Initials in a Tree Stand and a Notch in the Stock...

     The first year I went deer hunting with my stepfather, he parked me under the drooping boughs of an evergreen that sat at the edge of the soybean field on the farm we hunted. The only deer I was going to see from there was some straggler crossing the massive soy rows between the tree lines. I was probably seventy-five yards from the action and given that we could only use shotguns and slugs or buckshot, I was essentially just a placeholder.

     The old man only brought me along so that my mother would permit him to go hunting. So, the right placement of my stand wasn’t a concern to him. But I was out there, deer hunting like I’d always wanted, and that was all I cared about at first. As I got older, I wanted a real stand. Up in a tree. With at least a passing shot at a deer.

     After a couple of years of hiding under this evergreen, (where deer were apparently bedding down at night, given the amount of scat and hairs I found under there) I built my first stand about twelve feet up in a pine at the edge of the scrub trees on the south end of the tree line. I use the term “stand” very loosely here. Essentially, I nailed two boards across some branches and made a seat. I scampered up the limbs without a ladder, and parked myself there, under the canopy of pine needles and cones. It was basic, it was sturdy, and I was sixteen and didn’t care, so long as I had a real stand.

     I actually saw some deer that year. I watched a small buck and three does run, flags up, toward the center of the woods. A minute later I heard two shots and our friend Hank, had dropped the nice little five pointer I had just seen scurry away. Deer aren’t as populous or as big in Delaware as they are in other places, so taking a young five pointer was nothing to snicker at. In Delaware, you aren’t trophy hunting like you are elsewhere. In Delaware, you either get a deer or you don’t. The dimensions are just bragging.

     The following year, I found an old stand on the opposite side of the soy fields. It was about fifteen feet up in a split-trunked maple tree. Whoever built it made the steps out of limbs they’d cut and nailed to the main trunks. It seemed sturdy enough and I made my way up into the stand. I laid my shotgun on the floor of the stand and stepped onto the last step and snap…the step broke in the middle. I had an arm around each side of the trunk and I broke through the next step, then the next one, then the next one. I rode this thing down to the forest floor, like a primitive elevator. I was safe but shaken. I looked at the steps to the stand, all broken in perfect “V”’s and the inside arms of my jacket worn through from the bark on the tree as I held on and slid down. One or two long seconds to count fingers and toes and make sure I was okay, and I laughed at the whole thing. Until I realized my gun was still up there. Thankfully I unloaded before climbing the tree. I found a long branch and knocked my shotgun down to my waiting arms.

     The next year, I went to the farm by myself in September. I found the spot were a buck had been rutting for several seasons prior and laid claim to a nice, wide, multi-trunked maple in which to build my stand. I came back a couple of weekends later with lumber for the build. Using all my tree-fort design abilities, this was not a big deal for me. I come from a time when boys built tree forts every weekend. I was a master at this.

     It was big enough for me (by this time I was 6’1) it was comfortable, covered, concealed, and safe. I bought a dozen forty-penny spikes and hammered them into the tree for steps, and I was all set.

     I took my first -and so-far, my only—buck from that stand later that fall. He was a beautiful, symmetrical eight-pointer, about three and a half years old. One Brenneke rifled slug from my beloved Glenfield 778 (30” full choke, pump) and he fell where he stood. The next morning, after we’d dressed him and hung him in a tree to cool, I walked back out to my stand. I climbed up and took out my pocket knife and carved my initials, and the year (1981) and “8 PT” in the trunk of the tree. From then on, until that tree falls one day, that spot is memorialized in my heart. I climbed down from my stand and walked back to our camp. In Delaware you only get one deer per year, so I stayed and hunted again that day, with the sole intention of just helping with the drive later in the afternoon. I wasn’t there to kill another deer.

     That evening we loaded my buck into Hank’s van and took him home. We checked him at the station and I was congratulated by other hunters admiring the beauty I’d dropped. The next day I laid him out in our front yard, posed dutifully with my shotgun situated in his rack, and then took him for processing.

     Later that same day, I broke down my shotgun for a general cleaning, and while I had it out, I took out my pocketknife again, and carved a small notch at the top of the buttstock, right below where it joins the receiver. Just a small line carved into the walnut. I loved the way that gun looked, so I didn’t want to gouge anything big and garish into the wood. Just one line. Just enough to remind myself that I had joined the club and dropped a buck.

     That one line was like the threshold to manhood. One line…just an inch long. But the story it represented was wide, and deep and immeasurable. I could look at that notch and hear the crunch of that soybean stalk that he’d stepped on, that alerted me to his approach. I could see him again, walking carelessly toward his rut, unaware of my presence in that tree, twenty feet above his line of sight. I felt my finger squeeze the trigger. Felt the kick to my shoulder. Saw him rear back. I could hear myself cycle that pump action so quickly, it could have been a semi-auto.

     I can see him down that vent-rib. I can hear my voice, whispering to him as he lay there, took one deep breath, and kicked out his hind legs…and then stopped moving; “Stay down, big boy. Don’t get back up!” I had chambered another round, but I was hoping I didn’t have to use it. I wanted this to be quick and clean and hopefully, painless.

     I can feel my body relax when I realized he was gone. I feel the exultation building as I called to Hank, “Hank! I got a buck!” Feel the steps beneath my feet as I climbed down, the slight tension as I approached my prey, the momentary sadness as I realized I’d taken him, followed quickly by the sheer joy of accomplishing this lifelong goal.

     All this… all those memories live in one groove cut into the Walnut stock of a cheap shotgun I’d gotten for my sixteenth birthday. One line scratched into the wood with a ten-dollar pocket knife, the day after I’d taken my first deer. A gun I don’t even own anymore and haven’t for almost thirty years. A gun I would trade any gun I have for right about now.

