by Bill Heavey
Evan rapidly explained the satellite, map, pointer, elevation, and menu pages, each of which has an endless number of subpages within it containing options, settings, and cryptic phrases like Timbalai 194 and Afgooye.
“Let’s say you want to create a waypoint,” Evan said, pushing buttons until a little electronic man on one knee appeared in the LCD. He was carrying a flag with the number 018 on it. Inside the flag was another little flag perched atop a tiny square. There was also a bubble over his head that said “OK?” I could not have been more intimidated by a pistol jabbed into my ear.
Evan dropped his voice as if speaking to a toddler: “We could just accept that and enter OK, but there are 28 other waypoint symbols we could choose to mark where we are.” He hit another button and began scrolling through them: a car, house, tepee, fish, skull and crossbones, skull without crossbones, square, sinking ship, airplane, dollar sign, etc. He selected the house symbol and was about to proceed to confuse me even further when I snatched the unit from him and put a hand to my ear.
“I think I hear your momma calling you,” I said. He looked puzzled. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said. I pretended to listen intently. “Ah. There she is again. You better get home. She sounds mad.”
Seized by a mad desire to create an electronic bread-crumb trail, I fiddled with the thing and eventually got the compass to work, entered my house as a waypoint, and set off for a long walk around the block. When I got home, I discovered that I’d hardly moved at all, much less left bread crumbs. That’s when I noticed the map scale was set to 800 miles. Some people say the day is coming when we’ll all be using GPS whenever we venture into unknown territory. I say Afgooye.
Gear You Really, Really Need
Do you consider yourself a serious hunter? Take this pop quiz. Which of the following statements is a hunter least likely to utter on his deathbed?
(A) That monster buck I missed back in ’71? He was really an inside-the-ears 6-pointer.
(B) I always secretly thought The Bridges of Madison County was Eastwood’s best movie.
(C) I really wish I hadn’t bought so much hunting gear.
If you guessed C, you win a pair of Mossy Oak Blaze Tree-Stand briefs. A real hunter may admit he stretched the truth, may harbor strange aesthetic opinions, but he knows that too much gear is an oxymoron, like saying a deer has too big antlers. My basement is so crammed with the stuff—new, classic, useful, and ridiculous—that my wife, Jane, now requires an escort to take laundry down there. Below are a few items that you simply must have.
Adults-Only Deer Gear
The newest must-have whitetail accessory is—fasten your seat belts—buck semen! That’s right! Not real buck semen, of course. That would be … unsemenly. Not to mention dangerous to collect. (What would you do? Dress up like a doe and take a test tube with you into the pen?) No, what we’re talking about here is synthetic semen. We hunters will be buying railroad cars of the stuff this year.
According to the promotional literature of its distributors (the product is being offered by a number of companies), the “authentic odor and appearance of the product” will be obvious to “every male hunter.” I may be a minority of one, but this male hunter has extremely limited experience with the sight or smell of buck semen. Frankly, I’d just as soon keep it that way. The manufacturers assure me, however, that synthetic buck semen works on two levels: (1) Its irresistible sexual appeal stimulates a mature buck’s mating instinct; and (2) A little synthetic semen deposited in another buck’s territory is “the ultimate insult.” I would not recommend hunting on the ground with this stuff until more data is gathered on how angry bucks react to the ultimate insult at close range, but I think we can all agree that the chemists who formulated this stuff should be short-listed for next year’s Nobel Prize.
I Need This Like I Need …
Eye protection is extremely important to hunters and fishermen, because if you lose your vision you’ve lost a very important part of your eyesight. Also, very few catalogs come in Braille. That’s why Scott goggles with flexible thermofoam gaskets come not only in regular and over-the-glasses styles but also in clear and high-contrast sienna lenses. But the good people at Scott know that the discerning ATV rider or bassboat jockey is always on the lookout for that “extra something.” So, for just $49.95 ($16 more than the regular model), you can get its one-way Hologram Goggles, available in your choice of a single pattern: Bullet Holes.
