The Jim Bland Story

Jim Bland, of Jesup, was born in 1929 just as the effects of the Great Depression were beginning to be felt by many Americans. His outdoor life was greatly influenced by his father, James R. Bland, and his grandfather, Daniel Tate Bland, who was born in 1850. Today at 92, “Pops,” as he is known to his family, has provided a rich legacy of hunting and fishing memories for his children and grandchildren.

“My granddad was too young to fight in the War Between the States and too old by the time the Spanish American War started in 1898,” Jim said. “He farmed, cut a little timber and lived off the land to a certain degree hunting and fishing. Mostly, he told me some unforgettable stories and had a huge influence on my life. He did most of his deer hunting with an old black powder musket. Back before the turn of the century, there were still some deer to be found in the Altamaha River swamps, and he always killed a few each year. When he wasn’t farming, he was cutting cypress logs in the swamp. He would girder or notch the trees one year, then wait a year for the tree to die and cut it down the next year. At high water times, he floated his logs down the Ocmulgee in Telfair County out to the Altamaha River, and then rafted them downriver to the sawmill in Darien.

“When he was deer hunting, Granddad would take a stand near an oak tree and wait for the deer to come by looking for acorns. If a deer came by, he would aim and shoot. After the shot, he would immediately drop to his knees and look under the thick cloud of smoke to see if he got the deer. Usually he did.

“My dad worked for Southern Railroad. He was furloughed during the Depression so we moved to Jesup where he opened a Texaco station. Since no one had any money in those days, farmers would pay for their gasoline with potatoes, eggs, chickens or an occasional ham if someone slaughtered a hog. We ate well sometimes but had no money. Dad got to the point where he couldn’t pay the Texaco folks for their gasoline, so the station closed down. After that Dad got a job as police chief. He and two other men ran the three-man police force.

“Dad and the Sheriff of Jesup became good friends. The Sheriff’s family had some land on the edge of the Altamaha Swamp. Four of us would go hunting just about every Saturday—the Sheriff, his son who was about my age, Dad and me. Dad had a double-barrel 20-gauge shotgun with a full and modified barrel. He’d load one barrel with squirrel shot and one with buckshot for deer. Deer were rare, but occasionally we’d kill one. Squirrels were always plentiful in those days. I had a Stevens single-shot 20-gauge that I loved. I think I got it as a birthday present.”

Jim’s First Gobbler In 1939  (10 years old)

“On one of our typical Saturday hunts, Dad and I were slipping along through the edge of the swamp and we sat down for a few minutes to rest,” Jim continued. “Dad had a cedar box, and he got it out and yelped several times. He got an answer right away. Here they came—that gobbler and a whole flock of hens with him, at least eight or 10 in all! When he got close enough, I shot him. Later on someone took my picture with me holding my first turkey. Sadly our house burned to the ground a year later in 1940, and I lost my shotgun and a lot of old family photos. We had some great photos of Grandpa and dad, but they all got destroyed.

“Turkeys weren’t extremely plentiful in those days, but there were always a few in the swamp to hunt. Dad was a very good turkey hunter, and he killed several. I managed to shoot several more over the next few years. I killed my first deer a year or so after that first gobbler. It seemed like there were periods of abundance where deer would be fairly plentiful some years and quite rare the next year. I killed my first deer during one of those periods of abundance. During the Depression years, we mostly hunted squirrels, deer, ducks and turkeys. We killed more squirrels and ducks than anything else. One year there was a bad screwworm (blowfly) infestation. After the bucks shed their antlers, the worms would get in the wounds in their pedicles where the antlers had dropped off and sometimes get infected and kill the deer. Those worms almost wiped out the deer population. We only saw one or two over the next couple of years.”

A 10-year-old Jim Bland shows off his first turkey taken in 1939 with his treasured Stevens single-shot 20 gauge shotgun. The shotgun was lost in a house fire in 1940.

