The Independent-News, Volume 100, Number 2, Walkerton, St. Joseph County, 9 August 1973 — Page 19

gray beard and a wrinkled brow.

cated. Never has a 10 year old boy ever gone through the hazelbrush at such a rate of speed. Once there was a pheasant hunt along Red Creek, with the yellow popple leaves coming down in a golden rain and wedges of geese flying high overhead to their heart throbbing, forlorn cadence. On that occasion, a wise old rooster somehow eluded the dogs and the hunters, and nearly made me a young heart attack victim by flushing from right under my feet in an explosion of color and cackling. The bird made the fatal mistake of sailing within range of Uncle Charlie’s long barreled 12 gauge and died in a shower of feathers. There was a lot of joking among the hunters that maybe I should work out in front with the other "dogs,” and did I think I would be any good at retrieving downed birds? I grinned like a jack-o-lantern through the sudden attention, and if that wasn't the finest day of my life up to that point, well it was right up there somewhere near the top. Several years later, another uncle who understood my hunting addiction, invited me along to a November deer camp. And this was not just a run-of-the-mill camp populated by a crew of liberated city slickers: this was a camp of a half dozen hardy, bewhiskered "gentlemen” of the out of doors who hunted from daylight to dark and got up in the middle of the night to eat beer pancakes so they could be out in the swamps long before dawn. Uncle Duffy and that group of old time deer chasers gave me one of the most memorable weeks of my life. No deer camp since has ever measured up to that one, and I realized a long time ago that one never would. It was a year of deep early snow in the northwoods, and it was when the timber cutover was still young enough to support great herds of deer. Before the week was out the pole in front of the cabin held seven bucks, and one of them was mine. There were other “old” hunters, like Carl Rolland who never worked much, but he hunted and fished and trapped whenever he felt like it. The women in the community tended to regard him as a ne’r-do-well, but he was the envy of every man who had to punch a timeclock. When I was cutting my shotgun teeth, Carl took me to places that nobody else knew about, and where the fat mallards used to come sailing in like overloaded bombers. Part of the great joy of spending time with the veteran hunters was listening to the stories of their past exploits. I have no doubt that every last story was embellished properly,

but that just made them all the more fascinating. When one of my seasoned hunting companions would lean back and say, “Well, I remember the time .. .” why I was like a dry sponge and I’m sure I listened with my mouth open and my eyes bugged.

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Well, since those early days with the "old” men, I have gone through a generation of child raising, surrounded at each outing by my own sons and the sons of other men. It has been grand, watching the individual development of young men and their acceptance of and appre-

ciation for the great scheme of growing things. And through the years there have been some excellent hunting companions of my own generation, men who recognize the delights of autumn in a forthright, enthusiastic manner. But those old timers are gone,

and I must shed a lonely tear about that. Now, it is coming up on the time when in the autumn, the young hunters and the old hunters gather, I’ll be expected to grow a beard and smell like a wet dog, and lean back with a little sipping brandy and say, "Well I remember the time...”