The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told

by Jay Cassell

  The old man was alone and happy to chat. He’d snuck upstream for five miles that morning and never fired a shot. I asked him about his canoe, a battered fiberglass boat painted tan, with simple board seats. “Made it myself,” he said proudly. “More than 25 years ago.” All he carried in it was a weathered trapper’s basket and a pair of shotguns at the ready. He chuckled at our mountain of gear.

  He was 78 years old, lean, like musclewood, with a deeply lined face and a quick smile. His routine was to paddle upstream and then motor back to his truck with a 2-hp outboard. “I’ve hunted this river for 40 years,” he said, then looked down into the water for a brief moment, the silence widening like ripples in a pond. “But you get to be my age and you wonder how much longer you can do these sorts of crazy things.”

  “I wonder the same thing myself,” I said, and he grinned. He knew a gift when he heard one.

  “Why, you boys are just getting started.” I remember how good that made me feel.

  After we’d paddled out of earshot, Lee turned from the bow seat and said, “I hope that’s what I’m like when I’m his age.” And I nodded in agreement. Then we paddled silently for a long, lovely stretch while we thought about the miles that had crossed under the khaki-colored hull of the old man’s canoe, and the missed shots he’d cursed and laughed at, and the wonders he’d seen, and the wonders that remained for us around life’s twists and turns if we would keep a firm hand on the paddle and an eye open for the random gifts that drift our way.

  It was three days to Thanksgiving.

  Why

  GENE HILL

  Once in a great while, when my wife shames me into it, we have a little party at the house. Invariably some meddling woman will notice the all-too-few woodcock shooting prints I have hanging on the wall or the all-too-few decoys in my sketchy collection. “You shoot birds? How can you?” And then I try to explain to her the difference between the swing-through method, the pointing-out method and maintained lead. If that doesn’t confuse her out of any further remarks, she can be counted on to say “Oh I don’t mean that. I mean how could you? The defenseless little things . . . ” Mentioning the fact that she is wearing a leopard-skin coat that was probably poached by some African with a poisoned arrow, has absolutely no relation to the conversation. Save your breath. Birds are different.

  It’s of no help either to try to explain the ecology of so much land—so many birds. It does no good to explain about nature’s law of the survival of the fittest; or that she’s just knocked back second helpings on Pheasant Fricassee; or to point out that without the restraining laws of nature and predation etc., etc., she’d be up to her sweet derriere in bobwhite quail or wild turkey.

  What she wants to know—or have you admit, is that you are one hell of a killer, teeming with blood lust, who comes home from a few hours in a meadow or marsh with enough stiff game slung over your bloody shoulder to pull the rivets on your truss.

  This, for some reason I don’t understand, she understands and will accept as a perfectly valid reason. A friend of mine who makes his living, more or less, by working, more or less, for a gun company, is by nature a big game hunter. His answer as to why his house is decorated from cellar to attic with heads of antelope, impala and the outer garments of lion and leopard and zebra, is guaranteed to stop the nonsense. He merely smiles a very mysterious smile that I’m sure he’s practiced over African campfires, and says “Oh, I guess I just like to hear the thud of bullets smack against some solid flesh.”

  But what happens when you ask yourself the very same question? Some excellent recent anthropology, notably Robert Ardrey’s fine book African Genesis, claims that man owes his evolution to the fact that he learned how to kill. Ardrey has satisfactory evidence that man’s first tools were killing instruments.

  Maybe we kill just to keep our hand in, in case the job folds and we lose the mortgage and end up back in the father-in-law’s cave.

  The non-hunter doesn’t understand why you and I can go out and swamp it all day long, not popping a cap or cutting a feather and be delighted, if not satisfied, with a nothing-to-nothing tie.

  I guess I don’t really believe that hunting is a sport. I tend to agree with Hemingway who said something to the effect that only mountain climbing, bull fighting and automobile racing were sports and that everything else was a game.

