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I’m up here in Alabama around Auburn doing some job hunting and some camping.  Here is the story I posted at my other site about my attempted ultra-light camping trip.

I’ve not had a chance to do much as I am in Alabama looking for some employment opportunities and trying to re-connect to the outdoors.

This post is cross posted by a outdoor site as well.  However, I where I am staying has no cable TV.  I have watched the local news over and over.  I understand now why people are horribly uninformed in many parts of this nation.   If you did not have the Internet or cable you really would have very little national information available.  It is quite amazing how local stations simply refuse to cover news outside their local market.  A station like FOX that is over the air would make some serious cash.

Here is the story I sent my daughter about the attempted camping trip I made the other night.

—

Girl,

You would not believe the night I had at Trimbles.  It was full of rain, no wind, spiders, locusts and SPIDERS.  Did I mention spiders?

I’m sitting by a small fire, it’s nice.  There is a little wind and plenty of firewood at hand.  I’m cooking some tomato soup on my cooker while sitting in one of the green chairs.  Life’s good.

I need some bigger pieces of wood so I get up and walk down to the creek.  My headlamp picks up the far bank and I see dozens and dozens of little green dots glowing in the light scattered all over the leaves on the ground and on the trunks of the trees.  I look up and down the bank and as far as the light can go green dots are reflecting back at me.  I turn my headlamp off, thinking the bugs were fireflies.  But the green dots disappear.   I turn the light back on and the bright green dots are back.  Hmm….

Now I figure if they are on the far side of the creek, they have to be on the near side.  So, I turn around and start scanning the leaves around me.  Sure enough, there are ten or so little green dots on my side.  I figure they have to be bugs of some kind, maybe ants to be so many.  So I walk over to one of the dots, which doesn’t not attempt to scurry away at all, rather it boldly stands its ground.  I bend over, adjust my light and glasses so I can see and look down at what is giving off all of those pretty green lights.  It wasn’t ants.  It was spiders.  Hundreds and hundreds of little brown, unafraid green eyed spiders, just staring up at me like I was lunch!

I would be lying if I didn’t have a flash of that movie Arachnophobia!  All those hungry little green eyes glowing up at me “Go to sleep Ray.  Go to sleep.”   Yeah, and wake up in a cocoon hung from a tree?  Don’t think so.  I had brought a rake to clean out the area where I was going to set up camp.  I grabbed the rake and furiously raked the area around the camp, making the site larger by double.  No spider was going to use the leaves as a way to get to me.  I made sure I sprayed bug repellent all around the key areas.

I finally got the hammock up and running, slightly out of line because of the slant of the ground.  It is a lot harder than you think if you are a nubie.   Somehow I had managed not to pack one half of the hammock’s rope system and had to make do with another rope, one I knew had a recorded breakage limit of a hundred and twenty five pounds.  I doubled it up and wrapped it tight mentally calculating what twice that weight would be verses my fat rear end.  As an added safety precaution I also set it so it would be close to the ground.

I climbed in wondering if this was a good idea.  There was a slight rain falling but little wind.  It was hot muggy and frankly a little uncomfortable.  I squirmed around doing my best to get situated.  The rain increased so I got up and made sure all of the gear was secure under the tarp.  I checked the leaves.  Yep, sure enough, green eyes everywhere and they seemed to be closer.   As I stepped out from under the tarp something huge landed on my neck.  I swept my hand across my back and a spider the size of my fist, a brown long legged critter, flew off.  It landed on the ground and then scurried into my hat, which was on top of the pile of gear.  That would not do!  I grabbed my hat and beat it like an ugly step-child knocking the four inch spider back out.   It was extinguished with a quick stomp of my shoe.

As I turned to get back into the hammock, a little shaken to be sure, I was hit in the headlamp by a flying locust.  It bounced off the lamp, my glasses, my nose and into my open mouth.   Of course I spit it back out immediately, cussing the whole situation at the same time.  I got back into my hammock, settled in and then felt something like a prickly stick in my mouth.  I spit it out, it was a locus leg!

YUCK!!!

So there I laid, wondering what the nutritional value of a locus body part was, listening to the night, the coyotes and sweltering under the tarp that was protecting me from the light rain.  I remember a hundred yards up the hill to my truck, a short seven mile ride back to the trailer was an air conditioned room with an air mattress covered with a soft foam pad- like the astronauts use (according to the commercial anyhow).  I was stinking with sweat, which also reminded me of the fact the trailer had a hot shower.  I’m fifty-two.  I’m alone, not trying to impress anyone.  No kids, no women, no buddies. No reason to suffer!

It took me fifteen minutes to break the camp down; ten to walk up the hill and load up; fifteen to get home and another hour to clean up and get to bed.

Best camping trip I’ve had in a while.

Bob took a quick trip back up to Alabama.  Our lease is a combined set of lands totaling around two thousand acres. Most of the land consists of oak groves, planted pines and cutover.  Typical Alabama land.  Bob set out to straighten out the bad luck he kept having.  Turkeys were gobbling, but they were still henned up.  Bob worked back and forth running into the same problems as before.  This time he decided to work the greenfield by setting up his ground blind. It was a little warmer this time around so it could get a little hot in the blind.  He picked a spot we call “Hughes” which was a large two hundred and forty acres tract that was clear cut last year.  The land was hilly and had small creek bottoms running through the property.  The woodline on one end of the property kind of dog legged up a hill and then cuts back down to a creek then cuts again ninety degrees to create basically a odd looking “Z”.  In the top corner of this Z is a greenfield set out into the cutover.  Already one hunter from the club missed a good gobbler in that area.  Several toms would roost just off the clear cut then fly down and work the creek bottoms.   Bob just couldn’t get them onto our property.  He knew they did, but where and when was a mystery.  So he decided to set up the blind on the only greenfield in the area and got quiet.