     Next Saturday I’ll be back in the woods, deer hunting for the first time since that November morning in 1981. I have a Remington 783 / .308. It’s a wonderful gun, especially for the price. (I found it at a pawn shop with a Nikon Pro Staff 3x9 for under $350) I’ve put sixty rounds through it, acclimating myself to it and sighting it in. yesterday, after (finally) figuring out how to properly adjust the scope, I shot two groups of six, all within about a two-inch area. I also broke a six-inch-round steel plate at 100 yards. The gun is ready. The man is ready. The hunting land is ready. But…something is different.

     I’ve been to the land I’m hunting three times in preparation for the hunt. I had to machete my way in, because it is so dense. Part of the area was timbered-out several years ago and all that remains is a cedar / pine / coniferous forest and the densest thicket and bramble I have ever walked through. Stickers, briars, vines, and scrub-tree saplings made locating a good tree for a stand really hard work.

     My intention was to build a stand, like when I was a kid. But with full-time jobs and a daughter who at least needs to see my face occasionally, (I’m a single dad and she lives with me. She’s twenty, so she’s not a child, but she still likes to at least know I’m there), the opportunity to buy $150 worth of treated lumber and haul it down there and build a tree fort…I mean a stand, yeah a stand… just didn’t present itself. So, I bought a sixteen-foot ladder stand on sale at Dick’s. I assembled it in my living room, loaded the sections in my Yukon, and took it down out to the land I hunt in Appomattox County Va.

     I leaned it against a nice, tall, straight cedar, with a good view all around, climbed up and ratcheted it tight and that was that. I put a camo skirt around it, piled some brush against the ladder so it looks more natural, and left it until next weekend. And just like that…I had a deer stand.

     What the heck kind of fun was that? I assembled a metal stand in my living room. It has a seat and a footrest and a safety bar that doubles as a shooting rest. They included a safety harness system. A what? When I was a kid, I just fell out of the tree stand. I got the wind knocked out of me, got up and checked to make sure nobody saw me fall, and went on about my day, embarrassed but more careful next time.

     We didn’t wear camo back then either. We wore brown. All except for the blaze orange we were required to wear. We wore brown. We used doe urine as an attractant and we waited in the trees. No grunt calls. No “The Can” no face masks or gun covers. No camo anything. We tried to hold our pee for as long as we could, but the watered-down Maxwell House coffee from the Townsend Volunteer Fire Company’s annual Deer Hunter’s Breakfast would win every time. That coffee lease ran out around 9AM. Nobody thought about bringing empty Gatorade bottles up in the stand with them. We just let it fly off the side of the stand we didn’t have to climb down.

     Now I wear camo, (actually I prefer a ghillie suit) I have a “Can” a rattle bag, and a grunt call. I bottle my own urine, like Howard Hughes, and God forbid I eat something up there and the scent run off a buck. (What buck could resist the smell of PBJ?) I sit in a too-safe and too-comfortable steel tree stand. And my gun has a composite stock.

     Where am I supposed to carve my initials and the year, and the number of points in my steel stand? How do I notch a composite butt stock? If my fifty-five-year-old heart gives out, they’ll never find me in my ghillie suit. I’ll look like a big brush pile sitting up in a metal chair, like a tennis judge at Wimbledon. Some guy will find me up there by accident, and pry my Remington from my hardened fingers, like Robert Redford taking Hatchet Jack’s “Barr Rifle” from his frozen fingers in “Jeremiah Johnson.”

     I kid, of course. I’m not quite Walt Kowalski yet, snarling from my clenched teeth and telling the whole world to get off my lawn. The steel stand is taller than what I’ve built by hand and doubtless it’s safer. But I didn’t build it. I didn’t find a nice tree with several split trunks and design my own perch. I didn’t drag the lumber down there and cut it with a handsaw and nail it with a hammer. It’s not permanent. If it’s not productive, I can unbuckle the ratchet straps and move it. Move it? A tree stand was a badge of honor in my time. It remained in its location, like a shrine. Carl Ramsey, one of the guys who hunted with us when I was a kid, had a tree stand that was as high as a crow’s nest on a pirate ship. It swayed in the breeze and we all thought he was nuts to go up there. But it was situated in a tall oak that straddled the convergence of about four deer trails. We nicknamed his stand “Death Alley” because Carl got a deer every single year we hunted there.

     I’m doubtful as to whether metal stands that I buy at sporting goods stores and assemble in my living room with wrenches, can ever have that sort of character. What nickname do I give it… “Chief Ironsides?”  I love my Remington, but I don’t admire it. Not like I did that old wooden-stock Glenfield. The one-piece composite doesn’t have the feel that some craftsman somewhere hand-shaped it. It doesn’t look like someone might have hand-carved the checkering. It’s not hand-rubbed and oil-finished. It looks serviceable, and durable, and imposing in its dark, plastic, cold way. But it doesn’t look like art. Like it ought to be in a display case when not in the field.

     I’m discounting the new and romanticizing the old right now. I know this. But we hunt for more than deer (or bear, or rabbit, or ducks, etc.) when we’re out there. We harvest the stuff that make our lifetime memories. Right now, one week before my return to the woods, I’m wondering if I’ll make memories in my steel stand, with my composite-stock rifle, wearing my polyethylene ghillie suit, with a bottle of my own pee hanging by my head, making more artificial deer sounds than the “See-and-Say” my daughter had as a child. And if I do, will those memories hold up like the ones I made from a hand-built tree stand, and a hundred-dollar shotgun with a notch in the stock.

     Next week at this time…we’ll have our answer.

    

    

Staying Downwind

                “By-God if you’re gonna pick your feet like a monkey…you do it downwind!’

  -Bluebonnet “Boss” Spearman

    Open Range

     It’s one of the funnier lines from one of my favorite movies. Boss Spearman (played wonderfully by Robert Duval) is chastising his young hand “Button.” Button is a young kid who Boss saved from a life of poverty and who now works for him. Boss is both his employer and his de facto father. He dutifully gathers his sock and his boot and nudges his horse downwind a few yards, and another life lesson is learned.

