If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?

by Bill Heavey

  Greg is a curmudgeon, a painter and sculptor whose work gets high marks from critics but is too candid and straightforward for our sophisticated times. His latest project, for example, is a series of anatomical human hearts about four times life-size, meticulously sculpted in red cedar. A rare hereditary disease in Greg’s family caused the hearts to pack it in early, almost before they got started. Eight siblings, including his twin, died in infancy or childhood. Greg doesn’t know how or why he escaped, but he grew up more closely acquainted with death than any kid ought to. His two obsessions, art and fishing, help him cope. Each cedar heart requires thousands of hours of focused solitude with chisels, gouges, and carving burrs. He fishes like he sculpts, so I learned long ago not to promise to be home by a certain hour when I go fishing with him.

  * * *

  The weather on the anniversary of my birth was practically an invitation to self-pity: hot and thermally inverted, a sky the color of plumber’s putty holding down air that you didn’t want to inhale any more of than necessary. We figured the bass would be deep and set about trying to dredge some up, starting with the closest structure, the riprap where a bridge crosses the lake. Greg was throwing a deep-diving Shad Rap that looked like a perch dressed in drag, and I was slow-rolling a ½-ounce spinnerbait. It was too deep to anchor, so we drifted under the bridge, paddled back up, and drifted it again. All the while, Greg ridiculed my spinnerbait, a lure he considers vulgar. “There is nothing in nature that looks like that. Have you ever in your life caught anything with it?” I told him that I had, as he very well knew but had forgotten because his fragile ego deletes any memory in which he is outfished.

  After a spell we headed for a line of standing timber that marked a drowned road and tied up to a dead trunk in 25 feet of water. Greg tied on a Zoom Trick Worm in watermelon gold glitter. For two hours straight we fished without a hit. Finally, at about 7 P.M., the day began to soften. Snapping turtles surfaced and blew bubbles. A bullfrog started honking in the long grass along the bank. Suddenly Greg grunted. “I’m on.” A fat 2-½-pound bass jumped twice on its way into the boat. Five minutes later something slammed my spinnerbait and started to torpedo this way and that under the surface. It was a tiger muskie about 2 feet long and mad as anything that dinner came with a hook in it. With my spinnerbait mangled, I made a small gesture with my left hand and soon a fresh Zoom slapped me in the back. Such are the advantages of fishing with the same guy for 20 years.

  We each set the hook on a few more bass before my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. It was my wife, Jane, who, strangely, asked to speak to Greg. In the stillness of the twilight, I could hear every word. The guests had been waiting at the house for an hour. Had he forgotten?

  “Not at all,” he said evenly. “Everything’s fine.” Greg ended the call and handed the phone back. Great. Jane didn’t know that relying on Greg to leave off fishing and get me to my own surprise party on time was like asking Michael Jackson to stop hanging out with kids and meet you at a policeman’s ball. Even if we paddled back immediately and I broke the speed limit the whole way, I wouldn’t be home for another hour. Greg calmly rerigged his worm and tossed it out. “Let’s make a few more casts,” he said. We did, and by the time I got home, the 30 or so guests still there had switched over to water. The cake was brought out, the song was sung, and they left. Greg, showing a good instinct for self-preservation as well as his usual antisocial tendencies, told me he would see me at the party and went home for the night.

  Two days later he called to see if I could meet him on Thursday at the lake. “You know, I think that riprap’s beat,” he said. “We should just head straight for the wood.” I was tempted to point out how he had ruined a good party, nuked a week’s worth of planning by my wife, and left a crowd of people cooling their heels—all to chase a green fish. But those decade birthdays will wise you up. What had happened was done, and dredging it up wouldn’t change that. You get only so many old friends over a lifetime, and you’re lucky to have them. I’ve been told I’m not always a box of chocolates myself.

  What Strange Creatures

  The 110th-anniversary issue of America’s oldest continuously published hunting and fishing magazine, Field & Stream, is already a collector’s item. Centuries from now, archaeologists will discover copies carefully preserved in barbershops and beneath the short leg of hunting camp tables across the country. As they study the remains of our culture in these, the final days before our economic collapse and absorption into the Chinese empire as a rural province, what conclusions will they draw about early-21st-century American life? I’m glad you asked.

