by Bill Heavey
The Blind-Hog Jackpot
Once or twice a year, some manufacturer of hunting gear mistakes me for a serious outdoor writer and invites me on a free hunt. Since the call usually comes two days before the event, I am obviously not their first choice. But if Philip Bourjaily suddenly has a custom shotgun fitting or David E. Petzal needs his back waxed for a Hot Shots of the Gun World photo shoot, they may call me. As a writer whose only tangible asset is his reputation, I have a strict policy for dealing with all such offers. I accept immediately.
The people arranging this one were the manufacturers of Gore-Tex fabrics and Scent-Lok hunting duds, products that rank right up there with the pyramids and Britney Spears as among the greatest creations in history. They invited me to a two-and-a-half-day whitetail hunt on the 20,000-acre Halff Brothers Ranch in south Texas. The bad news was that it was for “management” bucks, the small deer that are periodically removed from the herd. The good news was that in south Texas these are gargantuan, bigger than 99 percent of the deer a typical hunter sees in his lifetime.
On a short hunt, it’s important to start botching things up early. At the airport, I was unable to lock my bow case because I had left the key on the kitchen table. “You don’t lock it, you don’t take it,” the security guy said. Every pore in my body opened and began to leak sweat. I was saved by Eric Eshleman, a TSA screener who fills his downtime on the job by picking luggage locks. He locked the case using a twisted paper clip, then sent me on my way with the new key. I hereby nominate him as the permanent head of Homeland Security.
I didn’t mess up again for nearly 20 hours. But bright and early the next morning, I decided to leave my release in the truck when guide Greg Bladgett and I were dropped off. We sat in a pop-up blind, as lethal as lawn jockeys, while a high-racked 7-pointer fed contentedly just yards away. Greg and I must be related, because he had decided to leave his cell phone in the truck, so we couldn’t call anyone to bring the release back. After a long silence, he dribbled tobacco juice in the dirt and whispered, “Aren’t we a couple of gold-plated idjits?”
On the final morning, with my chances to get a deer running out, Greg saw me readying my bow and said, “Ain’t gonna need that today.” As I hadn’t rezeroed my rifle, he handed me his bull-barreled 7mm mag, equipped with a 4×12 scope, and a handful of 140-grain ballistic-tip handloads. We set up in the dark, prone behind a log looking straight down at least 400 yards of road. At dawn, five does emerged to feed. Ten minutes later, I put the crosshairs on the shoulder of a shooter buck and squeezed. When the smoke cleared, Greg turned red. “You shot the wrong buck!” he hissed. Then he turned pale. “I’m going to get fired.” I had shot the only buck I had seen, which had since vanished. Better—or worse—much farther down the road lay a second, larger buck in its final throes.
Greg told me he had seen the second buck just before I fired, knew it was too big, and figured it wouldn’t make any difference on the shot of the deer we had agreed I would take. Greg thought the deer I’d aimed at did not react as if it had been hit. I was pretty sure I’d made a good shot.
Together, we walked down the road. At 120 yards, the animal I’d aimed for lay 15 feet off the road, as dead as a rock. He was a big, beautiful 130-class eight. We walked another 130 steps to the second buck. Evidently the bullet had continued on and hit it in the spine and femoral artery. He was definitely out of my price range—a 150-class trophy with 9 points, tons of mass, and kickers galore. Depending on how you chose to look at it, I had made either the shot or the screwup of a lifetime. Greg called his boss, who in turn called the ranch manager and biologist. “Don’t you touch a thing,” he said to me. “I’m gonna show them exactly how it happened.”
Many conferences in closed truck cabs later, Greg was cleared. The county limit is two bucks, so that wasn’t a problem at all. In the end, the ranch manager decided that I could keep the buck I’d shot at. The second will be on display this fall in the lodge of the Halff Brothers Ranch. They took my photo holding both bucks—more antler than I’d cumulatively killed in my lifetime, looking exactly like what I was, a no-name hunter who’d just hit the blind-hog jackpot. And I just want to say that I couldn’t have done it without my Gore-Tex and Scent-Lok clothing. It is absolutely the best.
