’ll be a short hunt. You remember that bird Seth killed last year? He and I set up right here. I clucked one time and that bird flew down seven steps from him and it was over.”

He qualified his puffery but remained optimistic. “This place is fifty-fifty, man. If they’re in here, we’re in good shape. My dad saw a nice gobbler in here the week before the season opened. This could be good.”

With that, we found a couple of good trees that overlooked the bottom and set up. Sunrise seemed to take forever as we sat there in silence. It was one of the prettier mornings I can remember in the turkey woods, and I tried to savor every moment of that sunrise.

As night surrendered to day’s unrelenting advance and the sky got lighter, the typical array of songbirds began to fill the morning air. We agreed that on such a clear, beautiful morning as this, we ought to hear plenty of gobbling.

Instead, we heard nothing. Not a gobble. Not a crow. Not a hawk. Not an owl. Around 7:30, we struck up a conversation with some hens, but they didn’t come to us. If they refused to come to us because they were anchored by a longbeard, he didn’t announce his presence in the form of a gobble.

Finally, when our time had run out and we had to retreat in order to make it to work, Jamie tried to offer some salve to soothe our having been shut out that morning.

“Well, man, I’m sorry. This place is fifty-fifty, like I said. I hoped there’d be one in here. There might be, which could be why those hens wouldn’t come in. Fifty percent of the time, we have good hunts in here. They either fly down right to us or there’s nothing.”

And I, in turn, offered him the only salve that I had. “Jamie, things don’t work that easily for me in the turkey woods,” I lamented. “They did for Seth, but I need better odds than fifty-fifty. I’m always the other fifty.” We laughed and turned back up the ridge.

Two-and-a-half weeks later, Jamie emailed me to tell me that our friend Seth had killed a gobbler under whose roost they’d inadvertently set up that morning. Their hunt didn’t last ten minutes.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Ten One-Hundred"

Anyone who spends a lot of time in pursuit of wild game makes a few adversaries out of his quarry now and then. Deer hunters are famous for this. They settle on one or two standout bucks that they spy on their game cameras, and spend the season obsessing over how to get downwind of them. They come up with clever names for the object of their obsession, like Droptine, Shifty, Dove Field Runner, Eye Guard and Swamp Thing.

Turkey hunters are even more prone than deer hunters to fits of hapless infatuation. Most turkey hunters I know – myself included – spend the first two or three weeks of the spring season enjoying the cacophony of gobbling, going to every turkey that sounds off at daybreak. The first few weeks of the season are typically a buyer’s market, and any turkey that acts right and is capable of being worked is just as good as the next one. Gobblers, during the first one-third of the season are, in a word, fungible.

But then something funny happens every year around mid-April. Just when it seems like the hunting can’t get any better, the birds hit a wall. They enter what is commonly referred to as The Lull.

I’m no wildlife biologist, but so far as I understand The Lull, it is a period when, due to either the turkeys’ adaptation to three weeks of hunting pressure, the relative futility in trying to woo hens who are becoming more interested in laying eggs and nesting every day, or both, gobblers really don’t do a whole lot of gobbling. Not much more than the occasional walk-up gets killed during The Lull. It’s sort of like sitting over a chufa patch in the afternoon, except you don’t already know where to set up your ambush and you’re not nearly as certain of success.

My experience during The Lull has been that only a select few dominant toms will continue to gobble. Most everything else shuts up. These “boss gobblers,” or so they’re called, ostensibly have bullied the subordinate toms into submission, securing for themselves uninterrupted airtime once the pickin’s get slim in the lady-friend department.

Two years ago, one such bird earned itself the unusual moniker of Ten-One Hundred. If you’ve seen that iconic Southern movie classic, Smokey and the Bandit, then you recognized immediately what this gobbler’s name means. If you haven’t, put this magazine down (okay, finish reading my piece first; then put it down), run to your nearest purveyor of DVDs and fork out the dough to purchase this piece of cinematic timelessness. And by all means, pick this magazine back up and finish it after you return. I’ve got kids.

In the film, Bandit educates Frog (played by Sally Field) that “ten-one hundred” is unofficial CB radio code for, well, going Number One. And as Frog points out, “it’s better than ten-two hundred.”

Back to our story. Around 7:50 one unpromising morning, I walked down an old dead-end woods road that drops off into a drain where I knew Ten-One Hundred liked to strut and gobble. I found a good spot under a young magnolia that provided plenty of cover and shade, and made ready my setup. After clipping various branches and brushing in the spot, I acknowledged Mother Nature’s unmistakable call. Better to embark on a blind sit with an empty bladder, I thought, so I pushed myself up off my turkey seat to answer the call, as it were.