  Our civilization was a mess. Careful excavation (of my house alone) will show that although men of this era possessed the theoretical ability to use sliding-drawer technology, most of us preferred to keep our outdoor gear and everyday clothing strewn randomly over the floor for easy viewing. Bowhunters preferred arrows of as many different length, weight, and fletching configurations as possible, perhaps as a testament to their skills. Guns were thought to shoot better if left uncleaned for years. And any kind of shotgun maintenance was particularly taboo, thought to bring generations of bad luck.

  Approximately 75 percent of the U.S. economy depended on revenue generated by hunting gear. Each year, an average sportsman obtained two offroad vehicles, four firearms, three bows, and many times that number of knives and flashlights. These items should have provided years of service but for one surprising characteristic: Sportsmen insisted that they be made in camouflage patterns, so most were lost within hours of the initial purchase, often before the buyer even left the store. Like other great powers, then, the country ultimately collapsed from within. While focused on external threats from men in noncamouflage ski masks, the nation ignored the stupendous cash-sucking power of Realtree Hardwoods HD and Mossy Oak Break-Up at home. Some researchers will theorize that Seclusion Asphalt 4-F, a particularly effective pattern introduced in the culture’s last days, might have been secretly developed and imported by our northern rival, the Molson Brewing Co.

  There was a great and universal fear of catastrophic flooding. In all but the most mountainous areas, people maintained finely crafted fiberglass boats on wheeled trailers parked just outside their doors and kept in a constant state of readiness: gas tanks full, tangerine-flake finishes buffed to a high gloss, carbonated beverages iced. Boats were not camouflage, but Americans replaced them annually, even if their houses leaked and they were unemployed. They were stocked with salted emergency rations shaped as worms and lizards, their favorite foods, and outfitted with hatches to store water, which had to be continuously reoxygenated in order for people to metabolize it. The fear of deluge will baffle researchers until they come across fragments of the Star, a publication that predicted the future with unerring accuracy. It warned that all the world would be inundated should a temptress named Rosie O’Donnell rise to power.

  The wealthiest members of society lived outside urban centers. This rural nobility demonstrated their status by affixing the preserved remains of bass and deer on the walls of their central gathering rooms. Singing electronic large-mouths, while rare, were marks of exceptional status. Some excavations will show that when a man married outside his clan, it was the woman who determined whether and where these objects were displayed. In many such cases, the taxidermy was exhibited only in their dwelling’s underground recesses.

  We believed that whitetail deer and largemouth bass possessed supernatural powers. Shamans placed deer with especially large antlers in the halls adjacent to enormous temples, such as the ones that will be excavated at Springfield, Missouri, and Sidney, Nebraska. Each massive head was displayed along with a number on a brass plaque, such as 195- or 204-. The significance of these numbers will not be understood, but some archaeologists will hypothesize that the number was the true object of veneration and that the deer merely served as a sort of honor guard.

  Heads of American households journeyed to the great antler halls to be taxed several time
s a year. Men spent much of each year in gymnasiums strengthening their upper bodies in anticipation of these visits. After paying homage to the numbers in the antler hall and gazing at the aisles of miraculous gear, each man was allowed to carry off as much of this treasure as possible in a single load. At the same time, half his annual income was electronically deducted from his bank account. He then underwent a final test of skill, which required him to wander in an outdoor concrete maze for days, looking for his vehicle. Upon finding it, he set down his armload of prizes to unlock and open its vast cargo bay. During the few seconds between putting the merchandise down and turning around to pick it up again, all of the camouflage items would vanish.

  One Moment, Please …

  No, dear Recorded Lady of the phone company, you listen closely because my menu options have changed. Press “1” if you think I will be the one to give up first and let you keep charging me for stuff I don’t need just because I have been on hold for six hours. I would rather be in my tree stand, but as a hunter I am skilled in the art of waiting. Press “2” if you think I am awash in disposable income and have no need for a new deer rifle. Press “3” if you want to speak to me, a dehydrated but determined hunter who is prepared to wait until the Rapture to fix the automatic leak your company installed in my wallet. Those funds have already been earmarked for the Remington 7600 pump .270 that my friend Ty is selling.

