by Gaila Oliver | Feb 6, 2017 | Dogs, Hunting, sportsmen, Uncategorized, wildlife
This is not a religious column.
At a Wednesday night prayer meeting devotion, our preacher was talking about how God knows each of His children so personally, and he likened it to a mother’s being able to tell her own child’s cry from amongst a dozen other kids playing together. “Scotti always knew if one of ours was squalling, even if they were a block away,” he declared.
I had never thought about it thataway before, but now that Jon had called it to my attention, I considered that he had made a rather sexist statement. After all, it takes a daddy and a momma to make kids, so why didn’t he just say that a parent knew the kid?
But he failed to correct himself, so in the car going home, I called it to Betsy’s attention. “Now, I’ve had Lyme Disease, so can’t remember, but I reckon when one of ours was crying amongst a bunch of others, I could tell it, couldn’t I?” I queried my bride.
She snorted, “You couldn’t hear ours cry when they were the only ones in the house and it was two in the morning!” Then she made a further point, sarcastically: “But when that pack of beagles was running a mile away, you could tell each one of their voices!”
Her sarcasm went right over my head. A man is supposed to know each of his dog’s voices, and if these genetic scientists would work on breeding better hunting bays into our kids, instead of trying to breed up left-handed pitchers or nuclear engineers, we’d be getting our money’s worth. Who cares if they can clone sheep? But if they could have cloned the Belle of Brownspur, it would have been a million-dollar deal.
Belle was the matron of our beagle pack, and had one of those classic bays that people write books about. She passed it down to only a couple of her pups, Sam and Miss Adventure, but I could tell the three apart when they ran together. Sam’s was a deeper bass, and Miss Adventure’s was a little more soprano than Belle’s contralto, and Sam drew his out a little longer, though not as long as Bellowin’ Buford’s bay. Buford was a Plott hound, not a beagle, a contemporary of the great Jupiter Pluvius, who had the finest bay a Black-and-Tan ever bayed. Trouble, a Redbone of their age, also had a wonderful bay.
The rest of Belle’s pups, when they ran together as a pack, were easy to tell apart. Eric the Red was coarse-mouthed, more a bawl than a bay. He was the pack’s strike dog. Little Seven had a chop-mouth, and her sibling Thirteen was, to put it frankly, squeaky. One of those pups was unlucky growing up, and the other was uncommonly lucky, but they were a wonderful duet when they ran together, sort of like pulling a harrow with two bad bearings on it. Beaudine, whose brown-spot hairline resembled my brother’s then, had a squally-mouth voice, and was the one who cold-trailed best. Sam was bad to over-run a bunny’s trail, but Beaudine could be depended on to work it out when Sam went astray.
Aunt Rose used to resent being awakened by that pack of beagles running a rabbit through her hedges early in the morning, but Uncle Sam took me aside after her lecture on keeping the little hounds penned up, to say that he enjoyed their concerts, and not to worry about Aunt Rose’s tirades. “Her bark’s worse than her bite,” he winked.
Trigger, the daddy of that pack, never got to run with them, joining in with his high-pitched “Ki-yi-yi!” He caught a truck not long after conception, and never saw his progeny. Angel, his sister, and the pup’s aunt, never saw them either, though Seven inherited her chop-mouth. She was struck by a huge stumptail moccasin, right in our front yard, and died in my arms. The fang marks were over an inch apart, above her eye. Why it didn’t break the little miniature beagle’s neck, I never figured. Never found the snake.
Miss Adventure was the last of that wonderful pack to depart this earth, living to a ripe old age, though only having one litter of her own. We thought she was barren, but late in life she managed to conceive, and bore five pups. They were only a few days old when I found the mother coon that had been run over, leaving two babies orphaned. I brought Smokey and Bandit home and introduced them to beagle mother’s milk, and, lo and behold, Miss Adventure adopted them willingly! The little coons grew up with the little beagles, and the dogs learned to climb trees (at least, as much as their basic equipment allowed), and the coons learned to run rabbits, though they never bayed atall.
Betsy and I talked all this out on the way home, and though I enjoyed the memories, I reckon she made her point, and in doing so, reinforced the preacher’s sermon. I gave up.
by Gaila Oliver | Jan 26, 2017 | Hunting, sportsmen, Uncategorized, wildlife
The hunter had positioned his tree stand on a little knoll above a well-used deer trail, and upon mounting the stand to survey the area, noticed an old cemetery at the top of the hill behind him. Being a tad superstitious, particularly with Halloween right around the corner, he was considering moving the stand, when a couple of does appeared, feeding up the knoll. Our hero readied his bow in trembling anticipation.
However, just as the does moved into range, he noticed a movement in a switch cane thicket behind them, and a moment later caught a glimpse of antlers. A trophy eight-point was trailing the does, as bucks so often do. The hunter remained frozen as the does fed by him and continued uphill, hoping that the buck would follow in their tracks, which led almost up under his stand.
