Mid-winter is time for reminiscences, I
suppose. There’s not as much to occupy your mind when the sun sets before 5PM.
Deer season is over and rabbit season is in the homestretch. Between now and
spring gobblers, there’s not a lot to do but clean the guns, mend the waders,
and get the fishing gear ready. (Although this year, I am intent on trying the
upper James for smallmouth in winter. I’ve heard so much about it)
These last few weeks I’ve been thinking a
lot about old hunts and old hunters. And since I’m quickly becoming the latter,
I have a larger collection of the former. Lately I’ve been thinking about how
we hunt, but more importantly, how we remember how we hunt.
Every hunter has a different style. Some
guys prefer to sit in a stand most of the day, use a grunt or a bleat box, and
then wait for what comes their way. Some guys prefer to still hunt on the
ground, choosing a likely post and doing their best to be unseen, unheard, and “unsmelled.”
Some guys prefer a .308 or a .30-06. Others would never venture into the woods
with anything but a .30-30 and others depend on their shotgun and a slug.
Some
bird hunters rely on a trusty semi-auto and others like the timeless look and
feel of an over-under. One man is a “Setter guy” and his buddy might be inclined
to a Spaniel. One guy sits in his blind with his trusted Chocolate Lab and his
neighbors has a Chessie. A lot of where and how we hunt is tempered by our
personalities.
These past few weeks I started seeing how
the way we remember our hunts, and the way we tell our stories is also flavored
by our personalities as well.
I’m a sentimentalist and a writer
by nature. And having never been more than an average hunter and fisherman at
best (and I’m being generous here) I find that my stories of old hunts are
flavored far more by the people I hunted with, and places I hunted, and the
picture those created, than by the technical specifics of what size shot I used
or which hook worked best.
I was thinking along those lines last week
when I was considering the two greatest hunters I have personally ever known,
and how they both looked at the hunt. It’s an interesting study and it made me
look at other friends I hunt with and consider how they tell their stories and convey
the memories they’ve made.
The two men I’m thinking of were both father-figures
to me. Both still are, to be honest, only one is gone now, imparting his wisdom
in my life, only from memories. His name was John, but everyone called him “Poppa
John” or just “Pop.” Every hunting and fishing community has its local legends and
Pop was ours. Growing up in Delaware, if you wanted to get your hunting
license, and you were a minor, you eventually met Poppa John.
Pop singlehandedly began the “Safe Hunter”
program in Delaware. Teaching young people to handle a firearm safely was a
passion for Pop. And he was tireless in his efforts. I grew up playing baseball
with his son, and one of his daughters was a classmate in middle school, but my
first personal encounter with the legendary Poppa John, was at 11 years old,
taking my Hunter Safety training at William Penn High School for three evenings
one week in September of 1975.
Pop was firm but patient. Tough but fair.
He brooked no foolishness where gun safety was concerned. Yet for his
disciplined and serious approach to teaching us about hunting safely, his wit,
wisdom, humor, and slightly cantankerous nature always came through. Every
important point he made about firearm handling was illustrated with a story of
how it worked in the field. And how it looked when someone didn’t do it
that way. Pop never took the “textbook” approach to teaching. He was sober as a
judge about the disciplines of firearms, but he related them to us through
years of experience, and wonderful stories -always in first person—that assured
us that this wise man knew whereof he spoke. From the time I was eleven, I
wanted to hunt with Poppa John.
Almost twenty years later, after he and
his wife had unofficially “adopted” me and I got to know him and consider him a
father, I came to know the deeper stories behind what he taught us in those
classes. Pop was an artist at heart. He drove a truck for a living, and after
an accident and a serious injury, he became a Range Safety Officer and an
instructor at Ommelanden…the facility that he dreamt of and then willed into
being. The first and only state-owned shooting facility in Delaware.
Pop was an artist. He loved art on canvas
and art in written form. He showed me a picture once of a buck he’d taken in
Virginia, about 50 years prior. It was an oil-on-canvas painting and he regaled
me about how the hunt went, and what sort of day it was and where the buck came
from. Then he told me that he had painted this masterpiece himself. That
conversation led to about two more hours of his personal history. How he’d
fought in WWII and when he came home, he went to community college to study art
and architectural design. How art was really his first love. How life happened
and his art had to be relegated to the closet of the impractical, because in
Pop’s world, his family came first and earning a living was far more a priority
than painting a picture.
But Pop never stopped painting. Not really.
