Winging along at an altitude somewhere between the Bluebird of Happiness and the Chicken of Depression... random esoterica from writer Chad Love celebrating the joys of fishing, hunting, books, guns, gundogs, music, literature, travel, lonely places, wildness, history, art, misanthropy, scotch and the never-ending absurdity of life.
Last night I had a dream (Really, no joke. I actually had this dream...) wherein Nick Offerman, in full-on "Parks & Rec" Ron Swanson mode, is showing me a sleek and gorgeous shotgun, a hammergun, of course, that he had made by hand. As he is pointing out all the details on the gun, Nick/Ron is beseeching me, in his deadpan Ron Swanson way, to either buy it, take it, or go find a hammergun of my own to hunt with (I can't quite remember which it was...) because real men of taste and dignity use such weapons.
It was, well, a little weird. Now I have this feeling that somehow, I must go find myself a nice, shootable hammergun, which is laughable, of course, because the only way I could afford an exposed-hammer double gun right now would be to buy two fifty-buck pawnshop H&R's and then weld them together.
Anyway, it was a strange dream, and to the best of my knowledge the first time I've ever dreamed of either exposed-hammer shotguns or Ron Swanson, even though I greatly admire both. Interpret it as you will. Interestingly enough, Nick Offerman, who is a screamingly funny guy, and also happens to be married to screamingly funny gal (and Oklahoman) Megan Mullally, is also a very talented woodworker, with his own LA woodshop.
Pretty cool stuff there, including a lot of projects involving beautiful slabbed timber, something I'd love to do myself if I could ever afford one of those small portable sawmills I've wanted for a while. So even though Nick Offerman probably couldn't build me a hammergun from scratch (Although I'm sure Ron Swanson could), I bet he could re-stock it.
Offerman also has a new book out entitled Paddle Your Own Canoe. Seems amusing. Haven't read it, but I'll keep my eyes open for it at the library. Can't buy it. I'm saving up for a hammergun...
Here's an interesting help wanted ad I saw this morning via the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Facebook page. If you've ever dreamed of escaping the pointless drudgery of your Office Space existence and going to work for a group of people so delightfully archaic and out of touch with modern times that they believe our public lands should best be protected, and experienced using quads not built by Yamaha or Kawasaki, then throw out those TPS reports, tell Lumbergh to go pound sand and brush up the 'ol resume, because here's your chance to throw off the yoke of corporate serfdom and Do Some Good...
We are seeking an individual with the talent, passion and desire to
promote and grow the Nation’s leading public lands focused sportsmen’s
conservation organization. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is growing
with 13 state chapters, individual members in all 50 states, and a
$650,000 annual budget.
Job Description & Primary Responsibilities:
Serve as a liaison between BHA headquarters and the leadership of local state chapters.
Provide services and support to BHA chapters throughout the country.
A primary focus of the duties will include increasing membership, event
planning, fundraising, merchandise sales and working with state
chapters to advance state and national conservation programs.
Work with and maintain regular communications with chapter leaders
to keep our volunteers informed and motivated about the organization and
its mission, activities, goals and fund-raising efforts. Work with the
BHA team to build major gift, corporate, foundation, grant, and planned
giving relationships to escalate our mission-related efforts
Develop new chapters and strengthen existing chapters to encourage strong volunteer leaders.
Plan and conduct meetings with chapters.
Minimum Qualifications:
The team member we desire is innovative and a creative thinker with a proven success of following through with their ideas.
Demonstrated - results oriented organizational, leadership, and sales skills.
Bachelor’s degree in related field plus 2 years of practical experience.
Demonstrated ability to work with and interact with sportsmen and
sportswomen and a general knowledge of public land conservation issues.
Innovative and resourceful self-starter that is able to work with minimal supervision.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Starting Salary: Depending on experience. This is a full time position with health and retirement benefits.
