October 2010 NewsletterJim Casada
Web site:
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com The Bittersweetness of OctoberA couple of weeks back I attended the 50th reunion of the Swain County (N.C.) High School class of 1960. It was a time of bittersweetness, although the sweet far outweighed the bitter. Moments of sadness included the fact that 18 individuals out of a class which numbered less than a hundred were deceased. In a class that size everyone knew everyone else, and the sense of loss is palpable, more so as the years drift by. Likewise, almost all of those who served as teachers and mentors are gone, but one of the highlights of the evening was the attendance of two surviving teachers. Both of them seemed to have a wonderful time and, still a source of wisdom after all these years, offered words of wisdom well worth heeding. Mostly though, there was pure joy in seeing folks who were part of one’s innocent youth, delight in reliving a time of simpler days and ways, and learning of the life paths others have trod. The reunion and conversations connected with it gave me all sorts of things to think about and memories to resurrect. Since some of you who read this monthly newsletter are sparse in the hackle and long in the tooth like yours truly, and because many of your pine for things belonging to a world we have largely lost, I plan to devote the bulk of this month’s coverage to such matters.
This will be the fifth Rutledge anthology I have compiled and like three of the four earlier ones, it is being published by the University of South Carolina Press. Their folks have outdone themselves with the dust jacket (see above), presenting a gift-like image with a ribbon wrapping a lovely painting of Hampton Plantation. The other three Rutledge anthologies I have done with them, and all are available at the same $29.95 price (and I will, for the next month, ship them free as well), are Hunting & Home in the Southern Heartland: The Best of Archibald Rutledge; Tales of Whitetails: Archibald Rutledge’s Great Deer Hunting Stories; and America’s Greatest Game Bird: Archibald Rutledge’s Great Turkey Hunting Tales. Also be sure to check the Web site for other anthologies I have edited and have available including The Lost Classics of Robert Ruark, two collections of O’Connor classics, and Forgotten Tales and Vanished Trails, a gathering of outdoor-related pieces by Theodore Roosevelt. Ah, October! There’s so much which is appealing about the month, with lingering hints of summer—Indian summer is appropriately named—in the form of bluebird skies, sunny afternoons, and katydids singing their timeless songs. It’s a month of fulfillment, although we don’t realize it as much today as our forebears did in yesterday. We don’t stop to take simple pleasure in groaning pantry shelves well stocked with jars of canned soup mix, green beans, applesauce, and other reminders of summer productivity and preparedness for winter which was once the case. Still, there are dozens of butternut squash to remind me of summer’s fecundity, turnip and mustard greens thriving in the aftermath of early fall rains, and today at lunch I munched on a juicy Golden Delicious apple in precisely the same way I did 60 years ago as a small boy. Dad had a small orchard and it featured several trees of this species. If September gives us the Harvest Moon with all its glory, more glorious still is the Hunter’s Moon of October. In its fullness, low slung in the eastern sky of early evening, it seems huge in size and so close as to be almost touchable. For me the time of the Hunter’s Moon evokes two powerful, enduring images. One is walking home in the moonlight, having given way to the temptation of roaming in the gloaming well past the time when any squirrel was likely to be about. Yet the soft light of night guided my footsteps, and having two or three squirrels in the game pouch of my worn old hand-me-down Duxbak hunting coat filled me with pride. The second memory is one I suspect countless pre-teen and early teenage boys have known over the generations. That of being slightly scared. Never mind Grandpa Joe’s reminder that “there ain’t no haints,” you walked a bit faster than was normally the case, and the eerie eight-note call of a barred owl sent involuntary shivers coursing through mind and body alike. The answer was simple—you whistled or sang while wending your way homeward, and if that path took you by a graveyard you upped the comforting volume of your serenade to yourself a few notches, just in case. October saw the onset of squirrel season, and to my way of thinking one of the saddest aspects of today’s hunting world is how little attention is given to the quest for bushytails. They were my training ground, my passion, and the basis for most of whatever I know about woodscraft. I remain convinced, no matter how many deer I’ve shot or how many turkeys I’ve killed, that a boy can have no finer introduction to the world of hunting than extensive exposure to squirrel hunting. They offer lessons in stealth and patience, put a premium on marksmanship (especially when hunted with a .22), teach the reading of sign and the