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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.

I’ll be posting photos later when I change the bandages.  However, last night I learn again about safety even with the simplest tasks, like sharpening a broadhead. Usually, I wear heavy leather gloves.  That way when I slip, and I do, I don’t cut anything seriously.  This time I got lazy, what could go wrong  when using a carbide cutting tool to put a new edge on a broadhead?  Well, just about a stroke before I figured on quitting I slipped and cut my shooting hand index finger across the knuckle and to the bone.

Stitches and the end of my bow season

The doctor said I didn’t cut the tendon (luck), but a number of stitches later, I was pretty sure bending back my longbow this weekend is done, and maybe for next month in Alabama.  It will heal, but it is going to hurt and heal slowly.  I’m severely right-hand dominant, but not for now.

Safety first!

the offending tool. Now in the garbage. Gloves, gloves, gloves!!!

Chief Cummings and his dogs

Where to begin. I’m going to submit a more extensive article to several magazines to see if they want to publish the work. But here, I’m going to share with you my father’s hunting life in photographs. Yesterday, I persuaded him to let me scan many of his old albums so I could capture his love of the outdoors in photographs. My dad has always, ALWAYS loved the outdoors and did anything he could to get into the woods or on the water. Even now, crippled with a bad back, diabetes and age, he travels to his beloved Alabama cabin as often as his health allows. He sits quietly on the porch and watches squirrels, birds and other critters as they hop, fly and crawl their way past his perch.

Dad on a bear hunt 1955

He tells stories of a youth spent collecting orphaned critters from cats to alligators as he ran the woods of Plant City, Florida. He played ball, helped his dad work construction, loved his mom, snuck in and stole oranges from farmer’s orchards, and did what kids in the forties did back then. During a stint in the Navy he was stationed in Jacksonville and spent all his free time hunting around the Florida/Georgia border. One of his first memorable hunts was with “Chief Cummings” hunting bears. Back then, the local wildlife officer actually helped set up the hunts. Dad still had photographs from that time. The photograph shows Dad proudly posing with his father’s Marlin rifle. Grandpa had shipped it over to Dad just before the hunt and he didn’t even have time to shoot it. Dad says it was a good thing he didn’t see a bear on this hunt. The firing pin was busted. One of the other hunters, a master chief in the Navy stationed at the Navy oridinance post manufactured a replacement later.

Dad eventually killed a 508lb bear on one of the hunts. As he sat there talking about the hunts of his youth he said “Son, those were good days.” Yes they were.

Game warden setting up the hunt!

How it was done in 1955

Everybody has a pair of boots they love. Usually, as in my case, the boots were at one time waterproof, but now can no longer hold that claim. My favorite pair of boots is a set of upland Danners. They are the best fitting pair of boots I ever owned. It is like wearing a pair of custom leather gloves on your feet. For the first couple of years the boots were waterproof because of a Gore-Tex lining. They were great! I wore them on duty as an anti-crime detective and in the woods hunting and hiking. But, eventually I wore them out. I had them resoled and somehow during the process they began to leak. It was heart breaking.

Worse, the wet boots led to wet feet and that led to some foot problems during the long hunt. I vowed to get a new pair of waterproof boots when I got home and I did, but they do not fit as well. I missed my Danners, no other boot felt the same way on my feet. I think every hunter/hiker knows where I’m coming from. So, I began to think about how to seal the boot. I tried Mink oil and all its cousins with some success. I figured the leak wasn’t actually through the boot, but along the seam around the sole. No matter how I worked it, I couldn’t seal the seam and a small leak always started shortly after hitting water. Then I got an idea. For years I had been using a product called Plasti-dip (http://www.plastidip.com/) to recoat certain metal items including parts of my tree stand. I knew the product was extremely waterproof and had some stretch built into its makeup.

taping off the boots

So I took my Danners and a pair of leather Irish setter boots and did an experiment. I taped off, using painter tape, the edges of the boots below the stitched sole and just above the leather seam along the foot pad. With a brush I applied several coats of black Plastic-dip to the areas I felt were leaking.

After a period for drying, I put my son to the task of testing the boots-much to his dismay. (Hey, I was busy working on something else and he was just sitting there during homework, so it seemed like a good idea!)

Jacob the guinea pig!

The end result of the experiment was a waterproof pair of boots with only a small black line of Plasti-dip along the soles. Now, I tried the same method on a much bigger scale on an old pair of snake boots that leaked almost since the day I owned them. Those boots are made of ballistic nylon and I basically had to paint the entire sides and top with Plasti-dip. That task was more difficult because of the material, but I managed to get one boot waterproof and the other almost the same. Since I started out with a pair of snake proof sieves, I know I’m the right track.

When I looked up Plasti-dip online I was surprised to find the product comes in many different colors, including clear, which should work for those of you who worry about appearances. I’m tickled; my boots are back in action and I think I’m on to something here!

Update: I figured out why, after a number of coats of Plasti-dip, my snake boots refused to stay waterproof. As I stood over the wet pair I noticed that the soles of the boots were wet. Not the rest of the boot, but water was definitely seeping out of the bottom. What?? So I reversed the process and filled the boots with water. I watched as water poured through the soles of the boot. Apparently, my boots have soles that do not deflect sharp objects very well. One stick, not a sharp one at all, had rammed its way into one sole and left a 1/4 inch cut. Each sole had at least three holes in it. Back to the drawing board. I’m going to have to find a material waterproof and tough enough to withstand me walking on them. AAGGH!

Update Two: I bought Shoe-Goo and put it on the boots. We’ll see. It does harden to a tough coat. I think I got all the holes. A couple of layers of plasti-dip and another test is in the offing. Update:  Success! The snake boots sat in water for nineties minutes with no leaks. I’m using the rest of the spray to cover the rest of the boot. If it works, I’ll be as waterproof as a rubber boot with snake protection. Total investment was less than fifteen dollars.