Out of My League
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can substantially upgrade the quality of your misery. Take me, for example. It’s a crisp morning in southwest Georgia, and I’m holding a slim Italian-made 20-gauge at port arms as I stride through the brush. The engraving of quail and dogs on it cost the eyesight of untold craftsmen, and the Circassian walnut stock has a grain like a Damascus blade, flashing purple highlights when the sun hits it. A hundred yards ahead, past the wire grass and plots of milo and sunflower, I can make out the well-muscled haunches of English pointers that receive more daily attention than those of Jennifer Lopez.
Suddenly, the dogs turn to marble. Jack, Thommy, and I pull even with each other. Jack Unruh, whom I had never met before, is the illustrator whose depictions of me as a clueless nimrod on the back page of Field & Stream magazine have brought squeals of joy from my daughters. We arranged to meet in Georgia so I could finally confront him about this, man to man. But he disarmed me by sneaking up on me at the baggage carousel at the airport and whispering, “You’re even uglier in real life.” Thommy is a friend of Jack’s from way back. He owns about 9 billion acres of land managed exclusively for wild quail, and I am looking for the right moment to tell him that I want to be his new best friend.
We pause, awaiting Thommy’s nod, then advance. The birds erupt—always the same, yet always startling—and scatter like jazz musicians, each riffing wildly on the theme of “downwind and fast.” Jack is a pretty good shot. Armed with this self-pointing stick, even I make a pretty sight every so often. But Thommy, toting a .410 soda straw (albeit a Purdey), plucks them down with a single-mindedness that Old Scratch himself would admire. He is the best shot I have ever seen. After a while, even the .410 seems like too much gun.
Growing conditions below the Mason-Dixon Line are especially suited to larger-than-life characters like Thommy, who combines scandalous amounts of old money and charm, plenty of horsepower upstairs, and a hint of insanity from having been on the losing side in the Civil War (don’t take this the wrong way; it runs in my own family).
“My ancestors were quite successful raising cotton and tobacco, and Daddy did the same in peanuts,” he tells me while we rotate in a fresh pair of dogs. “But my personal cash flow improved dramatically upon my father’s death, when I was 19.” Thommy’s father, a flinty fellow who could afford any gun on earth, hunted with a battered Remington Model 11 with a Cutt’s compensator. Fancy guns were for fools. You showed your respect for the birds with your shooting ability. His pleasure must have been keen when his only son took to quail hunting right out of the box. Thommy shot his first limit by age 9 and was a nationally ranked skeet shooter as a teen. He knew without being told to conceal his yearning for fancy firearms.
“There are people around here who will tell you that I ordered my first Purdey before my father was in his grave. Not so. It was the Monday morning after the service. At which time I ordered three.
“I knew Daddy wouldn’t have approved, and I regret that. In fairness to myself, however, he had his own secrets. One was that his grandfather had come to Georgia to escape hanging for horse thievery in Virginia. Another was that I am actually the child of a woman he met only once and sent off to New Orleans with a trust fund.” Although this seemed quite a confession, it was clear Thommy wasn’t telling me anything he hadn’t told many others. And you don’t really talk to men like Thommy. You listen, nodding in the appropriate places.
I made a double late in the hunt, a sensation so sweet that I wanted nothing so much at that moment as the financial wherewithal to experience it regularly. But time moves fast in Fat City, especially with a shot like Thommy. We had our limit by early afternoon, and he left soon after, driving north to
check out a promising dog.
Jack and I drove back to our motel, where I found the smell of Lysol unexpectedly welcome, returning me to a world I recognized. We cleaned the birds outside and iced a dozen. The remaining 12 we dredged in flour and pan-fried in the kitchenette. We sat on the parking-lot curb just outside our room, the grease spot on the paper towel between us spreading as the birds disappeared. Sipping pricey bird-trip Scotch from paper cups, we watched the red sun slip into the slotted horizon. I found myself envying Thommy, yet relieved to be back from cloud nine. “You know what it is?” I said to Jack. “I’m too screwed up to have that much money. I couldn’t handle it.”
Jack sipped his whiskey and smiled. “Aw, don’t worry. I don’t think it’s going to happen.” We touched paper cups and drank again. Then, realizing I’d just been insulted, I leaned over and took the last bird for myself.