  To me sport entails some grave element of risk. And hunting so rarely involves danger—not counting stupidity—that it doesn’t qualify.

  So let’s say that hunting is neither a game nor sport. Trap and skeet are games and delightful, but hunting is a thing apart. It requires some involvement.

  A lot of deep thinkers claim that hunting is largely a sexual thing. I won’t or can’t argue that. I tend pretty much to agree, but hunting has more than sexual undertones.

  I think each of us understands it in his own way. You hunt for your reasons and I hunt for mine. And each of us is satisfied in his own way.

  I think I hunt because I’m afraid of death and shooting is to me a very deep and complex way of understanding it and making me less afraid or more reconciled to my inevitable end.

  I think I hunt because I envy wildlife and by having this control over their life is to share in it.

  And I think I hunt because I have been hunted.

  I know I hunt without regret, without apology and without the ability to really know why. Let’s say I get a sense of satisfaction out of it that stretches back to the beginning of man’s mind. I hunt because I am a man.

  We are still young animals ourselves. Chronologically speaking we are only hours old compared to the birds, the fishes, and the bug that lays us out with flu.

  We hunters share some ancestor wrapped in stinking robes of skin who would greatly envy us our three dram load of 8s as he stares at the polished shin bone of an antelope he holds cocked and balanced in his hand.

  As the dog has the ancestral wolf, we have an ancestral killer too, tucked away, and not too deep, inside.

  Hunter’s Moon

  GENE HILL

  An English astronomer once commented to the effect that the slight changing of the redness of a distant star could alter a hundred years of our mathematical calculations. This was his way of saying that the works of man are insignificant when faced with the whims of nature. Civilizations have been born or lost in earthquakes and the coming and going of volcanos and tidal waves. A degree or two of temperature change over a few thousand years melted away the ice cap that covered much of North America and a slight shifting in the rain patterns of the world has created bare and torrid deserts where years ago lay tropic jungle. Hairy mammoths that were born and raised in long-lost humid swamps are now chipped out of the light blue ice of our polar lands.

  And you and I stand now in the coming of the fall speculating on the possibilities of an early frost that hopefully will skim the leaves from tenacious oaks . . . and yet not be severe enough to chill the ground so as to send the woodcock flying on to warmer soils and softer breezes. The slim balance of our sport so hangs on the vagaries of the unseen winds, the unknown seas—mysteries in their causes no less to us than to our apelike ancestors.

  Yet, we will grow restive in the weeks ahead. The Hunter’s Moon will see the shadow of a sleepless man who paces up and down his plot of grass, a morsel of dog as curious and as expectant as he is, tagging at his heels. He will stare at scudding clouds . . . wet his fingers to predict the vagrant wind . . . and hope that tomorrow will be kind enough to offer him a touch of frost or a heavy rain or a tracking snow. (And don’t forget the days you have all three between the dawn and dark!)

  But we’ll go on out, if I know you, regardless. And come home wet or cold or both ten times to the single day we come home smiling at the red god’s toss of dice. But that’s all part of sport . . . small creatures are the birds and sheep and deer to us . . . and we, small creatures too, our wishes merely hopes sent up at night, cast out on the winds, in the light of the Hunter’s Moon.

&n
bsp; Log Fires

  GENE HILL

  There are few things most outdoor-minded men pride themselves on more than the ability to build a good fire.

  I know I can start with a match, a nice dry chestnut log and a hatchet and bring a quart bucket of cold water to a rolling boil in less than five minutes. This particular accomplishment will not be whispered about in awed tones by my pals, but I take great pleasure in the fact. I think you can tell a lot about a man in the way he behaves around a fire—at home by the fireplace, in a gunning lodge, or the best of all fires—by the edge of a lake with only the wild voiced loons for company. They used to say that if you wanted to draw a crowd, start mixing a martini and suddenly six people would show up and tell you how to do it. But log fires are worse. People are forever poking and messing around with my fires; and never doing much good. I belong to the “start it right and leave it pretty much alone” school. I’ve just about gotten to the point where I hide my fireplace tools to keep meddlers from fussing around with a perfectly fine fire. To me a good fire doesn’t roar and flame. It’s obedient and thoughtful. It just burns quietly to provide a little background color to the stories and fill up the lulls in the conversation.