I walked down the ridge about thirty yards from my setup to relieve myself. The hardwoods which predominated this portion of the habitat had dropped enough leaves over the winter that my trek up and down the ridge was a noisy one. Truth be told, I didn’t think I was going to encounter a longbeard that day, so I took very little care to silence my movements. I trudged up and down that ridge, kicking, shifting and crunching every oak leaf I came across. I coughed. I cleared my throat. I did everything that would secure an F in Turkey Woodsmanship 101 before retaking my seat.

I plopped myself back down in a not-so-tactful fashion and pulled down my face mask. My shotgun lay on the ground beside my right leg. I adjusted my hat and facemask and looked up, only to see the unbelievable sight of Ten-One Hundred standing in the middle of the road with the sun shining brilliantly upon him. There he was, not 10 yards away from me in front of God and everyone, darting his head and eyes in a constant search. I guess he’d mistaken my sounds for a hen scratching in the leaves.

I froze, motionless. I dared not blink. I’d never been so close to a gobbler before; he looked mammoth, with his big, red head and iridescent chest. Of course, my gun lay obsolete on the ground beside me. It may as well have been a conductor’s baton or an umbrella.

After a few moments, he walked up the road, right past me off my right shoulder. When he passed, he could not have been more than five yards away from me. I didn’t know that I could hold my breath that long, but I didn’t draw in a molecule of air until he and his occasional clucking were long since out of earshot.

I was not aware that relieving oneself was an effective way to call up a mature longbeard. Ten-One Hundred, however, provides the hypothesis. Unless a coyote got him – and I seriously doubt that to be the case – he is now two years older and that much wiser. Of course, I plan on going after him when the opportunity presents itself.

And I’ll drink plenty of coffee and a couple of bottled waters before I do.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"The Woods"

A hundred miles and twenty-five years east of here, there once stood a stand of woods. I’m not a good judge of acreage but I’d guess they consisted of half of a quarter section; maybe a little less. To this day I have no idea who owned the property. But since it bordered my yard a few feet from the back door of the little apartment I grew up in, the neighborhood kids and I considered it ours.

Everyone referred to it as simply the Woods, and from my earliest memories until the ninth grade, chances were that’s where I could be found so long as we weren’t having Thanksgiving, Christmas or a hurricane.

Biologists talk about diversity of habitat and carrying capacity. When it came to providing a place to grow up and make memories, the Woods' carrying capacity was virtually unlimited. The Woods were so diverse, they could double as the jungles of South Vietnam to a group of boys playing war one day, and mimic a private hunting preserve to that same group of boys who wanted to scratch out a few doves, squirrels and rabbits the next. Among its many iterations, the Woods served as a campground; a place for curious boys to stash a Playboy lifted out of someone’s older brother’s room; a perfect replica of the set from Raiders of the Lost Ark; an ideal place for a first kiss.

I knew every trail, every opening, every twist and every turn. Even today, I can close my eyes and trace with my finger in the air all the paths and trails – from the opening at the head of the main trail just a few long strides from my back door, all the way to where the woods stopped abruptly at what was then new development. Townhomes and apartments served as our southern and western borders, while my back yard bounded us on the east and an asphalt street – named Rogers Street of all things – hemmed our northern edge.

Most days, I’d burst out of the back door headed for the Woods in full stride; I gave nary a goodbye to my mother as the door slammed behind me. Depending what was on the day’s agenda – whether I was meticulously packing my “army stuff” for a full day of playing war, or simply planning a structure-free day of hide-and-seek, dirt clod fights or BB gun shooting – my mother may have gotten to see almost nothing of me before I disappeared into the Woods. It was a different time back then, or so it seemed. A better time. A time when a mother could allow her son to explore such a vast expanse on his own and know that he’d be back come dark. I never gave it a second thought at the time. Now that I am a father, however, I cannot conceive of how my mother was able to do it. I am grateful that she was, though, because it gave me the freedom and the confidence to explore and learn things on my own; to confront a variety of situations and to prevail over them.

Not to mention the fun I had. I can still remember how the spikes on a green pine cone would leave paper-like tears along my palm and fingertips as I heaved it like a hand grenade at my friends. I remember the unforgettable aroma of the dirt. The sound the cicadas made on warm evenings, and their hollow, crunchy sheds that still clung to the pine trees after they matured and flew away.

