Hunting Generations



My son posing with a deer my father killed in 2012


     November Means Muzzle loader season here in Tennessee. The cool to cold days lead hunters into the woods in force to see if the added range of a muzzle loader and the wild abandon of the rut can produce better results than the warm, sweaty, buggy bow season did. I am no different, I never miss the first chance to sling lead at my favorite table fare. Recently my son who is ten years old has been making the yearly pilgrimage to Middle Tennessee with my father and I to hunt. To have three generations of hunters in the woods has truly been a blessing from the All Mighty. Back in 2012 My father was able to take a nice eight pointer and share the experience with his son and grandson. I can not think of anything better than the old man seeing his son whom he shared the gift of the outdoors with pass it on down the line. This year My son Ryan and I took two deer from a blind strategically hid on a ridge overlooking a small grove of white oaks. Ryan was able to not only witness the very sobering taking of life when the deer were shot but also all the work that went on afterward. We dressed the deer and drug them out. Later we skinned, quartered, butchered and ground the two deer into food. What better education could a young man receive and what better reassurance could a grandfather receive but to see his son teaching his children proper living. Tonight we said grace over the deer that we came by honestly and as I watched my family eating I was overcome with a sense of how real life can be if you live it. While I feel closer to Thoreau when I am experiencing the fruits of my own labor instead of that of others, I feel closer to God when I share the lessons with my son, Your pal the Envirocapitalist.

Boys to Men.

I am dismayed by our protectionist culture today. We seem to want to protect everyone from everything. I myself like dangerous things and I know how to use them safely.  I was not caudled as a boy and protected from everything and called baby. I was allowed to play outside without a parent panicking that I might hurt myself. I was made to do work, pitch in around the house, and go hunting and fishing at a young age. I was probably as much hinderence as help to my father in most areas but I learned how to do things that a man should know how to do.  We used chainsaws, axes, mowers, guns, and knives.  We stayed out in the woods for days at a time. We night fished, and crappie fished, and gardened.  We hunted, trapped, and ran trot lines.  We worked.......and I mean we worked hard.  We built a deck onto the house, we painted the house, we worked on our vehicles ourselves, we mowed our own yard. to sum up, I was not treated like a fragile vessel that would shatter at any hardship. Today we seem to be treating our boys like little babies that will never grow up instead of the men in training that they are.

The Boy on a camping/hunting trip with me in the Big South Fork wilderness area at 8 years old

I have started giving my son the benefit of the doubt. If the hunting trip I am going on is in a tough rugged place and the weather is not that good I'll take him anyway. If the work that needs done is tough I'm bringing him along. I am proud to say he is blossoming. I was trying to "protect" him from tough situations but as soon as I took some of the constraints off. Let him use his knives, go on overnights in the mountains in the winter, and help bust and stack wood, he began to grow and become more confident and capable.  I have learned that our children can become men if we teach them how and on the job training is the best training of all. Your pal the Envirocapitalist.

More to explore than you think.

AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.

One thing that continues to perplex me is the belief of the city dwellers that our wilderness is almost gone.  I will be the first to admit that I wished there was more wilderness and less suburban sprawl,  but I am not delusional enough to think that the outdoor opportunities in America are few. If I quit my Job and spent the next year just exploring I probably couldn't make a dent in all the wild places in the East much less the western part of the country.  I love Big South Fork (See other stories on BSF here, here, or here) I intend to hunt it next weekend with a good friend Wild Bill Picket.  We have not been able to cover all the ground available to us even though we make a yearly trip there.  I can't wait to get there, it has the feeling of a true wilderness. I hope everyone can find wild land to explore nearby and take advantage of it. Your pal The Envirocapitalist.

Steven Rinella hits the nail on the head.