     Being downwind is on my mind these days. Ten days from today, I’ll be in a tree stand for the first time in thirty-six years. When I hunted as a young boy and a young adult, I split my time between the stand and the floor of the forest. I liked to walk the woods and see the signs of the deer in the neighborhood. I always tried to be mindful of the wind and remain downwind of where I thought the deer would be. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you get it wrong and they smell you before you ever see them.

     Now, I’ve never been one to go overboard in putting too high a value on scent and scent blocker. Especially during the rut, when most bucks are so randy you could wear a suit made of pine tree air fresheners and they’d still take the chance to get near a doe. So maybe I’m not that careless about scent…but I think you get the picture. I’m not marching out into the field covered in Old Spice, nor am I keeping my hunting clothes “hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall’s back porch” to quote the great Johnny Carson.

     I’ve done my best hunting and had my greatest success from a stand. A stand gets you up and out of the dense ground cover. It broadens your view and…it keeps you essentially downwind, regardless of which way the wind is blowing. A stand keeps you up and out of sight. I remember an episode of “In The Heat of The Night” where Carroll O’Connor’s character was giving a life lesson to one of his deputies and he used deer hunting as the teaching tool. He explained why we hunt from tree stands. “Now, the deer has no natural enemies in the trees. So, he normally doesn’t look up to spot danger.” I don’t know if Carroll O’Connor ever hunted, or if the script writer ever did, but it was sage advice. Your best bet when pursuing a wary prey is to hide where they won’t look.

     I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks as deer season approaches. Thinking about being downwind. I’m downwind of middle age now. (I just turned 55) In December I’ll be 20 years downwind of a painful divorce that shook my soul and reshaped the rest of my life. I’m downwind of some hard years when a business failed, and losses piled up.

Downwind of some relationships that needed to go, and sadly…some that I wish were still active.

     I’ve learned the value -stubborn as I am—of accepting the facts about some things and just getting downwind of them. It was hard to just let go of the harm done by my ex and her (now second ex) husband and just move on, but I had to in order to get downwind. It was hard letting go of the sting of the crash of ’08 but I had to get downwind and move on.

     Lately, for the last few months or so, I’ve been realizing more and more how I’ve allowed fear to paralyze me. The last economic downturn was horrible for me and for my daughter. It took a long time to find a decent job again and once I found one, I’ve found myself slowly being constricted by it like a python, in exchange for the relative security of a steady paycheck every two weeks. I’ve worked where I work for four years now and it’s the longest time I have ever been in a non-commissioned role in my life. I have always made my own money and always risen or fallen as a direct result of my efforts.

     I yearn to face that challenge again, but I find the fear of the unknown, or rather the not-guaranteed, is very great and its power is strong. I’ve been afraid to do what I know I need to do if I’m ever going to have a life that resembles -even remotely—what I hold in my heart. I want a home again. I want time to write more books and work on cars in my own garage and be around people a little more. My current job -and all the side jobs I must do to supplement my income—is not conducive to this life I seek. So, I need to make some decisions.

     Next Saturday I’ll be climbing up into a tree stand to place myself downwind of the thing I seek. The height provides me with a clearer view, a sharper angle, a keener sense of what is moving. I can hear a little more, see a lot more, and I can be downwind of the prize I'm after. I can watch it, and study it, and decide whether it’s the one I want, or if I’ll wait for another one to come by. There are times when  buck looks big and his rack looks record-breaking because your view is hindered by the thicket. But up high, you can discern better whether you want this one or not.

     While I’ll be seeking this position next week, I’m also seeking it in life. Now, especially as I’m downwind of youth and every shot must count, I’m looking for a stand in a tall tree, above the trails and ruts and beds of the things I am looking for. Up where I can take it all in, think about it, and then take my shot.

     I think that’s the lesson I’m learning as I return to the woods for the first time in so many years. And I think it’s one of the reasons we hunt, besides filling a freezer, of course. Because it takes us back to something elemental in our lives. There are life lessons we can learn, regardless of our age or how many times we’ve come to these woods and fields. I’m learning that I need to find my stand. To get up above the normal view of those things I am after; success, a home, an adult relationship with my now-twenty-year-old daughter (it was easy when she was six and I was her hero) maybe even love again. I need a place above where those things are looking, so I can take the shots and make them my next trophies.

     I’m seeking a spot downwind. Downwind from something much more than a high-scoring buck. Downwind from the things that have brought me to where I am, and the things that might be preventing me from going where I want to go.

    

My Second First Hunt

     Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll be in my deer stand on a friend’s land in Appomattox, about 25 miles from here. It will mark the first time I have deer hunted in 36 years. In fact, it will be the first time I’ve hunted for anything in probably 30 years. A lot has changed since I was last in a tree, looking for a buck.

     In 1982, when I took my last buck from a tree stand in Delaware, I was 19 years old. I was using a Glenfield 778 shotgun, because rifles -other than black powder—can’t be used for hunting in Delaware. There just isn’t enough open space to shoot an HPR safely. Nobody wore camo back then. Nobody rattled or used a call. The only trick we had was doe urine. The most high-tech weapon in our arsenal was the Brenneke rifled slug.

     Back then, our hunting party consisted of me, my stepfather, Carl Ramsey and Hank Teryzcak. Carl and Hank were friends of my stepfather. To be honest, he only brought me along because if he didn’t, my mother wouldn’t let him go hunting. I was always his passport to things he wanted to do. It did nothing to endear us to each other. By the time I was about 16 I figured out that he couldn’t have cared less about me being there. I served a purpose and that was good enough.

     I didn’t let that deter my love of the outdoors and the hunt. Carl and Hank taught me about hunting. Carl taught me how to track a deer. How to tell which way he was moving by examining the direction he broke branches on his trail. He taught me how to tell how recently he’d been through, by feeling the poop. As a young boy, eager to learn how to score my first deer, I was not above picking up deer poop.