The way I choked and hacked and gagged after a friend and I inhaled our first cigarettes sitting atop a huge dirt pile way back in the Woods near their western edge. The way dirt clods would disintegrate into puffs of grayish-black sand upon connecting with their targets when conditions were dry; the grease-like smears and considerable bruises they left when conditions were wet. How we incinerated the first dove we ever tried to cook over an open flame, yet forced ourselves to be men and eat it anyway – and pretended to savor it.

And I remember the way life and death felt in my hands when I picked up a bird or a squirrel I’d shot with my beloved Daisy PowerLine 880. I experience to this day the same curious mixture of pity and regret and thanks and exhilaration when a quail or dove are brought back to me, or when I lift a fallen doe’s head by the ear, or when I hoist a longbeard by its feet. I have an enormous sense of gratitude for the place where I first came to know and appreciate that emotion because, without that emotion, what we do becomes not hunting, but merely killing.

The Woods were such an immensely special and important part of my growing up, it’s hard to conjure up a memory of my adolescence that doesn’t include them. They are the backdrop of countless photographic records of my childhood. They were a source of enormous enjoyment for me; no doubt a source of consternation for my mother. But they afforded me a happy, confident childhood and first ignited in me a love of the outdoors.

Today, any time I catch just the right whiff of honeysuckle or trod along freshly tilled ground consisting of just the right dark sandy soil, I am transported back in time to a place where a happy young boy ran free as a bird through the wild acres of his youth. Now, thanks to the Woods and all the special times and memories they provided, the man who long ago was once that joyful young boy still enjoys great days outdoors.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Overheard"

Outdoor people and experiences generate some of the fondest stories, one-liners, anecdotes and yarns around. Since I happen to be thinking back on some as I enjoy my coffee on this quiet morning before everyone wakes up, I thought I’d share some with you.


Judge

Some years back, a quail hunting party was making its way through the broomsedge while a black-and-white short-haired pointer bounded and scoured the ground for scents up ahead. Three men, decked out in canvas brush pants and blaze orange vests, carried their .20 gauges in the ready position. They were spaced out in a line about ten yards apart from one another, behind the dog. Just between them and the dog, their host, a seasoned and jovial lawyer, trudged along, slapping the elaeagnus occasionally with his walking stick, yelling, “Come on, Judge! Hunt ‘em up, Judge! Let’s go, now, Judge!”

As they hunted the edge of a food plot, one of the men asked their host about the dog. His face broke out in a contented, boyish grin; then he explained, “Besides my family, my greatest loves have always been the practice of law and quail hunting. Even though I have enjoyed my practice, I got so tired of being bossed around by judges my whole career that I promised myself a long time ago that I was going to get myself a bird dog and name him Judge. Now, any time I go home or take him hunting, I’m finally able to tell a Judge what to do!” He burst out in laughter and added, with gusto, ‘Sit down, Judge! Be quiet, Judge!’”

Not Today

Two or three years ago, my wife and I were preparing to run some errands when I informed her that one of our stops would be at a hunting buddy’s house to leave him a ticket to a turkey banquet. My buddy is always up to something and, somehow, it seems like he’s always just returned from an intriguing hunting destination. Hence, he usually has a doozie of a story to tell or is neck-deep in an intricate project every time we see him.

But apparently this day, my wife was short on patience. Moments before we left the house, she said, “Before we go over there, let me make it clear: No, I do not want to have lunch with him; no, I do not want to hear about his latest trip to kill sheep on Kilimanjaro; no, I do not want to watch him clean his shotguns; no, I do not want to help him build a barn. I’m telling you – it doesn’t matter what he says, the answer is no. Not today.”

Look, Daddy!

When my son was about three years old, he began accompanying me on turkey scouting trips. One particular trip stands out more than others. After we’d been on a sandy trail for a few minutes, we encountered a large hog wallow. As we stepped around it, something long and curved with brown-and-white stripes running down the length of it caught my son’s eye. He stopped to pick it up and inspect it. A moment later, his face lit up.

“Look, Daddy!” he exclaimed. “I found a feather!”

“You sure did,” I said. “You’ve found yourself a nice wing feather. Good job, son.”

I tucked it into one of the holes in the top of his hat and he wore it there for the rest of the day. He stroked it and studied it the whole way home while he asked a seemingly endless stream of questions about turkeys. I’m not saying I planted that feather right in the middle of a trail I knew we’d be walking down, but I sure was happy that it sparked a prideful interest in wild turkeys in my son.

Good Thing You Quit

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine and his wife were expecting their third child at the end of March. As you can imagine, my friend was virtually MIA for months after the baby arrived. When I finally saw him, he relayed to me the following story of a conversation he’d had with another of our hunting buddies a few weeks before the birth.