That’s right. You, the wearer, see normally when you’ve got these babies strapped to your head. To the world, however, you’re sporting three really big bullet holes (caliber is not specified but looks to be about .30/06) in your goggles. These quality optics virtually guarantee you the right-of-way in the marina or at crowded trailheads. The invisible-to-the-wearer feature means that you are likely to forget to take them off in public. This can result in priority seating at diners and restaurants and helps make that all-important first impression when requesting to hunt private property.
Ahem
I am of the firm belief that you can’t have too much stuff slung around your neck in a deer stand. That’s why—in addition to binocs, a grunt tube, laser rangefinder, and a lucky Mr. T medallion—I have added the Original Cough Muffler. This gem features washable, reusable filters, a nonglare matte finish, and its own lanyard. You just hack away into the mouthpiece whenever the urge hits, and it sucks up the sound. It’s only $21.95, plus shipping and handling, from Ellington and Rush Hunting Products in Loganville, Georgia. The problem with this product is it sets you thinking: What about those coughs that come out from, you know, your other end? Aren’t they far more likely to ruin your deer hunt? I think it’s time somebody came up with a Below-the-Belt Cough Muffler—preferably one that wouldn’t hurt to sit on.
Hey! My License Plate!
While we’re on the subject, no hunting rig is complete without Uncle Booger’s Bumper Dumper. (Actual motto: “When it comes to #2, we are #1.”) Say good-bye to squatting behind a bush, in a flimsy Porta Potti, or in spider-infested outhouses with the Bumper Dumper (only $59.95). Just plug the sturdy frame and toilet seat into your trailer hitch, and you’re good to go! The seat has been tested to an impressive 600 pounds, more than adequate for the average sportsman. You can use the Bumper Dumper with plastic sacks, most 5-gallon buckets, or a sealable bucket beneath the toilet seat.
Turn your vehicle into a rolling outhouse. Think of the pride you’ll feel when visiting new friends for dinner, and they start to show you where the bathroom is. That’s the moment you jerk a thumb toward your truck in the driveway and say, “Thanks anyway. Brought my own.” Best results obtained with a stationary vehicle.
Fetch! Fetch! Fetch!
No hours are more precious than the ones you spend with your dog. This includes time spent throwing stuff to him in the water as you prepare for another season freezing in the duck or goose blind. Sure, you can throw plastic dummies to your dog. But plastic dummies are cheap, and don’t think your best friend doesn’t know it. Closed-cell foam with a sewn-in polyrope for easier throwing is a step up. But nothing says “I wuff you” to your best friend like the time-tested Dokken’s Dead Fowl Trainer. The soft, durable foam body simulates the look, feel, and weight of a dead bird. And the limp, totally free-swinging head discourages shaking. In fact, it practically shouts, Take it easy, big fella! I’m dead already! to your dog. The Canada goose is a mere $49.99, the mallard just $26.95.
As long as you’ve gone this far, you’ll want to enhance the realism even more with the Dead Fowl Trainer Shark, an attachable wing that stands up vertically in the water and looks remarkably like a shark fin. It’s just the ticket for building a young dog’s confidence or working on multiple retrieves. Sadly, it may encourage your dog to attempt to retrieve actual sharks. Dokken’s regrets that it cannot be liable for replacement dogs in such cases.
I know what you’re thinking. Hey, it gets tiring chucking fake dead birds out there! It sure does. That’s why you’ll want
to be able to launch them a cool 200 feet with the .22-caliber-blank-powered Retrieve-R-Trainer. The complete kit, manufactured by Specialty Products, includes the launcher, a two-piece shoulder stock, a foam dummy, a cleaning kit, and case for $129.99. Never mind that 200 feet is way beyond shotgun range. The real reason to buy this is to mess with your dog’s head. About the time he’s getting used to the idea that birds fall down (occasionally) when you shoot, show him you also have the power to raise the dead the same way. Your pup will look at you with new respect the very first time you use it. That’s something you can’t put a price tag on.
The Only Way to Hunt ’Em
Every year I vow to go bowhunting with less equipment. Every year I end up with more. And every year it helps me screw up in new and exciting ways.