Hughes 1A greenfield setup

Now Bob likes guns. He brings a couple and always tries to challenge himself by using a setup that adds to the difficulty.  This time he brought up his twenty gauge shotgun loaded with #5’s.   Bob said he sat down and waited.  A couple of hours past and then he glanced up and saw a hen’s head coming up over the hill near the edge of the greenfield.  He picked up his camera to snap a photo and in the view finder he sees another hen’s head pop up.  So, he puts his camera down and picks up his twenty.  Soon he sees a third head, this one is red and big.  He grabs up his rangefinder and camera again to snap a set of photos.  The three birds aren’t paying attention to his blind at all, so he feels safe.

The gobbler eases up and Bob reads thirty-three yards.  Easy money for the tight pattern shooting twenty.  Bob takes grabs a couple of photos and then picks up the gun. He carefully aims the twenty and pulls the trigger. The bird flops over and starts flapping his wings.  Bob shoots him in the head again noting the pattern dusts up all around the tom’s head.  He stops flapping and lays still.

"Iron Man" gobbler easing up into the greenfield

Now he takes his eyes off the bird, which is situated just on the edge of the greefield, looks down to put away his camera, book and gear. He steps outside the back of the blind, scaring off the hens and walks over to the bird….which is gone!

Bob looks back at the blind, down at the ground, around at the cutover and there is nothing, no bird no blood, nothing expect a single feather.  Needless to say, Bob tells me he’s a bit mystified if not down right stunned.  What the heck?  Bob does what he knows he has to and starts a grid search all the way to the woodline and oak bottom. No bird. No blood. No tracks.  Three hours.  He called me when he got done and told me the story.  I said that thirty-three yards with a twenty shooting three inch fives should have pole-axed that bird.  His dad confirmed that fact in another call.  The only thing that made sense was the gun shot a little low and maybe he chest shot the bird.  But still..

The only evidence left of the shot gobbler! What the heck!

The only other answer is this  is no ordinary bird.  He was some kind of superhero bird.  A real “Iron Man.”    Bob had to leave and could not get right with another bird before he had to travel.  His season is over.  Mine never got started as my wife’s business went south with the recession and on top of that, she was diagnosed with cancer and must have surgery.  I had told “Raining hens” that my daughter and I would live vicariously through him this season.   And so we did.  Last year’s effort mimicked poor Bob’s effort this year.   As he said earlier. “I understand why you hate turkeys so much.”

Wait till next year.

Some of the bottom where the gobbler ran off to, maybe.

I’m officially about a thirty something Cherokee.   In my opinion this gives me the right to give my hunting buddies Indian names.  Bob’s story about the amount of hens landing around him has now given him the somewhat dubious nickname “Raining hens” Reese.  He was covered up with girls all giving him a hard time when he tried calling in the tom.

At the end of his trip Bob calls me with a story of success, but not in the classic sense of the word.  Unlike the TV versions of turkey hunting where the magic decoy or call makes all the difference, real turkey hunting is a series of long hunts and missteps occasionally punctuated with enough moments of triumphs that it makes you keep getting up at zero dark thirty and walking miles and miles across some tough terrain to kill a bird that weighs twenty pounds.   One of my hiking buddies, a small game hunter, would laugh at me and say, “How much money do you spend on a turkey trip?”  I’d tell him, always landing on the shy side of the actual number- no reason to give the man too much ammunition- and he’d pull out a calculator and make a big deal of punching in numbers.   “Let’s see, that is about one hundred and fifty-five dollars a pound!” he would exclaim out loud.  “Would it not make more sense to go to the store and buy ten fat turkeys?”

Now I know he knows why we turkey hunters do it.  For the love of God, he  is chasing snipe and quail through the Florida low lands, kicking moccasins to the side with his boots! So, who’s the real nut!  However, if we were to look at this like it was a contract, we would certainly be getting the short end of the stick.

Bob is one of those hunters who shoots the best gear and tries the newest gadgets.   I used to do be the same way, but as I got older, I became used to certain things working well and stuck with them.  My Mossberg 835 I hand painted.  The Holosight it is topped with, which after two birds got away because I wasn’t used to the distance between the sight and the barrel, I learned to shoot with deadly efficiency.  The Knight and Hale Sla-tex slate, Primos and Quaker boy mouth calls and a Quaker boy box call.  Outside a Primos owl hooter and a crow call, I’m pretty much set.  Before that, every year for a long time I would purchase a new “trick” I would swear would turn the tide on my hunting woes.  Finally I realized there was just a lot of hunting, hoping and getting lucky when it came to killing gobblers.