Living in a state where the very notion of public land is viewed as a pseudo-Socialist plot designed to destroy the free market, BHA is one of those groups I greatly admire from afar, and really should join (and in fact, damn it, will join...). This sounds like a great job working for a group doing important, rewarding work, and were I either qualified and living in a western state with, you know, some public land to actually defend, orqualified and in a position to relocate to a western state with some public land to defend,I'd probably have my arms wrapped around the legs of their HR manager right now, crying like a wee girl and begging to be hired.
Instead, I'm passing it along as a public service announcement to any of you miserable Miltons out there who may be reading this surreptitiously from your cubicle while dreaming of someday escaping the hive to find Meaning.
Monday afternoon I decided it would behoove me to grab the decoys, the waders and the old lady (canine version) and be set up on the water when that massive, nationwide cold front/storm system was scheduled to blow through late Monday afternoon. I had visions of undulating waves of high movers riding the wind right into my decoys. Ahh, the giddiness of pre-failure...
I also briefly considered hunting - for the first time - out of the kayak, but wisely decided that 45mph gusts, a notoriously windswept lake, plunging windchills, and a tiny, narrow boat loaded with gear, decoy bags, a somewhat fat man and a somewhat fat dog would more than likely result in Watery Death and six inches below the fold in our local paper.
So instead I decided to hunt a small slough below the dam of the reservoir. Not an ideal location, as it presented some logistical issues of its own (long hike in, extremely limited area in which to hunt, extremely limited open water in which to drop ducks so your dog doesn't have to search for them in the acres of dense, flooded reeds that ring the pond, even more extremely limited area in which to set decoys without falling into deep water/sucking muck and the corresponding Watery Gelatinous Death that goes along with said misstep, etc.). It's basically a spot that allows zero flexibility in setting up according to conditions and wind direction. Like castor oil, you just have to take what's given and like it.
But when everything aligns just right, it can be a great spot. So that's where the dog and I found ourselves Monday afternoon. We survived the extended sand plum thicket crawl, I survived the setting of the decoys, and all we needed now was cold weather and mallards.
So we waited for the gust front and the clouds of ducks that were surely just over the northern horizon. And waited, and waited, perspiring in my waders as I watched clouds of insects fornicate under a brilliant azure sky. Where the hell was the cold front? Where the hell were the ducks?
Eventually, I started getting a few ducks winging by in the sunshine, almost all of them wigeon, a species of duck for which I have a particular fondness. The obvious fakery of my decoy spread was eclipsed only by the obvious fakery of my calling, but I did manage to drop the first pair of weary, astigmatic and tone-deaf wigeon that committed to the decoys. I sent Tess after the first one and then remembered that I had a video camera I never, ever remember to actually use. So I grabbed it to record a few seconds of sloppy dog handling, lackadaisical dog work (she is ten, after all), and overall low-production value entertainment of interest to absolutely no one but myself. But since this is my blog, I don't care...
She's never been a ball of fire like my other two chessies, and she's never been as crisp, either, but she's always been consistent, if a little plodding. I duck hunt almost exclusively alone, so the past few years as she's slowed down and settled into her golden years, I've let Tess slide on a lot of little things for which real dog men would frown upon and chastise me. But again, she's ten years old. She doesn't give a shit what real dog men think of her, and neither do I.
So we waited, enjoyed the sunshine, shot a couple more wigeon, which appeared sporadically and in small groups, and waited some more. All in all not a bad way to spend a late afternoon, even if the expected clouds of ducks never showed up. Right before I decided to pack it in and head for home, a lone drake mallard flew in, and instead of dropping him in open water, which is what would have happened had I shot him correctly, I winged him and he tumbled exactly where I didn't want him to go; into the jungle of reeds and deep, sucking muck across the slough to my right.
Since both the dog and I were in a makeshift blind on the back side of the dam, covered with reeds, all either of us could see was the mallard angling into the general area of the reeds. Neither of us could actually mark it down.