And so it happened, almost too good to be true. The buck never suspected an alien presence, and the hunter made a great shot at close range, the broadhead piercing the eight-point’s heart. Dead on its feet, the buck broke into its death dash, jumped the low fence, and collapsed in the cemetery, never knowing what had hit him.
Hurriedly scrambling down the ladder and nocking another arrow just in case, our hero approached his fallen trophy, but no coup de grace was needed. That’s when the hunter noticed the fallen tombstone.
In its blind final run, the deer had knocked over one of the old grave markers, a heavy one at that. Not only had the stone been rolled away, so to speak, but the buck’s heartblood had splashed all over the white marble. Glancing around fearfully to see if any ghosts had been disturbed, the man saw that several other tombstones also had telltale red droplets staining their pristine faces. Grunting, he reset the fallen stone.
Obviously, all kind of questions spring to mind when confronted with this type situation: What are the laws concerning graveyard desecration? Would the hunter, or the deceased deer, be charged as an outlaw? Were any of the bloody tombstones marking families that he knew? Or worse, his own family? Were the residents of the cemetery liable to rise up in fury over this intrusion into their peaceful sleep? And most important of all, would darkness catch him before he could make restitution?
Quickly loading his deer on his nearby four-wheeler, the hunter headed full speed for home, where he dumped the trophy in the yard with his bow, grabbed the needed supplies, and high-tailed it back to the scene of the crime.
So, if you were out in the woods just at dusk one evening, passing by an old cemetery, and happened to notice a camouflaged person feverishly scrubbing tombstones while glancing over his shoulders in rising panic at the horrible things that were gathering to wreak vengeance upon him for the desecration of their peaceful resting place – well, now you know.
And by the way, he says a mixture of one part bleach to three parts water works quite well for cleaning tombstones.
However, there was one other problem, he discovered when he visited the scene the next day during full sunlight. One can’t just clean a few of the stones in an old graveyard; the contrast between the newly bleached markers and the rest of the ancient tombstones was too evident. For the rest of the deer season, he cleaned a few more old stones each time he hunted, until now it’s the gleamingest old cemetery in the whole South!
And just to be safe, he moved his stand a couple of hundred yards away, even though it had produced a trophy buck on that spot!
by Gaila Oliver | Jan 19, 2017 | Hunting, sportsmen, Uncategorized, wildlife
I have long maintained that New Year’s Eve doesn’t come on December 31, at least for us Sporting Types Down South. Our New Year begins when Dove Season opens again in September, which is generally over the Labor Day weekend.
We oil and put away our guns in early May, after Turkey Season. Some of us get them back out in late August to shoot a few skeet and sharpen up our shooting eyes (and some of us need more sharpening as we get older!), but that is just playing, not real sport. The real sporting season begins when you can hunt again, and the first time we can do that (legally, anyway) is on Opening Day of Dove Season. That’s the beginning of a New Year, for afterward comes squirrel season, bow season, rabbit season, deer season, bird season, duck season, and then comes turkey season again in the spring.
This past few decades, with the advent of thousands of acres of corn being grown in the Delta, we’ve had problems getting the old-time concentrations of doves, like we used to get. When cotton was king, and you had a 25-acre millet or sunflower field in the middle of 10,000 acres of cotton, you had all the doves on 10,025 acres. Nowadays, the millet field is in the middle of 5,000 acres of cotton and 5,000 acres of corn, the latter being harvested three weeks before Opening Day. That spreads out the concentration.
This fall at Brownspur, we hadn’t had a rain in nearly two months. I could sit out by the Swimming Hole and get a limit morning or evening (did that the last two years, matter of fact). My neighbor, another Sporting Type, had a dried up pond last year that he decided to reactivate for Opening Day, since it was dry last year, too. He took a 1,000 gallon nurse tank, filled it up, and drove it to the dry pond, where he drained it. When he returned with the second tankful, the pond was dry again. It took 10,000 gallons of water before the bottom of that pond was even muddy, and 10,000 more just put maybe an inch of standing water in it for a day. The next morning, it was dry again!
The weekend after Opening Day a couple of years ago, a young friend called to invite me to come down for a hunt. “Uncle Bob, there are TONS of doves in our field!” he exclaimed. “Bring Adam, and Cuz, and the Jakes, too.”
I done that. We showed up with boxes of shells and spread out across the field, which was maybe ten acres. We loaded up and got ready for a hot shoot.
An hour later, most of us were gathered under a shade tree next to the water keg. Collectively, we had seen three doves, none close enough to shoot at. We began an exercise in mathematics for the benefit of our young host, who was still sitting across the field, so we had to figure loud, to include him. We figured that doves, unplucked and on the hoof, so to speak, ran about three to the pound – this was an estimate, since we had neither scales nor three doves, you must understand. This meant that doves would therefore run about 6000 to the ton, and since our host had proclaimed he had “Tons” plural, we figured that a minimum of 12,000 doves were due to come to that field that afternoon. In order to help him confirm his estimate, we began to count off and subtract to help wile away the long evening. “There’s one, Will – only 11,987 more to go!” “Watch, Adam, here comes Number 19 – only 11,981 to go, Will!”
