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It’s
that time of year when all of the major hunting seasons are finished.
Although fishing will get me through the summer, it just ain’t the
same. But it’ll give me a reason to get out of the house and not cut
grass.
Now
is the time where I need to clean my shotgun after turkey season, but
when I do it means it’s really over. I just like seeing it and my vest
lying right where they should be when I am leaving the house at 4:30 or
5:00 in the morning. Until I clean it and put it away, I’m ready in
case the state declares an emergency one-day turkey season, as I tell my
wife, "You never know." And in response I get…The Look
(you guys know what I mean).
As
I said, fishing is getting me through it. I used to watch all sorts of
hunting shows on television. You turn the air-conditioning way down so
when you see the hunters on the screen breathing steam on a hunt, you
are a little cold as well. A fellow can sit there and watch the show and
at least remember last season as you judge how good or sorry the hunters
are you are watching.
This
summer is going to be a long one. My wife and I are trying to save money
by cutting back on things we really don’t need. I didn’t complain
when she cut off the area calling. I didn’t bat an eye when the caller
I.D. went away. Caller I.D. doesn’t affect me much because we never
get calls for me anyway so I don’t usually answer the phone. If I do
answer the phone, I’ll find out who it is. If it is a telemarketer, I
always have some fun with them. When she got rid of the automatic voice
mail, it didn’t bother me. I figure if we didn’t get the call, they’ll
call back. My wife had to check it because I could never remember the
call back number nor the code to hear the messages.
Then
she hit me below the belt. I woke up one Sunday morning to watch my
hunting shows and they were gone! All my other good channels were gone
as well. When I asked her what happened she told me how much money we
were saving by going with a cheaper satellite package. I knew we were
cutting back but I really didn’t believe she was serious! I still find
it interesting that while our new "package" got rid of the
Military Channel, National Geographic Channel and all the hunting
channels we still have all the home improvement channels, real estate
channels and more shopping channels than you can throw a stick at, but I
keep it to myself. (Show me a husband who isn’t afraid of his wife and
I’ll show you a fool or a liar!)
So,
with the meager television fare I have to choose from, I’ve started
watching a series about three groups of people who have been tossed out
in the Alaskan wilderness to survive. To call these people city-folks is
an understatement. I missed the first few programs but its gotten real
interesting. I get the impression many of the participants were
vegetarians when it all got started, but now that the world is covered
in ice and snow, meat is starting to look good to them. (A note to
vegetarians: stay in the South, when the ground is covered in snow,
there ain’t many veggies to eat!)
Anyway,
the last show I saw had two of the group hunting either a moose or a
mountain goat. One bunch was trying to get a moose but he kept giving
them the slip. They showed close-ups of the faces of these people. Their
eyes were very intense and they could hear their quarry actually walking
ahead of them but they couldn’t see it. I turned the volume up really
loud and still couldn’t hear it, but they said they could. It was
interesting to see how sharp their vision and hearing became when their
stomachs were growling.
It
was hilarious to watch three computer programmers argue about how to
sight in a .22 rifle.
I
got to wondering where they find these people and how someone goes about
volunteering for these things. I thought if I were to go on one of these
things, I could show them a thing or two. I’ve never hunted moose or
mountain goat, but I’m from the South, I could definitely get my rifle
shooting straight in about ten minutes and probably find something to
kill before the sun went down. I’d have my shelter built pretty
quickly and have a fire going at which point it’s just a matter of
enjoying myself. But then I realized watching someone doing something
"in his or her zone" is probably boring television.
I
guess most people would be bored if they sent a bunch of us Alabama
folks up there, I doubt America would want to watch us sit in our
homemade lawn chairs in front of a roaring fire munching on moose meat
and gaining weight. They might think they would get to watch us suffer
with the big mosquitoes up there. Well, they’ve never had to try and
eat watermelon during dog days when the gnats are at their peak have
they? Watermelon just doesn’t taste right without a little gnat
flavoring. I bet moose meat just isn’t moose meat without a giant
mosquito to give it some zing.
If
they think the cold would get us, then they have never spent a morning
in an Alabama shooting house or 12 feet up a tree, have they? We Alabama
outdoorsmen can comfort ourselves during the coldest of weather by just
knowing there will be no snakes. (Do they even have snakes in Alaska?) I
can guarantee no polar bear hunter ever had to worry about stepping on a
snake.
Most
of us could probably handle a grizzly bear charge. Why? Because once we
kill it, it is something that won’t make us sick to eat, unlike
snakes.
I
would like to be humble and say if they wanted to see Alabama deer
hunters in a panic and at a loss of what to do next, send a group of us
to New York City. I am sure the television people think we would have no
idea what to do, but hey, I went to New York City two years ago and did
just fine. (You just have to know how to use your Southern accent.)
Back
to Alaska, one bunch actually managed to kill a mountain goat! They
raced across this mountain to get to the downed animal because they said
the bears knew when they heard a shot, a hunter had killed something and
they would show up and steal it.
This
is proof positive to me Alaskan bears have never tried to get between a
Southern hunter and his game. If that happened to most hunters I know,
we’d be serving grizzly stew along with the mountain goat kabobs.
Besides, we all learned in school the mountain men only shot once so the
Indians wouldn’t know where they were. Now the Indians used to eat
bears for breakfast, so if the one shot rule fooled them how could it
not fool a bear?
All
in all, this show makes for good entertainment because I can sit there
in my living room and know I could be out there making it look easy and
if it wasn’t, maybe I’d come back a little leaner.
Just
once I’d like to bring a group like this to Alabama and see how they
fare facing the things we do every day. Like choosing which bar-b-cue is
best, getting the air conditioner repaired in July, coming up with ways
to keep the love bugs from sticking to the car…you know, stuff like
that, the life threatening decisions we here in Alabama have to make
every day of our lives.
And
just once, I’d like to see those computer programmers come down here
and eat a slice of watermelon in August and see if they can keep the
gnats out of everything.
Ralph
Ricks is the manager of Quality Cooperative, Inc. in Greenville. |