     We hunted a farm in central Delaware, the owner was the aunt of a friend of my stepfather’s. She was seldom there, staying in the house only once a month or so. She leased the farmland to a local man who grew soy beans. Over the years, I had three stands on that farm, all of which were in various positions within the tree line, looking out at the soy. Each year, one or two of us took a deer. We weren’t scientific hunters then…we just sat in the stand and waited. Then after lunch we’d walk the woods for a bit, and then back to the stands in the afternoon, until dark.

     Looking back, we probably did it all wrong. Or at least half wrong. We drove them way to early. This land was not very pressured, the deer weren’t spooky. It’s just that we were antsy to harvest and thought we’d stumble on them if we walked the woods.

     But taking deer was really only half the reason we came here each year. The other half was being together. It was for me, anyway. I treasured deer season, for the hope it held in the possibility that “this would be my year” but also for the camaraderie that I experienced at our campsite. The relationship with my stepfather was tentative on the good days, and vacuous on the rest. But with Hank and Carl, I found the brotherhood I needed at that age. They laughed at my jokes, appreciated my youthful zeal, and gently nudged me toward adulthood by imparting their wisdom on me for two or three days each November.

     We walked through the freshly-cut soy in the dark of early morning, and one by one disappeared into the woods as we came upon our stands. They’d wish me luck and slap my shoulder. Lunch was our own call. Sometimes I’d stay in my stand, other times I’d walk back to the camp, and one or two of them would be there. But the best moments were in the late afternoons. Whoever got back first, got things started. He broke out the Coleman stove and got the coffee water going. We’d heat up the food and begin the recounting of our day. One by one, my hunting friends would appear from the lengthening shadows, and we’d talk of rut signs, and rubs, and the annoyance of squirrels and how beautiful the sunset was. Sometimes there’d be a deer hanging in a tree near camp, cooling, the reward for patience and a well-placed stand. Other times, there was nothing but the lament that “they must be moving through here at night.”

     But the one constant was the excitement of the hunt, and the satisfying feeling that, regardless of whether we harvested a deer…we were here, together again, doing this thing we loved. This thing that tore us from our mundane, suburban lives and made us feel like old-school men again.

     I took my first buck on the last day I deer hunted before my 36-year hiatus. He was a beautiful 8-point gent. About 3 and a half years old. He was making for his rut, walking across the recently cut soy fields with not a care in the world, randy, as bucks-in-the-rut will be. He stepped on one lone stalk of uncut soy and I turned to see him. He walked carefully but not too carefully. He stopped to nibble now and then. I waited for him to turn to the side, so I could get a shot at his shoulder and be sure to drop him. (It was getting late and I didn’t want him running off and to have to try tracking him in the dark.) He never turned to offer his shoulder, and when he was about 50 yards out, I decided that he’d spot me eventually, so I raised my shotgun slowly, and squeezed off a shot at the white blaze in the middle of his chest.

     A shotgun impacts hard, and the buck reared up, straight up on his hind legs. He flipped over backward and laid there. One deep breath, and his legs kicked out…then he was still. I had pumped the fore stock so quickly that I doubt a semi-auto could have chambered the second round any faster…but it wasn’t necessary. I remember whispering; “Don’t get up, big boy…just stay there.” After a few long minutes of watching him, I climbed down from my stand and called to Hank.

     I walked out to my deer and circled him cautiously. His tongue was out, and he was gone. I stood in silence, admiring this magnificent animal, and thinking to myself, “I did it! I finally took a deer, and he’s a beauty!” Hank joined me in a moment or two, placed an arm across my shoulder and said, “He’s a beautiful buck, Craigy.” (He always called me that) and we fell to work dressing him.

     Back at camp, we hung him in the tree to cool overnight and started our dinner. Carl couldn’t make it that year and my stepfather was coming down that evening. He pulled in our camp to see my buck hanging in the tree. He asked if Hank had gotten it and he was shocked to find out that I had bagged him. I sensed a little jealousy in his demeanor and I thought, later that night, that he really wasn’t very happy that I’d gotten a deer before he did.

     The following year I was away in college, and the year after that, Mrs. Mills sold her farm and we didn’t have our place to hunt anymore. I moved out, then life took me down some paths I didn’t see on the map, and before I knew it…36 years had passed since I was out in the woods.

     I lost track of Carl 30 years ago, stopped talking to my stepfather 13 years ago, and found Hank on Facebook 15 years ago. Life is different. I’m 55 now. I’m a single dad with a daughter who loves music. Any sentimental notion of taking my son hunting is going to have to wait until -and if—she marries and has a son.

     I live in a place now that I dreamed of when I was a boy. A place where the deer are abundant, where the fishing is beyond my dreams, and where the scenery reminds me, daily, that Someone bigger than me spent a few extra moments when He created this part of the world.

     I have tried convincing my best friend to come down for deer season. Oddly enough, as much as we hunted together when we were boys, we never deer hunted. He had friends downstate who had land where the really big bucks lived, and he went with them. But Mark and I traipsed through every patch of woods and every field and every swamp, pursuing every possible variety of game we could hunt. What we were actually pursuing was the moments we had out there. We were too young to realize it, of course, but looking back, it’s the moments that make up a hunt, that we remember forever.

     Yeah, I remember the points on the rack, and the weight. I remember how many rabbits we took at Phillip’s Nursery, or the Canada Geese we got that one winter we had a pit in Middletown. But it’s more than that. It was the conversations in the truck on the drive to the fields. It was the laughter, and bragging, the moments when we realized that we had talked our way through some serious matters for such young men. Or the moments we realized we hadn’t spoken a word for miles, but we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

     Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll be out in my stand for the first time in more than half my life. Out there alone. I haven’t lived here long enough to know anyone well enough to hunt with them. To be honest, I enjoy my time alone. My job demands that I spend most of my day, in service to other people, and when it’s time to go home, I am spent like an old shotshell. I am gregarious and outgoing. I am also introspective and often, reclusive. I really, deeply love having time alone, particularly when I hunt or fish.

