JAN-A-6

CUMBERLAND ISLAND-’04:

THE UNIQUE AND HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL ISLAND WILDERNESS OF CUMBERLAND,

AND OUR SPECIALLY PRIVILEGED POSITION IN IT,

TO VIEW IT, EXPERIENCE IT, AND ENJOY IT,

WHILE WILDERNESS AND RETAINED RIGHTS LEASES

STILL ALLOW US TO DRIVE AND HIKE IT,

APPRECIATE THE “NANCY’S FANCY” HOSPITALITY,

AND EVEN HOG HUNT!

January 9—15, 2004

It was a wonderful hunt! And, I never fired a shot—not even at a paper target! But, it was the right group of people with a good representation of first-timers in one of the last hunts, and two father and son teams—enough to make me jealous! And we each got to see the island with a bit of a tour guide—mois—and then see the excellent public Television video of Cumberland Island, a van Kloot film, that gave the historic background, the political turmoil and the fending off the grandiose development plans to keep Cumberland Island the unique and pristine wilderness island it is. This makes the hunt on Cumberland Island in the wilderness a paradox with a number of factors weighing in against it—but here we were, once again, enjoying it to the full. It is nearly overwhelming to a first-timer, with the thought that we are carrying rifles through a national park wilderness, in an environment as untouched as if it were pre-historic, or as if we were early African explorers of a dark continent of unknowns—yet without spending more than the gas and 12 hours it took each of us to get here in smooth drives down from Maryland and other points.

DRAMATIS PERSONNAE OF THE 04-HUNT

We were nine in total, with four first-timers. There were two no-shows, one of whom I had looked forward to being on the island with before the hunt and even after exploring the island, indulging in a retreat at Greyfield Inn’s elegant dinner. But, when the walk-through was postponed and Virginia backed off from the Cumberland visit on the weekend preceding the hunt, I canceled the Greyfield dinner, and concentrated instead on the ten of us who were confirmed after the fifteen of us were registered as Retained Rights permit holders. Both Russ and Christian Elwell, despite many years of planning and promising to try for this experience, were both licensed, but had the wedding of Russell junior in Mayville the day before. Reg was registered but had let it sneak up on him, and did not show. Donald, of course, has had many opportunities since the time he actually came, but that was before he was married. This would be an ideal experience for him, for Michael and for me, with a possibility of the weekend before for the families to also visit this unique and vanishing opportunity. Sage Baker is David’s friend, and as the Schaefers were about to depart, they drove over and Sage decided not to go! So, with at least five of my pre-registered hunters not showing up (a greedy grab under the Retained Rights privilege of almost one third of the coveted slots for the hunt!) we were down to nine—about the number that Nancy’s Fancy can comfortably accommodate in splendor.

Now who did participate?

Mois—huntmeister and naturalist tour guide.

Dale Kramer—my friend and head of the D G Liu project on remodeling Derwood. I had been with him on New Year’s Day and then visited with his family—not dissimilar from mine—and we had also gone on a Howard County goose hunt on January 2. This was his first visit, and despite the long descriptions of what this unique environment is like, it is overwhelming to a first-timer, and Dale could hardly believe it. He is a very experienced bow hunter and carried both bow and two firearms with the idea of trying whichever worked. He certainly would have scored multiple times if we were hunting big bucks, since I had him staked out in the tree under which I invariably see good deer.

Tom and Drew Griffioen—my nephew and great nephew, drove down, with whom I had gone on December 26 to hunt does with a muzzle loader in snowy Michigan. Drew and I in a treestand spotted three does and Drew shot one. This was a great time for them, as the first time they could ever have even imagined such a hunt, and they enjoyed it from the bottom up—and they both got to see and shoot at hogs! Drew learned more than if he had been in school, and learned how to appreciate many things except for oysters and soft-shell crabs!