understanding of habits and habitat preferences of one’s quarry, and offer a tangible link to our country’s roots. After all, it was squirrel hunters, in the form of the Overmountain Men, who turned the tide in the American Revolution at the battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens. It was a Tennessee lad raised as a squirrel hunter, Alvin York, who became our country’s most highly decorated citizen soldier. Men who squirrel hunted for pleasure and sustenance, those of the ilk of Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett, found the gateways through the Appalachians to the west and in doing so set in motion what historians call America’s “manifest destiny” to people the continent from one ocean to the other. Yes, squirrel hunting stirs my soul, and if you scoff at such preoccupation with the humble bushytail, I think it is you, not me, who is the poorer for it. Today’s youthful hunter gets his start on a longbeard or a heavy-racked deer, but where’s the building up, the preparation, the linkage to the land, and the gradual understanding of the importance of the experience as a whole? I think it too often is missing, and for me squirrel hunting opened the door to a world of wonder which still thrills a full six decades after I killed my first squirrel. Some index to the place that moment holds in my life’s passage as a sportsman is offered by the fact that I can still today, in my mind’s eye, relive every moment. More than that, I feel completely confident that I could still today, if so challenged, walk to within 50 yards of where I shot that first squirrel on national forest land. It was one of those late October mornings, still in the pre-dawn chill, when those sentinels of autumn, hickories, were adorned with their raiment of gold. I was hunting with a borrowed .410 single shot, and the hammer on it was so stiff it required both of my hands to pull it back to cocked status. Dad was just a few hundred yards away on the other side of the ridge, and he had given me a single shell, provided whispered instructions I had heard a dozen times before about not loading until I sat down, and told me to choose my shot carefully. Looking back I suspect he know I was going to get a shot, because that ridgeline was absolutely littered with hickory cuttings. I found a convenient perch atop an old chestnut log, long before a victim of the deadly blight which destroyed this monarch of eastern hardwood forests, and sat down to wait for daylight. It seemed forever in coming, although I suspect it was no more than a quarter of an hour at most. Sparse mist came and went, providing glimpses of the stars when it lifted, then in imperceptible transition there came a moment when the stars no longer winked at me. Just as that realization dawned I heard a soft sound, one I readily recognized, thanks to previous hunts sitting at Dad’s side. It was the noise a squirrel makes as its feet grasp the bark of a tree. Within seconds I located the source, a big old boar squirrel easing his way up the side of a hickory not twenty yards away. Forcing myself to move slowly and work as silently as possible, I somehow managed to get the hammer back on the .410 without undue racket. I nestled the gun into my shoulder, put the bead on the bushytail the way I had been taught, and squeezed the trigger. The shot broke the morning silence, and it was still echoing off nearby mountainsides when the squirrel, after clinging momentarily to a limb, tumbled to the ground. My first squirrel—hardly a momentous affair in the grand scheme of things, but a milestone in my life as a hunter. The racket set another squirrel to barking in the distance, and I vaguely remember Dad shooting twice soon afterward. For my part, I was out of ammo and so excited I couldn’t stand it for long. I had to traipse across the ridge, show Dad my prize, and ask for another shell. Never mind what it did to his hunting or how many squirrels I scared, in that time and place I was on top of the world. I have equally powerful and poignant memories of my first trout on a fly, my first cottontail, my first grouse, and, many years later my first turkey and deer. The latter two came in adulthood though, and they somehow weren’t quite the same. The enthusiasms of youth know no match in adulthood, although I like to think that in some ways my boyhood has been an extended adventure which continues to this day and I know that the more remote my real boyhood becomes the better it seems to have been. Who would want it any other way? That’s the sort of thoughts which run through my mind as we move into October. Of course it’s the month of the rut here in South Carolina, it’s the time when big brown trout in my native Smokies begin to answer the ages’ old urge to start their spawning runs, and closer to home schooling bass are chasing minnows as they feed ravenously against the coming hard times of winter. It’s a time of shortening days, lengthening nights, dropping temperatures, and a bit of added vigor in one’s step. Simply being outdoors once again is a joy, and the glorious leaf colors from nature’s incomparable palette are a pleasure beyond measure. I