“When are you guys due?”

“End of March.”

“Wow. Good thing you don’t turkey hunt.”

“No, no; I love turkey hunting.”

“Oh. Well, good thing you quit turkey hunting, then.”



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Optimism"

If you’re one of those driven people whose definition of success relies strictly upon results, then hunting may not be for you. After all, 4:30 a.m. comes awfully early, twenty-eight degrees is awfully cold and the pre-dawn woods are awfully dark, especially when there is no guarantee of success at the end of the day. So if you will categorize as failures a morning in the duck blind when nothing but pouldeau and water turkeys fly over your decoy spread, or a morning in a deer stand when nothing but an armadillo and a few squirrels sidle by within range, then hang that scent-free camouflage coat back on the rack, and instead, join one of those steak-of-the-month clubs.

You see, the only certainty about hunting is its inherent uncertainty. All too often, the only things we carry out of the woods are the guns and gear we toted in and, hopefully, a few memories. I don’t know the percentages, but I can attest that an overwhelming number of treks into the woods end with the pick-up truck bed’s being as empty as it was when it pulled up to the gate before the hunt.

Therefore, a healthy – if not unrealistic – amount of optimism is crucial in order to make it through a several-month-long season with your mental health intact. Each hunter has his or her own particular way of seeing the bright side in order to press on, only so much of which is based on actual fact or science.

Take, for instance, any number of times you and a friend have been driving up to deer camp on a Friday afternoon. How many times has he gazed out the window at a cow pasture blurring by and offered, “The cows are up on their feet. That’s a good sign.”? Forget the fact that cows have hooves and not feet; your friend’s observation is fueled by unadulterated optimism: because one random herd of cattle happens to be up and feeding, therefore all the deer will be up and feeding, too. That’s good stuff. Hit the gas.

Then there are cold fronts. I, personally, can find nothing wrong with cold fronts. They usher in seasonal temperatures which are conducive to building a fire, they push ducks southward (a real plus if you’re a Southern duck hunter) and they give deer hunters ample room for optimism. Any time a cold front is bearing down on us, I am fond of saying things like, “Now’s the time to be in the woods. The deer are going to be up and moving in advance of this front.” And inevitably, once the front has passed and the winds have died down, I’ll follow that up with, “Anybody who’s in the woods today is going to kill deer. They’ve been laid up waiting on this front to pass through and should be moving all day.”

Now, I don’t know whether deer movement and feeding times are really affected by cold fronts and other weather phenomena. All I know is that on occasion, I have seen deer up and moving about on either side of a cold front. The thing that enables me to extrapolate my mere hypothesis into immutable fact without the first shred of proof and in flagrant violation of all known scientific protocol, is, in a word, optimism.

When it comes to the glass being half-full, turkey hunters epitomize the ideal. In fact, there may exist no more optimistic lot than turkey hunters (or masochistic, for that matter). If we turkey hunters weren’t the-glass-is-half-full kind of folks, we wouldn’t be capable of getting out of bed long before sunup for forty-five mornings in a row just to pursue what is unquestionably the toughest and most formidable quarry in the woods. Separate and apart from the sheer difficulty of hunting wild turkeys, the hunter is prone to get frostbitten when the season opens and snake bitten by the time it closes; he’s likely to log a hundred-or-so miles on his snake boots; and runs a real risk of realizing zero return on his investment by season’s end. Were we able to bottle and sell a turkey hunter’s optimism, we’d be able to cure depression around the globe by lunch time.

Duck hunting is a little different than turkey hunting. With turkey hunting, you know the gobblers are out there: you’ve seen their tracks; you’ve found their droppings; you can hear them gobble. Coaxing one into gun range, however, is quite another matter, or, as lawyers put it, the ultimate issue. Duck hunters, on the other hand, don’t always know whether they’ll have ducks or not. If you don’t get enough rain, you won’t see any ducks. Too much rain, and the ducks will be so spread out you may not see any. And if there’s a freeze, the ducks will be one or two states south of you by the time you buckle your waders.

One thing this proud turkey hunter will readily admit is that duck hunters work harder than anyone else in the woods or on the water. I’ve been duck hunting enough to not only have gained immense respect for die-hard duck hunters, but to know that I’d have a hard time getting through an entire season under the best of conditions; I cannot imagine slogging my way through a bad season. Like turkey hunters, duck hunters insist on hunting every day, rain or shine, good or bad, feast or famine. The level of optimism required of duck hunters must be extraordinary to get them through seventy-something days in the duck blind.