Bob told me one of those stories.   For a week “Raining hens” Reese was surrounded up to his neck in henned up gobblers. They were hammering the woods sometimes until four thirty in the afternoon.   He would start out before daylight trying to get to the birds before they hooked up with the hens and wandered off.  In one area, what we call the “400″, Bob spent three days humping the hills around the area, which is a combination of select cut pines and cutover, ending up only minutes behind the birds as they met up and wandered off our lease to another property.  He sat in the rain, the wind and cold only to have the bird walk away from him to a boss hen, or slip by him, refusing to come down a hill or slip out of cover.  Finally, nearing the end of the hunt, Bob gets back onto the perimeter road and works his way to the back side of the property.  The flock of birds liked to roost right on the edge in the pines and then fly down into the oak bottoms a couple of hundred yards off of us.  He can hear the tom that won’t come back across the bottom hammering the woods.   But he also notices that after the light rain just quit there was fresh scratching along the road heading from one back greenfield to another on top of a hill about three hundred yards away.  “I could tell they were ahead of me, going for the open greenfied because of the rain.  So I decided to ease up, but first I stopped and pulled on my 3D leafy wear.”   Bob eased up, the wet ground allowing him to move silently, and managed to close another twenty or so yards until he spotted a gobbler poking his head over the lip of the greenfield.  Bob froze until the gobbler went back to eating and took more steps.  He was mostly in the shade and the 3D leafy wear seemed to be confusing the birds.  Three times they looked over at him, three times he froze.  Finally, they moved back from the lip and he slipped up quickly covering about forty yards.  He was within range but stuck in the sun.  The gobbler he was after must have heard the footsteps and after hearing the clucks earlier must have been expecting another hen to be making the faint steps he was hearing.   Bob figured he was about forty yards out. He slowly raised his shotgun and fired. The bird rolled over like he was hit by a 2×4.  Bob raced up and saw him trying to get up and fired another round and the bird was down for good.  He took photos and picked up his bird for a very long walk back.

Of course “Raining hens” Reese’s bad luck continued as his photographs were deleted by a faulty camera.  Good memories, no photos.

It’s been years since I’ve hunting Florida.  I live here, but my hunting heart belongs to the great state of Alabama.  People are good, the weather is good, the land is exceptional and the hunting is solid-good deer, good turkeys, good small game, just good.  Back in the late nineties to around 2005 I hunted a public piece of land up the road from me called the Yucca pen.  The land was open, filled with ATV’ers and mudders.  People shot, hunted, goofed around and basically just “ran the woods” on the weekends.  There was a small population of pigs and a smaller population of deer on the land.  I ran a feeder or two and usually hunted in the mid-week.  It was fun, but not very productive.  I killed a few pigs, no deer but spent a good deal of time in the woods, which is where I would prefer to be.

Dad and the cart with a couple of deer in the way

A couple of unconcerned deer, in a different era, they'd be camp meat!

Several years ago the State of Florida bought the area up and sealed it off.  I pulled my stands and gear and left.  Years passed, finally I broke down and decided to try to hunt it with all the rules and regulations the State demands (I have a basic dislike for bureaucrats telling me where, when and how I hunt.  Who are they?  Most aren’t even outdoorsmen.)  But I bit the bullet and signed up.   I went on Google and printed down an aerial map of the area.  I quickly noted a series of flag ponds situated in the back corner of the property about a mile from the main road.  A friend of mine said most of the hunters stayed close to the main roads, so I figured this would be a good place to hunt.  Kaley-Ann and I made a quick scouting trip and I had to eat a little crow.  Whoever set up the area did a good job.  The staff and the rules were laid back.  I was surprised and pleased.  Kaley-Ann was even more pleased.  We jumped a number of small game and a couple of hogs, which was the goal.  We also saw deer- silly, stupid, non-afraid deer.  On the way back to the truck around dusk, a young spike refused to get out of our way.  In another time, my dad would have put him in the cooler without a blink of an eye.  But times change and we think about QDM a lot harder today.

Hog rub on a main game trail

Kaley-Ann really wanted to take a hog with a bow.  She had built her own bow from Rudderbows from a bamboo backed hickory blank.   It is a fine shooting bow, but a little heavy and she is working on trying to master it.  As a backup we decided to bring along her Remington .260.   On our first trip we walked to the back of the hunting area.  It was about a mile in.  Most of the other hunters tried to stay closer to the road.  We pulled along a game cart on the off chance we got something we could pull it out.  We went to the area we scouted and worked slowly into the wind.  We circled the slough where we had jumped pigs before.  About a hundred and fifty yards out, we heard the squealing and popping of teeth coming from the tall grass and palmettos surrounding the slough.  Kaley-Ann’s eyes opened wide in awe as the sounds of pigs fighting with each other echoed across the slough.  It was hard to tell if the pigs were in the palmettos on the far side of the slough, or in the slough itself which was covered with chest high thickets of grass under which the pigs a burrowed dozens of trails.  We both crept closer, Kaley-Ann readying her rifle.  It took about twenty minutes to circle downwind and come up from the south.   The pigs quit fighting so we were still a little confused as to their location.   We eased up to the edge of the slough with me a little to the inside.  I figured the pigs were so loud because they were in the palmettos on the far side of the slough so I kept an eye in that direction.  As we snuck up I caught Kaley-Ann looking past me to my right so I turned my head and to my surprise saw about a hundred pound boar walking along with us only fifteen yards away!  He didn’t see us because of the tall grass and thickets but we could see him from about the shoulders up.   Here I was between Kaley-Ann and a pig.  I backed up and drifted towards her and away from the pig, but I still could see both at the same time.  Kaley-Ann raised her rifle and fired.   The pig squealed and took off.   I figured he’d be DRT (dead right there) but he jumped into the slough and was gone.  No blood, no hair, no signs at all.  We circled the slough and even went through it on a grid search, nothing but other pigs complaining about us disrupting their day.  Kaley-Ann scratched her head, fifteen yards and a clean miss?  She finally admitted the adrenaline dumped when she saw the pig so close may have gotten the best of her as she tried to shoot through the tall grass.  (I think she overcompensated trying to shoot “through” the brush trying to hit the shoulder.)

