And The Winner Is…

Final conclusion: it’s y’all.

Yep. After a month of sorting through all things 2024 Outdoor Blast, what I enjoyed most about the four-day (for me) honeycomb of hoopla was meeting and greeting our people: you.

Thanks. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Which is highly doubtful.

I’ve made this statement concerning Georgia Outdoor News from the very start, all those years ago: it’s about US! If you hunt, fish, trap or simply traipse amongst our state’s outdoors, we want to be a part of that.

No how-to on cod fishing off the coast of Rhode Island. (Rhode Island has a coast, right?) There’ll be approximately zero recipes for poached or pickled python. Equally as many on proper procedure for wrassling them wrigglin’ heathens into a sack in South Everglades. (Forget it, Gill; I AIN’T goin’!)

And about those grizzlies and moose in the Yukon… Well, I’ve been proposing I’d undertake that trip for 37 years but still ain’t nobody listening. Come on now; it ain’t ALL that far north of Macon…

But back to the Blast…

Here’s a tidbit for you, dear reader, a behind-the-scenes look at pre-opening day load-in parking lot duty: ever herded cats in a 2-acre lot with a 20-lb. boar coon as a helper?

In a pouring rain?

And then comes a certain late-afternoon call. A vendor is doing his best to reach us before the gates are locked for the night, and his GPS seems to be taking a siesta. He’s hauled his wares in the big trailer ONLY a thousand miles from Texas to OUR show. One of but two that he attends per year.

We waited, unloaded some killer stuff, helped him set up and I made a new friend.

THAT is parking lot duty. And why all the hard-at-it staff smiles even as it sweats—no grousing on these grounds.

Then, there’s opening day.

I never know what to expect when the floodgates fly. Except that this is what we’ve waited an entire year for: our people have arrived.

Including The Perfect Couple.

You see, this eye of the beholder thing is the real deal. I was born and raised in uh, well, GEORGIA!

And we see and read into pertickler things possibly with a dollop of difference than folks that ain’t jes natural from around here.

Such as how you are witness to a young couple walking over to have me sign a copy of Rabbit Stompin’ and know upon first glance that The Perfect Couple—which up unto this point in life seemed fairly mystical or maybe mythical—stands before you.

Before you begin asking questions concerning my psychic powers, I’ll just come clean on how I knew: the T-shirts were a dead giveaway!

His was vintage Pabst Blue Ribbon. Hers? Moon Pie.

My people. And you don’t need no p, h or d to figure it out.

There’s quite a bit of time in the GON booth—which is more fun than getting dirty as long as Craig James and his little spitfire of a wife Brandy are alongside—but there’s also bouncing around the building like a pinball for various and sundry reasons. Like meeting a young lady from Brazil whose name is Brazil who now lives in Texas but would seem a fine fit for Georgia if we could keep her away from Okefenokee bears.

(We didn’t get around to whether or not they have bears in Brazil but  it seems that the Swamp comes up in just about all of my conversations anyway. By the way, boys, 35 days from the opener as I write this. Yee-Haw!) Moving on…

I’m four days and 196 miles away from home, but they won’t let me kill nothing nor build a cookfire at this motel, so a man’s gotta eat somewhere. And right here is where you learn of one of my true weaknesses in life. I heard Pastor David Jeremiah say that we don’t become addicted to things; we addict ourselves. He’s right. I’m guilty. I have addicted myself, and the cycle will likely never be broken.

For—despite having struggled manfully to maintain my girlish figure—Cajun food is impossible to overcome!

Seems there’s this place I’d never heard of, some dozen miles down the road: Henry’s Louisiana Grill.

The menu: gumbo, crawfish étouffée… and I think there was some other stuff, too.

Went in alone Thursday and was called by name while being draped in beads by smiling owner Casey Shillcutt. OK, so my name was on my shirt.

But it wasn’t Friday, when, accompanied by a veritable Mongol horde of compatriots, I invaded again. And was treated like an old friend. She’s Casey now.

Saturday? Yep. Gumbo and crawfish three nights running, wolfed down with the best sweet cornbread I’ve ever added a couple pounds with.

I’m looking at the beads; wish I was looking at the gumbo…

It’s hard to pick THE highlight; perhaps, as seems to happen every year, Sunday’s Shoot-Out. There’s something about being on the mic and giving away a shiny new Chevy truck so red that it gleams in the dark…

Especially to a guy who lives across town from me!

David Shepard is profiled a few pages back, pictured with bucks and his truck. We took the bucks off the wall at his dad’s man cave.

I’ve known that dad, Don, only for a little over 50 years.

He has sons. I have sons. We’ve spent a lifetime making them productive citizens, the best men they can be. We’re proud that they fit it.

With our people.