Wimmens. Deer Variety

Doe. So come on and admit it: a totally dismissive attitude crept unsummoned into your brainbox  immediately upon reading the word. I get it; skinheaded whitetails don’t get no respect. Been there. And got over it. For the most part. Sure, I’d still rather see something wearing a bundle of bones on its head come…

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50 Years Of Turkey Obsession

“When I was 12 years old,” Brad Campbell was saying, “I traded a pig for a .22 rifle.” That remark caused me to smile all over my face. It called to mind a certain long-ago conversation with a sociology professor who was attempting to explain the term “hunter-gatherer” as a single entity. It became quickly…

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Dogging Deer With The Duck Roost Gang

Way off in the distance, the yammering seems to be getting fainter; the race is headed away from the huge clearcut I’ve wandered out into. Perched atop a pushed-up logpile, out front there is but scattered brush and a single line of trees too scraggly even for the loggers. Down the narrow dirt road 50…

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The Race Is On

Familiar with the term, “skinnin’ it back?” If not, thing for you to do is—as my little Ma used to say—“Pay ‘tainchun!” In my home county of Dodge, there’s a certain strip of highway—which shall remain uncharted for our purposes here. One tops a hill, then motors in a dead straight line to the top…

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Of Bears, Dogs—And Friendships

  There’s no accounting for the bug that bites you. Or when it happens. For some, it’s a process of growing into whatever activity they eventually fall for and become consumed. Others are suddenly smitten. Like Don Butts. His parents didn’t see it coming during a vacation trip to the Great Smoky Mountains all those…

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Oh, What A Day

Never been much of a “list” guy; I bore too easily. Tend to quickly become over/under—and mostly under—whelmed by too many facts and figures spouted forth by someone seeking to validate their existence or self-absorbed place in the overall scheme of things. (Y’all didn’t see all that high-horse rhetoric coming, now did you?) Plain. That’s…

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Freaking On Fumes

So. Here we are. Decision time. You’ll have to think back a month or so; it’s a strain, but work at it. We’re talkin’ Wednesday, Aug. 30. On the one hand, we got this old gal Idalia. Calls herself a hurricane. T’other? Dove season opens in three days. The problem, however, lies in-between… In Monroe,…

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More Than Just A Dove Shoot

Of a morning, stumbling to perform my ablutions, the framed photo is likely the first thing bleary eyes are able to focus upon. Father And Son, it’s entitled. It’s 15×19, shot from the darkness of what appears to be a cave cut through a mountainside. With the camera at their backs, the subjects are a…

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Altamaha River Limb-Line Cats

The world moved slower a hundred years ago in south Georgia. Life was simpler; but, truly, times were hard. There was little industry. No “town” jobs to speak of in a spot as sparse as Soperton. Willie T. Barwick was struggling just to get by in the year 1920, at wit’s end. That’s when he…

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Reverie Disruption

My mind races… It’s like, pick a tangent, any tangent… Guess it’s all this whirling; on the mower. Only ridden from Dublin to Waycross, in circles, this morning. My simple brain needs to get focused on a simple subject, get up on plane and head out in a single direction. Hmmm… What’s for dinner? Now…

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