Sporting Life

Slim’s Place

Guided by a star

By Tom Bryant

The note arrived on a Tuesday. Mail delivery had been sporadic at best, ostensibly due to the pandemic and delivery of voting ballots during the recent elections. The note was brief and to the point. It was a typical Bubba transcript and read, “We’re having a get-together at Slim’s next Saturday. Why don’t you come to the house on Friday. I have some fresh makings of Ritter’s apple brandy. We’ll test it, and I’ll grill a couple of steaks. Judith’s at the beach with some girlfriends, so we’ll have the place to ourselves. We’ll catch up and talk old times. Hope you can make it, Bubba.”

Bubba and I have spent many days afield, hunting, fishing and camping, and we have become great friends. Our paths went in different directions when Linda, my bride, and I moved to Southern Pines. Plus, Bubba started taking more exotic hunting and fishing trips across the world. To be honest, he has deeper pockets than I do. Our friendship remained, though, and we stayed in touch and met from time to time at cocktail parties, friends’ gatherings and such.

Slim’s Place, referred to in Bubba’s note, is an ancient country store, actually begun and operated by Slim’s grandfather. When the grandfather died, the store fell into disrepair and almost rotted away until Slim, after making a fortune out West in the real estate business, restored it to its former glory. For years, he ran the store more as a hobby than a business, often exclaiming, “The only reason I keep this obsolete old store open is so all you reprobates will have a place to go.”

We did go. It was a place, like the theme song played in the TV show Cheers, “where everyone knows your name.” We did know the names and the families and the dogs and the history, good and bad, of all the good old boys who took advantage of Slim’s hospitality. The patrons of the ancient establishment were a diverse collection, from mill owners to mill workers. Every visitor to Slim’s store was on equal footing, except maybe lawyers. They were jokingly treated differently.

We were in between the holiday seasons, Thanksgiving roaring toward Christmas, and it seemed as if everyone wanted the weird year 2020 to be over. The country was still divided, more so than I’d ever seen due to the acrimonious presidential election and the political differences in how to handle the coronavirus. There didn’t seem to be an end to the rancorous conflict throughout the country, and 2021 would soon be upon us. I hoped that a visit to Bubba’s and Slim’s Country Store and a meeting with a group of good old boys would put everything into perspective.

Bubba built his home back in the mid-’80s, and it’s quite a showcase. Pretty much energy-efficient, the home sits on a little rise overlooking a small lake that is consistently teeming with wildlife. Ducks, geese and even at times a pair of otters use the carefully constructed habitat.

I arrived there in the late afternoon, looking forward to a great visit with an old friend. After an appropriate time of good-natured insults to one another, we went through the house to the deck off his study to watch a beautiful evening sunset.

True to his word, as we settled back in chairs overlooking the pond, he said, “OK there, Cooter, let me pour you a little shot of Ritter’s finest.” (He bestowed on me the nickname Cooter years before and it stuck.) On the table between the two chairs was a decanter full of an amber liquid, and as he poured us a little libation into heavy cut glass tumblers, he added, “Ritter wanted you to have a couple quarts. Don’t let me forget to give ’em to you. He told me to tell you Merry Christmas.”

We both sat in comfortable silence and watched the sun slowly sink behind the tree line on the west end of the pond. Several wood ducks soared close over the water, did a hard turn and skidded to rest near the far bank.

“Watch, Tom, those ducks do the same thing every evening. They’ll swim around for a few minutes then fly up to those oak trees and roost for the night. Pretty to see, almost like they have a watch. They come in every sundown at the same time.”

“I love to watch wood ducks,” I responded. “Speaking of ducks, I thought you’d be down in Louisiana duck hunting about now.”

“Nope, this dadgum virus has everything screwed. I’ve canceled two trips already. One fishing and one hunting. I think I’m gonna just stay home until after the first of the year. Things have got to change. The country can’t continue like this. How about you? Y’all still heading to Florida on your annual winter fishing adventure?”

“The plan is still there. We probably won’t go back to Chokoloskee this time, opting for a closer fishing hole, maybe Cedar Key just above Tampa. Last year we were way down South when this virus thing broke and had to hustle back with the snow bird migration. It wasn’t a pleasant trip. How are things at Slim’s? Things at the store getting by in this crazy year?”

“That’s one reason I wanted this get-together, with you especially, and also some of the old crowd.”

After Slim passed away, Bubba had purchased the old country business from Leroy, Slim’s nephew, who had inherited the place. Bubba bought the store on a whim, and as he often said, so he’d have a place to go. Plus he liked the coffee.

“The venture is getting to be more trouble than it’s worth,” he continued. “We closed the first two months of the pandemic and gave all the perishables to local churches. Now we’re open only three days a week. I would have already closed the place, but I’m keeping it open because Leroy has to have a job, and more than that, in memory of Slim. Like I said, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

The sun had fully set but there was still a soft glow on the western horizon. In contrast, early stars began to twinkle in the eastern night sky.

We sat quietly, sipping Ritter’s brandy.

“I don’t know what to say, Bubba. No one would really blame you if you shut it down. I mean thousands of businesses are closing during this virus mess. Slim would probably have already closed the store. And yet I keep remembering that Christmas season years ago when you and Slim and I were sitting on the porch of the old building, also enjoying some of Ritter’s apple brandy, when that bright star showed up in the eastern sky.”

“Yep,” Bubba paused. “Those were good times, good days, Tom. I recollect that night every Christmas, especially about Slim quoting a verse from the Bible, you know, about the star and the birth of Jesus.”

He stood, stretched, and looked to the eastern sky that was sprinkled with stars. “I think I’ve made up my mind, Cooter, I’m gonna keep the decrepit old place open. I believe we need a bright star now more than ever. This Christmas, why don’t you come up here one evening and we’ll sit on the porch, drink some more brandy and watch for it. Maybe the visit and our search will bring good tidings in 2021. But right now, what say we grill a couple of steaks?”

I did visit Slim’s venerable old country setting one frosty evening a few days before this past Christmas. Bubba and I pulled up a pair of rockers on the wraparound porch with Slim’s favorite rocker on one side. We looked to the east and waited. The bright star was still there.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

A Special Calling

Turning ducks on a dime

“In November,” the old man said, “even the
rattlesnakes don’t like to bite people.”

— Robert Ruark, The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older

By Tom Bryant

I’ve lived a bunch of Novembers, and each of them, although different, has carried a smidgen of sameness that has always made that special time of year one of the best.

If you’re an outdoorsman camping, hunting, fishing or just walking through the woods, November is the time that brings the rest of autumn into sharp focus. The sky is bluer, the air more fresh and crisp. All the animals seem more alive and alert. Ducks are in the middle of their migration south; male deer are in rut with necks swollen and antlers all scrubbed free of velvet. They’re prancing around looking for does. And if there are any quail, they’re alert, on the lookout for birddogs and hunters.