  Ever notice how much the hunting dogs love a fire with their menfolk sitting around? Old Tip, my lovely lady Labrador, will snuggle up to a scorcher until I’ll swear I can smell her singe. She’ll toast one side, then the other. More often than not, when bedtime comes around she looks the other way or pretends she’s deep in sleep because she wants to spend the night alone staring at the coals. Good fires make good friends.

  And here’s an old verse about wood that I’ve always wanted to memorize and never will:

  Beechwood fires are bright and clear

  If the logs are kept a year.

  Chestnut’s only good, they say,

  If for long it’s laid away.

  Birch and fir logs burn too fast,

  Blaze up bright and do not last.

  Elm wood burns like a churchyard mold;

  Even the very flames are cold.

  Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

  Fills your eyes and makes you choke.

  Apple wood will scent your room

  With an incense like perfume.

  Oak and maple, if dry and old,

  Keep away the winter cold.

  But ash wood wet and ash wood dry,

  A king shall warm his slippers by.

  A Christmas Wish

  GENE HILL

  There are a lot of legends and stories about Christmas wishes . . . and how I wish this year that wishes were real and I had one now and then. My old dog Tip, I know, wishes she could run the fields again instead of having to shuffle slowly at my heels. And I’d like to wipe away the touch of winter that has come to stay forever with some of my old shooting friends. Some folks say to be careful of what I wish for because it might come true. But I don’t think you and I would abuse the privilege. I don’t know what I’d do if I were rich, so I wouldn’t wish for that this Christmas. I’d like to take the friendships that I deeply treasure and really stretch them out for times to come. Old dogs, old friends, old brooks and quail meadows that I have learned to love especially should never change or go away. I think I know the wish that we’d all like to have. A handful of friends . . . a handful of dogs . . . would have their sweetest yesterdays become tomorrows.

  Just a Dog

  COREY FORD

  We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

  —Oscar Wilde

  The phone call came out of the blue. An aged, crackling voice wrapped in a slow, undulating Southern drawl came blasting across the line. Kip put his hand over the receiver of the phone and smiled broadly. He pulled me onto his lap and held the earpiece between us. “It’s old Fort Falls,” he whispered. “I haven’t heard from him in a couple of years!” Then Kip took his hand off the mouthpiece and said, “Fort, you don’t have to yell! I can hear you loud and clear.”

  The voice on the other end hollered back, “Can you hear me now, Kippy?”

  “They can hear you clear ‘cross to Maine, Fort. You don’t have to talk so loud.”

  “ ‘S that better, Kippy?” the old man said without any perceptible decrease in his decibel level.

  “That’s just fine, Fort,” Kip laughed, resigned to listening to what the earsplitting voice had to say. He knew it would be a short phone call. Fort came from a generation that counted the seconds on the telephone because a long-distance call could cost a morning’s wages. “He’s deaf, too,” Kip whispered to me as I got off his lap to move a saucepan that was boiling over on the wood cookstove.

  A minute later, my husband came into the kitchen. “Good old Fort,” Kip said. “He practically raised me. Taught me to hunt and fish when I was a kid. I learned everything I know about the woods from Fort.”

  “He lived here in Hardscrabble?”

  “Yep. He and his wife lived next door in the stone house and took care of Corey Ford for years. Before that, Corey had a plantation, and Fort was his estate manager. Then Corey moved here, and Fort and his wife, Louise, followed. When he left Hardscrabble in ‘53 for Dartmouth, Fort and Louise drew the line. They said Hanover was too fancy a place for country folk like them, so they opted to stay in Hardscrabble. They bought the farm down the road—the one beyond Ken’s place—and lived there about fifteen years before moving back to Carolina when Louise’s health started to fail.”

