SPORTING LIFE

“The storehouse of our memories is like an unused room in which lay aside the odds and ends of many treasured things.”
— Roland Clark, Gunner’s Dawn

For the last several months a debilitating illness seemed to dominate all my thinking. It felt as if it had been an interminable time since I had roamed the woods and streams hunting and fishing. The calendar that Linda, my bride, kept of assorted obligations was filled with doctor appointments. My life was centered around pills and stethoscopes.

It was a depressing time. So what to do?

“Quit whining,” I told myself. “Head to the woods. That’ll make things better, or at least improve your outlook.”

I hollered to Linda, who was in the laundry room putting on a load of wash, “Hey, Babe, I’m gonna ride down to the farm and check things out.”

It had been several months since I had been to “the farm,” as I call the old tobacco workings to which my friend Joe Rosy lets me have access. It’s a wonderful corner of the Drowning Creek swamp area, teeming with deer, doves and turkeys. Back toward the swamp, there’s a beaver dam, and wood ducks live, nest and enjoy a habitat that is hard to find in our so-called modern world.

“You be careful,” Linda responded. “Take your phone.”

“OK,” I replied. “I’ll be back a little after dark.”

I grabbed my hunting bag, a battered old Orvis pack that I’ve had forever. I keep it stuffed with items I’ve learned over the years would, in a rush, come in handy — everything from a Swiss Army knife to shotgun loads of all gauges from 28 to 12. Depending on the gun I happen to be using, I’ll not run out of ammunition.

It’s a short ride down to the farm, and I usually take a little detour through Pinebluff, where I spent many happy years growing up. The old house where we lived is still there. After my father died, Mother sold it and moved to the farm in South Carolina that’s been in the family for years.

The Pinebluff house is a little worse for wear, but every time I drive by, memories come flooding back. Ironically, on this particular day, my first in weeks out of the house, just as I got to the corner, a black dog came bursting out of the pines and ran right in front of the truck.

“Smut,” I thought for a quick second of my old canine friend. But no, this dog was more like a pointer than a retriever, just with a black coat. Smut was my first dog, a curly-coated retriever, black as the ace of spades. Dad got him for me when I was in the third grade, and he became my constant companion until I went off to college. Smut was not a champion hunting dog by any means, but he had a natural instinct that helped him overcome his lack of obedience. Not his fault, more mine and my lack of knowledge about training a working dog. Our timing was perfect, though. We were both untamed when it came to the woods, and we spent many a day and night roaming that Pinebluff area of the Sandhills looking for adventure.

When Mother protested the little pup coming to live with us, complaining that she would be the one responsible for him, my father said, “A boy and a dog should grow up together.” In looking back, I can see how she loved the impish, tiny puppy almost as much as I did.

I continued on down Pinebluff Lake Road and decided to pull into the small gravel parking lot and maybe eat a snack from my gunning bag. It was good to have an appetite again. Food hadn’t meant a lot lately. I grabbed a pack of nabs and walked to the pier of the little lake where many years before I had learned to swim.

As a youngster before the town outlawed dogs in the lake, Smut and I would swim from the pier to the dam. He was more at home in the water than I was. As a matter of fact, he roamed Pinebluff and the lake area as if it was his domain, to be enjoyed at his leisure.

It was a quiet morning, and I watched a sheriff deputy’s car roll around the near curve and head toward town, and I decided to meander on to the farm. Remembering Smut brought to mind another furry best friend that lived with me during my early years of hunting — Paddle, a little female yellow Lab. I learned more about training a dog, or more to the point, acquiring the knowledge of how to train a dog, from the best teacher, Paddle herself. She was amazing and accomplished more afield in unusual situations than any animal I’ve ever known.

I thought back to a cold morning at a beaver dam. Paddle and I hoped to catch wood ducks as they came off the roost. The beaver dam was located in a little bottom about a hundred yards down a small rise. We had scouted the area the evening before when we noticed ducks winging their way back into the swamp. We pretty much had the lay of the land the next morning when we silently drove the Bronco, lights off so as to not disturb roosting ducks, down a little dirt fire break and parked under a giant white oak tree.

Frost on the broom straw crunched underfoot as I eased through the outer rings of the swamp to the beaver dam where we would set up for the hunt. Paddle, walking at heel, was anxious to go.

The swamp turned gray with early dawn as we hunkered down awaiting the morning flight. We heard the ducks as they came off the roost, and that was about it. They had flown in the opposite direction from where we were hiding.

I decided to give it 30 more minutes before heading home and to work. Just as I stood up on the narrow edge of the beaver dam, a lone wood duck came whistling over at the edge of the range of my gun. I snapped off a shot anyway, and the duck hit its after-burner and sailed on out of sight. Paddle took off after the bird and I whistled her back to heel.

“No bird, Paddle.”

She looked up at me expectantly as if I needed a good excuse for missing the duck. “It was out of range. We’ll get the next one.”

But there wasn’t another one, and after 30 more minutes, I decided to head up the hill to the truck. Just as we stepped off the beaver dam, Paddle tore off, racing toward the edge of the swamp with me shouting and whistling to get her back.

“Now where is that crazy dog going?” I thought as I hustled in the direction she had taken, concerned that we would be delayed getting home. Just as I stepped out of the tree line bordering the swamp, here came Paddle over the rise with the wood duck in her mouth, the same wood duck that I had shot at and thought I had missed. She knew somehow that I hadn’t.

It was a great morning in the woods at the farm, and my impromptu visit to Pinebluff and remembrances of the wonderful dogs that have accompanied me through life was therapeutic. I felt as if I had another lease on the days to come.

As Dick Coleman, my good friend and hunting buddy, so eloquently put it shortly after his big, rangy black Lab, Honcho, had died, “Do dogs go to heaven? Well, if they don’t, I don’t want to go either.”