Bill Webster—my Somerset County host and the one with whom we have gone deer hunting the last several years made it to Cumberland this year. Bill teaches Vo Tech in Princess Anne, and is a wonderful teacher for the guys there, but had not taken a day off in 26 years. When I had tried to get him down before, he said he would be available after he retired. When the others in the school heard about this and the “sunsetting” of the hunt and its experience in Wilderness Cumberland, they insisted he go. We convoyed down and I had helped drive between Bill and Dale. Bill also contributed a marvelous treat to the feast, carrying over a dozen dozens of frozen soft-shell crabs ( which everyone but Drew welcomed as a superb appetizer) with the chaser being an even better appetizer course—the fried oysters he fixed up for our Tuesday dinner preceding our main course. We did not suffer from any lack of calories. Bill was carrying his hand-picked Christmas present—a stainless steel lever action 45/70 Guide Gun. My only regret is that he did not paste a hog with it.

These were the four first timers who were the focus of my efforts to be sure they had a good time in this most enjoyable wilderness which it is a privilege to share while we still can. They really liked it—both the sightseeing in the historic and natural history and the scouting and hunting in wilderness as well.

Craig and David Schaefer—the consistent father and son team, but especially good this year since they had a chance to talk about real life on the way down as David, now 21 had to think about what would be possible for him to make a living and get a real job, now that he has demonstrated that he can at least get back to school with a prospect of finishing there at Towson State. David had hunted with us four years last year when he finally scored on a good hog. Craig and I were both happy just to be here whether we shot—or shot at—anything at all. Craig used the occasion as an excuse to buy a new gun, a Spanish semiautomatic assault .308 with all the fancy attachments to it. He blew up a fair amount of sand in sighting it in, and was ready to take on the island’s ugly residents, but he and I and Bill were the only ones that had not fired a shot by the time that the hunt was over—although each of them fired off a fair number of rounds against paper.

Paul Gibbs—an old timer, who has forgotten his lunch, his gun, and every other part of the hunt except the jokes he re-tells, forgetting who it is that told them to him in the first place. Paul is somewhat limited by heel spurs, so he did not put on much mileage, and if a hog accidentally ran his way he was going to open up with the .243 I had once used (Chris’s gun) for deer hunting as long ago as eighteen years back when we first deer hunted in Georgia. Paul enjoys the cuisine, cigars and a fine dinner (especially since he can label them all as Atkins Diet) which is good since Betty Rose and Melissa had put together the menu planning. For the first time I had not been the principle grocery getter as I always am in the elk camp and the menu planning that BR had done was our guide for the redundant dinners and lunches we enjoyed. The menus included the low-end items such as a full tenderloin of beef, lasagna, pasta with Melissa-made sauce, and we never did get to the hamburgers and more ordinary fare that went back off the island. We had excessive munchies and lunch stuff for our mid-day snacks and on the hunt support.

Rich Reinert—flew in from Tucson to meet Paul in a motel that he had reserved along with his frequent flyer air ticket, and they picked up the last of the perishables when Paul drove down from Atlanta on Friday night to join Rich. We all met on the dock at Greyfield launch where Bill Webster and Dale Kramer and I had tried to nap a bit after arriving there unexpectedly early in a blustery cold pre-dawn at 3:30 AM. We saw Paul and Rich as they pulled in in mid-morning and we went to the new dock where the Lucy Ferguson pulls in, avoiding the perpetually silted up marina where she used to dock,

So, Rich, Paul, Dale and Bill and I arrived on Saturday in time of the noon ride over with all our groceries and gear at noon, with a little time for the blustery cold weather to clear, which it did in fine style with an even nicer return trip on the Lucky on Wednesday than the days we had spent there, despite the cold, cloudy and sandy start. I called Tom and Drew who were on the dock in time to come over on Saturday evening and I could take them straight away to see the ghosts of Dungeness’s ruins before the moon rose. I called Craig after I returned from my exhilarating Sunday morning beach run, and came down to pick Craig and David up at 1:00 PM on Sunday afternoon.