Life’s Lesson in a River Swamp

“After the war started Dad went back to work with the railroad. One of the regular runs was from Atlanta to Macon to Jesup and over to Brunswick. He had lots of friends on the railroad including a conductor that I got to know fairly well. Since shotgun shells were rationed during the war, they were very hard for us to get. The conductor had a source in Atlanta where he could get plenty of shells, and he would trade me shells for squirrels. I’d get up at 5:30 a.m. in the morning and go down to the station and get on a freight car. By then I was using my dad’s 20-gauge double gun. The conductor would stop the train and let me off in the middle of the woods between Jesup and Brunswick. I would hunt all day—mostly for squirrels and ducks. I think I got one deer back in those days and occasionally I would get a turkey. Turkeys were pretty scarce by then as well, but they were more plentiful than deer. I would get back on the train late in the afternoon all wet and muddy from being in the swamp all day. I would give the conductor a mess of squirrels, and he would provide me with plenty of shotgun shells.”

Young Jim Bland excelled in track, basketball and football sports during high school. He almost got to play football at the University of Georgia under legendary Coach Wally Butts.

“After the war, the University of Georgia set up a satellite campus in Savannah. Coach Butts sent me there in a two-year program, but a knee injury ended my athletic career. Since football was out, I decided to transfer to Georgia Tech and try to get an engineering degree. While there, I spent a year in the Navy ROTC program and then joined the Air Force ROTC. Upon graduation, I came out as a first lieutenant in the Air Force.”

Jim’s adventures in the Air Force over the next few years could fill a book. Several months after the Korean War started, he shipped out to Korea where he spent nearly a year living on an island several miles off the west coast.

Not only is Jim Bland an incredible outdoorsman in his own right, but over his lifetime he has taught two sons, a daughter, 11 grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews how to hunt, fish and respect the outdoors. Pictured is a small collection of those he has taught (from left kneeling): John Lex Kenerly and Hunter Bland. (From left standing): Pops, David Bland II, David Bland and James R “Jay” Bland IV.

Duck Hunting in Korea

“I was issued a .30 carbine and a standard .45 automatic pistol,” Jim said. “Although there wasn’t much threat of attack, I didn’t have much confidence in either of them, so I wrote my dad and asked him to send me my old Browning Model 1897 pump 12 gauge so I could at least do some duck hunting. Dad broke it down and sent it to me in pieces like a Christmas present. All of our supplies came in by parachute, and some things got pretty beaten up when they bounced around on the rocks, but the old shotgun was fine when I put it together.

“Now I had a gun with no shells. There was an American prison camp on a small island several miles away, and I contacted some of the guards and tried to work out a trade. Of all things, they badly needed some good old American-made toilet paper. This was something I was able to get parachuted in in large quantities, so I traded them toilet paper for shells. All they had was solid brass 00 buckshot. That shot had some kind of power. I literary wore that old gun out using that brass shot. The gun held six rounds, and it finally got to where it fired whenever you pumped the action. I didn’t have to pull the trigger.

“Later on an Australian destroyer came by and anchored out off the island. The captain invited me over for dinner occasionally, and I discovered that some of the gunners were shooting skeet off the back of the ship. They had lots of beer and skeet shot. By then I had a whole barn full of toilet paper and that was a valuable commodity to those Australians. The military-issued stuff they were using was worse than a Sears-Roebuck catalog. So I traded them toilet paper for skeet shells and beer. That eastern side of the Korean Peninsula was a major flyway for geese, so I got to hunt lots of geese with my old shotgun. I also hunted ducks in some of the rice paddies. Ducks were a pest to the local farmers because they ate the rice, so they were very pleased to let me shoot those ducks. I always gave the ducks to the children because they had very little meat in their diets.”

After the Korean War, Jim was fortunate to land a job with ITT Rayonier in his hometown of Jesup. The company had just built a new pulp and paper mill on the banks of the Altamaha, and Jim used his engineering skills to run all the sophisticated machinery. He retired in 1990 after a long and productive career.

