Turkeys Can Be Tough, Not As Tough As Gracie

As is typical with 14-year-old girls, Gracie Thigpen just wants to have fun. But this Bleckley County teen is anything but typical; for Gracie, having fun revolves around hunting, fishing and the outdoors. She’s learning that this hunting business is usually anything but easy, especially when it comes to harvesting a tom turkey. Unfortunately, she…

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Rocks & Docks For Reds & Trout With Miss Judy Charters

How often do we drive over a body of water, gaze out and muse, “There ought to be fish there… and there, and there…” and wish we were in a boat checking out those hunches? Motoring over Lake Sinclair on 441, past Little River and Lakeside landings, drives me nuts. I’m crisscrossing  the Oconee, Ogeechee,…

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Works For Me!

It seems to be a fact of everyday life—EVERYDAY—that wherever breakfast is served in establishments open to the public, one can stumble upon, over, around and through a gaggle of gents confidently curing the world’s ailments. One by one. Despite the fact that they’re all talking at the same time. Did I say gaggle of…

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Jake Cures March Madness

Consternation, I would say, aptly described the look on the old hermit’s face. Of course, I’d never say it to HIM, because we’re forthwith contemplating a dissertation of explanation. I can just hear him now: “Ye said what? I look how? Do I need to pick up a oak limb?” It struck me that consternation…

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Meet Mister B.O. Mock, 96-Year-Old Deer Hunter

The gnarled finger sweeps across a vista to instantly quicken the heartbeat of any south Georgia deer hunter: chest-high planted pines bordered by a pond, a field and a hardwood head, requisite creek trickling through. “There in those pines is where we got pictures of at least one really good 8-pointer, and the other one…

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A Fitting End

As frequently happens, the first things that caught my eye were those looong legs! Hmmmmm… That was my left eye. My right was laser-focused on the swaying hips. Kinda reminded me of a girlfriend back in high school: walking away decked out in Dodge County red, she looked just like a box of Valentine’s candy!…

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The Dodgy Hares Of Woods-N-Water

Smack-dab in the middle of more than 5,500 game-rich middle Georgia acres; beagles squalling and roaring fit to blow needles off the pines; a perfectly frosty, sunny morning; perched squarely in the path of the already half-hour race—and leave it to Blaine Burley to come up with a kamikaze attack rabbit! Monday, Jan. 16, was…

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Honorable Mentions

Flip backwards amongst all these pages and somewhere you’ll trip across what I writ concerning Sam Muzayen. Which is about half of what I wanted to write, but other folks hereabouts is better at this than I is so they has to have their pages, too. Editorial Capacity Supervisory Specialist (I just made that up!)…

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Quitting Is For The Enemy

Normally, this is a period fraught with chaos. Never mind the ever-present and who-knows-how-deep black water, claustrophobic brush, vines and briers clawing and ripping; just hurry as best you can. Hounds are roaring out of their minds, hunters sloshing, tripping, bleeding, pushing on… Because some 987 interminable yards into the Okefenokee Swamp, a bear is…

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Look At It My Way

That I have an overactive imagination plus an abhorrence to being forced to sit still among fellow humans are not up for debate. My mind literally whirls; and my feet want to, even when they can’t. Amazing that I can perch in a TomCat literally for hours in perfect contentment; but surrounded in a doctor’s…

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