My waterproof Danners. Back in business

waterproof!

I shifted uncomfortably in my climbing stand as I studied the surrounding Florida cypress head.  I tried to shake off the nagging mosquito that hummed in my left ear.  The whine would cover any subtle noise of approaching hogs.  I glanced around, looking over the short cypress and palmetto thickets.  All was clear, so I gave the mosquito a quick swat and it was quiet again.  My seven year old daughter’s voice echoed in my head, “Mommy says Daddy sure loves his hunting.”

My wife was right, I sure did.  She reminded occasionally, and not always sweetly, that I liked hunting a little too much.  But I had no choice; it was the way I was raised.  My dad introduced me to hunting when I was just big enough to be carried on his back through the swamps of the Florida Everglades.  I shot my first rifle, sitting in my dad’s lap because I wasn’t old enough to hold it by myself.

My Dad and me- many, many years ago

I leaned back against the scrawny pine tree I managed to squirrel up using my API climber and thought about my dad and what he had helped me become.  I have been thinking about that lately because my dad is getting older, his body is slowly winding down.  He can’t get around much anymore between the diabetes and his bad hips.  The diabetes has taken its toll and his health prevents him from doing too much too often.  A far cry from the man I remembered humping a young boy through waist deep swamp water while proudly wearing his “gookie” boots.  “Gookie boots” was the nickname his best friend AJ “Squeak” Allen gave the new moose hide snake boots my Dad bought.  Dad would walk around challenging rattlesnakes and water moccasins by stomping on them, daring them to defeat the thick hide with their fangs.  One day, Dad and Squeak ran across a rattlesnake that was well over seven feet in length.  Dad killed it with a pistol.  Squeak took one look at the snake which was longer than a man was tall and said “Ray, I wouldn’t stomp that snake if I had gookie boots up to my armpits!”

God, it seemed like it was just yesterday I would stay up all night anticipating the trip to the Everglades and the times my Dad would hunt the backwoods with me in tow.   Hunting was a blessing because it held us together through all my rebellious teens and early twenties.  Funny thing about getting older, I swear our parents get smarter the older we get, go figure!  Too bad we don’t listen when we are young men.  I could have avoided some painful lessons.

A couple of years ago, when my daughter was just a baby, I began to notice something happening to me.  I would glance in the mirror in the morning and just for a second I would see a face of a man who looked a lot like my Dad.  I also began catching myself studying my hands.  They seemed like they belonged to someone else.  My hands were weathered and wrinkled, with a good number of scars scattered across the knuckles from assorted briars, errant knife cuts, and stubborn nuts and bolts from rusty stands or truck parts.  You know what I mean.  My hands had been around for some time now and it took me awhile to realize I’d seen them before, they were my Dad’s hands.

They were the same hands that held the rifle for my first shot; the hands that picked me up and put me on his back when we had to wade some swamp deep in the Everglades.  They were the hands that built hunting cabins we stayed in or fixed that old workhorse ‘65 International Scout we drove.  They were also the same hands that held me in a viselike grip when I was being scolded for the times my mouth overloaded my-you know what.  They also pulled me to him for his demanded bear hug every time I came around, regardless of whether or not I as a young boy, or a grown man.  It didn’t matter if I was alone or with my buddies and the embarrassment was overwhelming.

They were the same hands that held a Winchester model 88 for more years than I have been around.  He bought the rifle in 1955, two years before I was born.  The tack driving .308 accounted for dozens of deer, hogs and turkeys while being held in those steady hands until he finally laid it down several years ago.  Last year he surprised me by giving the rifle to me after years of my good-natured hinting I would sure like to own such a fine weapon.  I took a deer with it last winter and it was a special moment for me.

My wife just doesn’t get it.  She sees me take my kids out into the woods, to experience what I had experienced when I was a kid. She thinks it’s just an excuse for me to get out, but it’s not, it’s a rite of passage, a link from my grandfather, to my dad, to me and now to them.  I’m showing them something they can pass onto their kids when they grow up.  It has been the one constant that has always kept my father and me together.  When I’m out in the woods, I think about the times we had and the things we did.  I thought about him as I looked down at my hands cradling the Mahaska recurve.  Several years ago, I rediscovered the beauty of traditional bowhunting that my dad had shown me when I was in my teens.  For some reason, picking up a bow had brought me full circle to a time when a middle aged man traveled the woods with his youngster in tow.

But times are different.  Just recently, when he was with me on a turkey hunt in Alabama, he spoke of growing old and how thinking about his life had changed.  At seventy, he was a more cautious and worried man.  I had noticed his wariness and occasional confusion with a deepening sadness.  As to make the point, one day when he was driving his truck with me next to him,  he started to turn the wrong way at an intersection and I had to remind him the property we were headed to, the same he visited the day before, was in the opposite direction.  I bit my lip and smiled as he apologized.  I stared out the window at the blue spring day and pretended to study the passing pastures.  How long would it be until the cycle would be complete?  First the father and his son, then man to man, and someday the son becomes the father.

The times have changed, the love hasn't

I thought about that moment again as I studied my right hand covered by my leather shooting glove and I realized my eyes had become bleary.  I tried not to think about a season soon to come where he will not be there, waiting to greet me with a bear hug and an “I love you son.”

Truth is I don’t mind those hugs as much as I did when I was younger.  I even start a few up myself these days.  My kids sure get tired of them though.  My five year old son begs off a lot, but I think he’ll get over the embarrassment in forty years or so.  Heck, he might even get to where he likes giving them himself.  I think about what my wife said.  Yes, I do love hunting, but more than that, I love my Dad.

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