When I was a youngster, September meant going back to school, getting new books, and learning. It also meant the beginning of dove season, which made the month more palatable for me. Of course, I’d rather have been in the woods than in a classroom.

September went by in a flash and brought October, opening more hunting seasons and the first really cool weather that improved lake and river fishing.

October was the month to get ready. The older I get, the more getting ready there seems to be. In the long run, the preparation is better than the event itself. Seeing as how I’m a duck hunter more than anything else, in the weeks of October I’m in a dither rounding up all my equipment: waders, decoys, waterproof hunting coats, cold weather gear like wool shirts, socks and real necessities like long underwear. Duck boats have to be checked, canoes need to be updated with fresh camouflage, and duck calls need to be tried and, if necessary, retuned.

Over the years, I’ve collected a plethora of duck calls and have become somewhat proficient in using them. It really is quite an art. I can call a duck with my favorite call, but my call is nothing like that of a duck hunting guide I had the good luck to meet many years ago.

His name is Bill NightSky and he’s a Chippewa Indian who lives on the reservation close to Lake St. Clair in Canada. Bill is tall, about 6 feet, slender and moves with the natural grace of an athlete. He speaks with a slight accent. I think he enjoyed listening to a Southern accent because he smiled a lot when I answered questions about what duck hunting was like in the South. When we were heading out to his duck blind on Lake St. Clair and talking about calling ducks, he said to me, “You know, Tom, I don’t doubt you can call ducks using that special call hanging around your neck, but there isn’t a white man alive who can turn a duck like a Chippewa Indian. I’ll prove it to you this morning.”

And prove it he did. It was a weeklong trip. We flew to Detroit, spent one uneventful hour there, rented a van and drove across the river to Canada. At the border, we were thoroughly questioned by a guard about our guns. When she asked me if we had handguns, I laughed and replied, “Ma’am, I have a hard enough time hitting a duck with a shotgun, much less a handgun.” She didn’t smile or respond. I did get her to grin a little when I told her we were Southerners, had grown up with guns, and didn’t understand all the red tape in crossing the border. She even let us cross without unloading all our stuff from the car.

We had booked our rooms in a small hotel just a few miles from the Chippewa village and met our guide, Bill, early the next morning at an ice skating rink right outside the reservation. It was a real learning experience for me, my first visit to a tribal homeland. They had their own economy and government including game regulations and game wardens, police and, unfortunately, poverty. The destitution we encountered on the reservation was distressing. It was an eye-opening experience made more so by the goodwill we felt from our host and the natives we met when we hunted with them.

Bill split our party of four so that two of us went with another guide to the marsh bordering the lake, and Tom Bobo and I stayed with Bill to hunt from a small island a mile or so into Lake St. Clair.

The morning was misty and cold with a heavy frost, but in no time, we were hunkered down in the reeds looking out to open water and watching for ducks. Bill had put out just a few decoys, mostly big ducks like mallards, blacks and a couple of pintails. We were ready and waiting.

“I’m anxious to hear you blow your call,” I said to Bill. “What kind are you using?”

“The most natural one you can find,” he replied. “Watch, there are ducks heading our way.”

About eight or 10 ducks circled high above us, looking as if they were going to continue on down the lake. Bill cupped his hand over his mouth and did some chuckling that sounded exactly like a hungry mallard that had just discovered the mother lode of corn. The ducks put on the air brakes, turned on a dime and headed right back to our decoys. Bill did that same remarkable calling all morning using his mouth. No manufactured call. It was amazing.

As astonishing as it was to watch Bill NightSky call ducks with his mouth and hands, I still have to use a handmade wooden call. Not long ago, I had the opportunity to meet a young fellow from the Raleigh area who carves duck calls. They are more than a functional way to attract ducks. The calls he builds are works of art.

For me, a duck hunter who has lived through many seasons, it’s a pleasure to meet another duck-calling enthusiast, especially one as young as Tom Padden. Tom has turned his hobby into a business. If you’re lucky enough to get on the list for one of his handmade calls, I’m sure it will be a prized addition to your collection.

While we were having lunch, Tom showed me several pictures on his smart phone of duck calls he has made. Each one was remarkable. Looks are one thing, but when I asked him how they sound, he replied good naturedly, “Like a duck.”

I was fortunate several years ago to meet my cousin’s husband’s brother, who is an avid duck hunter and builds his own calls. He is also South Carolina’s duck-calling champion, for what year I don’t remember.  I convinced him to make me three calls. I kept one and gave the other two to good hunting buddies. They are strictly utilitarian in looks, but man, they do the job.

I plan on getting young Padden to make me a call this winter and can’t wait to add it to my collection. By the way, if you’re interested, his business is Birddog Outdoor Inc. in Cary, North Carolina. Get in touch. Probably, you’ll have to be added to the list, right under my name.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Fields of Dreams

Remembering conversations with old friends

By Tom Bryant

I backed the old Bronco out of her resting place in the garage and loaded it with my hunting paraphernalia. The gear for this trip was negligible because it was just an afternoon chase, and I’ve learned after many hunting seasons to travel light. As far as that goes, most of my dove shoots over the last several years have just been an excuse to get to the woods, not much shooting involved.

The little farm I lease, ostensibly for bird hunting, is only 30 minutes from home and one of the prettiest pieces of property I’ve been on in a while. It’s about a hundred acres, maybe a little more, and used to be a tobacco farm. Two old barns are still on the property and provide a haven to escape bad weather when needed.

I pulled the Bronco into a grove of pines, shut it down, grabbed my dove stool out of the back and found a nice shady spot close to the field to set up and watch for doves. It was still hot. September always is. Not much different from August, maybe a little respite later in the day, but hot anyway.

I watched the field for a short while. I could see a few birds working toward the north end but not much on my side, where I had decided to hunt. So I wandered back to the Bronco, put the tailgate down, fetched some water from the cooler and perched on the back like my dogs and I used to do. I had two yellow Labs, not at the same time, but in different eras of my life.

My first, named Paddle, lived 14 years and hunted with me almost every time I went to the woods. She was with me in my early hunting days, the time of my life when I was still figuring out what the world was all about. She and I had many conversations sitting as I was now on the back of this vintage truck.

Mackie, my second Lab, came along right after Paddle went to her reward where birds flew aplenty and the retrieves are always successful. Mackie was different. Where Paddle could be described as laid-back, Mackie was a little uptight. It’s funny to see how dogs have different personalities, just like people. When we would pull up to a hunting area and I would let Paddle out of the truck, she would walk around slowly, stretch, wander away, do her business, come back, and look up at me as if to say, “OK, boss, let’s go do this thing.”

When I let Mackie out of the Bronco, she would hit the turf running, tearing about, nose to the ground, all business, as if birds were everywhere and she didn’t want to miss a one. Mackie was during my adjustment time when I had finally figured out that you couldn’t equate success with money. Money helped, though. It was the barometer used by just about everyone gauging achievement. As the old saying goes, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.”