Typical low land pine scrub

A view from a low climber! Each white spot is hog rooting. There were hundreds.

About three days later we tried it again.  This time we brought a climber on the cart and wheeled it back into the same area.  Kaley-Ann climbed up a tree about eight feet which was all the tree would handle.  I left her and went to another area to sit and watch a game crossing.  (It was more her hunt than mine.)  The day was breezy and just a little warm.  The kind of day you’ll find yourself dozing instead of paying attention.  Around dusk, I got up and went for a little walkabout.  As I approached a large pond a heard a rustling and two large pigs jumped out about ten yards away.  They didn’t stay long enough for me to get a bead on them, but I wasn’t that interested because Kaley-Ann had just radioed me and said she was covered up with pigs.  She was just trying to pick one that wasn’t surrounded by piglets.   A few minutes after my encounter, I heard her rifle bark.  She radioed me she had one down.  I walked over and sure enough a nice fat sow was lying dead on the ground.

Small slough with tall grass. You could hide fifty hogs in it.

It was easy money.   We went and grabbed up the cart, pulled it back and loaded the pig.  We started out.  That was when I learned a valuable lesson about weight, thin wheels and soft Florida mud.  To say it was easy to get out was an understatement.  Six hundred yards of pulling that fat pig through the slough and I thought I was having “the big one Elizabeth!”   I’m not twenty-five anymore.  I decided to lighten the load and gut the pig right there.  I did and it was a little easier, until we loaded up the rest of the gear including the climber onto the cart.   There are moments when we look back and say “this was a special time.”  The struggle to walk out with her prize, pulling side by side, talking and laughing about how weak we looked as the sun set and the moon began to rise was a special moment for me.   Towards the end, Kaley-Ann tried to persuade me to go and get the truck.  “Dad, they won’t care if we drive a couple of hundred yards!” she panted as we pulled the cart across another rut.  I said to her, “Rules are rules, and it would be my luck the game warden would drive by just as we were coming out.  Let’s just stay the course and we’ll be okay.”  We did and finally made it out.  The funny thing was by the time we got out of the woods and back to the check out station everybody had gone home!   I could have driven all over the place and nobody would have known or cared.  But it was still a good lesson.   However, one my back and arms reminded me of for several days afterward.  Now I see why all the other hunters hunted closer to the roads.

Dad,Kaley-Ann, Chloe and the pig.

Life is good when you spend time hunting with your kids.   This hunt was no exception, except for the fact that about half way out I had this great idea for an invention- a motorized game cart for old farts like me that tend to forget I may think I’m twenty, but my body is on the back side of fifty and has all the dents and dings that come with it.  Motorized carts, a sure money maker.  I’m just saying…

It was deer season again which meant a trip to Alabama and a stay in our wonderful single wide trailer on our fifteen hundred acre lease. Not many members were hunting as it was the last week of archery and muzzleloading season. Before I left I dug out my old .54 caliber Renegade and tried to sight it in. I hadn’t shot it in almost fifteen years, instead opting for bows and rifles. We had some trouble sighting it as it jumped from left to right and back to left. At one point, my buddy, Bob, wondered if the sights were loose. I pulled on the rear sight and it was fine. I pulled at the front sight and much to my dismay it moved back and forth easily. That explained the wandering groups! Several quick taps from a hammer and a punch rolled the dovetail down and the front sight was working again. We didn’t have a chance to sight it back in before the trip so we grabbed up all the gear and hit the road.

Now I love bowhunting in any form including crossbows. I don’t like wheels so I took along my Excalibur. It is a tack-driving weapon and I have the shaved and Robin Hooded bolts to prove it. However, it is an awkward weapon. Sorry guys at Excalibur, but it is what it is, and this creature can get in the way. Especially when sitting in a tree stand or trying to move around inside a shooting house. (Shooting houses on my lease are built on the basic 4×4 design. Good for rifles, bad for anything oddly shaped.) I knew my daughter would have trouble with it, so when we got up to the lease I had her shoot my old black powder and I’d use the crossbow. I should say that I may gripe about the crossbow’s design, but it is a deadly weapon. I killed a nice sow with it one year, hitting the pig at better than thirty-five yards in the near dark and nearly knocking her over. It sent a bolt with a Fred Bear Razorhead through her ribs and out the other side in a blink of an eye.

With a quick sighting in session and a few lessons on how to handle the rifle like how to     prime it with caps and the safe removal of the same, I sent my daughter out to a shooting house on our “400” property while I climbed a pine tree with my Summit at another food plot. As I struggled up the tree, it had been a year and my biceps were not used to pushing me and my gear up, I realized that being on the wrong side of fifty was starting to take a toll on me. Next year, God willing, I’m getting one of those sit down/pull up stands. Anyway, I get settled in and start to relax. It’s a good clear day and a good wind. I ranged a couple of trees and got ready for that six point I was after last year. It was only a matter of time. About thirty minutes later I hear BOOOM!!! from the area where Kaley-Ann had set up. I waited a minute and she radios me (we use radios to communicate when set up separately) “Dad, I got one.”

I was grinning under my face mask “What was it?” Hoping and not hoping it was that six point we both were after.

“It’s a doe.”

“Is she dead?”

“Oh, she’s dead!”