     So, I’ll make my way to my new campsite on the afternoon before the hunt begins. I’ll set up by myself and eat my dinner and sleep in my trusty old Yukon. I’ll awaken at 4am and walk to my stand in the dark. But if I listen closely, I’ll hear Carl and Hank wishing me “Good luck, Craigy.” (They always called me that) If I stand real still for a moment, I’ll feel Hank slap my shoulder as I head down the trail. I’ll be sitting in my blind as the sun rises and I’ll smile and think of Mark and wish he was here in these woods with me…still competing with each other, if only mildly, to see who would score first and who would score biggest. If I score a big buck, I know I’ll be texting a photo to my dear friend of 40 years, Dave Lewis. And he’ll be thrilled for me.

     I’ll maybe blink back a tear, thinking of Poppa John, my dear friend, and father-figure who loved the outdoors like few others, and who was a Virginian himself for the first half of his life and who always hoped we’d hunt together at least once before he passed. I’ll think of my “adopted dad” Bob, the greatest hunter I know or will ever meet, who loves these moments and would love this one especially, because he knows what it means to me to finally be back out here.

     If any tears remain, they’ll be from the memories flashing through my soul. The years I spent in the woods as a boy. The dreams of hunting a place like this, and finally having the chance. The jokes we told, the funny things we did. The slow, careful, old-fashioned way I grew into manhood out in tree stands, and honeysuckle, and briars.

     I don’t have my old Glenfield anymore, although I’d give anything to find it. I’m hunting with a Remington 783 in .308. I have camo, a rattle, a grunt call, and trail cameras. It’s a long way from an old Carhart jacket, a pair of Levi’s, an orange vest and a shotgun, and a bunch of wonderful guys who didn’t approach things nearly so scientifically.

…or is it?

   

Gun Laws Work. I'm Living Proof

Allow me to introduce myself.

     I’m 55. I’m a single dad. A college graduate. I work for my alma mater, I have a business on the side, I work as hard, or harder than anyone else I know. I am a member of a local church, attend regularly, read the Bible daily, and even write Faith-based books. I’m pretty much, by all accounts, a decent guy.

     I’m also a perfect example of why gun laws work. And why they don’t.

A month ago, I traded a friend of mine a nice MacBook Pro for a Ruger SR9. It was the first gun I’ve owned in 28 years. In fact, it was only the second gun I’ve even touched in 28 years. Not because I am anti-gun…I absolutely love shooting and love hunting and the outdoors. In fact, my dream is to write the kind of articles and books that the late Gene Hill wrote. Stories of the emotional attachment, and the memories created by fine firearms, and days in the field.

     But, until September 28^th of this year (2018 for future readers) I was prohibited from owning or possessing firearms. I was a convicted felon.

     I never did anything violent, just stupid. In 1990, I had a construction business. I also had a partner. He had a drug addiction. Having never been around drugs and being unfamiliar with the signs of addiction, I didn’t recognize the telltale traits. We were cruising along, doing well, and I decided to take a week of vacation to hang with my best friend before he got married.

     The Friday before I left, my partner and I wrote out our bills, I signed the checks, (Lindsey, for some reason, never wanted to sign a check, even though our account was set up for either of our signature, not requiring both) we sent them out, and I told him I’d see him about ten days later.

     When I returned, my answering machine (remember those?) was full. Employees were calling, suppliers were calling, customers were calling. “Where was Lindsey?” asked the customers, because he apparently hadn’t shown up on the job he was running all week. “Why did our checks bounce?” asked our employees. We had two crews, and both Lindsey’s crew and my crew went to the bank to cash their paychecks and were told the money was gone. My suppliers repeated the same lament.

     Before I left, we had deposited about $12000 in receipts from jobs we completed, so the money was there when we wrote the checks and I signed them. I called Lindsey but could not find him…or my checkbook. The next morning, Monday, I went to the bank. The lady we normally dealt with looked up my account when I told her what had happened, and she went white. The account was overdrawn almost $7000. She checked the recent history and saw that Lindsey had gone to another branch -where nobody would ask why he was doing this without me—and withdrawn $9000 of the $12000 we’d deposited. Then he vanished.

     I found out later that he went on a drug bender and wound up in a rehab outside of Washington DC. My checkbook mysteriously reappeared on the front seat of my truck overnight, but Lindsey never contacted me again. I sold the extra truck, and the extra tools, (fortunately, the business was all mine before I met Lindsey and I still owned the assets). I managed to repay about $5000 of the debt within a week or two. My crew got paid, most vendors got paid, but there was still about $4000 outstanding. I went to each person personally and asked them for patience. I explained what happened. Most were kind and waited until I paid them back. But some of the vendors were larger corporations and had rules they could not bend for me.

     In a two-week period, I was arrested 11 times for bad checks. (Since I had signed them, I was on the hook) I could have gone after Lindsey for embezzlement, but I had no idea where he was and he had nothing of value. I was too busy trying to salvage my own life now. Three of the checks were over $500 (the largest being $1025) and so in Delaware, I was now charged with a felony.

     Long and short of it…by the time I got to court I had repaid most of the debts, but the state wanted at least a piece of a scalp and so I accepted a plea deal to plead guilty to two felonies and drop the other to a misdemeanor. I was stupid to do so, but I was 27 years old, I had never been in trouble before, I was afraid I would go to jail, and I had a public defender. That added up to me accepting the felonies.

     I walked out of the courthouse, thinking I was lucky to be walking to my car instead of the DOC van, heading to prison. I got probation and within two years, all of this was in the past. Except that I couldn’t own a gun anymore. And I couldn’t vote. And whenever I filled out a job application I had to check that box. I was ashamed and broken-hearted.

