At Your Own Risk!

Question to idiotic, inept, would-be thieves: Just how do you plan to tote out that big ol’ tower stand considering the fact that you ain’t gonna have no kneecaps?

Call or text when you come up with an answer. Assuming you are left with enough fingers and/or thumbs to punch buttons. If that’s so, it’s only because Sloan was in a forgiving mood. But, it ain’t likely!

Back in November 2015, GON ran a photo of a petite, 5-foot-and-not-much blonde perched like a model with her camo crossbow and a recently-deceased alligator. The gator was a right smart longer than she is, but no match when it came to bad intentions.

The taker of that 8-foot-plus gator was my buddy Debra Sloan. She’s been ramrod/second mama to my son Myles and all his baseball teammates at Georgia Southwestern State University, from which he (hallelujah) graduates (hallelujah) in December (hallelujah)!

(It’s not like I’ll be glad to have him back home, but he IS my No. 1 fishing partner…)

I’m sure Sloan has an official title for her job in the athletic office at GSW, but she’s not pretentious enough to sling it at me. We started talking hunting within five minutes  of being introduced and have never stopped. You know how it is: we hunters are all in this together.

And we’d better keep it that way.

Sloan is one of the proficient variety. Just ask that gator or one of her deer, or ducks, or turkeys… 

Her dad, the late Dr. John Harold Durden, a USDA veterinarian, always wanted to be sure she could look after herself, and if that meant killing, dragging, gutting and cooking it, so be it. She’s covered the bases. In fact, she’s evidently a better hunter than I am. We made a deal that she would swap me one of her homemade pound cakes—the best this side of Mars—for a turkey.

Best cake I ever ate. And next year I’m gonna blast two cantankerous old gobblers to make up for never seeing one this year!

Sloan is meticulous about her stuff, and especially her hunting stuff. So when she found that tower stand on its side, obviously ready to be hauled away by some life-without-parole candidates, she felt scorned.

And you know about a woman scorned…

I’d like to be able to print the entire social media post, but your magazine would likely catch fire if I did. So let’s hit the highlights in an open letter to the perpetrators:

“You made some fatal mistakes: 1. Trespassing and taking down something that didn’t belong to you. 2. Mistaking me for a weak and mild-mannered female.”

The crooks who toppled over Debra Sloan’s stand only got half the job done. According to the author, if they’re somewhat smart, they won’t return to finish the job…

I can just see all you married fellers loosening your collars as old memories make their way back!

My favorite: “But when you go back to attempt to load it up, you smile real pretty for the cameras, because I will hunt you down for the thieving, trespassing… you are, and…”

Well, you get the picture. Right feisty, ain’t she?

I can assure you of one thing: this old boy ain’t hauling no tower stands within 50 miles of the Flint River, even if you’re offering them up for free!

And should by any chance the hooligans read this, please take some sound advice and remain far, far away from the area of that stand. If you don’t, you’re likely to leave limpin’. And that would be a waste of good buckshot. 

So that we are perfectly clear on the subject, let me tell you a too-true story from far enough back in my hunting career that hopefully the statute of limitations has run out. As it happened, I wasn’t directly involved—and ain’t namin’ no names nohow!

I had two ladder stands stolen from this piece of secluded, private property, and two hunting partners lost one apiece. When queried, the resident tenant farmer reported that he had heard a truck cruising the dirt roads and fields at night on several occasions.

And, as a single, elderly man who lived alone, he was seriously concerned. Not to mention downright scared. So somebody loaned him a 12-gauge automatic and provided a couple five-packs of slugs.

It was three nights later that, just after midnight, he heard a pair of shots in the soybeans behind his house. Walking up the road to the field entrance, he saw where the metal gate had been trashed, pushed down as the truck ran right through and over it.

His thought was to crouch in weeds beside the opening in hopes of getting a tag number and description of the truck. But when it suddenly roared out of the bottom and straight toward him, lights off, he panicked and put two slugs through a radiator and into a 360-cubic-inch FE block—which hissed its way into eternal slumber.

The pair in the truck bailed and ran almost as fast down the dirt road as the old man skedaddled up it. When law enforcement and others arrived, they found in the truck bed what turned out to be two of the costliest does ever killed.

P.S. 

I know for sure Sloan has a 12-gauge semi-automatic…