I figured as much. Getting hit with a 230 grain lead ball a half inch in diameter had to put the dinky-dink on that deer. So I realized my hunt was over and I got down so I could go back to the truck and drive down to Kaley-Ann’s location. When I showed up she had already tracked and recovered the deer. It was a small doe and I could see the lead ball hit her right through the chest. Kaley-Ann smiled and said it was right where she was aiming. However, she didn’t like the gun that much. “Dad. I’m not sure about this black powder deal.”

“Why? It seemed to work.”

“Because when the deer showed up I followed your instructions and pulled the hammer back. When I pulled the trigger the hammer fell but nothing happened. The doe looked up at me but luckily didn’t move. I so quietly pulled the hammer back again and pulled the trigger a second time. That time the gun went off! I couldn’t see the deer! The smoke was everywhere! Then I see her run off. When she did I saw my right hand trying to work the bolt like I do on my .260. But there’s no bolt, I’m out of bullets!!

Kaley-Ann firing the Renegade

I was laughing out loud imagining my daughter frantically waving her hand back and forth working a bolt that doesn’t exist. I pointed out the rifle did exactly what it was supposed to do, hence the dead deer on the ground next to the truck. She had to admit I had a point and we loaded her trophy into the bed of the truck and drove back to camp. We later figured out she didn’t have the primer set square on the nipple and the first strike set it up correctly. It went off on the second, as it was designed. Had it been a nervous six point, I think I would have lost a future black powder fan. As it turned out my Dad, who is failing steadily and giving away his things, told her he would give her his old .50 caliber Hawkins when he got back to Florida. That is a tack driving old style rifle, fully decorated in brass and wood. The old way for sure. It’s a hard way to gain a prized possession, but if he lasts till she shoots a deer with it, the moment will last forever in the stories told by our family. Isn’t that really what hunting and family and loving is all about?

I think it is.

P.S.- With this deer, Kaley-Ann has taken game with every type of weapon except a bow.   Although she did hit a running bunny with a blunt, just the wrong arrow head. Pretty good for a fourteen year old girl who has to travel 600 miles to hunt.

My daughter and I have a hunt scheduled for the end of the month in a WMA just up the road.  Years ago I hunted it when it was open land, but stopped after the state bought the land up.  Now I see the area, which was swamp with buggy trails, is criss crossed with roads.  My buddy Bob says the pigs are thick but are probably a little shy after muzzleloading season.

Who cares, it was a good time back then and I hope a better time coming up.  My daughter is ready, I’m ready, our gear is getting organized as we speak.  Here are some old photos of my time in the area.  We’ll blog our experiences.

Let me tell you a story.  When I decided to dedicate myself to bowhunting with recurves, I spent a lot of time practicing and refining my skills and equipment.  I also spent a lot of time hunting.  Almost three times a week I would go out and service feeders, or set up and hunt.  I had an old Toyota pickup that took a beating driving through the wet buggy roads that criss-crossed the land.  There were times I waded to the high ground where I hunted. It wasn’t easy but it was close.  And it was fun.

Over the years the pig population went from having a few around, to have a bunch around.  That was even with it being open land and hunted by everyone with dogs.  I found out why when a buddy of mine ran into a man who was hired by a farmer in another county to trap out the pigs destroying his crops. The trapper was transporting the pigs to our area and letting them go.  Nice move on his part.  So, in one year we went to a few pigs of different sizes to full grown boars with an attitude.

In that year I had a small feeder set up in a cypress head.  After work, around two or three in the morning, I would gather the feed and run up to the feeder and service it.   More than once, as I held a flashlight in my teeth while pouring corn into the feeder, I would sense something watching me.  I could hear the pigs moving around me in the underbrush.  It was spooky to say the least.

On the days I could hunt, I would scramble out and either climb a tree (usually a slick cypress) or set up a ground blind.  I took so few shots, that the pigs got used to me being there and would sometimes work down wind to see if I was in the blind or not.  One day, I had one actually stick its nose in my blind. I could have touched him.  I shot a couple but nothing of significance as I was still struggling to harness the recurve’s abilities while not going totally nuts with “buck fever” when a pig showed up.

One day, I was in the ground blind, the one you see in the photo, when a nice sized black boar showed up.  He was nervous and kept looking around at the thickets, something was out there.  Suddenly, I see a huge black blur bust out of the thicket and charge across the opening smacking the smaller pig in the side.  I think my jaw dropped when I got a look at the size of the other boar.  The best way to describe him is a black bear with tusks!  He was so huge his shoulders drawrfed his hindquarters.  He looked like that cartoon bulldog from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.  The tusks actually stuck out like knife blades as he snapped at the other pig.  Now the smaller pig was about a hundred and fifty pounds.  The big guy was easily twice as big if not more and he was twelve yards away and pissed.  He chased the smaller pig around

the opening for five minutes, charging and grunting.  Once they almost ran me over throwing dirt from their feet over the netting an onto me.   I was wishing I had brought my pistol as I looked at my fifty-five pound recurve and aluminum arrows.   Finally, the big pig backed down a little, froth coming from his mouth as he eyed me and the other pig.    I thought about trying to shoot him, but realized two important things; One, I was on the ground and unarmed other than the bow and he was all of three hundred pounds plus and already pissed off.  Two, getting him out of there by myself would be a nightmare and besides pigs that size arent that good to eat.

The first pig looked at me, then at his adversary, then back at me.  He wasn’t sure what to do next.  He turned sideways and I can honestly say without thinking my bow came up and the arrow was off.  It actually surprised me a little and both pigs a lot.   I could see the arrow sticking about halfway through the boar behind his shoulder.  He took off like a bolt of lightning.  The huge boar did the same thing in the opposite direction, much to my relief.