     The day after court, I took my beloved Glenfield Model 778 shotgun to a pawn shop that a friend of mine owned and sold it to him. I knew Dave would give me a better price than anyone else. I tried not to cry when I signed it over to him. I saw the notch on the fore stock where I’d commemorated my first buck. I thought about all the years hunting with my best friend and all the times we’d had as boys -becoming men— with our guns in hand. 

     That was March of 1991. Other than one afternoon in 1997, when we were in Utah on our honeymoon and my wife’s friends who owned a farm insisted we go out back and shoot some clays…I had not held a gun, owned a gun, possessed a gun until three weeks ago.

     In 2011, my “adopted dad” Poppa John passed away. Pop was a legendary hunter and shooting instructor back home and he’d always wanted to go hunting with me. He knew about my legal issue and he kept pushing me to pursue a governor’s pardon. I investigated it once back then, but the paperwork was daunting. We always talked about eventually hunting together, and Pop teaching me to shoot trap. But Pop passed before I got around to getting that pardon and to my regret, we never hunted together. (Even as I write these words, I have tears. I miss Pop and I miss the hunts we would have had)

     I’ve had opportunity to shoot. I was offered a Beretta P380 once. A friend of mine, who had no idea that I was restricted, had taken it off a guy at a bar where he was a bouncer. The guy was also a felon and did not try getting it back. I told Mike I didn’t have the money to buy it and that was that.

     In 2013, Delaware restored voting rights, so I could vote again. That got me started back on the road to a pardon. And so, in 2017 I started the process. In June of 2018, I appeared before the Board of Pardons and was recommended. In September 2018, Governor Carney signed my papers and restored my rights. I will tell you that twice in the process I wept. The first time, when the Board said they recommended me unanimously without my even having to testify. The second was on that Friday, September 28^th, 2018, when I opened my mailbox and saw the letter from the governor. I went in my house, opened the letter and read those words. I saw the gold seal affixed to the page and I broke down in tears. I did this right. My fellow citizens decided that I had lived my life in such a way that I deserved to be restored to normalcy.

     I never mentioned it to anyone during the process and no one asked, but I was proud of the fact that I abided by the rules from the moment I became a felon, until the day my pardon was in my mailbox.

     And that is the point of this story. The current gun laws are more than adequate. They succeed because of people like me. People who understand where we messed up -even if we were a victim ourselves—and we understand what it takes to get this fixed. And in the time between, we abide by the law. I knew the penalty for having a gun. I chose to obey the law. There are criminals in this world who also know the penalty. They choose not to obey the law. They straw-purchase, or they steal guns, or they buy them in the black market. But regardless how they acquire a gun, they’ve acquired it illegally.

     They were already law breakers, so they just see gun laws as merely another law to break. Me…I saw them as a guaranteed trip to prison. My obedience to the laws came at a great cost. It cost me years in the field with my best friend. It cost me precious memories with Pop. I was ashamed and embarrassed. But I abided by the law.

     Gun laws were made for people like me. Because people like me abide by the law. Criminals do not. And no law on any books anywhere will change that. In 27 years of restriction, I never used a gun in a crime. Never shot anyone. Never robbed at gunpoint. Because I chose to abide by the law. The laws are just fine.

I’m living proof.

Taking the Time...

  It's August 11, 2018. Another summer careens to it's end. No other season seems to speed by the way summer does. Winter drags on for what feels like an eternity. Spring, with it's endless rains and quirky temperature shifts, seems to last several weeks too long. Spring is tolerated only because we've grown so weary of winter that we'll endure yet another rain storm, because it means summer is just that much closer. Fall is confusing. It begins as nothing more than a date on the calendar. It's still warm and the insects still buzz about, and the days are still somewhat longer.

     Then, sometime around the third week of October, fall shows her self. One morning you wake up and you can see your breath again and the trees begin to turn colors. In the south, fall can be a very pleasant time of year. When I lived in Tennessee, fall was easily the best of the three seasons. The blistering summer heat was finally gone, and the chill of winter never really showed itself until Christmas. The fall months were full of warm sunny days and cool, but not cold, nights. Here in Virginia, it's similar, although the pleasant fall weather gives way to the cold of winter a few weeks earlier, and winter stays much longer.

     Back in the Delaware Valley, where I grew up, fall was a brief respite, a quick break between the sweltering dogs days of summer, and the seemingly eternal grey, cold of winter. By Halloween you needed a coat. Not your "big coat" reserved for the depth of winter, but a coat nonetheless. By November you woke to frost on the ground and had to scrape your windows -albeit lightly-- a few times each week.

By Christmas, it was cold. Mostly. There was always the inevitable warming trend around Christmas. Back home we dream of a White Christmas, every year the weather patterns tease us and give the impression that "this will be the year" ...and then it rains. It rains on Christmas Eve. Period.

     But today it's the middle of August. Technically five weeks of summer remain, but everyone knows that summer ends on that horrible Tuesday morning in September, the day after Labor Day, when all fun comes crashing to an end. It's August 11th, and I've fished once this year, so far. 

Once. 

     I live in a place where the choice between which of the four beautiful, pristine, productive rivers I want to fish is as hard to make as which new Corvette I'd want someone to give me. The answer is "yes." I dreamed of living in a place like this when I was a little boy. A place where no matter what direction I pointed my truck, I'd find a place to fish that was the stuff of dreams. And yet...I have fished once this year.  Part of that is because it has been a miserable, rainy, horrible-conditions summer. It has rained, and rained, and rained. And then it rained again. The James River, where I fish the most, has been out of it's banks all summer. In June, it looked like it does in March: high, and turbid and fast. Fish were holding anywhere but where you could fish for them. It probably affected the spawn and I'm worried what next spring will look like. 