EXPLORING CUMBERLAND,

ESPECIALLY FOR THE FIRST-TIME TOURISTS

AND HISTORY BUFFS

We loaded up the Lucy Ferguson and motored across in a foul overcast day, with no ability to see the usual escort of dolphins, nor to peer around the protective hanging Plexiglas curtains to see the ruins of Dungeness towering above the coastal marsh. We passed near enough the Civil War Fort Clinch to see it, and got to the Greyfield dock where I pointed out the King’s Bay Sub Station and the giant buildings that service the Trident Submarine Navy fleet and the giant degaussing weir through which they pass the nuclear submarines to eliminate the charge they pick up under water. The idea has been that a charged particle that moves is vulnerable since it can be detected. In the slogan of the New Techno-Armada “If it moves or emits, we can kill it.” The Trident submarine with its twenty MIRVed missiles from the large silo hangars at King’s Bay is the remaining invulnerable third of the Strategic Triad of the Cold War. It can destroy many times over a nation we are presently propping up its economy with friendly aid. I have often asked, “Do any of these automatons with memory chips in their electronic brains all patterned to destroy a nation that no longer exists—the Soviet Union—know or have heard since they came up from the incommunicado silence down there for three months or more at a time, that “The Game Has Changed?” I know I would not want to be angling for spotted sea trout inside the limits around this highly sensitive area that holds more than a third of the world’s destructive firepower in a futile embrace. I wonder how the porpoises blowing noisily as they surfaced near me escaped vaporization as they go up the IntraCoastal Passage edging close to the King’s Bay Trident Fleet?

I hopped out and got the Ford Ranger. We had been told by the captain of the Lucy Ferguson (not grandson Mitt Ferguson this time on the way in, who did pilot us on the way out) that we were wasting our time, since the NPS had hired a full time government hunter to shoot all hogs in an effort at “eradication” of the hog population of Cumberland Island, and in the last months he had shot (and left lie to rot) 4,500 hogs. This turned out to be a misquote, since it was told to him as four to five hundred hogs, and Mitt confirmed that it was 634 to be exact. Still and all, that is about one full cycle of piglets for these rapidly proliferating pests and threats to nesting turtles. The term “eradication” is a biologically absurd idea for the pressures of a single, even professional, hunter, and means that anyone who says this big word has not been in the thick places of the interdune meadows that I have fought my way through over entire regions that look like a legion of rototillers had been turned loose and let ride without steering.

With the stories of “eradication” still in our ears, I went to get the Ford Ranger and made a short-cut through the palmettos at the water’s edge to get the vehicle—and immediately busted into a brown bulldozer who scooted away from me in the thick grass, leaving a rippling wake behind him. “Eradication” indeed! All that the professional did is to reduce the number of dumb hogs by a biologically insignificant number and smarten up the remainder in a natural selection that has made this a very real hunt against an even more cagey prey! I do think the days when I would single handedly drop four hogs in a sequence with clean one shot kills may have passed; now we are going to have to hunt them up! And, I, for one, have come for a hunt, and not for a shoot! And I—and each of us-- got what we came for!

When I arrived, and loaded newcomers Bill Webster and Dale Kramer on board, I stopped at Nancy’s Fancy to offload, then told them to immediately take a walk on the beach through the vast and vacant ocean shoreline. They saw a deer at the beach, and as far as they could see saw only the curve of the earth that prevented us seeing from one end of the island to another. This is my running route, on trackless sand as the tide is out. I saw a big loggerhead turtle skeleton bleached in the sun, and promised to bring Drew and Tom back there when they arrived, since Drew has several assignments to carry back to school, along with the pork chops his teacher has requested. I want him to carry back fossilized shark’s teeth, a bit of appreciation of the historic role of the island being the site of the Revolutionary War hero, General Nathaniel Greene’s burial (favorite general of George Washington and the one who had defeated the British in the southern campaigns) and his underling, the flashy cavalry officer Lighthorse Harry Lee, who failed in everything he ever did after the Revolutionary War and came back broken in health and deep in hock to die and be buried under the niece of his old commander, since Greene was given Cumberland as his reward for US service, although he could not make it profitable. The huge live oaks with their sturdy limbs and dense timber were ideal for ship building for the young nation that needed a Navy, so they were cut to make the ribs of Old Ironsides—the US Constitution. I had wanted Drew to carry back an appreciation of the island wilderness and its unique place in the history and natural history of this good earth—even more than I wanted them to bring back a hog. I have been in many if not most of the world’s ecosystems, and none is better or more beautiful than Cumberland—poignant and perfect.