I waited for a few minutes to get my act together and went to where I had last seen the pig bolting through the cypress trees.  Blood spray was on several of the trunks, I found the back half of my aluminum arrow broken on the ground covered in blood.  I thought this is just like in all those stories I read in the Traditional Bowhunter Magazine.  All I had to do was follow the blood find the pig and some good looking girl would jump out with a cold one and bag full of cash.  EAAASY!

But my luck never really changes.  Nothing comes easy.  No girl, no beer and no cash.  I found out, as I worked my way through the swamp thickets, that the blood had suddenly tried up.   I was down to tracking drops of blood on my hands and knees, and soon that stopped.  It was getting dark and I knew that pig was dead in there somewhere.  It was too hot to leave him for the next day, so I started a grid search in the failing light.  Just as the sun set and dusk was growing heavy I stepped out onto a main trail to double back and took about ten steps and almost fell over the boar!  He was dead in the path!

The arrow had taken out one lung and stuck into the liver on the far side. He had traveled about a hundred yards but in a circular path, most of the blood was sealed inside his cavity as pigs tend to seal up, because of the thick skin and fat,  after being hit with an arrow.  I thanked God for the recovery and the experience.  I was hopping and yelling in excitement, until it hit me he was a lot bigger than I thought.  I was a quarter mile from the truck, in a swamp, in the dark, alone.  I tried to drag him and that wasn’t happening. I tried to load him on a skid and THAT didn’t work, so in the end I had to field dress him and quarter him out to get him home.  I made it out around 0230am.   This is the biggest pig I ever shot or shot at.  In the end I’m glad I didn’t try his big buddy.  It would have probably killed me one way or the other.

This is another story in a series being done for my dad.

Young, invincible and a little bit outlaw

Times were different then. Being a hunter in the late fifties didn’t mean the same thing it does today. Technology, regulations, restrictions, and having to deal with the environmental whackos that hound hunting and fishing takes a little fun out of being in the woods. Back when my dad was a young man, strong, invincible, and full of that wild fun that bubbles out of you no matter how hard to try to hold it in, he ran the woods and fields like a year old puppy chasing his first rabbit. He hunted and fished everywhere at anytime, call him he’s there, think about calling him and he’ll probably show up with a shotgun or fishing rod stuck in the trunk just in case. Those were enchanted times, and too often, because of our youth we don’t realize until later just how special it was.

The only thing that can make it better for a young hunter is to have family and friends share the same love. This is especially so if the young man can find a best friend. Not just a hunting buddy, but that guy who will stick by you, thick or thin, for the rest of your life. You know who I’m talking about. Like the saying goes, “A good friend will bail you out of jail… A best friend will be sitting beside you saying, “Damn, that was fun!”

Dad was lucky. During his last days in the service or shortly thereafter he met Carl who turned out to be his best friend, hunting buddy and fellow outlaw. Not that they were bad guys, it was just back in those days you might bend the limit a time or two, and needed someone who was as dedicated as you were to slip by “the man.”

Carl Sr duck hunting in Perry

Ray Sr glassing for bird off an abandoned cabin roof

During the late fifties, Dad and Carl and both of their dads lived in the Jacksonville area. They roamed the north end of Florida and the south part of Georgia hunting ducks, quail, deer and anything else in season. They made regular trips to the area around Perry Florida in the Panhandle hunting ducks. Dad tells the story almost every time we pass through the I-10 area of I-75. He goes, “Wish, did I ever tell you the time Carl and me went duck hunting?” “Sure, but tell me again.” Dad smiles as his mind drifts back in time.

“Well, Carl, he was a damn good shot. He grew up around Jacksonville trapping and hunting as a kid. He went to Korea as a sniper. When he was over there, he got frustrated about not being able to tell if he was hitting the North Korean soldier. So he writes his daddy and asks him to send some ’06 sporting ammo. He gets a couple of boxes and starts using them. Boy, he said that made a big difference! He said he’d shoot the guy with the old ammo and he’d just drop out of sight. With the new stuff, POOF! The guy’s head would explode. Carl figured he was doing the right thing until one day his commander called him in and reamed him out good. He had found out about Carl’s “adjustments” and told him if the NK’s got a hold of him, they’d shoot him on the spot. Carl said, “I don’t know why y’all is so upset. You guys taught me how to kill; I was just improvin’ on the method.” Dad would laugh out loud. “Wish, that man could shoot. I saw him spin around in a fire break one time and shoot a running deer at better than a hundred yards. That damned deer hit the ground like a sack of potatoes! When I got up to it, I saw the bullet had passed right through the heart!”

Carl and Dad with their ducks (less one)

Dad pointed his finger at me. “Now, me and Carl, we loved duck hunting. Went every chance we could. One time we went hunting out by Perry. We had a good day and when we got done we found out we had shot a little over the limit. Back then it wasn’t a big deal, but we were young and broke and couldn’t afford the ticket if we got caught. So, Carl figured out we could get back to Jax okay if we could hide the extra ducks. Carl had this old sedan, so we began stuffing ducks all over the place, under the seat, in the engine compartment, under the tire, just everywhere. We drive back and everything is fine. A couple of days later, Carl goes on a date with this nurse he was chasing. He liked her a lot and was working the angles pretty hard.” (You have to remember, this was the late fifties.) “It was winter and cold. So, when Carl picks up his date, he decides to start up the heater. The whole car explodes with this foul smell. I mean gagging bad! Carl had noticed something was wrong earlier, but couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from. Now, he could hardly stand it! His date is retching, Carl can barely breathe, and he’s at a loss to figure out what was wrong. That was until he reached up under the heater vent and pulled out a decomposed duck. In our haste to hide the ducks we miscounted. So when we pulled them back out of the car, we thought we had them all. Needless, to say a smelly rotted duck made the nurse decide Carl wasn’t the one for her.” Dad laughed at the memory. “He was pretty upset, but me, I thought it was hilarious. Just goes to show though. If you try to get away with something, it will always come back to get you in the end. That’s a good lesson to remember, son.”