  “That’s a funny name, Fort,” I pondered.

  “His full name is Fort Sumter Falls. There’s a great story behind it. You’ll have to have Fort tell you when he gets here.”

  “Oh, is he coming to Hardscrabble to visit?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say? Yes . . . he’s coming for a visit.”

  “That’s nice. Where’s he staying?” I asked.

  “Here. With us.”

  “With us?”

  “Sure. He’s only coming for a month.”

  “A month?” I couldn’t believe Kip didn’t ask me first. Here I was, with a large house, a small child, and more work than I could handle, and now I had to take care of a house guest for a month! I reined in my temper about as unsuccessfully as an unbroken stallion getting his first taste at a bit.

  “Are you kidding?” I screamed.

  “Sure . . . I mean, no,” he continued, oblivious to my outburst or what it meant to have another person under our roof to feed and pick up after. “He’s flying in on Saturday.”

  “This Saturday?”

  “Laurie, that’s three whole days away . . . plenty of time for us to get ready. (“Us?” I thought.) Besides, he’s no trouble at all. You’ll love Fort.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Fort? Why, I guess he’s pushing eighty by now.”

  This was one of those special moments in married life when I happily would have hung my husband by, uh . . . the thumbs.

  Fort Arrives

  Saturday arrived. Kip, Tommy, and I got ready to leave for the airport. The guest bedroom was all set, the refrigerator was stocked with food, sherried beef was simmering in the Crock-Pot for dinner, a batch of my homemade bread was rising in an enormous earthenware bowl on the kitchen counter, and some Joe Froggers were cooling on a wire rack out of Bess’s reach.

  I was prepared, and in the comfort that comes anytime you feel the contentment of having your own universe in order, I began to actually look forward to meeting the man that meant so much to my husband. Shortly after Fort had called a few days before, we got another phone call—this time, from Fort’s granddaughter, who Kip had known since childhood.

  “I’m sorry about Granddad,” she said. “I don’t know what got into him. Suddenly he announced that he wanted to go back to Hardscrabble one last time, and the next thing I knew, he was on the phone with you. I’m sure it has a lot to do with Grandma dying.”

  “Louise is dead?”

  “Yes, Kip. She died about six months ago. But she’d been awfully sic
k for a real long time.”

  “Send Fort on up,” Kip told her. “God knows he took care of me plenty when I was growing up. Laurie and I can surely take care of him for a mere month. Besides, it would be good for him to come home to Hardscrabble and be among his old friends.”

  “There can’t be many left.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” Kip answered. “Hardscrabble doesn’t surrender its own to the Grim Reaper graciously.”

  “Let me speak to her,” I whispered to Kip, and after saying, “Of course it’s all right, we’d be delighted”; and, “It means so much to Kip to have Fort visit”; I asked a battery of questions. The answers were consoling: “No,” his granddaughter said, “he has no special dietary needs. He eats whatever you put in front of him.” “Yes, he’s entirely self-sufficient. Just give him a good book or a fishing rod and . . . ”

  So here it was, Saturday, and we were ready to leave for the Airport. As I said, everything was ready for Fort’s arrival. I wasn’t, however, prepared for the robust, elderly man who walked off the airplane.

  He must have been very handsome as a young man. The square, cleft jaw was firm, his smile wide, and his blue eyes twinkled from under white brows that were arched in perpetual amusement. He had a full head of snow-white hair, stood as straight as an oak tree, and had a handshake as firm as a logger’s. The only thing that betrayed his age (which I soon found out was actually eighty-three) was a hearing aid in one ear and a gimpy leg. (“Leg quit working right when I was a kid,” he later explained. “I got in the way of the intentions of a hotheaded bull that got lusty over the cow I was milking. I took a horn right through the kneecap.”)