He may have stopped painting on canvas, but he painted in his heart, and he
painted in mine…mine and anyone else who sat with him and listened to
his stories. Pop would tell you more about the daylight or the fog, or the snow,
or the temperature, or the guys in the hunting camp, than he ever would the
caliber or the shot, or the duck call. The hunt was a gathering, not an
exercise. It was tradition, and friendships, and honor. And when Pop spoke of
the animals, there was a reverence and an appreciation that imbued a sacredness
to the hunt. These animals were here for us. To feed our families. To provide
food and sometimes covering. They were treasured. Their sacrifice was
appreciated. They earned our respect. We did our best to take care of their
habitat, because it too was sacred. And…they were beautiful.
Pop would describe a deer the way an art
critic described a Rembrandt. Pop knew that these animals -like the humans who
pursued them—were created. They weren’t here by accident. Pop described
an animal the way I imagine DaVinci describe the Mona Lisa when his workday ended,
and he described his current project to his family. When Pop shoed me that
oil-on-canvas of a deer he’d taken, it really was a microcosm of how he viewed
hunting, the outdoors, and life itself. The artist in Pop, saw the art in the
world and connected to it.
The other greatest hunter I ever knew is
another father to me. He has hunted all over the world and taken game I hardly
knew existed. He has been to lands I can’t even pronounce or find on a globe. He
is a quite soul and he’s not one to boor you with a story of the field if you didn’t
ask. His trophies and memories are enough for him. If you’re an enthusiast and
a friend, he’ll gladly tell you about the Ibex, or the Gemsbok, or the doe his
grandson took last winter. But he won’t brag about any of it and unless you
ask, he’ll never introduce the topic in a conversation. He’s the antithesis of
what everyone else thinks a big game hunter is.
His profession requires a precise nature
and his is the perfect fit. His approach to life is as precise as his approach
to business. Direct. Clutter-free. Well planned. Well executed. This is how he
approaches a hunt as well. It must be when you’re going for an animal on the
other side of the world and you’re depending entirely on a guide or a local.
There has to be an itinerary. It must run like a watch.
When he settles down with a bourbon and
begins to tell about a hunt, he describes the day, the environment, and the
events with precision. He notices these things. What was the temperature? Where
was the wind coming from? Where I might describe a day by saying “It was hot as
blazes and windy like March!” He will tell you it was “a seven to ten mile per
hour breeze from the South, and about 91 degrees.” It’s his nature to know
those things.
He told me a story once about a particular
sheep he was pursuing and how he took a shot from some distance and had to drop
down a chute formation on the side of this mountain. It was all shale and he
lost his footing and wound up sliding halfway down, wondering if he’d be able
to stop. The wondering how he’d get back up to his guide. He noticed the type
of shale as a matter of fact. His scientific interest and eye for detail picked
it up right away and it flavored his story.
He is a collector of adventure stories and
an expert on Teddy Roosevelt. And for all his precise, analytical nature, there
is still magic in his stories and a twinkle in his eye as he recounts the
moment of harvest. I have spent hours absorbing these stories, in part because
they are as close as I will likely ever get to such exotic locations and such
once-in-a-lifetime hunts. And also, because I love this man. He’s been a father
to me when I had none and I find myself sometimes seeing me in those pictures
he paints. Hunting alongside hm, just happy enough to be there. A life of
adventure comes along far too infrequently to ignore it. So, I lap it up when I
can.
I had this in mind when I considered these
stories I write and how it is I view my own outdoor adventures. Like Pop, I’m
seeing the beauty and the art under it all. Often, as I hunt or fish, I’m
already crafting the words I will write later, and a few trips out have been
cut a little short because the inspiration overwhelmed the urge to hunt or fish
that afternoon. Like my other hunting hero, I often notice the details of the
day or the environment.
Someday, I hope to hunt with him. Just
someplace local, for some game that tastes good but doesn’t necessarily evoke
such grandiose imagery. Because hunting forms a bond, and because I always
wanted to hunt with my dad, but never had a dad to hunt with.
I never got the chance to hunt with Poppa
John either. His health precluded any more trips to the woods, and he passed in
2011. But I take him with me every time I go out, and I carved his initials
into a tree in my deer land this year. It won’t ever mean anything to anyone,
should someone find it someday, but for me it was a way of leaving a bit of him
out there in the Virginia landscape. He would have loved the beauty. He might
have even painted a picture of it. Since he can’t, I try my best to let my
words do it for him.