I promised I would and filed the story away to tell my kids one day when we drove together through the same area. And I have a time or two. They laugh every time I tell it. Kids think dead smelly birds making anyone gag is funny. But, they get the lesson to, cheating may be fun, but you’ll always pay in the end.

I just finished putting in a small garden.  No plants yet, but the dirt and the wood beam frame are in place.  I stuck a couple of old almost dead plants in it to see if I can save them, although I hold little hope.  I am thinking about planting butterfly flowers and maybe some roses (I love roses).  I really can’t plant vegetables because the garbage eating raccoons around my house would jump at the chance to steal fresh tomatoes.

Well, as I pondered what to do with my new garden, apparently my daughter’s tree hugging friends decided to get a move on.  Today, I was pulling up what I thought were young weeds when I realized they weren’t weeds at all.  The little sprouts were corn!  The squirrels were busy hiding corn kernels from each other.  Obviously they forget where they buried the corn, because it was in the ground long enough to germinate.

A squirrel farmer's crop.

I didn’t have the heart to pull them up.  Butterfly flower, roses and corn!  Who cares, my daughter will get a kick from her little buddies’ farming skill.  It did make me think just how many oaks and pines and other trees and bushes have been planted by our little absent minded furry farmers.  There are probably thousands of acres of woods filled with fruit and nuts trees that have been enjoyed by other bigger critters thanks to the tireless efforts of the measly squirrel, God’s original farmers.

One of our furry farmers

I love sitting by the fire and watching it burn.  I think there is something basic, almost instinctive, in the relationship between man and fire.  My father loved to sit by a open fire, as did his father and his father’s father.

Tonight I spent time building and sitting by a fire in my backyard.  As a matter of fact, I had two going, one in a stone pit and one in a homemade tin fire pit.  The stone pit is made up of stones from my second home, the great state of Alabama.  For a while I collected rocks every time I went up and put them around my home as decorations.  With hunting on hold for me I spend time in the backyard chopping wood, gardening, building a fire to ward off bugs and give me a little peace.

Now today’s fire was a little different.  My wife was doing what wives do best, which is going crazy every once in a while.  So, I found it safer to sit- no hide- in the backyard!  I chopped some wood, built two fires, lit a Citronella candle (which doesn’t work by the way) and brought a water bottle full of Jim Beam with me.  I was a very happy backyard camper until the bugs ran me out.

backyard set up, hiding from the Mrs.

As I stood by the fire I began to wonder if the relationship between man and fire has something to do with how the fire burns.  When you first light it, the fire starts out small and weak. Add too much wood and the pressure causes it to go out.  Too little wood and it starves, but if  you treat it just right a fire will grow and burn brightly.  The young fire burns with an energy that gives off light and heat, it seems like it will last forever.  Soon though it slows, but it leaves you good coals, coals you can cook on, stay warm by, coals that last a long time, steady and strong.   After a while the coals begin to cool, their light begins to fade, although they still give off lifesaving heat, but their time is nearly over.   In the end, they quietly go cold, leaving only ashes.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that a fire mimics man, or is it that man mimics the fire.  As children we thrive the best if we are given just the right amount of encouragement, not too much pressure, not too little attention.  When we grow into young adults there is nothing we can’t do, nothing that can stop us. We burn bright with energy and hope.  But as we get older, we learn the meaning of life, that providing a solid, steady place for others to feel warm and secure is our job, our destiny.  In the end, we grow older and weaker.  We have less and less to offer, but if you huddle closer, listen a little harder, we still have something to offer.  Even as ash, long after we have grown cold, we offer the elements that the future can be built on.  A fire gives ashes to the earth that add nutrients so the new growth can flourish.  We give memories and lessons that our children and our children’s children can learn from and prosper by.

After a lot of chopping this is what left of the playhouse

Those were the thoughts I had as I watched the fire slowly grow dark and cold.  I didn’t mourn the loss, as I know it is the same for all things including us.  I hope that in the end I’ll provide the warmth and comfort to my family and someday my words will guide my children to a good life.

There is an old saying about fathers and daughters; “A son is a son until he takes a wife. A daughter is a daughter all her life.” To many men, until they are fathers of daughters, this old saying doesn’t mean much. But when you see your daughter for the first time, held in the arms of your wife, it all makes sense. With my daughter it is especially meaningful. You see, when she was only a year or so, she became sick with a simple flu. But as young parents, my wife and I didn’t know the dangers of the flu in a small child.  After a few days of futile home remedies we brought her to the doctors.  One look at my daughter and he admitted her immediately to the hospital.  The doctor told us had we waited another day or so, my daughter would have died from dehydration.  This I know to be true, because another acquaintance of mine didn’t act fast enough and his daughter died in her mother’s arms.