I checked my cherished Mathews compound: newly installed Limb Savers, 7-inch Doinker stabilizer, and Meprolight tritium pins that glow in the dark. I set my rubber boots in a bag by the front door so I wouldn’t forget them. Into my backpack went a rangefinder, binocs, tree belt with extra hooks, and an adjustable grunt tube that mimics everything from Barry White in heat to Minnie Mouse on helium. I stuffed in my hat, extra fleece vest, and peanut-butter sandwich (double bagged to prevent odor leakage). Then came a spray bottle of Scent Killer for on-stand touch-ups, folding saw, a small water bottle and big pee bottle (make sure not to mix these two up).
In the fanny pack I loaded a flashlight, insect repellent, two Fletchunter releases (they’re black, and I live in terror of dropping one and having to start a brush fire to find it), a bottle of wind indicator powder wrapped with 20 feet of orange tracking tape, knife, deer drag, rubber butchering gloves, disposable plastic scent-placing gloves, a bottle of Trail’s End #307 along with six new scent wicks and reflective ties with which to hang them, arm guard, and license. There was probably some other essential stuff that I can’t remember offhand, but that’s most of it.
I went to bed that night at 10 and woke every half hour until my alarm finally went off at 4:30. There were a few cars already parked when I got to the woods, but nobody near my secret spot. I got upwind of the car and began to dress.
It was at this point I discovered I’d left my rubber boots standing at attention by the front door. I looked down at my shoes: 6-year-old orange leatherette bedroom slippers with vinyl soles that I can locate in the morning by smell alone.
There was only one thing to do. A $250 activated charcoal suit up top doesn’t mean diddly when your feet smell like catfish bait. I got back in the car, sprayed down both slippers with half the bottle of Scent Killer, cranked the defroster on high, and crammed them in the vents. Ten minutes later, I began picking my way stealthily up the slope—falling on my face every 10 yards thanks to the vinyl soles and jamming the top of my tree stand into the back of my skull each time. I’d enhanced my camo with about 5 pounds of dirt by the time my flashlight beam found the single Bright Eye tack in my tree.
I was soon 20 feet up with an arrow nocked and the tattered remnants of hope fluttering in my heart. A groundhog waddled by at eight. At nine, a cardinal perched in a tree and looked at me funny. “Forgot my damn boots,” I whispered. “Leave me alone.”
At 9:30, a pair of small bucks appeared, a 4-pointer followed by a 6. They were working their way right into the wind and past my stand. I stood, legs shaking in my wet slippers, grunted once to stop them after they passed, and made an 18-yard quartering-away shot on the 6-pointer. He went down 70 yards away.
At the local processor’s, I tried to keep the counter between the two of us as I asked for mostly steaks and burgers, with one ham to be made into jerky. I’d tucked the ticket in my wallet and was headed for the door when he caught me. “Hey, man,” he called. “I see them shoes you got.” I braced myself for the coming taunt. Instead, there was respect in his voice. “Still-hunter, right? You must know your onions to get one that way on opening day.”
I turned and beamed at the guy. “Only way to hunt ’em,” I said. Whereupon I swaggered out the door, hit a potatochip wrapper in the parking lot, fell on my butt, and came up smiling. A very lucky season so far.
Confessions of a Bass Fisherman
I’ve been peppering the bank methodically for a good half hour with a soft jerkbait when I catch something out of the corner of my eye. Thirty yards away, a single stalk in an isolated clump of reeds wags once in the breeze and comes back to attention. Only there is no breeze. And no stray puff of air would do a surgical strike on one reed. “Bass,” I mutter, already stashing the rod noiselessly in the bottom of the canoe and lifting my window-sash anchor. Smooth as a shoplifter, I take up the paddle. Three quiet J-strokes put me in casting position.
The rest unfolds like the money shot in a Monster Hawgs of Transylvania video. I throw 10 feet past the target and tease the plastic back like the day’s blue-plate special. The reed bends again. A sudden hole opens in the water. The lure falls down it. And then I’m into him, a bass like I’ve never fought before: too big to jump, too mad to think, too wild to care.
The first surge nearly pulls the rod from my hand. Then he’s dragging the boat up into a cove, the reel is choking each time he bucks, and I’m shaking and reeling frantically in between surges to try and keep up with him. Now his dorsal fin breaks the water, like the conning tower of a submarine surfacing. He looks like a very large fish—only bigger. If I can just hang on I’ll have the bass of my life. He dives, and I’m trying everything I can think of to turn his head when my wife’s face suddenly appears suspended in the air next to the canoe. She doesn’t look happy to see me.