Cuz, a compooter genius (self-proclaimed), whipped out a calculator and helped our host determine that, if he averaged hitting one of every three doves shot at, then it would take 18,000 shells to bring down his ton of doves, which would cost at bargain prices, just under $2000 per ton of doves, unpicked. However, he could then eat 16 doves per day, so would save grocery money in the long run, for his meat for the entire year would run him only about $5.50 per day, unless of course he wanted a steak once in a while for variety.
Understand that all this helpful figuring was at the decibel level of a shout, in order that our young host could hear, for he steadfastly refused to join us at the water cooler, where most of us spent the entire afternoon, doing mathematical exercises. When the evening was over, we were still 11,376 doves shy of the quota, though Cuz pointed out in all fairness that any doves over the first ton might be classed as plural, so we may not have been but 5,377 doves shy of the declared quota for the field.
Whatever. We were trying to be fair, but haven’t been invited back, for some reason. However, our young host has announced his college major change, to a math science – engineering!
Outdoor experiences can be life-changing, can’t they?
by Gaila Oliver | Jan 4, 2017 | Hunting, sportsmen, wildlife
The following was reported to have been overheard from the Annual Convention of Whitetail Deer Instructors.
Chief Buck Instructor: “Now, students, listen up! If you flunk this course, you don’t just fail, you end up as the main ingredient in Venison Stroganoff. Okay, here’s the way to keep your antlers off someone’s wall.
“First, do your juking at night. Feeding, too. Humans mainly hunt during the day, and even have laws against hunting us at night, so if you get out at night and lay up during the day, you’ll have a great chance of surviving the season.”
Chief Doe Instructor: “He’s right, girls. And night life is fun, anyway. Accommodate the guys in this while the season is on, and make your buck take you out to some of the best night spots. Why, there was this one little persimmon thicket….”
Chief Buck Instructor: “Ahem! Enough of that, Edna. All right, here’s a report from the Recon Team Leader.”
Recon Commander: “Now, on this map, you’ll notice we’ve plotted all the tree stands, salt licks, and wheat fields. By promoting the use of tree stands, we’re able to keep track of 99% of all hunters, and avoid them. Use the salt licks and wheat fields at night, or at noon, when all the hunters come in to eat and take a nap. Notice we have indicated which way all the stands face. To keep hunters from moving their stands, our Special Forces Platoon will come up from behind at least once a week, or else do a trot-by in the brush right at dusk. Very Important: make rubs and scrapes each night, always within sight of a tree stand. That keeps hunters from moving around.”
Chief Doe Instructor: “Ladies, teach your fawns and yearlings to look up! Few hunters ever stand on the ground these days, so let the kids help locate new tree stands.”
Chief Buck Instructor: “Okay, you guys with the big racks – this is recommended procedure for this season. You can mosey along in brush, if you just have to move during daylight – but whenever you reach a clearing, haul tail! Dash away, dash away all!”
Chief Doe Instructor: “Ladies, we understand that there are doe seasons in some areas this year. You’ll notice that those areas are also marked on this map. If you happen to be crossing one during daylight, here’s the foolproof method. Just as you walk into range of a tree stand, stop, flick your tail several times, and look back. It works every time. If a hunter thinks there might be a buck behind you, he’ll let you go by, so put on a good show, just as if you were enticing Bubba to ask you for a date.”
Chief Buck Instructor: “You young bucks, that method can also work for you. If you don’t get to your brush top before daylight, then act like there’s one of us mossyhorns close behind you. Act nervous, keep looking back and flicking your tail. It also works well if, just before you get within sight of a stand, you hook a dead sapling several times. Make it sound like you’re fighting a big buck, then run by the stand like he’s chasing you.”
Recon Commander: “Okay, notice these roads and four-wheeler trails we’ve marked on this map. It is vital that we make as many tracks in them at night as possible. Matter of fact, for the first week of the season we’ve scheduled a battalion parade each midnight down this main road, crossing this creek here at the ford, and marching along this four-wheeler track. If it rains, we’ll double-time as soon as it gets muddy enough for our tracks to be deep. This will keep the hunters close to roads, and away from our hideouts.”
Convention President: “I’d like to introduce the Head Squirrel, who’ll have a few words to say about this season’s co-op efforts. Sam?” (Polite applause)
Head Squirrel: “Thank you. My people are fully alerted to begin scampering about in the dry leaves instead of trees as soon as the season opens. If you do get spotted from a stand, we’ll immediately start scolding and fussing in the opposite direction, to distract the hunter as much as possible. We’ve also enlisted the armadillo tribe and the wild turkeys in this effort. We’ll make as much noise as possible around each tree stand, in order for the hunters to think there are deer all around them, and to confuse their direction if you are there. And, we thank you for distracting the humans for us, during squirrel season.”
Convention President: “Any questions? Fine. Just remember, guys: you can survive hunting season, if you don’t get to thinking too much about sex! Adjourned!”