can only hope you salute October with the same snappiness I do, and even thoughts of coming bad weather does little to dull the wonders of this month. My hope is that it will mean somewhere near as much to you as it does to mean. As a classmate at the aforementioned reunion reminded me and the rest of those assembled for an evening of memory, we are all about as grown up as we will ever be. In truth, I never wanted to be more grown up than I was that moment of killing the first squirrel, and just thinking of it turns back the years in my mind, if not my body, in wonderful fashion. May it be the same in your world. With this month’s ramblings focusing on squirrel hunting, I would be remiss if I did not share some squirrel recipes. It’s a wonderful meat, and I don’t know of anything I like much better than squirrel and dumplings, unless it’s fried young squirrel with side dishes of baked sweet potatoes so full of good sugar has caramelized on their skins or baked squirrel the way Mom used to prepare it. All the recipes below come from either Wild Bounty or Wild Fare and Wise Words, and both cookbooks are available on my Web site. I also can’t resist a quotation from one of my favorite writers, Robert Ruark, found in The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older. “I never turned a hair when confronted by roast coon or a mess of chitterlings or squirrel-head stew.” I’ll pass on the chitlin’s, thank you, but I’ve sampled and savored the other two. The recipes which follow, however, aren’t quite as adventurous. BAKED SQUIRREL1 or 2 dressed
squirrels (more if you wish) Cover the squirrel with the water in a large saucepan. Add the baking soda and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and rinse the meat well under running water, rubbing to remove any baking soda residue. Return to the pan and cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until tender. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Transfer the squirrel to a baking dish, dot with the butter and bake until brown and crusty. The broth makes delicious gravy. In my family this was simply known as “Anna Lou’s Squirrel.” Anna Lou was my mother, and she was a wizard in the kitchen. Squirrel was a family favorite, and we ate a bunch of it. FRIED SQUIRREL1 cup flour Mix flour, salt, and pepper and place in a paper or plastic bag. Beat egg well and place in a shallow dish. Drop squirrel in flour bag, shake to cover well, remove squirrel, and dip in egg mix. Return to flour mix and shake again, repeating with each piece. Heat canola oil in skillet and quickly brown squirrel. Place browned squirrel in roasting pan or baking dish and bake, uncovered, at 250 degrees for approximately 1 1/2 hours or until squirrel is tender. SQUIRREL BISCUIT-STYLE DUMPLINGS2 squirrels Cut two squirrels into serving pieces. Place in a Dutch oven and cover with water. Add bay leaves and simmer for one and a half hours or until squirrels are tender. Skim if necessary. Squirrel may be removed from the bones at this point and returned to stew if you desire. Add onion, celery, carrots, seasonings and water. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Increase heat. Heat stew to boiling. Add dumplings and continue cooking as directed below. DUMPLINGS½ cup milk Slowly add milk to dry ingredients. Drop by teaspoons into boiling liquid. Cook for 15-20 minutes longer or until dumplings are don in the center. One final thought before bidding adieu. If you want some ruminations on October from a somewhat different perspective, I have a guest blog on a wonderful Web site I discovered (or more accurately, my brother discovered and shared with me) a few weeks back. It is the brainchild of a wonderful woman of the Appalachian high country, and if you are enamored of country living, traditional ways, gospel and country music, old-time foods, and good writing, I suggest a visit. The site address is www.blindpigandtheacorn.com. Even if you don’t like my attempt to evoke the essence of October, I think you’ll like the site. Thank you for subscribing to the
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Before
doing so, however, let me plow through the obligatory push to help me
turn words into pennies (I’ve long since abandoned the idea that the
scribe seeking shekels can aspire to lofty goals such as nickels or
dimes). I’ll be doing a bunch of book signings starting when Carolina
Christmas comes out early next month, and I’d urge you to check my
calendar on this Web site to see if I might be in your area. Meanwhile,
my pre-publication offer on the book (its sub-title, “Archibald
Rutledge’s Enduring Holiday Stories,” pretty well tells you what it is
about—holiday hunting at Hampton Plantation) at list price of $29.95 and
I pay the postage still stands. I’m happy to say a bunch of you have
sent orders, and I’m also pleased that authorities in the field who have
had a peek at the book through advance proofs have reacted very
favorably. In fact, Rob Wegner, who knows more about the history of deer
hunting than anyone, offers such a gracious encomium I want to quote it
in full. Needless to say I’m tickled pink with his kind words.