I had many wonderful conversations with each dog sitting on the tailgate of this old truck. They were amazing companions, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of them, especially on opening day of dove season.

I walked back to the stool and stood next to an old pine on the edge of the cut cornfield. Doves continued to fly on the north end, but clouds had moved and the sun was now bearing down. Birds don’t fly in this kind of heat, so I sat on the stool, leaning against the pine and remembered a hunt that my old friend Bryan and I had many years ago.

It was the first week of the season and, man, it was hot. The kind of heat where it seems you sweat more water than you can drink. Our spot on the field was right beside an overgrown drainage ditch. The crop of corn had been combined the week before, and there was plenty of food for birds. Our problem, though, no shade.

A white-hot sun so bright that it looked as if it took up the entire western sky was slowly moving to the horizon. I had backed up the Bronco so it was facing west, which gave us a sliver of shade at the back of the truck. Bryan and I were hunkered down on our stools in the minuscule shadow cast by the tailgate. The hunt looked as if it was going to be a dud, but as the sun began to drop behind the tree line, doves started flying by the hundreds. In less than 30 minutes, we both had our limit.

A far off rumble of thunder broke my reverie, and I watched as cumulus clouds built up like mountains in the western sky.

“It’s gonna storm before sundown,” I said to no one in particular. I miss my dogs, I thought. When I had Paddle and Mackie, I always had someone in the field to talk to. It seems that over the last three or four years, I’m in the woods more and more by my lonesome. My old hunting buddies are aging out, for one reason or another, health problems, other interests, whatever. Now, most days out in the countryside find me a solitary fellow.

As the thunder persisted toward the west and it seemed as if the storm might be heading my way, another memory of a long-ago dove hunt, one that could have been deadly, came to mind.

I was hunting a cornfield that abutted a small tobacco patch and was walking the dirt tractor path in between the two planted fields. The Bronco was parked at the top of a small rise, almost to the trees, about a hundred yards away. Suddenly, a dove fluttered up out of the standing tobacco, probably having gotten grit from the plowed areas for its craw to help in processing food.

I shot and it fell somewhere in the rows of plants. Paddle had died the season before, so retrieving was up to me. While all this was going on, I noticed a squall line coming over the trees right toward me, so I stepped up the pace to find the dove. I had just spotted it and was bent over to pick it up when the hair on my arms and the back of my head stood up. I dropped the shotgun to the ground and hunched over to make myself as small as I could, and BAM! A bolt of lightning hit a giant white oak in a peninsula of woods jutting out in the tobacco field not 50 yards from where I was hunkered down.

The storm was closer now, so I picked up my gear and moved to the Bronco as the first big splats of raindrops pounded on the roof of the little truck. I turned it around to get a better view of the storm coming across the cornfield. Lightning was popping here and yonder and thunder rolled across the trees.

It was a sight that never grows old: Mother Nature showing the critters, me included, who’s boss.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Beach Daze

When only O.D. and The Pad would do

By Tom Bryant

I grew up in the ’s, and I believe the lifestyles during those wonderful times will never be seen again. World War II was over, with the slight exception of the police action in Korea. (Folks involved in that so-called police action would strongly disagree with the terminology — to them it was a war.) After that, the country settled into a cycle of prosperity not seen by the general population in a very long time.

In my own house, Dad was the single provider. Mom never worked outside the home. Raising four children was her full-time job. We had one car, and it was a family car, a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, built to haul about anything. We weren’t poor, middle class maybe, but a long way from being rich. From the age of 13, I worked at one job or another every summer. Service stations, food stores, and finally Dad let me work at the ice plant, where he was manager. As a teenager, I earned my own spending money and helped with my college finances as well. But in the summer of 1959, I was a brand new graduate of those bastioned halls of higher learning at Aberdeen High School, and I was ready to celebrate.

College was right around the corner. In my mind, I had just graduated and was not real excited about becoming a freshman again. I had a pocketful of money I’d been saving, and two weeks of vacation before I had to report to Dad for summer work. There was for me only one destination during that off time, and that was the beach. Not just any beach but Ocean Drive Beach — better known as O.D. — and The Pad, better known as The Pad.

In our short time as teenagers, The Pad had become a tradition for several of my good friends and classmates, and graduation had added an extra emphasis on the importance of heading east. O.D. was calling.

Clifton and Graham, friends and also recent graduates of old AHS, were already there, supposedly on a scouting mission to find a place for us to stay for a few days, cheap. I was to meet them at The Pad at 3 o’clock Monday to begin our celebration.

The Pad was located on the corner of a street dead-ending at the ocean, right across from The Pavilion, an attraction in its own right. Home to games, carnival-type rides and snack bars, it also had a concrete dance floor and jukebox.

Both The Pad and The Pavilion were opened in 1955 and were mainstays at Ocean Drive Beach for fun and frolic. Structurally, The Pad wasn’t much, just a shed covering the bar and its sand floor and a square deck for dancing. I honestly can’t remember if the dance floor was wood or concrete. Behind the bar, washtubs were full of ice and cans of beer. In those days Pabst Blue Ribbon, PBR, was the most prevalent, and the wall surrounding the entire building was lined with empty beer cans. It was rumored that the wall was erected to hide dancers doing the shag, a six-count rhythm created by bands and music performed by groups like The Drifters.

All in all, The Pad and The Pavilion were the place to see and be seen, especially if you were young and in a party mood. As Harold Bessent, manager of The Pad for its last 10 years, said, “It became a sort of Mecca.”

Right on time, Graham and Cliff came sauntering out of the white sunshine glare of the beach into the cool shade. Chuck Berry was blasting “Johnny Be Good” from the jukebox, I was leaning against the bar talking to the on-duty afternoon bartender.

“Hey, Bryant, where’s your car? We didn’t see it outside. Didn’t make it down here?” Cliff was constantly chiding me about the car Dad had given me for graduation. Especially after he heard that it had two flat tires on the way home from the estate sale where Dad bought it. The old car, a 1940 Chevrolet Deluxe, served me well over the next several years.

“It’s parked around the corner. New tires,” I laughed. “Ready to go. What have you deadheads been doing? I hope you’ve found us a place to sleep. Cheap.”

“You won’t believe it,” Graham said. “Larry,” pointing to the bartender, “put us on to the Just-A-Mere-Guest-House, not two blocks from here. We left the car there and walked back. We booked us a room for three days, the only room they had available.”

That vacation week when we celebrated our graduation at The Pad and Ocean Drive Beach was one that we’ll never forget. We had a grand time. And at reunions ever after, it would always come up, “Do you remember that week at The Pad when Blue . . . ”

The Pad was torn down in 1994, not meeting the town’s requirements for safety and other things. The memories that old bar created for hundreds of young folks just beginning life after high school, would never be forgotten.