Well, shit. I had a downed but live duck out there in that nightmare of water, mud and cover, no clear idea where it was, and absolutely no way to reach it short of sprouting gills or webbed feet. Well, that's why you have a dog, right? All I could do was line her in the general direction of where I thought the duck went down, give her a "back" and hope like hell the fat old girl could bust her way through those reeds and use her nose to find that mallard. There would be no handling beyond the initial line, but she knew the game.
So I sent her, watched her hit the reeds and disappear, and then of course suddenly remembered (again, a bit late) that I had a video camera. What follows is, literally, about eight minutes of me filming a silent row of reeds, so I chopped it down to about a minute-and-a-half of me filming reeds, followed by some silly, overly effusive praise that Tess earned every bit of.
A few short years ago Tess would have eaten up a retrieve like that, but at ten, although she's still fairly active, I was a bit worried she'd tire out looking for that mallard and get hung up in the reeds,which really must be seen in person to understand just how dense they are and how difficult it is for a dog to negotiate. If she had gotten hung up, my only option would have been to walk back to the north around the entire slough, cross a creek, walk back in from the west and start bushwacking into the water, hoping like hell I wouldn't step off into a hole or bury myself in silt.
But she made it: all slow, pudgy, arthritic, crotchety, gray-muzzled, slowly-going-blind sixty pounds of her. It wasn't an especially long retrieve, sixty yards, maybe seventy. But a tough one for a seasoned citizen. It was a helluva lot of fun to witness, a great way to start what may well be her last season, and a perfect example of why I will never understand the appeal of hunting ducks and birds without dogs. I know a lot of people do, and that's cool if they like it, but for me hunting without a dog is kinda like eating a chocolate chip cookie without the chocolate chips. Bleh.
A few observations from opening weekend of my personal obsession with a fast-fading tradition:
I think this is going to be Ozzy's breakout season where he starts putting things together. He's doing well, and I am pleased. Jenny, not so much thus far. She was a wild, poorly-behaved wench this weekend. My fault. We'll be working on that. She always seems to start out poorly and get better as the season goes along. I'm hoping that pattern holds.
Trying to keep up with dogs over rough terrain, not to mention mounting a gun, getting your head down on the stock and properly swinging through on a quail, all while suffering from an irritating and pernicious firewood cutting-related neck and hand injury (more on that in some future blog) that prevents you from doing pretty much all of those things, is an act of futility and pain. Think Frankenstein attempting to hunt quail, and that would be a good approximation of me this past weekend.
As suspected, we have more birds around than last year, which means that instead of walking twenty miles and seeing only heat shimmers, hallucinations and dust devils, this season you will walk twenty miles and not only see heat shimmers, hallucinations and dust devils, but your dogs may, just may, get a fleeting chance to catch a few tantalizing molecules of quail essence swirling in the eddies of the morning chill, and then remind you why you're so infatuated with them. The dogs and the quail.
But despite that, it's still bad, and nowhere near what it needs to be. Last year was apocalyptically grim. This year it's merely catastrophically grim. If we get one more summer like last, perhaps we can hope for an upgrade to disastrously grim next fall, and if we get really, really lucky and get two more normal summers, I believe the Oklahoma quail season of 2015-2016 will be merely grim.
At least that's what I and the 20,000-odd (down from well over 100,000 at one point) fools who still stubbornly chase these dreams into the wasteland each year are shooting for. The only question is, how many of them will still be around in a couple years to enjoy that wonderfully grim year of quail hunting?
It was not hard to find solitude this past Saturday on the public area I hunt every opening weekend. A few more than last year, including a couple out-of-state groups who chased their own dreams all the way from Georgia and Alabama. But even with the uptick in numbers, it was a shadow of what was, and most of those few remaining are old, wistful and pushing forward mostly on the pull of the past.