ARRIVAL

EXPLORING THE PRISTINE

IN THE PRIVILEGE OF SOLITUDE

I then took Dale and Bill Webster to the ruins of Dungeness Mansion and also to the Ice House which is converted to a museum of early Cumberland History. Phineas Green had tried to build an agricultural sinecure here, with rice and cotton, but he pricked his thumb with a thorn and was dead of lockjaw in a few days. Here he is Lord of the Manor, and Master of all he surveys, but dropped dead by a thorn and a bug—I think that is every bit as much as the Dungeness Ruins a classic “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.”

I took them around to the natatorium, fallen in still further since I had first come to Cumberland and the weathering of the masonry and collapse of the woodwork is about complete, so that it will look like a wilderness as soon as the thorn tangles complete the job, since the nasty modern invention of the IRS had eliminated the staff of 450 servants that the Thomas Carnegie heirs needed to tidy up their summer place. As we walked around to the giant “birdbath fountain” out in front, I said I always see turkeys whenever I explore along the Dungeness grounds, and I would take them over to the further decayed Studebakers and touring cars of the Carnegie kin to see them. We admired the cars, now further collapsed, as much as the mansion, and then turned around and stumbled in to a flock of thirty big turkeys, most of them long-bearded toms. It was a Kodachrome moment, since I had carried an extra roll of film I gave to Bill Webster to put into his bargain camera. I had my own camera and a second one would be coming with Tom and Drew since I had packed it up at Michigan to come down with them and the photo albums that were two thirds of their load. When they eventually did arrive, I proudly pulled out the spare battery I had purchased in a quantity of eight extras—and found they were all the wrong size 3 V special camera batteries, and the Nikon they had brought down for me failed on its first photos. So, with the exception of a plastic disposable Photo Works camera, this is a non-image trip for this usual photojournalist, and you may see pictures from all others along with a couple of my own via internet transmission when the few I have taken are ready to send. So, enjoy the word-pictures of “Cumberland-04!”

We took a long walk on the beach at the lowest tide I have seen—with over 500 meters of sloping sand beyond the dunes to the gentle surf. The quiet lapping of the waters was all that could be heard with the exception of the few shorebirds, and soaring pelicans, cruising over horse and hog tracks in the sand under foot. There were no trawlers out shrimping as there almost always are—perhaps due to the cold weather and full moon which brings the shrimp into different patterns. We had bought a few shrimp to try as sea trout bait—the only fish caught was a baby bluefish. We saw the long beach and I walked to a field of siphons from large clam beds which we could have exploited if we had carried a rake shovel and pail. As we walked along, Bill Webster asked incredulously, “Just how many cottages are there on this beach?” I held up one finger, and said “you are it!” Each marveled at the privileged place we have in this transient special event. I had said, “If you had offered me the choice of being the only accommodation on the over twenty miles of ocean front Atlantic Beach and told be this would be for a short time before that privilege was over, or that I could be here for a lifelong opportunity to cruise this beach, but that there would be fifty new cottages each year with a bit of a crowd developing—which would you think I should choose?” It is like the wilderness provision of the NPS accession of the park—we are carrying rifles through the only National Park that allows this for a limited time in a sanctioned controlled and “sunsetting” hunt—would you rather have it this way, or an open hunt unlimited in time and participants?

And, here we are.

The history of the island and the convoluted plans by which we have this precious access in such luxury adjacent to the pristine and primitive wilderness I had tried to explain to each of the participants—those who showed this time and those who did not, believing they could “always do it another time”-- but it would be made most clear through a video that Keith had told me about. The video is “Cumberland” and he said he had a copy in the locked closet in the basement bedroom, but that it could also be got at the Greyfield Inn. So, I had tried to set up our first night’s entertainment after dinner the van Kloot National Public Television video. At first pass I could not find it, but I did get it later, and by that time I had gone to meet the Lucy Ferguson on its last run as the sun had set. I picked up Tom and Drew as they arrived with their mouths agape, trying to take it all in as the light faded. I drove over to Dungeness so that they could see the eerie mansion ruins in the dark before moonrise. As we drove in, Drew spotted a deer right in front of us—he was already convinced he would like this place!