  Ah, Recorded Lady, if only we had met under happier circumstances. Instead, I opened my monthly statement from your company (which discretion prevents me from naming, although its initials apparently stand for Making Customers Insane) and discovered that I am paying an extra 99 cents per month for the anachronistic luxury of a paper bill. It was this change that prompted me, many hours ago, to call and switch to online billing. I will continue to hold, because 99 cents a month adds up. Over 25 years, it comes to $297, enough to buy Ty’s rifle, with its twin action bars, free-floated barrel, and quick-release four-shot magazine.

  Ah, Recorded Lady, you have returned after a short interval of toothless smooth jazz. You explain that my long hold time is due to “an unusually heavy volume of calls.” And yet this is the only kind of volume of calls your company experiences. You assure me that, even now, an army of customer-service representatives is engaged in hand-to-hand combat over the privilege of serving me. Meanwhile, exciting news! Did I know that I can register for a chance to win $10,000 just by signing up for DSL service? Actually, Recorded Lady, I do my lottery playing at 7-Eleven, just like everybody else.

  Recorded Lady, did you know that the 7600 goes unheralded on virtually all “Greatest Deer Rifles” lists? Yet it is an excellent firearm: inexpensive, accurate, and as dependable as an old rotary phone. What’s more, it’s a great gun for still-hunting, since it offers faster follow-up shots than any bolt action and even some semiautos. No, Recorded Lady, I do not wish to sign up for the CallManager feature that would allow me to stage miniature United Nations conference calls with nine friends and connect to satellite imaging so I can find lost garden tools in my own backyard. But thanks for asking.

  The gun in question is available because of an unfortunate experience Ty had hunting mule deer a few years back in the Montana badlands. Crawling on his belly for half a mile toward a buck with a rack like a Sears dump rake, my friend at last attained the cover of a small rock. He then looked down and saw a rattlesnake occupying the very same real estate. Although the serpent showed no aggressive intent, Ty found himself unable to reciprocate. Emitting one of the louder screams ever made by a surviving licensed electrician, he levitated from prone to standing by force of will alone and clubbed to death what turned out to be a 2-foot hank of barbed wire left over from an old fencing job. The serpent was reduced to rusty powder, the walnut stock sustained extensive rock- and barbed wire-related injuries, and the buck bounced happily out of sight. This experience soured Ty on Montana, mule deer hunting generally, and that 7600 in particular.

  Here’s the beauty part, Recorded Lady. It still shoots fine, and the very defects that mar its cosmetic appeal make it attractive to tightwads like me. I have always held that the first thing to do with anything new that you love is to go out and bang it against something. Once that initial ding is out of the way, you can get on with enjoying it. (I am sure that unlimited directory assistance in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, value-priced at $4.99 per month, pays for itself the first time it is used, but I must decline.)

  You underestimate me, Recorded Lady. I do not choose to try my call later, when hold times may be reduced. I am a Heavey, of Irish extraction, eldest son of my father, and cheap to the bone. Notice that I do not say “thrifty,” Recorded Lady. Thrifty is for dabblers and dilettantes. Among my people, cheapness is not a hobby but a vocation. One of my earliest memories was seeing a look of profound satisfaction spread over the face of my grandfather, a decorated general wounded in both world wars, as he shifted his Oldsmobile into neutral and coasted down hills to save gas. My own father once stopped the car to pick up a fallen apple from the middle of the street. Back home, he doused it with milk, put it in the oven, and served it to my sister and me as “dessert.”

  These men are my ancestors, Recorded Lady. This is the legacy I strive to be worthy of. And so it is just you and me now, locked in a contest of wills to determine who gets the Remington 7600. Do not think me arrogant, Recorded Lady, but I am betting on me.

  Undressed to Kill

  No part of Field & Stream magazine is more eagerly awaited than the sage advice from the likes of Jerome B. Robinson, Keith McCafferty, and T. Edward Nickens. These are guys who know from personal experience that:

  • A bull moose nose is the size of the average human head and, properly tanned, makes a good hat.

