#2025631 - 08/11/10 08:01 AM
Maybe You Can Relate...
|
bowriter
Non-Typical
Registered: 08/31/02
Posts: 40302
Loc: Lebanon,TN USA
|
Online
|
|
Outdoors With John L. Sloan …copyright John L. Sloan August 2010
August 11, 200
SMELLS, TASTES AND RHYTHMS.
There is no cornfield near here. I don’t even know where the closest one is. I lean against the old red oak, letting it block some of the biting wind and ponder the small pile of corn just in front of me. I count the kernels. There are 11, all in a small pile.
Crows.
Crows are hoarders. They hoard things for later use. Somewhere they have found some corn, probably in a feeder somewhere. I don’t know how many trips it took them to make this small pile or how many were involved. I’m sure crows did it. Someday, if they need it, they’ll come back and eat it.
I listen for the sound of falling leaves. It’s funny, unless you are a woodsman, a student of things both wild and natural, you may not know leaves make a sound as they fall. You must know how to listen. You can taste a sunrise, smell a frost and see an updraft of air. And you can hear a leaf fall. Not just when it hits the ground; as it falls.
To do these things requires a desire to do so and a mentor. To the early student, tasting a sunrise may seem impossible. But you can do so just as surely as you can feel a change in the rhythm of the woodlands and the wildlife within. All hunters, the good ones, learn this.
Sometimes it is easy. You don’t have to have a great deal of experience to realize the bush has suddenly gone quite as a bear approaches. It doesn’t always happen. But it happens often enough. Suddenly the birds are silent, the pine squirrels are gone and the ravens have left. Then a bear steps out. If you were attentive and knowledgeable, you would have been expecting him...or something. The rhythm changed.
I learned to do many of these things by watching older hunters-my mentors-men who understood the swamps and hardwoods, They didn’t tell me, “When this happens, this is going to happen.” In fact, they said little. Many times they would just stop, stand motionless and sniff lightly or lick their lips, or cock an ear. Little by little, I learned to sniff and lick and listen with them. After a few years, maybe 20 or 30, I began to decipher the codes and break down the formulas of becoming part of the ebb and flow of the woods.
I remember one morning, deep in a vast swamp, one with no road and few signs that man had been there before, when I heard a rhythm change and then saw the cause. I was watching a grey squirrel scurry in the leaves. I was seated on a downed cypress log, not 10 feet away. Suddenly he was gone. Two blue jays, perched on an ironwood branch above me, quickly turned and looked the other direction. It wasn’t much of a change but for some reason it caught my attention. I looked where the birds were looking and out stepped a bobcat. I began to become a hunter that day. And I had yet to worry about shaving or girls or good whiskey. I began young. Shortly two of the first wild turkeys I ever saw flew over the bayou.
But since that day I have been a student of rhythms and tastes and smells of the outdoors. Each year I add to my catalog of “things”. One year I added the shiver of an elk bugle and the grinding of a feeding caterpillar. Just this past fall I watched as a tendril of air rose from a damp log, one a coyote had just claimed. It rose like upside down Spanish moss. I saw it.
The hunter, the true one, cares not what equipment he carries in his hands or even if he carries anything. The hunter is a gatherer of knowledge seeds, delighting in every new kernel, hoarding them for future use. As it is with the crow, perhaps some day he will need them.
###
Cutline:
Two turkeys sail by as I watch. They are among the first I have ever seen
_________________________
Constipation has ruined many a good day. Not as many as stupidity, though.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2025646 - 08/11/10 08:17 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: bowriter]
|
Good time Charlie
TnDeer Old Timer
12 Point
Registered: 10/08/99
Posts: 6539
Loc: Tazewell
|
Offline
|
|
Very Good Bowriter,good read
But it is so true you have to become one with your surroundings
_________________________
Live every day as if it were your last
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2025976 - 08/11/10 11:27 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: Good time Charlie]
|
W.Seay
12 Point
Registered: 01/17/06
Posts: 7148
Loc: Collierville,TN.
|
|
Offline
|
|
Great read!