“Stop punching me in the back!” she snaps. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
I wake to find I’m in my own bed, arms pinned in a backlash of nightgown and bedsheets. I have been chasing dream bass again.
Bass fishermen aren’t the craziest people in the world. We do not claim to be the pope, nor that the CIA has implanted tiny receivers in our teeth, nor that we know for a fact that Steven Seagal is a German dressmaker hiding out from his creditors as an action hero in Hollywood. On the other hand, you do not want to get between us and our vehicles when we are sneaking out of work to go fishing. It’s just not a safe place to stand.
Some behaviorists say fishing is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Cast, reel, repeat. Continue until your arm falls off. This is, of course, total nonsense. We will fish only until our arms are so sore we can no longer lift them. This is a big distinction.
Bass anglers will fish at any time, in any kind of weather, on any kind of water. One of my better fish last year came in deepest, darkest Washington, D.C., 20 yards from where half a dozen police cars, blue lights turning the night into a weird kind of funhouse, were haphazardly parked during a major drug bust at Hain’s Point. I’d nailed a 4-pounder along a hydrilla bed on a Tiny Torpedo. One of the beefier cops squinted into the night as he herded men into a paddy wagon, saw my boat, and waddled over to the rail along the river. “Doing any good?” he asked. “I always wondered ’bout fishing here.”
There’s a reason for our devotion. It is this: Once you’ve had a day where it all comes together—when your casts could land on a marshmallow at 25 yards and you sense the fish sucking your lure in right before it happens and they’re hungry for exactly what you’re throwing—you suddenly feel like you’re in exactly the spot you were meant to be, snugly in God’s pocket. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it’s magic. The absolute chaos of your life suddenly makes sense, and you know firsthand that at least one path to grace can be navigated with a paddle, oars, or trolling motor.
And we will lie, if we must, to get to the water. Back before I realized I’d never make employee of the month and quit a regular job to take up the twin vows of outdoor writing and poverty, I spent as much time scheming to get out of work as I did actually working. Chronic ailments were my stock-in-trade. From May to October, I was beset by periodontal disease and sinus infections, sleep apnea and a back that required regular chi
ropractic adjustment. These conditions were aggravated by incoming low-pressure systems and the tidal variations of the river I fished.
My boss knew. Heck, the whole office knew. But knowing and proving are two different things. Walking to my car in the lot, I’d be so full of fishing anticipation that I’d have to force myself not to run. It was a heady feeling, to still be on the clock while surfing the crest of the first wave of rush-hour traffic, headed for a place called the Stick-Ups and an afternoon chasing bass. Now that I’m my own boss and can go fishing whenever my wife says it’s okay, I almost miss it. Almost.
Bass fishermen are not, as so often portrayed, equipment junkies. You give me a truck, boat, trailer, depthfinder, trolling motor, lights, GPS, radio, aerator, four tackle boxes, 100 lures, eight rods, and a pair of polarized glasses, and I’m one happy camper. A measly 70 grand would just about do it. Heck, I bet Ray Scott spent that much each year on those fringed cowboy jackets he used to wear at the Classic weigh-in before they gave him the boot. And despite our affection/affliction for gear, we also love knowing that the bass couldn’t care less.
We know what George Washington Perry, the farm boy from Rentz, Georgia, was outfitted with when he caught The Fish, the 22-pound 4-ounce monster he dredged up from Lake Montgomery pond back in 1932. He was using a $1.33 baitcasting outfit and a Creek Chub Wiggle Fish, a wooden lure with glass eyes. He was fishing from a skiff he made himself from 75 cents worth of scrap lumber. That fish was very nearly spherical, 32 inches long and 28 inches in girth, only a little smaller than the bass in my dreams.
The new world-record largemouth is more than likely finning its way around someplace right now, scaring the bejesus out of any little 12-pounder that makes the mistake of settling into its hole. I want to be the one to catch it, of course. I want the million bucks in endorsements and the everlasting fame, and I want the world to be mesmerized by how humble I am afterward, thanking Jesus and Momma and my corporate sponsors.