The ‘50s and that restful, peaceful time were over. The unknown future lay on the horizon. There was the Cold War with Russia, the hot war in Vietnam, the technological race against other countries, and even perhaps against ourselves. I realize that when remembering the past, a person has a tendency to forget the bad stuff and just remember the good. My mother always said, “If you think the good old days were that good, try using an outdoor toilet when it’s 14 degrees outside.”

As a matter of fact, I think The Pad had outside bathrooms, and if I remember correctly, they were just a little better than what Mom was talking about. The difference, and a good thing for us, it wasn’t 14 degrees.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

The Truth Is Out There

And so, I guess, is the wild turkey

By Tom Bryant

Ben Franklin once said the American eagle is “a bird of bad moral character, does not get his living honestly, steals food from a fish hawk and is too lazy to fish for himself.”

He described the American turkey as “a much more respectable bird, a true original native of America, a bird of courage.”

Old Ben was pitching the turkey as the nation’s national bird instead of the eagle, a bird with which he must have had an earlier conflict. I don’t know about eagles, since they were in seriously short supply during my years enjoying the great outdoors. But I have had some contact with the wild turkey, at some distance. Not planned by me, all the turkeys’ doing.

I grew up hunting the piney woods of eastern North Carolina, and the swamps and river bottoms of the low country of South Carolina. In my youngster years, when I went hunting, I wasn’t a specialist. If it was in season, it could end up in my hunting vest. I was partial to squirrels, doves, quail and ducks, but turkeys? They were as scarce as, at that time in my school learning, an “A” in algebra.

I heard rumors that they were still around but in short supply. My granddaddy had a turkey tail feather mount hanging in his study in the old plantation house in South Carolina. He often would reminisce about the times when low country swamp turkeys were plentiful enough to fill many a hunter’s Thanksgiving table. “No more today,” he said. “They’ve gone the way of the ivory bill woodpecker.”

As I grew older and became a little more sophisticated in my efforts afield, I leaned more and more toward hunting waterfowl, mainly ducks and geese. Any sportsman can tell you that it’s very easy to go overboard on paraphernalia, especially if you’re a true connoisseur of the sport. And I was. I wanted it all: decoys, shotguns, camouflage clothing, waders, boats. It took me years, but if the gear pertained to duck hunting, I wished for it and usually got it. I was truly at home with the noble art of duck hunting, and I realized that to be practical, the sport was all that I had time for, or the necessary funds.

At the end of January the season for duck hunting is over. It’s too cold for fishing, and summer camping seems to be an interminably long time away. What was I to do in the fields? Bird-watch? Not for me, even though I hear it is a wonderful way to pass the time.

Then I read an article in Sports Afield about turkey hunting, and in the vernacular of salesmen everywhere, I was hooked. I thought, how difficult can it be? I’m familiar with the woods where I can hunt. I have a box call that should work. I think I’ll try out the sport in the morning.

My first effort would have made the Marx Brothers proud.

I was up and at ’em early, as prescribed in the article. Dressed from head to toe in camouflage, I drove out to the farm and found what looked to me like a great place to ambush an unsuspecting gobbler. I propped my dove stool next to an ancient pine, did a few yelps on my box call and waited for some action.

There was a small pond a few yards away that probably helped the mosquito population, which soon discovered they had some fresh meat. They were doing everything, including, I’m sure, making a plan to haul me away and lodge me in the fork of an old cypress to eat later. It was miserable. I quickly learned lesson number one about turkey hunting: Bring mosquito repellent.

The morning passed slowly with me sweating, scratching and slapping at hungry bugs. It seemed that the mosquitoes had sent out an invitation for deer flies to join the fun. Enough food for all.

Mama didn’t raise a fool, so before long I figured there was more to this turkey hunting than being eaten up by insects. I gave one more yelp on my call, decided to wait just a few more minutes, then headed out to breakfast, which seemed to be the only redeeming factor left in the entire morning.

I stepped out of the pine thicket onto a little sand road that led to the Bronco. The road wasn’t much more than a firebreak, and 40 yards away, in the middle of the small lane, stood a giant gobbler. Naturally, I had my shotgun slung over my shoulder. The big bird was like an apparition. I don’t know which of us was more surprised. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared. I stood there with my mouth open looking at where the gobbler had been, now long gone. I walked to where he had stood, muttering to myself. That really couldn’t have been a turkey, but his tracks confirmed he wasn’t a mirage.

It’s been years since I stared down that turkey on that little sand road, and I have been hunting numerous times since. I’ve seen turkeys, heard them gobble, and have followed their tracks to where they dusted. A turkey will roll around in the sand to get rid of mites, and I’ve picked up numerous turkey feathers from those dust baths. But as far as putting a wild turkey on the Thanksgiving table? No luck so far.

One morning at my Rotary Club breakfast, I was lamenting my bad luck in the turkey hunting department to several friends. I had heard that Rich Warters, an individual with quite a reputation afield (he even owns the National Champion of Field Trialing Bird Dogs), was proficient in the turkey hunting sport, having bagged several in upstate New York. Rich, who is also a loyal Rotarian, listened to my turkey complaints and volunteered to show me a few tricks of the trade.

Now, it’s not often that a good old Southern boy will take advice from a Yankee, but my back was against the wall, and heck, I had almost converted Rich to my slow way of talking, although his up-North accent does come back when he’s agitated.

We saw turkeys. They came up behind us, in front of us, and one morning sneaked up to us on the side of our blind. But we had no luck.

Unfortunately for me, Rich moved to Connecticut a year or so ago, and I’m on my own in the turkey hunting department again. We stay in touch, and he still offers invaluable advice, which I gladly take.

Last year I didn’t even hunt, and this year I’ve been out a couple of times. I’ve heard them gobble and have seen a couple at a distance, but probably if you get right down to it, I’m not that anxious to kill one.

I still remember the morning Rich and I were coming out of a swamp bottom after seeing a turkey just out of range. The turkey also saw me and was gone in a flash. It was a beautiful early spring sunrise. Dogwoods were in full bloom, and birds were singing and chirping as if they were auditioning for a Walt Disney movie. We stood at our vehicles finishing off leftover coffee and making plans for the next day when a ruby-throated hummingbird flew right between us, hovered for a second, as if he was checking us out, then buzzed away. We were awestruck, neither saying anything, and then laughing at the wonder of it all.

When I remember that morning, that beautiful day afield with a good friend, I realize that’s one of the reasons I make excuses to hunt turkeys. PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

All on the Line

A full day in a full life

By Tom Bryant

It had become a ritual with the old man. Every morning he would fire up the little gas stove in the Airstream, put the percolator on with enough coffee for four cups, two for now and two for later, which he would carry in his ancient bent thermos. Then he would warm four biscuits stuffed with country ham that he had cooked the evening before. The ham reminded him of home and the family farm. He missed the everyday rigors of farming but realized with the last doctor’s report that it was time to let that stage of life go. Two of the biscuits were for breakfast, and two were for lunch, when he would pull his skiff up on a mangrove key and wait for the tide to change.