With introductions all around, and the menu explained and posted on the refrigerators, we had a chance to get to know each other, and the rooms were assigned. We had enough munchies and drinks to keep everyone entertained—and still never ran out of any of these items with actual packing off island of some of the $600 stock of Costco and Wal-Mart bulk volume items, according to Betty Rose’s menu plans. We then sat down and tuned in on the Cumberland video. It goes through the ancient pre-history, and the Revolutionary and Civil War history, then the Carnegie history, and the Charles Frazier big development plans a la Hilton Head.

An overeager developer had put in place the high volume heavy duty electrical connections just like they are buried on Hilton Head when the delicate compromise was reached with the “Retained Rights” owners that turned this magnificent island into a masterpiece of preservation, even to its “wilderness”—although everyone is carrying a different definition of what a wilderness is—before the Aleutian Land Bridge? Before the Internal Combustion Engine? Before cell phones and Internet? One of the island’s inhabitants, Carol, has a very singular definition—there can be only one person on Cumberland---Carol. Full stop, no new joiners; so she is the head of “Friends of Wild Cumberland” agitating to have Plum Orchard Mansion look like Dungeness and the road ripped up (although she would like to have the electricity continued as long as she still is up there on the north end next to the ABE native Slave Chapel.

When we later learned from Mitt Ferguson that Carol was off island (I thought she would be arrested if she left the sanctuary of her wilderness island where she lives off road kill with only occasional visits from her University of Rhode Island professor friend.) She had once been given a double barrel shotgun by her young boyfriend when he was concerned about her staying alone in the wilderness and he insisted she have some protection. She used it--on him. When Mitt told us the story, it appears that she was off island for a second funeral in recent times. Her mother had just died. But before that her friend Professor Bob had been visiting, and he had a stroke, and was found lying on the floor. Carol had him lie there for about eight hours before deciding he should get help. When he was taken off island, the authorities asked "Why did you wait frittering away the 'Golden Hour?'" She didn't rightly know. So, without missing a beat, Bill said to Mitt:"So, she is now two for two!"

WE EXPLORE THE “CIVILIZED” END OF THE ISLAND,

THEN REGISTER FOR THE HUNT,

AND SCOUT THE WILDERNESS FOR OUR HOG TREESTANDS

The video brought out the mystery, the fundamental primacy of the island that makes one confront oneself—probably one reason I keep returning and sitting in a tree. If I went there at pre-dawn to climb a half-millennium old live oak to perch amid the Spanish Moss to watch the dawn come in with the birds singing, the verdict would be that I have gone daft. But, since I carry a rifle, with the express intent of doing in a non-cuddly vermin, it is understood that I serve a useful purpose in that tree, other than the ideal place in this primal wilderness to contemplate this wonderful world and my place in it.

Jimmy Carter is interviewed among others on the tape and says “There is no use in denying the unique special nature of Cumberland and the recognition by all who have ever set foot here that it must be preserved.” That it will be, quite probably preserved from our own use or enjoyment of it, so, “Carpe Diem!”

We had a tire problem. The left tire was soft when we picked up the gar and the last passengers, but there is an air compressor at Nancy’s Fancy, so we used it. It is a good thing we have a crew that knows how to use more than air compressors, since we needed some hard scrabble mechanical repairs. Tom slipped of a rear stair step that had come unattached, and we fixed that. The soft tire was no longer soft after the ride and blew out even though everyone hiked over to the other side. The spare, never used, was rusted in place, and after suggestions as to hacksawing it off, etc, application of Drew’s Black Powder gun solvent, and the rediscovery of a tool box in the closet that had the video locked away in it, made a final removal of the original equipment spare. We will get a new tire—and I kidded Keith that it will be a requirement that I get down there to change it. The chirping noise of the power steering had everyone convinced we had run out of power steering fluid, but we had not, and the problem was traced to the “serpentine belt” which was possible to relive by loosening another set of nuts that were frozen on, but got worked free to change the belt tension. So, no thanks to me and my limited mechanical repertoire, but a bunch of guys who take vehicles apart for a hobby, we were able to tune up a few items—hardly the major inconveniences we had from being stranded multiple times in the postal jeep!