As I sat next to my daughter’s bed, in a darkened hospital room, tears quietly rolling down my cheek, I vowed never to make that mistake again and I have spent my life keeping my promise. As time passed, my daughter, Kaley Ann, grew into a happy, intelligent young girl.  She was always serious about school, about pleasing her parents, about doing the right thing in life. Kaley Ann has always been a huge lover of the outdoors.  Part of it was probably from the days she spent as a five year old perched along side me in a homemade stand hunting pigs or other critters during bow season.  She was the best partner a hunter could want, content to play with twigs and leaves while helping her dad listening for incoming game. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise when Kaley Ann decided she wanted to be a hunter too.  Kaley Ann is your basic tomboy, more comfortable in jeans than a dress. She is her daddy’s buddy and tried and true hunting/outdoors partner.

Kaley at eight with her brother Jake

I taught her about all types of hunting; rifles, pistols, bows and shotguns.  At first she learned the basics with a .22 rifle.  But soon she graduated to a 260 Remington and took her first buck with a hundred yard downhill shot which broke both shoulders.  She killed her first turkey with 20 gauge hand-me-down.  I couldn’t have been prouder both times, not only for her skill but the respect she showed nature.

Kaley and Curtis, with Curtis's deer

As much as I liked to use other equipment to take critters, my first love has always been traditional bow hunting.  I bought the kids some wooden youth bows to play around with so I could see if they were interested or not.  When Kaley Ann was around eleven or twelve she said she wanted to try bow hunting.  I bought her a compound, figuring that type of bow would be a good first step into bowhunting and it would give her the energy to take animals safely.  Kaley Ann never complained; the good daughter that she was.  She shot the compound and seemed happy with it.  I, on the other hand, shot my Mahaska recurve (a fine bow) and an old Bear whitetail I picked up years ago on Ebay for seventy five dollars.  Last year, I decided to do something different and bought a bow kit from Rudderbows.com.  The bamboo backed Epe longbow was sent to me in the basic raw form, ready for me to shave and shape it.  It turned out to be a fine tack driving longbow.  Soon, Kaley Ann and I would have competitions to see who could shoot better, her with a compound and me with the longbow.  She often won.  She loved beating at my own game, and I loved loosing. But there were times I did as good or better with my traditional equipment.

I figured she was happy until about a month ago when she came to me and asked if she could build a bow like mine.  I was a little hesitant, thinking that the bamboo backed bow that Rudderbows makes were probably too slow at her draw to be successful hunting bows.  However, she really wanted a bow like mine.  I called Rudderbows and they walked me through my concerns.  We settled on a bamboo backed hickory bow at 66″ for her first attempt.  They added a handle and took the extra time to tiller the bow around 60lbs before shipping it to my daughter.

kaley with her brand new bow kit

Kaley Ann was on pins and needles until the bow arrived.  Immediately, she began shaving the limbs down as I watched and guided her in the process.  I explained how the bow worked and the need to take it slow and easy.  “You can always take more wood off, but you can’t put it back on.” I’d say as she shaved, sanded and then tested the pull.   I explained that taking the time to finish your own bow to your personal likes, makes that bow special.  She carefully sanded and filed the handle, checked the tiller and slowly, methodicallybegan to bring the bow to life. Working on her bow inside my cramped, messy shed. Her mom didn’t like the idea of shavings in her clean house. Rudderbows will help a lot with the basic layout on your bow.  Here they started the handle and gave a solid center cut.

Kaley tillering the bow

I would stand over Kaley Ann and worry that she would do it wrong and become disappointed. But, Kaley Ann is a very smart and independent girl.  After a while, she would glance up at me with that “leave me alone I know what I’m doing” look and I would force myself to walk away.  I shouldn’t have worried though.  She knew what she wanted, as she always did, and slowly the bow became hers.  She left it a little heavy, in order to challenge herself to build up to the bow’s weight.

Kaley Ann  picked out a stain that would color the wood to her liking.  We went online to Three Rivers Archery and picked out what kind of accessories she wanted on her bow.  Kaley Ann tricked it out the way she wanted; a leopard skin arrow plate, leather grips and musk ox puffers. All I can say it is a darned fine looking bow. So much so, I warned her she had better keep an eye on it, or I might find a reason to hunt with it myself.

Beautiful

I can say this, the people at Rudderbows make a seriously accurate bow.  Kaley Ann’s was the third one I made or seen made and all were tack driving bows.  I watched as Kaley Ann took her bow out for the first time, and while using my arrows (which aren’t tuned to her bow), drive arrow after arrow into a small plastic bottle at more than ten yards.

Kaley Ann laughed at me as she pinned the bottle to the target yet again, as I missing repeatedly by mere inches.  Her velocity needs to come up, but that will come with time, practice and tuned up muscles. Watching her bear down on the target and drive arrow after arrow into the bull’s-eye, all I can say is this, if I were a deer within twenty yards of my daughter this fall, I’d be getting ready to be served for dinner along with some rice and gravy.

I watched Kaley Ann put the finishing touches on her bow, I turned to my wife and said what I am sure all fathers say, “Someday she’ll discover boys and spending time with her dad with be all yucky and such.” My wife patted me on the arm and smiled. I thought to myself, I know someday Kaley Ann will go her own way, chasing boys, chasing careers, chasing her dreams. And “old dad” will be the guy she visits during the holidays.  I’d be less than honest if I said the thought didn’t bring me sadness.  But until then, critters beware!

Update: I wrote the above story about a year ago.  This year Kaley-Ann didn’t get a deer, but she did manage to hit a running bunny at almost twenty yards as he darted through some pretty thick brush.  She flipped him, but the type of blunt she had didn’t close the deal. (we have since corrected that!)  Still a running bunny at twenty, not bad!