His fishing gear was stowed under the awning of the compact camper he had bought years before at about the same time he had been able to purchase the lot on Halfway Creek. The small tidal creek, more a stream really, flowed out of the Everglades and was more brackish than fresh water. The evening before he had been able to net mullet for bait to use on the tidewater change in the bay.

His wife of 50 years, Hensilee, was away from the camp visiting one of the children in Fort Lauderdale, so he had all the doings to himself for a couple of weeks. A solitary man, he enjoyed the quiet of his little piece of property and never got tired of watching the sunsets across the Gulf. More times than not, he would be motoring back across the bay heading for home when the sun began its march toward evening. He would get there in the lowering light in time to clean the day’s catch, fix a bite of supper, and then relax in his favorite camp chair out on the dock that housed his archaic skiff.

He liked to say that he was a keeper of God’s nature and always gave more than he took. He actually grew up on a farm in the low country of South Carolina, a farm that had been in his family for generations. In the last year, he had passed the mantle and responsibility of the farm to his oldest son and now was at home on his creek in the closing stages of his life, doing what he loved most.

He paused briefly before walking down the short path to the dock where his little skiff rested, then went over his supplies for the day. Plenty of water in a two-quart canteen, never can have too much water on the bay. His daypack filled with lunch and other necessities that he had accumulated over the years, like his fillet knife and the first-aid kit he had built from scratch. His fishing rig consisting of a bait-casting rod and reel, a surf casting outfit he had converted to boat use, and a venerable fly rod that he loved to employ in the shallow salt water flats bordering the mangroves, just before the deeper water of the Gulf.

His skiff, he liked to say, was one of a kind, and it truly was. Built by a grizzled old Florida riverboat captain he had known for years, it was acquired after much negotiation. The captain’s health necessitated his move north to be close to family and was the only reason he’d agreed to sell.

It was a strange looking craft with a diesel motor amidships, almost like the ones on small John Deere tractors. It made a pockety-pockety noise recognized by anyone who had ever been around farm tractors.

The skiff was about 17 feet with a wide shallow V-beam that made it extremely seaworthy, yet with a very shallow draft. In front of the motor housing was a wooden half console, and at the bow was a covered enclosure for gear. A fish live well was located on the stern. All in all, an unusual boat. Slow, but as the old man often said, if he had to hurry, he wouldn’t go.

With the sure movements of many repetitions, he loaded all his gear, fired up the engine and slowly cruised down the creek toward the bay. He had one more superstition: He tapped his left shirt pocket for the reassuring, familiar feel of his bottle of nitroglycerin pills.

He’d had his first heart attack young, at 45. His second came 20 years later, in the same month as the first. It was January. He always said that it was the cold that precipitated the attacks; and after the prognosis of the doctors, he bought a winter place on the St. Johns River close to Astor, Florida. When that location wasn’t warm enough in the winter, he found and purchased the little piece of land on Halfway Creek.

His family doctor was brutally factual about his health. “You’ve had two heart attacks. The next one will take you away.” That’s when he prescribed nitroglycerin pills to help with the old man’s angina.

The ride out toward the bay was as restful and beautiful as usual; and in a short time, he was to the Ten Thousand Islands that bordered the Gulf. They weren’t really islands but mangroves that grew in the salt water with numerous twisted roots that would trap sand during tidal flows and create little islands, or keys, as the natives call them. He had worked with a local fisherman when he first began fishing the mangroves and learned the area as well as the river he used to fish back in South Carolina.

There was a miniature mangrove island that he named Fiddler Key because of the fiddler crab population. Every time he slid his skiff to the water’s edge, the beach looked as if it was moving, it was so packed with little crabs. The males’ greatly enlarged claws would be waving back and forth as they hustled on down the strand looking for places to hide. He would trap 15 or 20 to use as bait for what he called his favorite eating fish, the sheepshead.

Sheepshead love to hang around the mangroves because of their diet of crustaceans and barnacles that grow on the roots. The fish, which can grow up to 4 pounds, also have a great fondness for fiddler crabs, and the old man rarely missed catching four or five sheepshead around the islands.

In almost no time, he pulled five keepers into the boat and deposited them in the live well. He then fired up his skiff and headed out to the mangroves bordering the Gulf. It was almost time for lunch, so he baited his converted surf casting rig with a mullet and cast out where the deep water began. Then he tied up to a mangrove and ate lunch. It was also his tradition to take a little nap after lunch, so he put up his boat awning over the bow and nestled down on several boat cushions and dozed.

The drag on the reel awakened him and he sat up, grabbed his rod and leaned back to set the hook. Whatever was on his line was big, and the drag screamed as the fish took more line off the reel and headed for deep water. Nothing to do but cut the line or follow it in his boat.

He wanted to see this fish, so he placed the rod in the gunnel holder, untied the skiff, fired up the motor and chased the fish out in the Gulf.

The battle went on all afternoon. The fish would take out more line, and he would use the skiff by motoring toward the fish to help him recapture his lost effort.

As the sun was beginning to set, he finally decided to give up. The fish had him beat. Just as he was about to cut his line, he saw the giant fish roll to the top of the water only 40 yards away. He motored closer, muttering all the while, “I hope I haven’t killed him.”

It was a bluefin tuna about 5 feet long, probably weighing two or three hundred pounds. He got his pliers and cut the steel leader as close to the fish’s mouth as he could and watched as the enormous tuna rolled a time or two, one eye balefully looking at the old man, and then he gradually submerged and drifted out of sight.

He sat leaning against the port side of the boat and watched as the blazing sun slowly sank in the western Gulf. He shook a pill from the bottle he took from his shirt, hoping it would diminish the pain he was feeling across his chest. He figured he was probably 10 miles out and turned the little skiff toward the east and home. A full moon was rising across the bay as he entered through the mangroves. He slowed the kicker and released the sheepshead he had in the live well. It will be too late to clean them anyway, he reasoned. The pain in his chest would come and go. He felt as if his heart was in synch with his little diesel motor, pockety-pockety.

“What a wonderful day,” he thought. “If this is my last one, it’s been a blessing.” He took his last pill.

The little skiff glided steadily toward the brightness of the moonrise and home.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Airstream Adventures

Wit and wisdom of the campground

By Tom Bryant

When late winter rolls around, opening the door to an early spring, Linda, my bride, and I saddle the 4Runner and hitch up the little Airstream for our escape south to Chokoloskee Island below Everglades City, Florida.

It’s a good ride and we take our time, stopping along the way for needed R&R and also to see the sights. Fishing is ostensibly behind the outing, but these trips really have evolved into a chance to have great conversations with fellow campers. It seems as if everybody has a good fish story, and I try to get these folks to share some of their best tales.

Camping is a really great sport, and more and more people are getting into it. On our last summer camping trip to Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina, we were surrounded by a whole slew of tiny RVs that were just big enough to house a bed and maybe enough headroom to allow changing clothes. But the little units didn’t seem to have much more room than that.

