Uncle Billy
New member
Hunting and fishing trips of my childhood...
While I'm not a hunter myself, I've spent a lot of time in the woods with friends and family on hunting trips. I do like fishing and fishing trips as well. The best parts of it are the fellowship of a bunch of guys who like each other, living rough, cooking on a fire, sleeping in tents or a tepee or, most often a log cabin 28 miles by outboard boat from the closest people, with outside facilities, no electricity or running water, cooking on a wood-burning iron stove with lids and brass decorations...
... the smells of bacon and eggs frying over an open fire in the middle of our little cluster of tents on the river's edge, the coffee perking and steaming on a frosty morning as the mist rises off the river and the boats and motors are wet with dew or even frost; the shore dinner miles from camp at noon where we beached the boats, filleted and breaded about 2 dozen walleyes we had started keeping about 11 o'clock, and fried them in a huge frying pan over a driftwood fire, the beans steaming in a pot and the potatoes wrapped in tin foil with onion and butter tossed in the fire burning our fingers as we unwrapped them; then after washing the gear, the old guys would lounge around the impromptu campsite on the deserted shore, napping in the warm sun while we kids would toss spinning lures off the shore and wish the oldsters would wake up and go fishing again, where the only people we ever saw for a week were the 10 of us, and if you saw a boat in the distance, it was one of ours...
... or the early mornings in my grandfather's primitive but roomy log cabin which was 15 miles up a first-gear-and-crawling logging "road", in the late fall, before dawn, where the cooks (usually including me as "helper") would have the huge iron stove hot with a softwood fire which warmed the main floor level, the bacon or sausage frying, the toasted bread on a platter in the warming oven, taking egg orders or serving the oatmeal as each of the hunters came down from the loft and had their juice, and coffee poured from a 6 quart pot (they never would have rolled out of their bedrolls into the early morning chill and damp of the cabin loft if the smell of the cooking hadn't waked them up); laying out the summer sausage, bread, candy bars and fruit for each to pack his lunch; dressing in woolen clothes and heavy boots, handling the rifles and shotguns as the party was readying themselves to head out on a 4 or 5 mile hike to the area of the day's watch-and-drive for white tails, leaving as the weak, cold light of dawn spread through the forest...
... the warmth and friendly baking bread smell of the cabin at day's end when the 8 or 10 hunters returned, chilled and shivering with the sweat of the hike back, maybe carrying a field-dressed buck or two which was hung from the giant pine out front; the bunch of them in their long johns and heavy sox, having a beer and telling stories of the day's hunt while dinner was on (or in) the stove, filling the cabin with the smells of roasting beef (early in the trip) or venison rump roast (later, if we had been lucky enough to bag a button buck for camp meat); the inevitable poker game after cleanup, with the Coleman lantern hissing overhead and Canadian Club or Chevas Regal poured over ice from off the porch; the antics that always went on, making story-telling fodder for the rest of the year, like the time somebody snuck out to the outhouse and fired a few rounds with the .45 my uncle always carried, into the collected mess under it while somebody was aboard one of the 2 holes- it was an up-scale privy- and was never invited to go hunting again, or the time someone tossed a firecracker into the stove, which blew all the lids off their holes- he wasn't invited again either...
...the deep silence and absolute darkness as the Coleman faded and went out at rack time; the rapid dash to the privy or behind a tree, when pausing outside for a moment presented you with the absolute isolation, the absolute blackness of the sky freckled with a million spots of sparkling light, and whiteness of the snow, the outlines of tall standing pines that surrounded the cabin rustling gently in the breeze, the cold brightness of moonlight shining over it all made you feel small and insignificant, but really fortunate to have an opportunity to be this intimate with the natural world, the forest, and the beauty of what God had made for us...
... this goes on and on as I encounter a huge memory readout. I apologize if this is too long.
While I'm not a hunter myself, I've spent a lot of time in the woods with friends and family on hunting trips. I do like fishing and fishing trips as well. The best parts of it are the fellowship of a bunch of guys who like each other, living rough, cooking on a fire, sleeping in tents or a tepee or, most often a log cabin 28 miles by outboard boat from the closest people, with outside facilities, no electricity or running water, cooking on a wood-burning iron stove with lids and brass decorations...
... the smells of bacon and eggs frying over an open fire in the middle of our little cluster of tents on the river's edge, the coffee perking and steaming on a frosty morning as the mist rises off the river and the boats and motors are wet with dew or even frost; the shore dinner miles from camp at noon where we beached the boats, filleted and breaded about 2 dozen walleyes we had started keeping about 11 o'clock, and fried them in a huge frying pan over a driftwood fire, the beans steaming in a pot and the potatoes wrapped in tin foil with onion and butter tossed in the fire burning our fingers as we unwrapped them; then after washing the gear, the old guys would lounge around the impromptu campsite on the deserted shore, napping in the warm sun while we kids would toss spinning lures off the shore and wish the oldsters would wake up and go fishing again, where the only people we ever saw for a week were the 10 of us, and if you saw a boat in the distance, it was one of ours...
... or the early mornings in my grandfather's primitive but roomy log cabin which was 15 miles up a first-gear-and-crawling logging "road", in the late fall, before dawn, where the cooks (usually including me as "helper") would have the huge iron stove hot with a softwood fire which warmed the main floor level, the bacon or sausage frying, the toasted bread on a platter in the warming oven, taking egg orders or serving the oatmeal as each of the hunters came down from the loft and had their juice, and coffee poured from a 6 quart pot (they never would have rolled out of their bedrolls into the early morning chill and damp of the cabin loft if the smell of the cooking hadn't waked them up); laying out the summer sausage, bread, candy bars and fruit for each to pack his lunch; dressing in woolen clothes and heavy boots, handling the rifles and shotguns as the party was readying themselves to head out on a 4 or 5 mile hike to the area of the day's watch-and-drive for white tails, leaving as the weak, cold light of dawn spread through the forest...
... the warmth and friendly baking bread smell of the cabin at day's end when the 8 or 10 hunters returned, chilled and shivering with the sweat of the hike back, maybe carrying a field-dressed buck or two which was hung from the giant pine out front; the bunch of them in their long johns and heavy sox, having a beer and telling stories of the day's hunt while dinner was on (or in) the stove, filling the cabin with the smells of roasting beef (early in the trip) or venison rump roast (later, if we had been lucky enough to bag a button buck for camp meat); the inevitable poker game after cleanup, with the Coleman lantern hissing overhead and Canadian Club or Chevas Regal poured over ice from off the porch; the antics that always went on, making story-telling fodder for the rest of the year, like the time somebody snuck out to the outhouse and fired a few rounds with the .45 my uncle always carried, into the collected mess under it while somebody was aboard one of the 2 holes- it was an up-scale privy- and was never invited to go hunting again, or the time someone tossed a firecracker into the stove, which blew all the lids off their holes- he wasn't invited again either...
...the deep silence and absolute darkness as the Coleman faded and went out at rack time; the rapid dash to the privy or behind a tree, when pausing outside for a moment presented you with the absolute isolation, the absolute blackness of the sky freckled with a million spots of sparkling light, and whiteness of the snow, the outlines of tall standing pines that surrounded the cabin rustling gently in the breeze, the cold brightness of moonlight shining over it all made you feel small and insignificant, but really fortunate to have an opportunity to be this intimate with the natural world, the forest, and the beauty of what God had made for us...
... this goes on and on as I encounter a huge memory readout. I apologize if this is too long.
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