A grueling duck season, a frustrating spring in the turkey woods and a shutout in the deer stand can dishearten the upbeat, and positively grind to a pulp the pessimistic. Like strong camp house coffee and plastic-wrapped pastries, our optimism keeps us going, especially in times when the ledger shows far more red ink than black.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Can't Win For Losin'"

One of the cruelest things anyone can do is to give a lollipop to a child, but tell him he can’t lick it. In fact, a bank recently ran an ad campaign on TV in which bicycles, ice cream, toy trucks and even a pony are given to children, but the kiddies are told they’re not allowed to enjoy them. The point the bank and its clever advertising agency are trying to make is that it does no good – and, in fact, is actually worse – to give people something they want if they’re not going to be allowed to enjoy it.

A little-known fact is that this ad campaign was based in large part on my two most recently planned Arkansas duck trips.

A good friend of mine has a duck camp in east Arkansas. To say he has a duck camp in east Arkansas doesn’t do it justice. My friend’s camp is east of Stuttgart and west of Marianna, smack dab in the middle of the epicenter of Arkansas duck hunting. His impressive patchwork leasehold includes rice fields and flooded timber on and around East Lake, Big Cypress Creek and Peckerwood Lake.

A few years ago, I received an invitation to spend four days at my friend’s duck camp in early January. By all accounts, the hunting had been stellar prior to my arrival and, not having done any significant duck hunting in the past, I looked as forward to that trip as anything else I can remember in recent years. The experience did not disappoint.

I cannot, in good conscience, call myself a duck hunter, even though I have hunted ducks. Duck hunters are far too dedicated and work far too hard for an occasional and journeyman waterfowler like I to assume their moniker. But that trip turned me into a starry-eyed lover of duck hunting. During my four days in Arkansas, we hunted tupelo gum holes, sunken rice field levee blinds and flooded timber – the works. It was there that I was introduced to legendary Mississippi Flyway duck hunting, the ice-breaking capabilities of a shotgun stock, the whistling wings of a pre-dawn flight of teal, and, fortuitously, the extra-dry gin martini. I have tired of neither of them since.

For the better part of the following year, I eagerly awaited another invitation, but dared not ask for one. Then in September of that year, it came: I’d been slated to arrive in duck camp on January 6 to hunt for four days. During the ensuing three-and-a-half months, I was like an impatient kid waiting for Christmas to come. Until I received a phone call from my friend two days before I was to depart for Arkansas.

“I hate to tell you this, Rog, but the duck hunting here is dead. Everything’s frozen solid and has been for two weeks now. The other day, I drove my four-wheeler all the way across Peckerwood Lake. Anything that’s not frozen, like the rivers and creeks and stuff, is under eight feet of water from the flood. We don’t have any holes anymore and there’s no place to stand. The ducks have all gone to Louisiana. Last weekend, the duck plucker in Stuttgart cleaned twenty-four ducks – the entire weekend. Normally, they clean three hundred-a-day. Sorry, but I’m packing up my dog and my stuff and heading home. Maybe next year.”

I was pretty disappointed but I understood. There’s always next year, I thought. Well, apparently not. Next year was last month and, thanks to Mother Nature once again, I did not get to spend any of it hunting ducks in Arkansas.

Honestly, the thought of another duck trip having to be canceled never crossed my mind. To the extent that such a thought may have crossed my mind, I immediately would have dismissed it and chalked up the 2010 cancellation to a combination of freak weather phenomena.

But sometimes, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men . . .

This time, a trip didn’t even get scheduled before it was called off. Instead of a phone call, an email announced the bad news. And unbelievably, instead of too much water, now there wasn’t enough water. The creeks and rivers were at their lowest in recent memory. Peckerwood Lake was at a fifty-year low; so low, in fact, that the water was even below the intake valves for the pumps that flood the rice fields. There was literally no water for the ducks. Again my friend was forced to scratch out what little duck hunting he could from sympathetic local farmers and cut his season short. And again, my return to his Arkansas duck blinds and cypress brakes would have to wait.

From solid ice, to too much water, to no water at all, I can’t win for losin’. I’m sure, given favorable conditions, an Arkansas encore is inevitable. But if I call you up to tag along next year and there’s something else you already had on the books for that weekend, don’t cancel your other plans until you hear me honk in your driveway.

I’d hate for you to feel like one of the kids in those commercials.

(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Wonderboy"

Four vultures circled the men as they walked up the spine road toward the highway. The scavengers, macabre silhouettes against a cloudless, powder-blue sky, glided silently along their orbits. The absence of any discernable effort on their part suggested they could wait out the men for as long as it took, until one of them dropped.