I called Craig and found that he and David were at the Greyfield dock in Fernandina expecting to take the noon Lucy Ferguson over. I told the group that there was one ritual I had to observe, and they could choose whatever they would like for the morning—a beachcombing, searching for shark’s teeth, or chasing wild horses—but, I way going to do my single dawn run on the beach for as much the length of the island as I could. Last time I had run up into the wilderness passing South Cut Road to Lake Whitney where I saw a couple of gators in the pond “Right you did!” was the response on the return, so I had to go back and carry the unbelievers so that everyone had a view and pictures of the gators.

The run was wonderful. Since I had no camera, I did not shoot the one blur I had thought was a hog vanishing into the interdune meadows and I brought Tom and Drew to the Loggerhead turtle skeleton when I returned 12 miles and 90 minutes later. I packed up Bill and others and went down to the South End of the Island to Dungeness Beach, to show them more horses, after dropping the others off on the Greyfield dock to try to catch sea trout. This is the right time of year to be doing this, but it has to be done on the rising tide. We saw Mitt Ferguson and promised him soft-shell crabs and talked about wooden buy boats which he was interested in getting for a project for his elderly Dad to work on. Bill Webster knows one in Somerset County down near Crisfield and will put him in touch with Marsh who wants to peddle it after putting $35 K of work into it. I went on with Bill Webster to the South Beach so he could marvel again about having the whole island stretch out for his gaze alone. We went back on the boardwalk that the NPS had built over the marsh on the Intracoastal Passage side, and got right inside a rookery of ibis. It is profoundly beautiful, these isolated moments that just seem to happen on Cumberland!

We went back to pick up Craig and David. David’s friend Sage Baker, all licensed up, was called as they were about to pick him up, and he said “Nah, I don’t want to go after all!” So much his loss, but I am chaffing over the waste of the coveted limited slots in this last of the hunts that are not going to come again. I have a short select list for the future if there is to be another hunt after the tougher regulations that narrow it down and make it harder, and there will be no no-shows in the new list. Craig had got a new Spanish .308 assault rifle with all the fixings and he wanted to sight it in, so he gave me his Georgia license and I went up to Plum Orchard with all the others to register in and then scout our spots.

Rene was checking us in. She reported that we were the 53rd hunters and we had our half dozen pre-paid no-shows. Fifteen hogs were shot on the first hunt, and they were fewer and harder to get, but there were still more than enough out there to be hunted and to tear up the island. She said a new Park Superintendent was appointed getting rid of the last one who had made Don move, but now a new NPS Ranger named Eric Ullitallo had come in, and he was eager to set his own rules—pertaining to safety and driving—but he was fair and safe, and pro-hunter. We gave our license numbers for the nine of us hunting, and sang happy birthday to her, since our visit always coincides with her birthday, on the Cumberland Island she had come to seventeen years ago at age nineteen.

We showed the Plum Orchard mansion briefly, before going up the main road to Oyster Pond Trail, where I took the newcomers and spread out the others to scout. I hiked in, as dry as I have ever seen it, with no water nor even mud in the Oyster Pond itself on which we usually have to hop over on Cypress knees. I hiked in and put Bill in the far corner where he could reach out with his Guide Gun, and propped Dale into the favorite tree from which I have always seen both big bucks and hogs. I went to my old time favorite, the five hundred year old live oak that I admire from just looking at it, alongside the palmettos of the dried Oyster Pond. I had picked a special tree for Drew, and made a “ladder” for him to boost himself up into it, across from which his father would be sitting nearer to the ground. When I came back the five of us were hiking along toward the Ford Ranger when I spotted five black hogs on the run—all spread out in front of us so that each of us could see them easily—one for each if we had been armed!