En Garde!
Recently, the editor in chief of Field & Stream, Sid Evans, invited me to chase tarpon and snook with him in Florida. I accepted enthusiastically and began sweating like a low-level mafioso asked to go for a boat ride. Possible reasons for the summons include the following: (1) He has just read one of my expense reports a little too closely, (2) David E. Petzal is again lobbying for me to cover carp noodling in North Korea, or, worst of all, (3) he expects me to fly-fish. In which case I am toast. On the off chance that years of neglect have improved my casting skills, I get out my fly rod, set up in the backyard, and begin hitting myself in the forehead with a weighted nymph.
It’s not that I don’t know how to fly-fish. In just 25 years, I have gone from raw beginner to advanced beginner. But here’s the thing: I have almost always felt like a hypocrite with a fly rod in hand, as if I were trying to impress somebody watching from the bushes. And I’ve always despised the snobbery of so many fly-fishermen. Plus, I stink at it.
I can hear you long-rod boys getting your backs up already. “We’re not better, just different,” you huff. “After all, what really matters is having a good time.” Translation: “Our idea of entertainment is Shakespeare, and yours is the back of a Froot Loops box. But the important thing is that we both love to read.”
My idea of fun is catching fish. Tons of them if possible. I love the tug and the way all three of us—the fish, the line, and I—become electrically connected for a few moments. I can count on zero fingers the number of times I’ve gone to bed thinking, Damn, that would have been a pretty good day if I hadn’t caught so many fish. But you can’t tell a fly-fisherman that. He’ll give you some mumbo jumbo about “loving the process,” spit white wine in your eye, and run you over with his Saab.
Despair over the outing with Sid drives me to set up a casting lesson with fly-fishing legend Lefty Kreh a couple of days before the trip. Nervous as a fat hog in December, I call that morning to confirm the appointment.
“What time did I tell you?” Lefty asks.
“Eleven,” I say. “Don’t you remember?”
“Hell, I’m 80 years old,” he cackles. “I don’t even remember why I just came upstairs.” Put a fly rod in Lefty’s hands, however, and he remembers everything. We get right to it, casting on a pond near his house. “Forget all that crap about the clock face,” he tells me. “It’s not where you start or end, but what direction the rod tip is traveling when you stop that determines where your cast will go. And it sure ain’t about power. I can throw a line 100 feet into the wind with two fingers.” Holding the rod between his thumb and first finger, he does exactly that. It’s like having Harry Houdini tell you how easy it is to pick locks with your toes or Dan Marino explain that any newborn could throw a perfect spiral 70 yards.
In spite of myself, I begin to make progress. “That’s it,” says Lefty. “Firm wrist. And forget that B.S. about holding the elbow in tight. It can move all you want as long as you keep it on the same level. Imagine your elbow sliding along a shelf. Yeah!” For a few minutes there, I actually believe I can pull it off.
In the Everglades three days later, I am offered a chance to take the bow platform and cast a big fly tight into the mangroves for snook. I confess to not being a great fly caster.
After watching me for a few minutes, our guide quietly begins to assemble some spinning tackle and hands the long rod to Sid. I am delighted to report that he is not the world’s most stylish caster, but he does possess an annoying knack of getting the fly to land where he wants it to go. Possibly it is just afraid of becoming unemployed otherwise. Anyway, it wasn’t long before he had a good snook on. And a minute later, I had one, too.
That night over dinner, the guide announced that he’d had a cancellation the next day and that he and his brother would be going out to smack a few snook themselves.
“Fly rods?” I asked.
“Hell, no,” he retorted, taking a long pull on his beer. “Not when I’m trying to get one for the grill.”
Long story short, my editor doesn’t care about my fly-fishing skills, and I still have a job. At least until he invites me to go skeet shooting with him.
Girl Meets Bluegill
The first rule of introducing a kid to fishing is that you absolutely must catch fish. Later on, he or she may be open to the idea of “enjoying the experience.” But at 5, believe me, they are out for blood. You get two, maybe three shots before even the dumbest Clifford the Big Red Dog DVD beats the hell out of watching a bobber do nothing. And then you have lost your child to all sorts of horrors: gangs, methamphetamines, violin lessons.