  • If you happen to survive the crash of your bush plane in Alaska and the pilot does not, it is perfectly acceptable to help yourself to one of his cigars.

  I learned some valuable field lessons myself this year that I’d like to pass on. I’m not claiming they rise to the postgraduate level of woodsmanship. But if you’re still awaiting a bunk in the gifted-and-talented section of hunting camp, listen up.

  Sleep with your clothes on. On a deer hunt in the Adirondacks, Gerald Marcury and I agreed that I would head out before first light, hike to a distant saddle, and ambush any bucks he might push my way while still-hunting. As I sweat easily, I opted to hike in long johns and a wool shirt, then don additional layers as needed. This plan worked perfectly right up until I sat down on a cushion of pine boughs and realized that my Realtree pants were folded atop my Realtree sleeping bag back at camp. Four hours later, Gerald approached, deerless but smiling nonetheless. “Is that a Southern thing, no pants?” he asked.

  Six months later, I met up with Gerald and a buddy to have a beer. I started to introduce myself to the friend, who shook my hand warmly and said, “Oh, you’re famous. Everybody in the hunt club says, ‘You should’ve seen the guy from Field & Stream who forgot his pants.’ We even have a saying now.” He dropped his voice to a TV-announcer baritone. “Pants: Don’t leave home without ’em.” (Gerald, allow me to thank you publicly. I have never met a guy who sleeps in women’s underwear who is half the hunter you are.)

  Hunt with SpongeBob. As I let my daughter Emma off at kindergarten before going hunting one October morning, I pointed up and cried, “Oh, look at the hawk!” Then I palmed the SpongeBob SquarePants Sea Mail Play-a-Sound book she had been reading, which her teachers have forbidden in the classroom. I thought no more about it until I was on stand and realized I had inadvertently stashed the thing in my daypack. After not even seeing a deer all morning, and with nothing to lose, I pushed the button decorated with a giggling SpongeBob. Out came a sound like a doe bleat on helium. Intrigued, I hit it again. A doe emerged from the bushes 70 yards distant, where it stood alert and frozen for two minutes. I hit the button once more. Fifteen minutes later, I sent an arrow into that deer. I am unsure about SpongeBob’s sexual orientation, but I will say this: The b
oy knows deer.

  Impersonate a competent person. Anybody who hunts with me regularly knows that I am essentially useless. I am physically unimpressive, have the woods sense of a parking meter, and for years thought that a “staging area” was where deer rehearsed theatrical performances. I’m tolerated by other hunters because I know my place and because a natural bent toward arson makes me invaluable in starting and tending campfires. To make up for my defects, I religiously read the tips in F&S, then pass them off as my own at every opportunity. Recently, when a friend was lamenting the loss of his scope covers, I plucked an old inner tube from his truck bed, cut out a ring, and wrapped it over the optics, forming a watertight seal (this appeared in the Sportsman’s Notebook section of the magazine, October 2005). “Where in the world did you learn that?” he asked, amazed. “Old cowboy trick,” I shrugged, affecting the air of a man who had grown up in a sod house on the prairie with Pa riding the range and Ma fighting off Indians.

  Shut the bathroom door. Much of my rifle practice occurs with a pellet gun in the basement when nobody else is home. After a session this fall, I was sure my earplugs had migrated almost to my brain. Rushing upstairs to the bathroom mirror, I was probing deep in my auditory canal with a Leatherman Wave when at the door I saw the mother of a child with whom my daughter had evidently missed a play-date. She had entered the house when no one answered. Her face was pretty much the mask of horror you would expect to see upon discovering a man committing suicide via earhole. Her hands were clamped protectively over the eyes of her child, whom she dragged bodily backward through the living room, her mouth moving soundlessly. I watched—but did not hear—the door slam as she fled. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before my wife got word and returned home to deal with the large order of trouble with anchovies and extra cheese I had whipped up. The only question was how to spend the brief interval of peace remaining. I returned to the basement and shot a few more targets. Looking back, it was the smartest thing I did all year.