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November/December 2004 NewsletterJim Casada
Web site:
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com Holiday Sporting MemoriesIt was my great good fortune to grow up in a place where most everyone hunted and fished and in a family where the outdoors experience was a vitally meaningful part of life. As a youngster, Thanksgiving and Christmas loomed especially large when it came to family sporting pursuits. While the season for some types of hunting – doves, squirrels and grouse – opened well before these holidays, two of the rites of the quest that meant most to my immediate family began on Thanksgiving Day. That was when the rabbit hunting and bird seasons opened. Incidentally, if you need additional details for “bird hunting,” you have just revealed something about your roots or hunting background. For any true son of the sporting South, mention of bird hunting means one thing and one thing only – rangy pointers and that increasingly rare resident of broom sedge fields and pea field corners, the noble quail. Though it never occurred to me as a lad, our family had things pretty well figured out when it came to small game hunting. Dad always raised beagles and focused on cottontails, while my Uncle Hall was partial to bird dogs and bobwhites. Grandpa, with a perspective that skipped a generation to link the young and the old with a special bond, shared my passions. That is to say, he found particular joy in hunting no matter what was in season. But once Thanksgiving rolled around, bushytails and “partridges” (as mountain folks normally called grouse) took a back seat to birds and rabbits. From the last week of November right through the February season’s end for both species, we hunted them with a passion. I loved every moment of it. Those treasured days when it snowed enough for school to be cancelled. Each and every Saturday when my buddies and I could hunt with the grownups (that meant access to automobiles and more distant terrain) was a piece of paradise. Then there were the two weeks of Christmas vacation. They provided so much pure pleasure that each day was to be sampled and savored to the utmost. Invariably by the time New Year’s rolled around and it was time to go back to the boring business of getting an education, I was a bit worn down, tough as a piece of seasoned hickory from daily dawn to dusk hunting, and things had come to a pass where even the beagles welcomed a bit of a break. Thanksgiving though, was what got it all started, and the annual hunt on that day was my favorite of the entire year. It would find Dad rousing me from a warm bed long before dawn for the first of weekly hunt breakfasts sure to stoke the inner man (or boy). That meant eggs, sausage or fresh pork tenderloin (we usually butchered hogs a week before Thanksgiving), gravy, hot biscuits and honey or molasses, and either grits or oatmeal. While Dad cooked, I hustled to put together the makings of a proper hunter’s lunch. Big chunks of “rat cheese,” a thermos of coffee for Dad and one of hot chocolate for me, soda crackers, tins of sardines or Vienna sausage, Golden Delicious apples from our little orchard, a pocket full of chestnuts to munch while listening to rabbit races, two or three sandwiches each, and maybe we would dare sneak in a couple of huge pieces of the rich apple sauce cakes Mom made in quantity each year for the holidays. Filled with black walnuts kernels we had gathered and painstakingly cracked, dotted with yellow raisins, and moist from periodic dousing with a bit of brandy, those cakes were about as close to culinary heaven as one could come. Yet for all the bounty of our field lunch on Thanksgiving and Christmas hunts, by late afternoon, deliciously tired from walking a good many miles, fighting briar patches, and (usually) carrying three or four cottontails in the game bag of my hand-me-down Duxbak coat, my thoughts again turned to food. For I knew that back home Mom, my paternal grandmother, and a collection of aunts would have all been busy preparing the family holiday feast. That meant a big turkey or several of Grandpa’s hens, country ham, chestnut dressing with giblet gravy, cathead biscuits, cranberry sauce, ambrosia, leather britches beans, and half a dozen other vegetable dishes. The dessert table would hold stack cake, fired apple pies, the above-mentioned apple sauce cake, buttermilk pie, mincemeat pie, and more. With the sort of ravenous appetite only teenage years and a day in the outdoors could produce, I invariably did the feast full justice. Thankfully, it didn’t end there. At Thanksgiving we would hunt on Friday and Saturday as well, maybe splitting Friday between birds and bunnies so the dogs could get a bit of a break. Come Christmas, when Dad might get as much as a week of vacation, we would hunt at least every other day. Lunch on those days meant wonderful leftovers from the holiday feast and hunting in a time when small game was far more prolific than is the case today. Those holiday moments of magic continued through my college years and a few years beyond (I had a brother who was a decade younger, and Dad kept dogs until he finished college). They ended about the same time the rural way of life began to change, and with that change came a great decline in the quail and rabbit populations. I still miss it – miss it a lot – and never do the holidays arrive without my thoughts traveling the warm, wonderful path back to those halcyon days of youth. If you had a similar childhood, you were blessed, and if you are in the process of making similar memories today, though they may focus on deer or some other type of game, you are doubly blessed. APPLE SAUCE CAKE1 cup butter Cream the butter and sugar. Add apple sauce and remaining ingredients, alternately, a small amount at a time. Mix thoroughly. Fold in raisins and nuts and mix. Bake at 350 degrees for one to one and a half hours or until the cake tests done with a toothpick. Without "adornment" this is a dry cake, but regular applications of a bit of brandy or wine will ensure moistness. If you don't want the infusion of alcohol (although this is what makes the cake so delightful), you can use an icing. Mom always did this on one or two cakes intended for "teetotaler" friends. Thank you for subscribing to the
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