Image courtesy of wildernessathlete.com

Every once and a while someone comes along and speaks your mind better than you do.  As is the case for Steven Rinella, who puts into words what most hunters wished they could voice and he does it in an entertaining and authoritative way.  Even though he has only written two books, (American Buffalo : In Search of A Lost Icon and The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine) He is one of my all time favorite outdoor writer's. 
          One of  his articles entitled " Steven Rinella: Why I Hunt" which I believe to be a must read for anyone struggling with the ethics of hunting, made me kick myself for not being able to verbalise any of these points to some of my outdoor compatriots who struggle with the life and death aspects of hunting.  Both books and numerous articles I read seem to really hit the nail on the head and left me craving for more of Mr. Rinella.  His love affair with the obtaining and preparing of wild foods really speaks to me. This lead me to his T.V. Show The Wild Within on the Travel Channel.  It focused as much on the skinning and cooking of the game as it did on the chase, which I believe is a major part of the hunt and sadly missing from conventional hunting shows. After devouring all five episodes I realized it didn't appear to be coming on anymore. As heart broken as I was, Mr. Rinella appears to still be writing so I digress since I enjoy the written word over television any way. He has written several other articles, of which I can safely say you will not be wasting time by following this link and reading a while. I recommend his work highly and I am sure you will enjoy what I hope becomes an outdoor voice for my generation, your pal the Envirocapitalist.

How much is a rockfish worth?

It was a seemingly normal summer day in 2007 when Stacy called me saying I should come with Ron and him rockfishing below Fort Loudon Damn. Earlier he had produced pictures of himself holding fish as long as a man and I had thought "how many fish steaks could I get out of that". There are not many fish safe to eat in Loudon lake due to mercury and pcb's, but the Rockfish or Striper (as some locals call them) can be consumed, at least for now. I jumped at the chance to battle these non-native giants with two of my best friends. Stacy, who could grow a beard in middle school, had not changed physically in a decade but was no longer the wild man that gave him the moniker "crazy Stacy" on the football team. Since returning from a short college football career he had graduated college and became a family man. His amazing instincts for harvesting game makes him one of my favorite people to hunt with. On the other hand Ron had grown to 6'3" tall and weighed at least 250lbs which happens to be 100lbs heavier than when he wrestled in high school. He is the hardest working man in the world, holding down two jobs for as long as I can remember and still spending more time in the woods hunting and trapping than the rest of us. I myself had gained weight like Ron but with out the growth in height. I went from being little Gabe at 5'7" to being "stocky" to anyone not wanting to insult the bowling ball I had become. I always expect adventure when I am with the boys since they seem to have little fear of anything and a curiosity of whats over the next ridge. But I had no Idea how close we would come to meeting our makers this day. We slid Stacy's 15' modified V aluminum boat into the river and started up stream toward the damn. Even though Stacy had used this boat in the boils below the damn before, I wondered if he had considered what difference adding me, a 200 pound man, to the back end would have. The first sign of trouble was during Stacy's explaination that we may not have that good of success because the moon was wrong. Then he mentioned the fact that my job was to put the two naked wires laying behind me against the battery terminals to start the bilge pump anytime the boat started filling up with water! The roar of the boils were evident before we could see them. the water being generated from turbines at the bottom of the damn looked like a whirlpool in a class 5 rapid. For the first 30 minutes we bounced around in the boils pumping water and trying to cast large plugs in to the concrete cut-ins on the face of the damn. Ron was standing at the front of the boat tempting fate every time the boat was jarred by the upheaval of water when Stacy had to gun it in full reverse to keep us out of the most dangerous area. First I felt water rush in over the back and up onto my legs. then I felt my heart jump as I reached for the afore mentioned naked wires to get the pump pumping. I was having trouble since water was over the battery and something kept hitting my elbow. When I realized that the something was the gas tank I almost panicked. Luckily Stacy stayed calm and set the engine full forward and shot us up into one of the cut-ins in the damn we had just been casting into. For reasons I am unaware of the water is as calm as a swimming pool in these little concrete coffins and this gave me time to regain my cool get the battery in the dry and proceed to pump the calf deep water out of the back of the boat. After some heavy duty pushing by Ron and some fancy boat work by Stacy we popped out of the cutout and raced across the boils to safety. Oddly enough this was the first time I noticed a family of Mexicans on the rocky shore fishing and I wondered what they thought about the crazy rednecks that just attempted to drown themselves for a few lousy rock fish.