_________________________
To one with faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2025989 - 08/11/10 11:34 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: W.Seay]
|
KENBOB10
14 Point
Registered: 06/22/06
Posts: 8342
Loc: Benton tn.
|
|
Offline
|
|
Good read.
_________________________
The other half of "Man Purty"
EAST SIDE MAFIA TCB
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2025990 - 08/11/10 11:36 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: KENBOB10]
|
JohnnyBond
Cat Man
Non-Typical
Registered: 01/16/08
Posts: 35567
Loc:
|
|
Offline
|
|
Good read
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2025992 - 08/11/10 11:39 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: bowriter]
|
Wes Parrish
16 Point
Registered: 06/12/02
Posts: 16968
Loc: Knoxville-Dover-Union City, TN
|
|
Offline
|
|
Yes, Bowriter, I relate.
Good read. Thank you.
The hunter, the true one, cares not what equipment he carries in his hands or even if he carries anything. The hunter is a gatherer of knowledge seeds, delighting in every new kernel, hoarding them for future use. As it is with the crow, perhaps some day he will need them.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2025999 - 08/11/10 11:41 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: JohnnyBond]
|
TC4ever
16 Point
Registered: 10/19/07
Posts: 14514
Loc: Va
|
|
Offline
|
|
Very good read!
_________________________
Hoping For Change in November 2012
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2026010 - 08/11/10 11:46 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: TC4ever]
|
Beekeeper
Good ol' Boys "Team Buckcreek"
16 Point
Registered: 08/26/09
Posts: 10946
Loc: McMinn Co. Tennessee
|
|
Offline
|
|
Good read.
Thanks,
Beekeeper
_________________________
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2026027 - 08/11/10 11:55 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: Beekeeper]
|
whistlinwingman
8 Point
Registered: 07/11/05
Posts: 1824
Loc: Morristown
|
|
Offline
|
|
Thanks. I relate totally.
_________________________
"I'm a great believer in luck, I find the harder I work the more I have it" -Thomas Jefferson
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2026237 - 08/11/10 02:41 PM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: whistlinwingman]
|
Pursuit Hunter
8 Point
Registered: 10/01/08
Posts: 2084
Loc: Way out there
|
|
Offline
|
|
Well done!
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2026940 - 08/11/10 11:42 PM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: Pursuit Hunter]
|
moondawg
16 Point
Registered: 06/19/02
Posts: 17765
Loc: Millington, TN
|
|
Offline
|
|
Very good read. We need more mentors like you.
_________________________
Don't look down, BE down!--Turkeyburd (Prevous 2012)
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2026948 - 08/12/10 12:07 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: moondawg]
|
RKenney
10 Point
Registered: 03/15/08
Posts: 3633
Loc: Maury Co.
|
|
Offline
|
|
BW,
You ain't part Indian....Are you? If you "ain't", you could have
fooled me.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#2026976 - 08/12/10 05:09 AM
Re: Maybe You Can Relate...
[Re: bowriter]
|
mike243
14 Point
Registered: 09/06/06
Posts: 9817
Loc: east tn
|
|
Offline
|
|
well written,mike243
_________________________
prayers sent for our friends in need every day
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
Moderator: RUGER, Tennessee Todd, Unicam, Cuttin Caller, CBU93, stretch, Bobby G, Outdoor Lady, TurkeyBurd
|
12104 Members
38 Forums
115719 Topics
1409865 Posts
Max Online: 756 @ 11/20/12 09:10 AM
|
|
|
The TnDeer.Com Deer Talk Forum is for Tennessee Deer Hunters by Tennessee Deer Hunters. If you enjoy using our Talk Forum and would like to contribute to help in it's up-keep. Just submit your contribution by clicking on the DONATE button below and paying with PayPal or a major credit card. Any amount is much appreciated. Thanks for your support!
|
|
|
Yes I can elate !