“Those buzzards up there don’t think you can make it, Jim,” prodded one of the men. His words puffed out in short bursts as he breathed heavily with each step. Droplets of sweat beaded on his nose and eyebrows before falling to the ground.

“I just gotta outlive you, Tom.”

The clay road beneath their feet was rockhard and gray. It’d been some time since a front passed through and the absence of any rain had left the clay road petrified and cracked, like magazine images in National Geographic of parched earth on a desert floor. Every now and then one of the men picked up a loose shingle of clay and sailed it sidearm down the road in front of them.

“How long’s this road again?” Tom asked.

“Right at two miles from where we turned back at the number thirty-two field to the blacktop,” Jim said. “Of course, we wouldn’t be having to walk two miles and hope Mr. Little’s around with his tractor if you hadn’t’a got the truck stuck.”

Tom groaned. “You’re the one who told me to stop and put it in four-wheel right in the middle of that low spot! Everybody knows you don’t slow down or stop in the mud; you keep going.”

“You were the one driving!” Jim shot back. “I just said I thought you might want to put it in four-wheel. I figured you knew how to drive your own truck through the mud.” Jim straightened his back a little after making what he thought was a good point.

Tom bristled because he knew it was. “Well -- you shouldn’t’a took us that way,” was all he could muster.

They trudged along in silence for the next few minutes until they began to walk up a steep rise in the road.

“I don’t ‘member this hill on our way in,” Tom said, panting.

“Course not,” said Jim. “We were driving down it coming in.”

“I also don’t ‘member that tree,” Tom said. “What happened there?”

Tom pointed to a black, hulking shell of a live oak which stood lifeless just off the side of the spine road. A full one-third of its girth, along with about half its canopy, lay skeletal on the ground. Worthless as firewood, it had been dragged aside and left uncut by the members of Jim’s hunting club after a lightning strike killed the ancient tree. The portion that remained standing was black, with a hollowed-out trunk and limbs that writhed toward the sky as if begging to know why it had been singled out for destruction.

“That’s the tree I told you about,” Jim explained. “We use it as a place to meet up when we come out of the woods. Got hit by lightning about three years ago, I reckon.”

He continued. “Last year I hung a trail camera on one o’them big limbs sticking up on that dead piece right there.” He motioned toward the brittle hulk of tree on the ground. “That’s where I got them pictures of that huge drop-tine I emailed to you.”

“Yeah, I remember that buck,” Tom said. “What’d you call him again?”

“Wonderboy. You know, like in that baseball movie, The Natural? Seemed fitting since I got his picture by a big tree that’d got split open by lightning. Man, that deer was perfect: big body; good sway in his back; low-hangin’ gut; huge, swoll-up neck; and that rack -- perfect four-by-four, with probly a eighteen- to twenty-inch inside spread.”

“And those drop-tines,” Tom interjected.

“And those drop-tines,” Jim said whimsically. “I thought he was just a 8-point until he had his head turned just right in one o’them pictures. But he’s a ten-point all right, with two big ol’ handlebars stickin’ straight down. I been obsessing over that deer ever since. Never seen ‘im on the hoof, though.”

The two men crested the rise in the road and spotted the highway about a mile or so up ahead at the end of the long clay road. They stopped briefly to catch their breath, each of them bending over and putting his hands on his knees. They relished the brisk wind that blew in their faces.

Still bent over, Tom turned his head and looked down a narrow path leading off the spine road into the brush.

“Psst!” he hissed, whispering to his friend who was turned the other way. “Freeze, Jim. Don’t . . . move.” Tom whispered his imperative to his friend who was turned the other way.

“What is –”

“SHHH! I think it’s Wonderboy,” Tom said, his voice still low.

Slowly, Jim turned his head until he saw the dark back half of a deer protruding from the sedge grass off the trail. With deliberation, the two straightened themselves up, taking care not to move too fast or make any noise.

But in a flash, the buck shot up its head and glared at the unfamiliar objects standing in the middle of the clay road. Grass and wild clover still hung from its mouth as it stared a hole through them, as if trying to assess the threat they posed.

The afternoon sun gleamed off its dark antlers. Its neck was thicker than Jim remembered. A loose brisket hung suspended from a broad tuft of white hair at the base of the neck. The buck weighed well over 200 pounds and was at least 4½ years old, they surmised. A true trophy. Jim stared, transfixed on the two drop-tines.

The buck rolled its jaw as if to chew one last bite of forage, then stomped the ground once with its left front hoof.

