Posts by Daryl Gay
Just Don’t Get Bit!
“Hey Mister, will your dog bite? I’m gonna pet him…” “HOLD UP! You might want to check with HIM first.” If you’re one of those folks who firmly believe that dogs are nothing more than sweet little nieces and nephews draped in fur, you might want to drop this and pick up the latest copy…
Read MoreCoyotes After Dark
The pasture sheens blue under an anemic moon, melding several hundred yards away into sky salted with straggly clouds. Stars wink here and there, chiding reminders, perhaps, that we should partake of this disparate panorama more often. There’s not a whisper of wind; the only sound is the breathing of our group of four following…
Read MoreRedneck Refinement
“Lookee here, all you gots to do is take this yer pencil-looking stick—what does they call them thangs? Anyways, rub it kindly scrapin’-like ‘crost the shaller bowl of that there…” “Nawww, he ain’t never gonna learn to work a outfit that complicated! What you need to do is put this here chunk’a plaskit in yer…
Read MoreWayne County Hog Jam 2021
A trip down to Jesup each year for the Wayne County Hog Jam results in the local board of tourism hosting a large crowd of fine folks—plus a huge pile of peeved and formerly pugilistic pork! The 2021 Jam, for instance, held Feb. 19-21, resulted in more than 3 tons of wild hogs being hauled…
Read MoreWhat WAS That?
Why is there always ONE? And why does it always have to be THE one? One last question: is it too much to ask for a simple glimpse, no matter how brief? Let me set the scene for you under the guise of understanding… You know the small town breakfast table, right? Well, sometimes, tiptoeing…
Read MoreClarks Hill LiveScope Crappie
Somehow, somewhere along the line, the whole video game thing managed to pass me by. Guess there were better things to do with my metacarpus at the time. Making a living, for example. But after a day on Clarks Hill Lake looking for—and AT—bunches of crappie with Troy Thiel, I could easily find myself working…
Read MoreGood With The Bad
February. Yep; it’s that time of year again. And, alas, my deer season has been taken from me once more. So what am I supposed to do now to replace piling out an hour and a half before first light, driving 30 miles to climb a tree, then watch fairly reasonable targets stroll past while…
Read MoreCoyote Trapping Ain’t Playtime
“An old trapper gave a buddy of mine six traps and told him to go play with them,” Josh Hall recalls with a grin. “That’s what we did, and that’s really how I got started in trapping. But it didn’t take long to find out that it wasn’t playtime, and that there was a whole…
Read MoreWheezer’s Last Stand
Some of my finest tale-telling ideas come from the deer woods. Mostly while hanging on the side of a tree in a 30-year-old climber. Not that all these strictly factual and totally straight-up narratives involve deer, however. For instance, there’s one critter that I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with. Squirrels hate me; because I…
Read MoreHealing The Hermit
Considering that he had the mental mettle of a ballerina—with temperament to match—I’d seen the old hermit in the throes of neurosis before. But this? “So, Jake, I’m telling you that I just bumped a covey of about two dozen down by Otha Sapp’s corn field, and you’re telling me that you have absolutely no…
Read More