We’ve noticed that as the baby boomers retire, many have discovered the fine art of outdoor life; and with some that means the open road. Most of the campers we’ve met are quite competent; but unfortunately, there has been an encounter or two with folks who don’t have a clue about how to handle a trailer.

One example was a gentleman we met in a small campground in Florida. He was towing a 30-foot Montana fifth-wheel, and it was a pain to watch him try to back that huge trailer into his camping spot. We were camped right across the road, and I tried to help his red-faced wife with hand instructions, and in her situation, shouts to keep the exasperated fellow from running into a tree or knocking over a water spigot. It wasn’t pleasant.

It was a particularly hot day, and after about 15 minutes, he finally got parked. When he stepped out of the big 350 Ford tow vehicle, he was drenched in sweat. I walked back over to commiserate with him, and he looked at me bleary-eyed and said, “If I ever get this blankety-blank camper home, I’m gonna sell it, and my next outdoor adventure will be at a Holiday Inn.”

“Nah, man. You’re just getting the hang of it. In a couple more weeks, you’ll be an old hand.”

“The folks who sold me this thing didn’t tell us that there would be so many problems. I mean you have to hook up, unhook, do the water, the electric, the sewer line. I mean it’s almost like you have to build a house before you can sit down, have a drink and enjoy yourself. No, man, I realized on this trip I’m not designed to be a camper.”

I’m afraid that there are a lot of people just like this guy. They have charged into the camping fray without actually realizing that there is more to it than cruising down the highway. It reminded me of that classic movie The Long, Long Trailer with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and all the problems they had.

That evening after supper we were sitting outside enjoying a glass of wine when the couple next door came over. We invited them to join us for a spell. It turned out that this was their first jaunt into the camping world, too, and they were seriously thinking about giving up and going home.

Linda laughingly told them about our first adventure driving home from the Airstream dealer when I wasn’t sure how to unhook the trailer when we got home. “Tom got out the manual and stood there scratching his head staring at the camper. He said, ‘Honey I think we’re gonna have to haul this thing around forever. I don’t know how to get it off the car!’”

We all laughed, then Linda followed up with, “We made one practice trip to Huntington Beach, though, and then two weeks later, we packed up the little ‘Stream,’ as we call her, and shoved off for Alaska. We were gone two months and drove over 11,000 miles. What a great trip!”

She looked over at me grinning, “Tom turned into a long-distance truck driver and has never looked back.”

We talked a little more, and it seemed as if the couple was not as upset and crestfallen as they had been when they first arrived. It could have been the couple of glasses of wine they had while sitting under our awning, but I hope they decided to give the sport a little more time. We left early the next morning, so I don’t know how things worked out with them.

We have run across the least experienced campers in our adventures but also some of the most knowledgeable. There was one old gentleman we met in Iowa, actually while on our trip to Alaska. The campground was right on the banks of a beautiful river, and as we were checking in, the manager said, “I know how you Airstream folks like to stick together, so I have a real surprise for you. I’m putting you right across from another Airstream, and I’m sure you’ll be pleased to meet the gentleman who owns it.”

That was an understatement. As we pulled into our site, I saw that the Airstream the manager was talking about was a real vintage model. I was just finishing the chore of unhooking and attaching the water and electric when a bearded fellow walked over and said, “I like your Bambi. I own the old unit across the way. Soon as y’all get settled come over and join me for a cocktail. Tonight I’m having martinis.”

“We’ll do that, and I’m looking forward to it,” I replied.

After we got settled, Linda and I ventured over to the site where the antique Airstream was parked. The bearded gentleman was sitting under his awning enjoying a libation.

“Hey folks, come on and sit.” There were a couple of vacant chairs right next to a small wooden table with a half-full pitcher of martinis on it.

Our host poured drinks and we began talking about our adventures. We learned that his Airstream had belonged to his uncle, who gave it to him when he came home from the Vietnam War. He had completely restored it and it looked great. Since then he had traveled to every state in the union except Hawaii and related that he had no real desire to see that part of the world again.

The conversation drifted here and there as we shared stories about different experiences on the road. Before long, we had to head home for supper.

As we shook hands, I asked him what his most memorable time with his Airstream was.

“Well, I noticed that you folks were kind enough not to mention that I have only one arm. I was in pretty bad shape when I came home from that lousy war. Left my other arm over there. Isn’t it funny how we won all the battles but still lost the war?”

He paused and patted his Airstream and said, “This little baby brought meaning back to my life. Hope to see y’all in the morning.”  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

A Hitchhiker’s Guide

Finding the universe in bluebirds

By Tom Bryant

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.”  — Henry David Thoreau

I haven’t met that many people who marched to Thoreau’s drummer. My father for sure, my grandfather without a doubt, and there was a gentleman I had the opportunity to meet for only about an hour, but that fellow was a walking example of what Thoreau had in mind when he penciled his famous Walden.

I’ve talked about it some and have written about the unusual experience I had that hot August afternoon when I met “Hank,” as he said he liked his friends to call him.

It was the week before dove season, and I was as busy as the proverbial one-armed paperhanger trying to get everything done on my newly leased little farm to be ready for opening day. I had invited several friends to help usher in the season, and was running back and forth from our home in Southern Pines to the field located close to Drowning Creek.

It was just before lunch, and the sun was really bearing down when I noticed a hitchhiker right outside of Aberdeen on U.S. 1. He had a sign made from a piece of cardboard with the message:

HEADING SOUTH . . . NO HURRY

The little cardboard sign got my attention, because back in my early days, I used to move around the country hitchhiking, using the same method, a hand-lettered sign with my destination scribbled across the cardboard. It worked.

Those were different days when I used my thumb to get back and forth to college. They were simpler, more peaceful times, and a lot of youngsters got about by hitching rides. But this guy had no destination listed, just south, and he said he was in no hurry. Unheard of, I thought, as I rode by the gentleman standing on the side of the road. Everybody is supposed to be in a hurry.

On my second trip to the farm, the hitchhiker was still in about the same location, walking toward Pinebluff. What the heck, I thought. It’s too hot for the old guy. I decided to pick him up and pulled over to the side.

He hurried up to the Bronco, looked in and said, “Thanks for stopping, mister. It’s getting dang hot out here.” The gentleman looked to be anywhere between 60 and 70. He was dressed neatly in well worn but clean clothes. He had a small backpack, and I could tell he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill loafer. He climbed in the Bronco, and I drove on south.

“Hot day to be out here, fellow,” I said. “Where you headed?”

“You know, I haven’t made my mind up yet. I might visit my sister in Florida or travel to Texas. Texas is supposed to be pretty this time of year.”

And so I met Hank. In our short conversation, I learned that, at one time, he had his own very successful business as a financial consultant and evidently had retired with a bucket full of money. Just when he and his wife were getting ready to enjoy the good life, she came down with a debilitating illness and passed away.