I had gone to show the graves of Nathanial Green and Lighthorse Harry Lee (his bones were later moved by Act of the Virginia Assembly to lie next to those of his Grandson, a superb military general who ended his days as a college president in the Virginia mountains---Robert E. Lee. I reminded them that Robert E. Lee’s birthday was coming up on January 19, and that I believe it may have been in his honor, rather than in mine, that the national government had declared it to be a national holiday to be observed by everyone taking a commemorative vacation on that special birthday! Washington and Lee College is known to Keith Carr for other reasons—just as Cumberland Island is a special place to him, since after pursuing Kate for four years, she became enchanted after her first visit to Cumberland. Some fellows have all the luck!

There was one more tourist visit—I whisked them north to view the wharf which was the ferry boat stop before the Coastal railroad was completed and the Cumberland hotel was in its heyday. Then I took them to the ABE Church, now painted, which is the old romantic site where JFK Jr got married to Carolyn Besset after Gogo Ferguson had met them in New York and suggested this out of the way place as a perfect site, free from all paparazzi, with security and privacy controlled for a Greyfield reception. Now since JFK’s martyrdom by his own stupidity by flying off to another wedding in the Kennedy clan, we may have to wait for another illustrious society wedding in a peasant setting to get the next “photo op” event for the society page or Style section.

HOG HUNT:

OK, NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY!

Monday morning, everyone was up at 4:30 to be in the truck at 5:15 to be in the tree at 5:30 AM. As always, with the mobility we enjoy, we got to the reaches the others cannot get to except by hiking in the pre-dawn blackness for hours. It was a glorious dawn. A big high racked buck came right under Dale and he shot a couple of pictures. I saw two hogs, roving through the palmettos, but they were heading toward Bill and Dale, but they never saw them, so they gave us the slip between them. Drew had three hogs crawl right past him, but he never got a chance to shoot his muzzle-loader. We are all in our stands until 9:00, and then I organized a little drive which put a fork-horn buck right past Drew.

We sat near the truck eating a little lunch until everyone assembled, then I drove up toward South Cut Trail for a drive through the thick stuff with everyone but Dale, Rich and me standing where they could see, and the three of us going through the impossible thickets to cover the dense hog sign to drive out any pigs in the thick stuff to those on watch.

I turned out to be the one on watch as I drove. I whirled around and said “First timers get our and load your guns!” as I had spotted two black hogs. Drew and Tom took off after one, and Dale shot at one which Rich also shot at. Drew puffed out a bunch of muzzle smoke, and Tom fired twice. The second (bigger) hog went down and then it scrambled into the palmettos. We looked for it—I trekking in unarmed, but saw no trace. But, if the name of the game is “eradication” we are doing what the professional hunters are supposed to do. Rich gutted out the first hog, and we hung it in a tree before starting our drive through the thickest of the stuff just as it began to get really warm. At lunch later, I walked right up to a brown hog in the palmettos that swapped ends when I called for the first-timers to come up front. I then made tight circles in the palmettos to drive him out and each of those standing watch heard the hog move around just outside my range of sight and it never showed itself. As I say, they are getting clever with the pressure of professionals.

We scouted some more and made long walks in the open park-like range of the hardwood ridges, spooking armadillos but no hogs. At the evening and following mornings we were in our assigned trees, and heard and saw action around us when it became light enough, but we shot no more hogs. It hardly mattered.

We had a good time. We ate too well, told lots of stories, saw a very beautiful environment, and each of the first timers except Bill got shots on game, and everyone saw game aplenty, most of it off limits. I never pulled the trigger, but I am the one who has shot more hogs than anyone but the professional hunter who is paid to do it—nice work, fellow!

We are making the world safe for nesting turtles, but also doing something inside ourselves. I envy the father and son hunts. I wish I could keep doing this indefinitely, but that would take some of the poignancy and preciousness out of it—like life.

Return to January Index
Return to Journal Index