     The plan now is to try my hand at fall / winter Smallies on the James. (And the Tye) I've wanted to for the four years I've been here, but never got around to it. This year, I will have to if I want to salvage anything of the fishing season of 2018. I plan on it...but I already doubt that I'll find the time.

     Finding the time is getting harder these days. I am a single dad, trying to put my daughter through college and help her put her life back together again after some very rough years. Her mom and I divorced when she was only 18 months old, and her mom married a man who terrorized them both. Divorce laws, and life's twists and turns prevented me from getting her out of there altogether. All I could do was remain active in her world, and let that jackass know that if he crossed the line, the hounds wouldn't even find his scent. Finally it got so bad that she moved with me here to Virginia. She was sixteen and allowed to make that decision for herself by that point. 

     Being a dad is my favorite thing. When she was little, we'd fish together at a little five acre pond near my house. She had a little "Barbie" spin casting set and she'd be thrilled with a bluegill now and then. Mostly she was just thrilled to be fishing with her daddy. Nowadays she has a boyfriend, and we're more roommates than father and daughter. But it's okay. She's with me and she's safe. But the arrangement doesn't allow for much free time. College is expensive, even for a guy who works for the school and gets her tuition for free. I have a side business. So fishing suffers.

     This fall I hope that will change. I've taken steps to minimize the demands on my weekends and I spent the summer getting my trusted, well-worn 1996 GMC Yukon roadworthy again. I will make the time somehow, because time, like real estate, isn't being made anymore. I wish I wasn't fishing or hunting alone, but that can't be helped. I've been here four years and a man in his mid fifties doesn't develop friendships like a boy of eleven does. When I hunt and fish I'm deathly quiet anyway, using the time and place to turn my thoughts inside and sort out the ball of yarn that fifty-five years has left me. This can be confusing for those who don't know me well. This silence of mine. So perhaps it's best to go it alone out there. But I do miss the conversations that would break the silence sometimes. The things we talked about when we were boys fishing "Nonesuch Creek" when I was just a child. Or the coming-of-age discussions my best friend Mark and I would have, between casts into the lilly pads on Lake Como, or Lum's pond. Or the wealth of knowledge I gained from Hank Teryzcak and Carl Ramsey when we would hunt deer on an old farm on the outskirts of Kent county in Delaware.         Hank and Carl were friends of my stepfather, who hunted this land with us each fall. My stepfather and I seldom spoke, but Hank and Carl befriended me and taught me how to track, and where to build my stand, and how to dress my first buck when I finally harvested him. There was only silence in the field, but back at the campsite there were jokes and laughter and stories and the transition into manhood. 

     That's what I miss now. I can fish alone in silence and not notice or care. In fact I prefer it. But the pre-dawn rides to the fishing hole or the end of day ride home, or the times sitting on the bank, eating a sandwich, and watching a massive freight train roll by and having no one there to talk with...those moments become glaring. There was something about setting up the evening campfire and one by one, seeing your hunting companions appear out of the lengthening shadows. When the last of us was in the fold, and the coffee pot was full and dinner was simmering, and the stories of the day would begin to be told...it was the best time in the life of that young outdoorsman. The one who hunts and fishes alone now.

    I wish I could have those days again. I wish I had friendship like that here in Virginia where I live. But I know full well that is not possible. Friendships like that are developed over many years. They take time. And time is a scarcity for me now. A precious commodity that the world seems to be in dire shortage of. That and the precious memories...of when there was plenty of time.

Saying Goodbye to my First Fishing Buddy

It would have been the summer of 1971.

We moved into our house in February of that year, and I think that summer I got my first fishing rod and reel. I got it from the guy who sold sporting goods in the New Castle Farmer’s Market on weekends.

Not long after, Tommy Riccio, my neighbor from across the street, took me to the secret fishing hole that the boys on my block all went to on summer mornings. They called it “Nonesuch Creek” and it’s not just a local moniker, it actually appears on maps of the area. A small little outcrop off the Christiana River, about three miles from our neighborhood.

It was tidal, and dirty, and smelled like diesel and dirt. We never caught anything but carp and catfish but that wasn’t really the point. We weren’t there for trophy fish or to catch our dinner. We were there being little boys. Fishing by ourselves, at a time in this world when little boys could jump on their bikes after breakfast, pedal three miles to their secret fishing hole, and spend the day in the sun, hidden from the nearby highway traffic, deep in a meadow that ran alongside this dirty little creek with the mysterious name.

We’d dug earthworms from our parents’ gardens the night before. We packed a lunch of bologna sandwiches and Coke’s wrapped in aluminum foil, in a vain attempt to keep them cold, and we set out on our spider bikes.

Tommy Riccio was three years older, and it wasn’t many more summers before his interests in hanging with the younger boys on the block waned, and he discovered girls and KISS records, and we didn’t do much together anymore.

But for those first few years, he was one of my best friends, and my fishing buddy.

He was creative and funny and mischievous and smart. Like all my other friends on that block, Tommy added the color to my childhood that made it fun and in many ways, tolerable. Home wasn’t the happiest place, but out on the block, with my friends from Monroe Avenue gathered on the white block wall that ringed my yard…I was happy.

Tommy and I grew up, and moved on, but we’d run into each other now and then when I’d get home for a visit and it was always good to see him. Somehow, even after 45 years, I still held him just a little in awe. He was still special to me. They all are, those kids from Monroe Avenue. It is always good to run into my childhood friends and Tommy was no exception.

Tommy passed away unexpectedly last week and the news hit me hard. He’s the second of my close friends from childhood to go, and like Sheila six years ago, this is painful for me. I love his family and I loved Tommy. His mom and dad were always the two people I made sure I visited when I’d get home. His mom passed earlier this year and I still struggle to grasp that. Now Tommy joins her.