“I started drinking too much,” he said. “Things were on the downhill slide. Nothing meant much to me anymore until one morning I looked out the kitchen window and saw the most beautiful sunrise, and my life turned around. I sold the house, gave everything to the kids, and decided to see the world from the ground up, as it were. I realized I’d never be able to spend all the money I had acquired, and it’s amazing how simply a person can live.

“You know what I did this spring? Watched a pair of bluebirds build a nest and have babies. That’s all I did. I had a part-time job on a horse farm in Virginia, and when I wasn’t cleaning stables, I watched those two little birds. It was wonderful.”

I dropped Hank off a short way from Rockingham, where he said he was going to spend a couple days in a motel, resting and escaping the current heat wave.

I never saw this truly contented man again.

My grandfather, a farmer, spent his life in and made his livelihood from his fields in the low country of South Carolina. He was dedicated to the outdoors, not just for the esoteric aspect but because that’s where he made his living and supported a family of eight children. I spent many days as a youngster following him through freshly planted fields and riding in his pickup as he checked on how his crops were growing. Those drives usually occurred on Sunday, when my grandmother would be at the little Baptist country church located close to the farm. She played the piano for the choir and was a huge supporter of the small house of worship. Me? I stuck close to Granddaddy’s side.

One Sunday as we were checking crops down close to the creek, I asked him, “Granddad, you don’t go to church with Grandma. Why is that?”

He pulled the pickup under a giant live oak and said, “Come on, son, I want to show you something.”

We walked down toward the creek, and he said, “Now, what do you see?”

I was kind of mystified as to where the conversation was going. “Well, I see the creek and the swamp and those giant cypress trees. That’s about it.”

“What do you hear? Listen good. Close your eyes and listen.”

“Crows. Sounds like they’re down the creek around the bend. And the creek water current is burbling, sort of like a whispering noise. And, oh yeah, a blue jay calling from across the creek, and a woodpecker is pecking somewhere close.”

I opened my eyes and we stood there silently on the bank of the little fast moving stream. “Son, this is my church. I figure the outdoors, this creek, our fields, anywhere I am in the woods is about as close to the good Lord as I’m gonna get, until He calls me and wants to talk on a more personal basis. No time soon, I hope,” he said, laughing.

The other person in my litany of outdoor champions is my dad, the finest man I’ve known. An orphan whose parents died in the 1918 flu epidemic, he was placed in the local boys’ home, and that’s where he lived until graduating from high school. A fantastic high school athlete, he won numerous scholarships to several colleges but decided on Clemson. He met Mother, and as they say, the rest is history.

My dad always lived close to the natural world. Growing up in the boys’ home, he was responsible for the garden that helped feed the residents, and that everyday closeness to nature as a boy never went away. He had a morning habit that was a real mystery to me until one morning I asked Mother what he was he doing.

My siblings and I would be around the breakfast table, chowing down, getting ready for school, and Dad would make a cup of coffee and go outside. He would stand there under an ancient longleaf pine, drinking coffee, looking toward the woods that led down to the lake. He followed that same routine every day.

“Tommy,” my mom said, “I believe that’s how your dad communicates with the Almighty.” Dad was outside standing in about the same spot drinking his coffee and looking toward the woodland.

“I think it’s as simple as he’s planning his day and praying for good things for his family.”

Thoreau, if he had had the opportunity to meet my dad, my granddad and Hank, would have been proud to include them in his small circle of friends.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

The Mist of Memories

Family never strays far from the home place

By Tom Bryant

“Tommy, I think I’m going to get a couple of cows. Tom, did you hear me?”

“Ma’am?”

“I said I’m going to buy two cows.”

“What?”

“Two cows. Buy. Put in yonder pasture.”

“Mama, that’s crazy. You know nothing about cows. That could be a
real disaster.”

“Son, I was milking cows when you were just a figment of my imagination.”

“Yeah, Mom, but you were a lot younger, and Grandaddy took care of the cows.”

“Makes no difference. Next time you come to visit, I’ll have two cows in the pasture beside the house, keeping me company.”

And that’s the way it was that early February so many years ago. Somehow, that month had snuck in a couple of spring-like days to lull us into thinking winter was about over. Two or three mild days and then BAM, winter slapped us in the jaw just to let us know that there was more to Mother Nature than was predicted on the Weather Channel.

Mom and I were enjoying the warmth on the front porch of the old house. I was in a rocker soaking up the rays, and Mom was in the swing, holding forth, talking nonstop about her plans for the home place and its surrounding fields, including pastures on both sides and behind the venerable, ancient plantation house.

The farm has been in our family for generations, going back to 1830. Built ostensibly as a wedding present for a young couple, it evolved into a working farm after the Civil War.

Mom had seven siblings, and after my grandparents passed away and during the hiatus while the lawyers figured out who would inherit what, the old house fell into disrepair. None of the children, except Mom, wanted to take on the responsibility and the expense of bringing the antiquated dwelling into the 20th century.

She took on the challenge. It was her history. Too many family occasions had taken place in the old house and the land surrounding it to, as she put it, let it rot away. It was a chore, but as she often did when facing a real difficult task, she made it work.

My dad passed away at a young age but not before he helped Mom pull together all the intricacies required to restore the farm. First came the general contractor, a gentleman builder who also wanted to see the historical house survive. It was a fact that he actually lost money on the project but was proud of the outcome, and often boasted to his friends that the job was a pleasure as he uncovered the amazing handiwork performed so many years ago.

The old house finally was comfortably livable, serving the family as it had so many years in the past. Mom reveled in family occasions and had as many events, which also included neighbors, as she possibly could; and most times it seemed as if I was in the middle of it all.

Family was more than important to her, it was almost a religion.

For example, there was the time when my cousin Faye had a series of small strokes and was recovering at home in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. Mom found out that I was going to be in Charleston on a business trip and gave me a call one evening right before I headed south.

“Tommy, when are you going to Charleston?”

“I’m leaving Monday. I’m gonna stop by the farm on the way home.”

“Make sure you see Faye while you’re there.”

“Mom, Faye’s sick. She can hardly talk. I don’t want to bother her.”

“You won’t bother her. She’s family. You can talk, she can listen.”

It turned out Faye and I had a good visit, and on the way home, I stopped by the farm and told Mom all about it.

“Now, didn’t it make you feel good to see your oldest cousin?” she said as I was walking out the door to head home.

“Actually, Mom, it did. Faye looked good and hopes to be up and around soon. She wants to make the family reunion in August.”

Family reunions! Mom lived for them. It seemed to me in those days as soon as a reunion was over, the plans for the next one would start. They were old-time events during the heat of summer. Relatives I hadn’t seen in years would arrive and feel right at home. Most of the time, my Uncle Tom would barbecue a hog all night before the day of the major event. Aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins twice removed would arrive full of stories about long-dead relatives. In my family, ghosts were always close. It’s said that a person never dies as long as there’s a memory. If that’s true, most of my family, as far back as I can think, is still around in the halls of the old house or hovering in the branches of the live oaks along with the Spanish moss. It’s a Southern thing. As my friend Lewis Grizzard said, “In a way, we’re a lot like the Japanese inasmuch as we revere our ancestors and eat a lot of rice.”