A 2021 Turkey Hunt for the Ages

After a lifetime of hunting and fishing and mentoring all of his children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, Jim naturally had to slow down a bit when he reached his late 80s.

“For approximately the last five years, from about age 87 to 91, my son David took me out and helped me get set up in the woods,” Jim said. “He would set up the blinds, walk me in and carry my gun for me. We’d get inside the blind and sit and wait for whatever we were hunting. During those five years, I always managed to get a deer, turkey and hog every year.”

Obviously the year 2020 was different. The pandemic kept Jim and his wife in seclusion for many months. When 2021 rolled around, Jim really didn’t expect to do much turkey hunting.

In April, Jimmy Parker, a dear friend of Jim’s and longtime hunting companion, passed away. Jim had rarely been outside the house for many months, but David talked him into going to the funeral saying he thought it would be safe since it was an outside graveside service at 2 p.m. David had mentioned to his father the possibility of going turkey hunting after the service or at least stopping by their property. The funeral was held near the Bland family’s hunting land on the Altamaha just outside of Ludowici.

“I talked to Jimmy’s wife Ann and asked her if she thought it would be disrespectful if I went hunting that afternoon,” Jim said. “Our hunting land is adjacent to Jimmy’s land.”

“Oh, no,” Ann told him. “He’d love that. It would be the greatest tribute you could give him on the day of his funeral.”

So after the service Jim and David drove over to their hunting cabin.

“We changed into some camp shirts and David took me out and got me situated inside a pop-up ground blind. After we were settled in, he started making a few yelps. We waited 20 or 30 minutes and never heard a sound.

In preparation for Pop’s hunt, David had recently ordered a brand-new Benelli automatic 20-gauge shotgun. This shotgun was much shorter and lighter than the 12 gauge Remington 1100 that Pop’s has used for decades.

“David had never shot it,” Jim said. “So I took the gun and he did the calling. After another 30 minutes or so, I looked up and there came the biggest gobbler I had ever seen. He stopped right behind a small tree about 30 yards out. I could see feathers on both sides of the tree, but I could not see his head. I put the sights right on that tree and waited for what seemed like an eternity. In reality it was probably several minutes. He finally took a step out from the tree. It was just enough so I could see his neck and breast. I squeezed off a shot. He dropped stone dead in his tracks, and he never moved a muscle. It was the first time David’s new shotgun had been fired, and for that reason it will always hold a special significance within our family.”

David posed the big gobbler on a log and took several pictures with his cell phone of Jim with his prize turkey and the new shotgun. David then sent one of the pictures to Jimmy Parker’s son, Greg and asked him to show it to Ann.

“Within an hour of the funeral, Ann was able to look at that picture,” Jim said. “She was thrilled for our success, and she just knew Jimmy was looking down on us. That might have been the greatest highlight of my entire 82 years of hunting the river swamps. I knew I could never top what had happened. What better way is there for a man to wrap up his many decades of hunting than to do something like that?”

Eighty-two years after killing his first turkey, Jim Bland poses with his 2021 gobbler. The outstanding bird was taken on the same day a funeral was held for Jim’s dear friend and hunting companion Jimmy Parker. “Killing that turkey in honor of Jimmy might have been the greatest highlight of my 82 years of hunting the Altamaha River swamps,” Jim said.

Jim’s legacy will go far beyond his fantastic hunting stories.

“In a nutshell, I think you could describe my dad ‘Pops’ as a man who has always been committed to doing the right thing,” said David. “He is a great woodsman and a great teacher. He is also a dedicated Christian and a fantastic person. One year when I came home from college he called in a gobbler for me on three consecutive mornings.

“He always taught us to ‘leave the woods better than you found them.’ He got all the kids in the family interested in hunting, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. Spending time in the woods with Pops was a cherished rite of passage for all of the grandchildren.”