As I was sitting on my tailgate Saturday afternoon eating lunch, a truck with a dog trailer pulled up beside me. Two men inside. Old-time men. Dog men. Bird-hunting men, representatives of a sepia-tinged epoch now past, trying to find one last good and familiar thing in this one. We talked for over an hour. They were both in their late seventies, from back east, almost to Arkansas. Their dogs were old, their truck was old, their guns were old, and their tales were old. And fascinating. And terribly sad. And terribly familiar. Two aging men from a region once rife with quail and quail hunting tradition, now driving a bunch of aging dogs hundreds of miles, all for the chance to grasp memory. I suppose that's what we all do eventually.
We talked dogs and guns and quail and OU football and when it was time to leave I gave them my card, told them to call me next fall for a scouting report and wished them luck. Right before they drove off, one of them said "you know, you're the youngest quail hunter I've met in a while." It should be noted that I am 42, and while the concept of "young" changes
with age, by no stretch of the imagination am I a rosy-cheeked cherub. But he was right. In fact, I was the youngest quail hunter I had seen all weekend.
I thought of the legions of truly young kids, teenagers and twenty-somethings that I had run into (for better and worse. Usually worse) out duck hunting the past two seasons, all those "crews" with their wispy beards and their barrel stickers on their guns and their "Cut 'Em" stickers on their truck windows and their simple faith that the ducks will always be here because of course for them the ducks always have been here, just like the quail had always been here, and everyone, young and old, had always hunted them. Until, of course, they weren't.
As those two old men drove off in search of what pulled them here, I couldn't help but wonder if they'd be back next year, or maybe the year after, or if they'd just drive off into the past, never to return. It's a helluva thing to lose an entire tradition. And it's a helluva thing to be a young quail hunter at 42.
After almost a year of inaction, obsessive online research and comparison shopping, it's time for me to bite the bullet and buy a good, commercial-grade meat grinder. I've narrowed it down to the 1/2 (or thereabouts) horsepower, #8 neck, stainless grinders from either Cabela's or LEM. However, my innate cheap-ass has raised its head, as it so often does, whispering, "Damn it, it's just a meat grinder! Buy This $99 knock-off
from Northern Tool and stuff that extra $200 in your sock."
I've had people whose opinion I trust tell me the Cabela's grinders truly are worth the money, and the online praise for them is damn-near universal. They're on sale right now, the half-horse model for $329, which is steep, but apparently good grinders- especially grinders that will be doing a lot of venison - are one of those "you get what you pay for, cry now or cry later" kind of products. But the nearest Cabela's to me is in Wichita, Kansas, so shipping a big, heavy grinder will cost.
The LEM is equally praised, and Bass Pro Shops-branded version is (not un-coincidentally) also on sale for $329. And although I generally dislike Bass Pro shops and make it a point to never step foot in the place, we do have one semi-locally. However, I'm also pretty sure that Academy sells the same grinder, and if it's like most everything else, it'll be cheaper at Academy, with the added bonus that you won't have some jerk-off accosting you as you're walking out the door trying to sell you lakeside condo timeshares in Missouri like they do at Ass Pro.
There is also a third option: I could try to win Hank Shaw's Book Promotion Contest and win the sweet 1/2 horsepower Weston grinder he's giving away (According to online rumor, Weston may or may not be the actual manufacturer of the Cabela's grinders). The only problem is that A. the kind of picture I had in mind probably wouldn't be in the best of taste, and B. (and I'm quite embarrassed to admit this, especially since I'm trying to get Hank to come out next spring and go paddlefish snagging with me) I actually haven't bought a copy of Duck, Duck, Goose yet to be able to take a picture. In fact, I haven't even shot a Duck, Duck or Goose yet this season. Long story there. But I'm going to, Hank, honest. Shoot a duck this year, and buy your book...