Surprise guest

The sun hung low and orange in the sky. I figured only an hour to set the two man tent up and get a fire started before dark. I had camped out alone many times but the feeling of impending doom that over comes me if I do not have a fire by dark always tickles me. After the sun had fallen I was able to get a small fire going and leaned back against a log I had drug down for the fire. I hadn't set there long jotting down notes in my field book when I first thought I heard the sound. ch.....ch....ch. It sounded like turkeys walking or humans! I don't scare easy and I am always heavily armed even when I am just hiking, but the sound of something staggering around in circles in the middle of the woods an hour after dark is unnerving. I finally couldn't take it anymore, and decided to investigate. At the time I was only 27 year old, extremely fit and a little cocky. I was probably just about a 2 hour brisk walk from the pavement and where my truck was stashed in what would today be the North Cumberland (or Sundquist) WMA. I had decided to scout this area for the impending deer season and was sorely disappointed in my findings today and had planned to push farther west in the morning. It was the lack of deer sign and indecisiveness that had led to me setting up camp late. I started out easing toward the walking sound then I thought "sneaking up on someone in the dark is a good way to get shot" so I turned on my flashlight and said in as manly a voice I could manage (I am only 5'7") CAN YOU HEAR ME? ...........yeah.........was the weak reply. I said OVER HEAR......he said OK. A minute later an older gentleman had walked into my light. He seemed a little disoriented but other than that fine. I said "what are you doing out here walking around at night. he said he had just misjudged how long his walk would take and and after it got dark it was hard to follow the trail and was taking him even longer. I told him he was still 2 hours from the road and he could use my cell phone to call who ever he needed to and sleep in my camp (fulfilling the good turn requirements I had learned as a scout in Elementary school.) The next morning I was more interested in getting my new buddy back to his car than running around steep ridges that held more geriatric hikers than deer. We made the walk to my truck in about 3 hours my comrade was not very chatty and seemed tired. after loading my truck up we drove north up the highway for at least a mile before coming to his car, this is when I first realized how lost this guy was. After dropping him off I thought how lucky he was to come across me that night and how getting lost can happen to anyone even a guy who had been hiking in that area for 20 years hunting ginseng and grouse. I re-learned a lesson from my scouting days at Copper Ridge Elementary that day.......Always be prepared, so lost can become found.

Big South Fork 09'

This year was truly a camping trip with the boys, we didn't do any hunting but it was still interesting. The cast this year included some original Heiskell Boys: Big Ron, Wild Bill, and Crazy Stacy. plus the builder of the above pictured home away from home Chris, James, and Josh the Eagle Scout. On Friday the boys had to clear fallen pines from the trail to the campsite , a regular event in East Tennessee in recent years since the beetles struck. Later at the Ranger Station near Bandy Creek a wild eyed employee of the national recreation area asked us how we got to the campsite since the trail was blocked. Why with a chainsaw of course.....WHAAAT a chainsaw....You can't have a chainsaw in the area. The boys were bewildered at this news, we have been camping here for a decade or better and had chainsaws every time. After taking a severe tongue lashing from the lady who sold us our camping permit, and calming Chris down since he was terribly upset by the women's bulging and twitchy left eye, we retired to our campsite.

We stayed up late that night re-living greatness of the past, cooking large hunks of meat over the fire, Shooting our handguns, and basically being boys. Billy had brought pistols in most every caliber, Chris , and Stacy had sidearms as well and I brought my 380 acp. We attempted to out do each other in marksmanship way past dark and fell asleep without a care in the world (well except it only being 20 degrees F.)

We always bring deer meat to eat and make cooking utensils from the forest around us. This camp out had, by the next morning turned into a eating trip more than a hunting trip. I have not eaten that much meat and practically nothing else in my whole life, but it was so good.

All the campers had not even awoken on day two when a Federal officer walked into camp. It was apparent from the opening that the wild eyed woman had told on us for the chainsaws. What happened next was a little embarrassing since two of my fellow brothers tried to hide the bright orange chainsaw underneath the truck then we all acted natural. After a dressing down and orders to never bring chainsaws to Big South Fork again the officer made us show him our camping permit and carry permits for the pistols we had been shooting. Luckily the officer didn't push the chainsaw issue any further and we were not in violation of any other laws that I know of.