I keep thinking about Tommy and that fishing hole and those spider bikes and the time we dissected a bullfrog in his garage and it looked like a scene from a horror movie. I think about the first tree fort we built in the big sprawling oak behind the Ferraro’s house. How we’d tar-papered the roof and it was weatherproof and we would sit up there on rainy summer days and talk about what boys talk about, while the Phillies game was on a transistor radio we’d brought along.

I thought about how we’d all pile into my mother’s VW Beetle and head to the Chesapeake Bay, or to the Drive-In on a Friday night or to the haunted houses at Halloween and we’d all go through them together. One big gang of kids, all from the same dead-end street. Friends to the end.

I’ll be thinking of Tommy next spring, when the snows thaw and the James River runs fast and deep and I begin another season of fishing. The James is a far cry from Nonesuch Creek. It’s beautiful, clean, and surrounded by pristine mountains and the fish I catch are true trophies. It’s what I dreamed of when I was a little boy, fishing that dirty creek with my neighborhood friends. In every imaginable way, it’s better fishing than what Tommy and I experienced on Nonesuch Creek.

Or is it?

There won’t be three other boys there; bikes piled clumsily nearby, with a coffee can full of earthworms nearby and cork bobbers floating anxiously on the water.

We won’t be telling jokes and peeing in the bushes, and getting tanned and sweaty and dirty and enjoying just being out there with each other.

It will just be me. Floating a section of one of the most beautiful rivers I’ve ever seen, like I dreamed when I was a boy.

In my heart though, where the best memories live forever, Tommy will be there. He’ll be there laughing at my jokes, telling me a few of his own, casting to the best spot and watching that bobber with an eagle eye.

He’ll live on in my heart, this old friend of mine, and he’ll fish with me in those brief, flashing moments when I’ll think of him, and Johnny and Richard, with our rods and tackle boxes in our hands, pedaling our way down the path that led to our secret spot.

I can still see his face as it was when we were kids. He’ll laugh, he’ll cast his line in that perfect clear water next to mine, and then he’ll go back to the place in my heart where he’ll be forever.

Godspeed dear old friend.

I’ll see you on a bright Saturday morning next spring. You’ll come out from your place in my heart, and we’ll fish together for a few moments.

Hug your mom for me.

The Soul of the River

The first real “fishing hole” I remember was “None-such creek” back home in New Castle, Delaware. Before that, I’d fished a few times with my grandfather in a little finger of the many creeks that ran throughout the marshy areas that adjoined the Philadelphia Airport, down the street from his house. I lived there for the first five years of my life and that was the first fishing I remember.

When we moved to New Castle, my new friends in the neighborhood had their spot at Nonesuch and they let me come along. Nonesuch was nothing to grow sentimental about. Not the landscape anyway. It was just a tributary of the Christiana River, which, itself, dumped into the Delaware. In the 70’s, when I fished there, pollution was an afterthought and the river smelled like diesel and dirt. You knew better than to eat the fish you caught because they tasted like the water they swam in.

None of that mattered, however, because we weren’t there to fish for food –although we tried that once- we were there to fish. For us, at eight years old, fishing was about being out on our own, away from our homes and families, growing up together. We talked about what eight-year-old boys talked about back then. We brought our bologna sandwiches in brown paper bags in our knapsack and we rode our spider bikes two or three miles to our secret fishing spot.

As dirty as that river was, the meadow that surrounded it was clean and sweet and beautiful. In the summer, it smelled of honeysuckle and hay. Butterflies fluttered about and birds flew overhead. It was a wonderful escape from the sameness of suburban housing. I never remember looking around and thinking about the history I was walking on. I was just a little boy, there with his friends, trying to catch a fish.

Now, though, things are different. Where I fish now is steeped in history and I am of an age that I pay attention to those things. I fish the upper James River mostly. Up above Snowden Dam, almost to Balcony Falls.

I found a parking spot last year and I walk the train tracks from there to Balcony and fish my way back, learning about this river as I go. (The plan is to buy a kayak this summer as soon as finances allow) Walking train tracks has always been an allegorical prop in literature. The wandering. The restlessness. The feeling of always moving along. It’s not that for me, necessarily, as much as it is a thread through history. I walk these tracks and wonder about the trains that have come and gone over the years.

 I came upon a unique marble historical marker on my last trip. It reminded me that this river…as all rivers, has been flowing for a long time. And in that flow, is history. This marker dates back over 150 years. The thing it talks about, this man losing his life to save others…it happened right where I was standing.

When I first moved here three years ago, I started thinking about the historicity of the area. I would, occasionally, look around as I cast my lure, and think about all those who have fished these waters before me. Native Americans who fished for food and drew their drinking water from the Powhattan, as they called it. Explorers, winding their way west through this gorge. Soldiers in the civil war –mere boys, really- fishing here for something to eat, after a fierce battle…or on their way to one. Locals. Little boys like I was when I fished None-such creek. Kids on their bikes, throwing cork bobbers into the water and being thrilled with whatever they caught.

Nowadays, when I fish...I look around. I never used to do that. Yes, I’ve always loved the scenery, but now I view it through the prism of history. These giant boulders that have been worn smooth by thousands of years and millions of gallons of water pouring over them. This gorge that was probably cut into these mountains by the Flood. These railroad tracks.

This river.

My best friend and I are talking about a late-fall trip here when he is done on his commercial crab boat for the season. Mark and I haven’t fished together in about 30 years. Life happens. To wade these waters and talk like we used to when we were boys will be life-giving for me. So much time has passed, and so many miles.

I have a mid-summer trip planned for Harpers Ferry and the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. Right next to the Antietam battlefield fishing, no doubt, the same waters where civil war soldiers fished and swam and worried about whether they’d make it through the next day. Nothing like that will be on my mind...I'll just be there to fish. But I will be thinking about them, maybe feeling their memories in the river.

The river rolls on...but as I get older, I find that, as it does, it deposits some of its’ memories in my soul.