Time seemed to slow down. Jim tried to quell the nervousness in his throat, but after a few moments he could no longer hold off a coarse, dry swallow. His dry lips pursed together tightly and his Adam’s apple grated up and down. The involuntary action felt like sandpaper going down his throat.

With that, Wonderboy blew, squatted, turned and lept into the brush, all in the same explosive instant. The men remained motionless, as if they’d been caught red-handed robbing a jewelry store. They listened to the heavy thumps and crashes of Wonderboy’s exit until it was out of earshot. Neither of them moved. They were unable to speak for moments after the sound faded.

Finally, Jim broke the silence.

“Wonderboy . . .” His voice trailed off in pursuit of the object of his admiration.

“Wouldn’t you know it?” Tom offered. “The one time we leave our guns in the truck. Still, though, just seeing him like that makes for a great day outdoors, don’t you think?”

As the two friends turned back toward the blacktop, a cardinal with brilliant red plumage lit upon a branch of the twisted oak beside the trail where moments before Wonderboy had stood. The bird called out to the woods in Wonderboy’s direction, as if underscoring the men’s disbelief of their encounter, and the wonderment of their one lost chance.



(c) Roger Guilian 2011

"Doctor's Orders"

The CFO phoned me from our son’s pulmonologist’s office to let me know how the appointment had gone. She allowed as how the doctor was disappointed in our son’s progress, and used phrases like “respiratory rate” and “nebulizer schedule” a lot. She walked me through the continued treatment regimen and explained how the doctor was augmenting it with antibiotics and a new inhaler. Also, she admonished, no school, no physical activity, no playing outside; and he’d have to skip his classmate’s birthday party over the weekend.

“No problem,” I offered. “We can handle that.”

My assurance was followed by a brief moment of silence. Then my wife sighed and added, “There’s one more thing. You’re not going to like it. The doctor said absolutely no more fires.”

“I’m sorry,” I retorted. “It sounded like you said no more fires.” I believe I even chuckled.

“I did,” she said. “I told the doctor you wouldn’t be happy. I asked him if we could have fires after the kids have gone to bed or just not every night, and he looked at me like I was insane. He said, ‘Your son does not need to be around smoke or fire, except on Christmas Eve or other very rare occasions. Not unless his symptoms improve or he outgrows this.’ Sorry, Honey. Doctor’s orders.”

I’m sure she said something else before we got off the phone, but if you were to walk in and put a gun to my head right now, I would not be able to tell you what it was.

No more fires.

No.

More.

Fires.

Call me simple; call me odd; call me old-fashioned; even call me crotchety; but a steady, unobtrusive fire is among my greatest delights. When August rolls around, I begin thinking of that first far-off break in the weather that will justify the season’s inaugural fire. Come September, I have usually already scouted out suitable water oaks, red oaks and the occasional hickory for cutting up and splitting. I celebrate the discovery of a good piece of fat wood or lighter knot in the woods the same way a Canadian tourist rejoices over discovering a broken sand dollar on the beach. To me, one of the most appealing aromas in the world is the green, pungent scent emitted from freshly split water oak as it surrenders its moisture and begins to dry out in the rack in my garage – which takes up an entire wall.

Between opening day of rifle season in November until well into turkey season every spring, it’s a safe bet that you’ll observe sweet, aromatic smoke rolling from my chimney – even on days when my neighbors are outside in their shirtsleeves. Let them think what they will; but I don’t charge them for the seasonal redolence that wafts through their yards courtesy of my chimney.

On fall and winter days when the sun has set before most folks have left work, my contentment upon walking through the door every evening requires little more than a hug from the kids, a kiss from the CFO and building a fire.

How can I be an outdoor writer without a fire? Aren’t I duty-bound to sit in my leather chair with a bourbon in one hand and my pencil in the other while the fireplace cracks, pops and hisses beside me? I feel as though I’ve been disqualified. What would Gene Hill have done had he been prohibited from sitting beside the fire? Changed tires and checked the oil at an upstate New York service station? A fire both haunts and inspires the spirit of a writer. I have long suspected that the writer’s block I endure in the summer months every year is due not to my relative inactivity and complete lack of motivation because of the stifling heat, but from the absence of a fire in the fireplace.

The doctor’s cruel proscription came just in time for the holidays, too. Yule logs require a fireplace, for Pete’s sake. Egg nog, off-key carols and obnoxious sweaters cry out for a mantle against which to lean. Stockings aren’t hung by the dishwasher with care. Chestnuts roast on an open fire, not in the microwave (Okay, so no one has seen a wild chestnut tree or gathered up chestnuts from the woods in over a century because of the blight, but you catch my drift).