Undeterred by the authorities we still made a walk about into the wilderness were Billy with some eagle eyes spotted a nice shed (6 points on one side) and scouted out a pretty nice place to hunt next fall. A bottle neck occurs between a bluff and a thicket created by a abandoned field. I hope to be there next fall.

That night we passed the antler around the campfire and told tales of the animals we had killed or almost killed and consumed more fire cooked meat. This typified the activities at Big South Fork 09'

With a thin blanket of snow covering the camp we packed up and left our old faithful campsite for maybe the last time. While we do go to the Big South Fork to hunt wild hogs occasionally we really don't want to be harassed by a pig in camp. Now that the authorities have found our refuge we will probably find elsewhere to camp. While we didn't hunt, hike much, or almost kill ourselves this year I did have a good time with my pals and spending 72 hours outside gives you a appreciation for how far from nature we are in our daily lives and how much I yearn to live closer to it.

Back to the South Fork (a preview)

I am about to make this tent my home again for a few days this weekend as I have in years past. The yearly Heiskell boy camp out in the wilds of Big South Fork has arrived and appears to have the potential to be more dangerous than even previous trips I have blogged about here.

This year, an old friend and honorary Hieskell boy from the past Mike Fadnek will be joining us, and unless he joined a monastery since I last ran with him, this year could be very interesting. Plus the usual riff raff should be in attendance and ready to make memories (The group of sophisticates I usually share the woods with are pictured below)

I will report back promptly next week after the excursion, with a death count (animals of course) any amusing stories of grown men doing things they know better than (including myself), and a general entertaining discussion of the events which occur when this diverse group of outdoorsmen go back to nature for a weekend.

Cheating death at Big South Fork!

The Annual Heiskell boy camp out at Big South Fork is always an interesting event, however the 2006 rendezvous was unforgettable. The usual cast of characters showed up with a few extra invited guests. The core group of myself, Ron, Stacy, Billy, Ray, and Chris were joined on this expedition by a stoner and a hillbilly named Lamance. The core group of campers are a mix of divergent personalities with one commonality, the outdoors. The first night in the wilderness that covers a huge area surrounding the Big South Fork river was the usual, making camp building a fire and drinking ourselves silly. The night went off without major incident except for stacy deciding to get out the chainsaw and putt it to work close to camp. The tree that fell in camp luckily did not hit anyone but the jon boat (which Ron had brought to make a trip downstream) took it on the chin. Needless to say Ron was not happy but stacy promised to fix it upon our returned to civilization. In the morning we split into to two groups for hunting and gathering. One will mainly take shorts trips then move using the trucks on the dirt roads to cover more ground. Ron, Chris, Lamance, and myself decided to follow the drainage off the mountain down to the river which would lead us to a horse trail and back up to the dirt track our truck was parked on. We had hiked most of the day to make it down to the river (we had projected the trip to the river to be only six miles cross-country). We were running out of time and still had miles to go to the horse trail so the decision was made to scale the steep sides of the mountain straight above us to make a b-line back to the truck. There would be two cliffs in the way but I was not worried, I had scaled several rock faces in my day. What I had not considered was I was already exhausted had sixty pounds of gear on my back and a remington 700 adl 30-06 hunting rifle . We had made it to the second cliff, I was following Lamance up the face. he had stopped at a small tree so we could pass the guns and the packs up to the top which Ron and Chris had already ascended to. After Lamance had pulled himself up off the small tree I proceeded to get on it. I think everyone heard the branch break. Just before completing the back breaking fall then probably bouncing and rolling all the way back to the river, I threw my hand out and felt Lamance's hand. Where he found the strength I don't know, but he pulled me up to the next ledge. Granted I was glad to be on top of the mountain and not Laying prone at the bottom, but the hike down the dirt track back to the truck was brutal. the burst of adrenaline from nearly breaking my neck had caused my legs to cramp. Cramp for the entire mile walk back. The apple pie moonshine helped that night in camp but only a little.