The first time I take Emma fishing, she is psyched right up until she steps into the canoe. Normally, water holds no terror for her. But now, just as we are about to shove off, her lower lip starts to tremble. “Gustave,” she whispers.
Gustave is an all-too-real Nile crocodile we have recently seen on a National Geographic special. He is more than 20 feet long and in the past few decades has eaten over 200 people, mostly fishermen in a river near Lake Tanganyika. The story of the French naturalist trying to trap Gustave for study made for a riveting documentary. The only problem was that he failed. Gustave is still out there.
“Don’t worry, Monk-a-lula,” I tell Emma. “Gustave never comes here. It’s too cold.” Emma checks the shoreline for crocs. I can almost see the machinery in her brain weighing her father’s perfect record (so far) of keeping her safe versus the primordial reptilian monster. The first tear streaks her cheek. Game over.
The second time, I decide to fish from shore. Emma has already shown remarkable casting potential with her little Tigger-themed push-button outfit, recently putting so much wrist into a cast with the yellow “fishy” practice plug that she snapped the line. I bait a No. 6 Eagle Claw hook with a worm just below the bobber. Emma attempts three casts, none of which reach the water. I gently take over, but the rig is so light that even I can barely get it out there. Fishless after two minutes, she starts throwing gravel into the water. “Monk, that scares the fish,” I tell her.
“That’s okay,” she assures me brightly. I change locations, wanting at least to produce a fish so she understands the goal here. She follows, with larger handfuls of gravel.
“I’m fishing here,” I say. There is a silence.
“Can we go home?” she asks. Zero for two.
It’s the bottom of the ninth inning. Unless we get on fish quickly the next time, my daughter will be lost to me forever. She will become an animal rights activist and be trampled to death by hogs while attempting to liberate the stockyard at a Jimmy Dean plant.
The day of reckoning finds us at a shallow bass pond. I am prepared with two Shimano kids’ outfits (one for backup), a bucket of minnows, juice boxes, string cheese, SPF 50 sunblock, insect repellent, and spare underwear. Emma works up the nerve to stick her hand in the bait bucket. When a minnow brushes her fingers, she giggles and yells, “They like me!” I bait one through the lips and toss it to a fishy-looking corner. It dances around for five minutes, nudging the bobber this way and that, and I am sure we are about to nail one. But it never happ
ens. This is evidently bluegill water.
We go looking for worms and hit pay dirt by uprooting sod near a seep downhill from the pond. Emma cannot believe the abundance of the earth. Each new worm sends her into near delirium. “Another one!” she squeals. We put two dozen worms in a cigarette pack we find on the ground.
Three minutes later, the bobber heads south like a share of Enron stock, and we have our first bluegill. “That is a huge fish!” I say of the 5-incher flapping at the end of the line. “A humongous-bungus fish! And you caught it!” All 34 pounds of my daughter are squirming with excitement. I ask if she wants to let it go.
“No! I want to keep it! I want to eat it! Let’s catch some more!” We do.
I’m sure there will be other memorable moments in my youngest daughter’s life: kindergarten, a first date, graduation, marriage. But I will keep forever the image of Emma’s face, of the pure and triumphant delight as she lifted that snapping fish up into the air.
Family life does not linger long upon such summits. That very night, Emma and I tangle over the number of Barbie dolls allowed in the bathtub. I set the bag limit at 10 to delay the inevitable clogging of the drain with synthetic hair. Furious at such tyranny, my daughter screams the worst insult she can think of: “Stupid. Little. DADDY!” Ten minutes later, as I am tucking in the still-damp light of my life, she stirs in her half-sleep and mumbles, “Daddy. Go again tomorrow?”
“Fishing?” I ask.
“Yeah,” answers a small voice falling back into slumber. “But first digging worms.”
Aging Ungracefully
I recently had one of those dangerous ends-in-a-zero birthdays that lure middle-aged guys into taking stock of their lives. This is a dicey business, frequently leading to despair and rash action, such as running off with the babysitter or dropping 60 grand on a candy-apple-red pickup with a Viper V10 engine that will pass anything on the road except a gas station. Me, I went bass fishing, arranging to meet my buddy Greg at a nearby lake.