So anyway, before pulling the trigger, I thought I'd ask for any last-minute suggestions, ideas or recommendations. Anybody have any personal experience with either the Cabela's or LEM grinders,or even that cheap Northern Tool meat grinder? Did I mention it's 99 bucks? It's also actually gotten not-bad reviews on a lot of the online forums. And it's 99 bucks. And there's a Northern Tool in OKC. And it's 99 bucks.
Or should I just lump it and buy quality the first time around? I've been butchering my own deer for years, and for years I've been messing around with a combination of junk grinders, other people's grinders, and other people's junk grinders. My brain says I should really be leaning toward quality...
But did I mention that Northern Tool grinder is only 99 bucks?
Truism: There is an inverse relationship between my age and the number of camouflage clothing items I own. As one keeps going inexorably up, the other keeps going steadily down.
Makes sense, I suppose. These days, I mostly bird and waterfowl hunt. Obviously I eschew any camo at all for my bird hunting, not only for the fact that it looks unbelievably silly, and tacky, but also because I have no desire to resemble a leafy, three-dimensional, color-changing, UV-blocking, ultra-wicking, holographic Ent as I chase the dogs across the landscape.
I do wear camo waders and a camo parka while duck hunting (the pattern escapes me, Dickweed Maxx 4-D, or something like that), along with a facemask (no effing affected facepaint for me) and a hat, so there is that. I can't completely chunk all this overpriced, overhyped crap, because, well, it does help some with the duckies. I also wear a few old, faded camo (lineage unknown) t-shirts and earth-toned shorts for early dove. In addition, I have a few old, worn and and thoroughly unstylish camo shirts and pants I wear for spring turkey, along with gloves, mask and hat.
But that's about it for my camo-wearing these days, which is a far, far cry from my camo-festooned youth, during which - growing up in a state college town - camouflage was not only potent tribal identity (Me Manly Hunter Man!), but fashion, philosophical, and political statement as well. You know, all those terribly important statements that seem to stop mattering so much as you grow older.
These days, I pretty much ignore the merchants of redneck cool and instead have taken to wearing mostly earth-toned surplus wool pants and shirts for what little bowhunting I still do, and have even begun committing the unpardonable sin of wearing a pair of old jeans and a brown or dark gray flannel shirt on warm days during deer gun season. And it's the damndest thing: as long as I pay attention to the wind, sit up against something (like a cedar tree) that breaks up my outline, and don't fidget around, the deer don't seem to mind they're being shot by a simple-minded nebbish who is neither Hard-Core nor Xtreme enough to wear such duds as what's now available.
I can live with that. Hell, eventually I'd even like to get rid of all my camo, every bit of it, and just go back to hunting like this guy.
I know you and Wiley Post (tragically born Texan but raised Okie) died together way back in 1935, but damn it, you left us way too soon. Hard to imagine that the state of Oklahoma once produced adventurers like Post and thinkers like you. In fact, you and Woody Guthrie were the best thinkers the state of Oklahoma ever grew. Honest. Since you two left, it's been mostly front-end-of-the-Bell-Curve territory for us, public-figure-wise. Which is why I'd be damn curious to know what you and Woody would think of your state and your country these days.
Now I know you once famously said you never met a man you didn't like, but
I must point out that, well, you did die rather young, and perhaps you
just never got the opportunity, so I have an idea: Please, for the love of all that's holy, and decent, and good, come back. Just come back. Yes, as a zombie. The undead are not only socially acceptable these days, they're actually celebrated (there's a societal metaphor in there somewhere). Truly, it's a damn interesting epoch we're in, and I'm confident that without much effort you'll finally find someone you not only dislike, but loathe. Trust me, there are legion from which to choose.
Come on, Will, re-animate. We miss you, we need you, and there's a helluva lot of us stuck here in the temporal world who would gladly take even a zombie Will Rogers over the entire current crop of bloviating fuckwits polluting the airwaves and the ether these days. I guess you could say that we're just all zombies looking for some brains down here, Will, and not finding them anywhere. Could you come back and give us yours, again?