Mom’s two “cows” blossomed into about 20 great big black Angus beef cattle. The 1,000-pound bull would follow her around the pasture like a puppy dog. She talked a lot about the freezing late-March morning when a new calf was born behind the barn in brambles and briars close to the iced-over pond. It was still dark when Mom went down there in the middle of a sleet storm to make sure the calf and the bawling heifer were OK.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my many years as a Southerner, it’s that nothing stays the same, good things as well as bad. That was also true with Mom’s cattle and her ranching experience. The cows became too much to handle, and she had to sell them. She cried like a baby when the big cattle truck loaded the cows and took them away. The old farm seemed empty after they were gone.

Mom went to her glory a couple of years ago after a long, wonderful life. Her ghost, I’m sure, resides with the rest of the family’s long-departed spirits in the halls of the old house.

My sister, Bonnie, inherited the home place along with the surrounding properties, including the grasslands. Next time I’m down there, I’m gonna try to convince her she needs to put a few cows in the pastures. It would make the old farm look natural, and Mom would be proud.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Sporting Life

Black Dark

Sleet, snow, ducks and a dog

By Tom Bryant

Old duck hunters call it black dark. That’s when you crawl out of a warm bed at three in the morning, wander sleepily to the door of the cabin in your skivvies, stick your head out to check the weather, and report back to the boys. The guys are slowly muttering, pulling on long underwear and heavy socks before grabbing a cup of coffee. You report, “Men, it’s sleeting mixed with snow, colder than Aunt Sylvia’s horse holder in January, and black dark. It’s perfect!”

That’s the way it was on one of my last duck hunts at Bob Hester’s duck club right off Lake Mattamuskeet. Black dark. When we trooped out of the little motel where we were staying for the duration, sleet was falling, bouncing off our hats like little grains of sand. As we loaded up and drove out of town toward Bob’s barn, the headquarters for the day’s hunt, Bryan said, “Man, it’s black dark out there.”

The little town of Engelhard has a few pole lights on street corners, and some of the stores were lit with night lights, but it didn’t take long to leave the town with its soft glow and move into the blackness of the country.

Bryan followed up his darkness statement with, “I hope y’all brought your flashlights.” I remembered the little Mag flash I had repacked with new batteries. I remembered the batteries but didn’t remember putting the little light in my gunning bag. Could be trouble, I thought.

The headlights of the truck pierced the coal-black night with just enough brightness that we saw the turn to Bob’s farm as we rode by it. Bryan stopped the truck, backed up, made the turn, and it was a short ride to the barn where we would get our marching orders.

There were two big pole lights on either side of the barn, creating a halo effect with the sleet and snow reflecting back on the building. Bob was inside his walled-off office with his feet propped up on his desk, leaning back next to a glowing, cherry-red woodstove that radiated heat across the room.

Bob Hester is famous across the Southeast with diehard duck hunters. He has gained his reputation after many years of studying species of ducks and their habitats. As Big Tom, a resident of Fairfield and the owner of a thriving duck cleaning business, says, “Mr. Bob knows more about ducks than ducks know about ducks.”

“Well, boys,” Bob said as he dropped his feet off the desk and stood up, “I hope y’all are ready to do some serious ducking. The weather’s right, and the ducks are here. It ought to be a good hunt. Grab your gear and let’s load up. You’ll need flashlights. It’s black dark out there.”

We hustled to the truck, pulled on our waders, grabbed our gunning bags and shotguns, and lastly, pulled out our flashlights. Luckily, I found my light just where I had stowed it, in the top pocket of my bag. It’s one of those waterproof stainless steel Mag lights about the size of a candle and works great in close quarters, but if I had to light up any distance, I was out of luck.

We crammed ourselves in the open bed of Bob’s pickup, and he looked in the back just before cranking up and heading out. “You boys all loaded and ready? It’s about a 15-minute ride. Hang on to your gear. There’s a couple of wet spots I’ll have to negotiate before we get there. Could be some slipping and sliding.”

He was right. The dikes we were driving over had holes from the weather and from regular wear and tear. Muskrats didn’t help as they dug and undermined the sides of the dikes in some cases.

Bryan’s little dog, Babe, snuggled up under my legs trying to escape some of the snow that was coming down harder. Babe was a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon and will retrieve anything from a duck to a squirrel; and as it worked out, she would see a lot of action before the morning was over.

After a short time, Bob’s truck slowed and came to a stop. He stepped out of the cab and said, “OK, boys, this is the jumping-off point.” He shined his big handheld spotlight out across the black water. As we unloaded from the bed of the truck, we watched with some trepidation as the light illuminated the tree line.

“The boat with the decoys is right here on the bank. If I was you, I’d put my coats in the boat until you wade across the canal. The water is a little deep and will come up right high on your waders, probably wet your coats if you leave ’em on. The canal ends right yonder.” He pointed his light to the low growing brush at the beginning of the swamp on the other side of the deep black canal water. It was about 30 yards.

We loaded our gear along with our coats and prepared to shove the skiff off the bank. Bob pointed to me. “Tom, you’re the tallest, go ahead and step in so we can see how high the water is on you.”

“Why don’t I paddle the little boat over to the other side and then step in where it’s shallow.”

“Naw, wouldn’t work. That skiff wouldn’t hold you. She’d sink.”

I looked down at the inky dark water, took a breath, and eased myself down. The water came up over my hips, but I had enough free board on my waders to make it across, unless I stepped in a hole.

Bob shined his big light toward what looked like a cut in the brush on the other side. “See that hole in the brush? You can put your coats on when you get there. It’s relatively shallow after that. Red survey tape placed on some trees will mark the way to the blind. It’s a couple hundred yards. I’ll come back and pick you up around noon. Y’all wear ’em out.”

He climbed into his truck, and we watched as the glow of his taillights disappeared down the dike. It was black dark, and our little lights were like pinpricks in the darkness. It started sleeting in earnest, looking like little pebbles splashing in the canal channel.

Bryan put Babe in the small skiff, and I pulled it over to the cut in the brush, then put on my hunting coat. The sleet changed to snow.

It didn’t take long for us to assemble on the other side and start our forced march across the sleet-covered marsh toward the blind. Bryan’s little dog stayed in the skiff with the gear and decoys as if to say, “I ain’t getting out there. Are you crazy?”

The hunt was many years ago, and it was to go down in the journal as one of the best. Hester has since taken his club super private, which means I can no longer afford it. Neither can any of my hunting buddies. All we have now are memories of what Hester called the “woods blind,” the snow on that winter morning, and that expression of old duck hunters: The night was truly black dark. PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.