As this has all begun to sink in – only partially, mind you; I hover between denial and rebellion – I have been able to arrive at only one sure, crystal clear, irrefutable, albeit begrudged conclusion: as much as I love to enjoy a good fire on cool fall evenings and cold winter days, I absolutely, unequivocally love my son more. Which leaves only one other matter to address, if the situation doesn’t improve or should I fail to talk some sense into this doctor.

Anybody need any firewood? I have a little more than a cord stacked up in the garage and it ought to be plenty cured by now.



(c) Roger Guilian 2010

"The Application"

Every year when hunting season rolls around, I have to leave myself little reminders to purchase my hunting license. These usually consist of yellow sticky notes affixed to the coffee maker, the refrigerator, the telephone, a kitchen cupboard door or two, and the dashboard in my truck. Inevitably, however, I always seem to put it off until the last minute. October always seems so far off when the heat index hovers around a-hundred-ten; it’s easy to be lulled into a sense of having plenty of time to renew my license.

If you hunt doves or ducks or any other migratory bird that falls under the auspices of the federal Migratory Bird Act, you are no doubt familiar with the Harvest Information Program stamp that is required on all hunting licenses in order to lawfully hunt migratory birds. This HIP designation is free-of-charge, but is nonetheless extremely important to the government. They want to collect data, you see, about every hunter’s harvest of migratory birds, so they can set bag limits and season dates.

At the time one acquires the HIP stamp, a series of questions is asked about the hunter’s prior year’s success in the field, which must be answered before the stamp will issue. I have never heard of anyone being sworn-in prior to answering these questions. Nor am I aware of any mechanism by which respondents are hooked up to lie detectors or injected with truth serum before answering, to ensure the veracity of their responses and thereby guarantee the accuracy of the data collected. Hence, I suspect that the process of collecting harvest information from hunters who are completely unfettered in their self-described exploits is incurably flawed, and no doubt creates the potential for some truly obscene boasting and embellishment.

Some of us, on the other hand, dare not embellish. We know all too well that we can’t pull it off. I’ve read that when a man lies, his face betrays him. The eyes twitch or the lip curls up or the temples pulsate or something like that. You can rest assured that if I were to spin a yarn about my exploits in the duck blind or dove stand, the man behind the counter at the sporting goods store would sniff out my fib in a heartbeat. And since we’re talking about federal legislation here, I don’t want to find out what the punishment might be for skewing the data with a trumped-up tale of triumph in the field. For me and others who lie as poorly as we shoot, it’s best to keep it honest.

True to form, one year I renewed my hunting license just as the first dove split was opening in the South Zone. I’m not necessarily saying that I was standing at the counter in full camouflage while my truck idled outside, but if you were to write in to this magazine and say you had video evidence of such, no one would write you an open letter in response calling you a bloody liar. As the license renewal process reached the point where I indicated I would need to participate in the Harvest Information Program, the conversation between the man behind the counter and me went like this:

“Will you hunt migratory birds this season?”

“Yes. In about half-an-hour.”

“Did you hunt migratory birds last season?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Alright. Let’s go over the birds you hunted. Did you hunt ducks last year?”

“I did.”

“How many ducks did you kill?”

“I’m not really sure. I only hunted two days. It couldn’t have been that many because on the second day, the guide let his retriever sleep in after watching me shoot the first day.”

“We’ll say between one and ten. Okay, did you hunt geese last year?”

“No, but I’m thinking of taking it up. I could have one whale of a goose hunt out behind my house. They’re everywhere.”

“No geese. How about doves? Did you hunt doves last year?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. Did pretty well, too, actually.”

“How well? Did you kill more than thirty?”

“Oh. No. Is that really the cut-off?”

“One-to-thirty on the doves, then. Alright, woodcock.”

“Do we have any woodcock around here?”

“No woodcock. How about coot and snipe?”

“You mean pouldeau? No. And everybody knows snipe don’t exist. They’re like unicorns.”

“Right. Okay, last one. Did you hunt either rails or gallinules last season?”

“What the heck are rails and gallinules?”

“Did. Not. Hunt. Okay, you’re all set.”

“Wait a minute. That’s it? You didn’t ask me about quail.”

“Sir?”

“Quail. Aren’t you going to ask me about quail? I hunted quail last year. I’m actually a pretty good shot on quail – as long as they’re flying straight away from me. Go ahead: ask me how many quail I killed.”

“Quail are not a migratory bird, sir. They’re not part of the Program. Will you be needing anything else?”

Needless to say, the migratory bird population is in no danger of dipping below sustainable numbers because of me.



(c) Roger Guilian 2010