by Jay Cassell
Reprinted with permission of the author. Jim Casada has written or edited more than forty books. Readers can order his books by going to his website, www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com. His website offers a free monthly e-newsletter.
Daybreak
RON ELLIS
I can never remember being late for a hunt. We may have been late for everything else in our lives, but we were never late for opening day. Maybe once or twice we were delayed in getting away from home so that we found ourselves hurrying along, in a race with the sun to reach the ridge top. But we always made it on time, with the Mercury rolling to a stop where the road ended, right in front of the old two-story white frame house with the big front porch that the Morgan boys called home. We sat there listening to the soft ticking of the Mercury’s engine as it cooled down after the long run upriver. The woods, stretched out along the spine of the ridge that ran for more than a mile to the east, straight to the town of Persimmon Gap, were still black smudges against a developing gray sky, floating out there above Mercury on the hood. There was no mistaking the sound or the feel of it all.
Often, Stony’s voice greeted us from out of the darkness. He would have seen our headlights coming down the road as he sat there on the front porch in the dark smoking his first cigarette of the day and sipping a cup of thick black coffee.
“Mornin’, boys,” he would yell. “Thought you might be up today. Good wet day to hunt.” He would leave the porch and make his way through the grass to the car in the darkness, juggling a big white coffee mug in his left hand, and extend his free hand to Dad. They would shake and then Dad would pour himself a cup of coffee from the red thermos. They would both lean against the car and talk some in low voices and sip at their coffee and smoke, until Stony decided it was time to let us go.
“The light’s comin’ fast. You’d best be gettin’ in the woods. Don’t let me keep you. Come up to the house before you go. Sherm’ll want to see you.” He would retrace his steps to the house and retreat through the screen door into the rectangle of yellow light that was the kitchen. The last sound was of the screen door slapping shut against the doorframe, the big spring resonating in the dark.
In the car trunk—we called it the “boot” in those days—Dad kept the shotguns in green canvas cases: a pair of sweet little .410 pumps—a Sears Roebuck Ted Williams model for me and Dad’s dream gun, a Winchester Model 42. The guns were stored on top of a big cardboard box, which was neatly filled with the important things we would need for the day’s hunt: boxes of shotgun shells, canvas shell vests, the dependable Army canteen snug in its worn and faded green canvas sleeve, extra socks, olive drab cotton bandanas, cigars, and Snickers bars.
The taking of the gear from the trunk was done with a great deal of ceremony. Dad poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos, lit a cigarette, and then stood quietly for a few moments just studying the darkness and listening. Though I was close by, I suspect he was, during those brief moments, very much alone with his memories and with familiar sounds and voices I could not hear. We spent some time loading our vests with shells—green Remington shells for me and blue Peters hulls for Dad—and taking care in assembling the rest of our equipment. We sprayed the tops of our green canvas caps and the cuffs of our pants and shirts with insect repellent, as much to discourage ticks, or so we thought, as the mosquitoes. Dad finished his last cup of coffee and another cigarette as we stood there in the dark.
We traded shotgun shells, without fail, before going into the woods on every hunt. It was a good luck ritual, a wish for a successful and safe hunt. We placed the “good luck shells,” which is what Dad called them, into the magazines of the .410s and shucked them into the chambers, the little guns clicking and throwing metallic echoes into the hills that came back to us in the dark. And then we were ready.
We went into the big woods behind the barn by crossing through a low-hanging barbed wire fence that was just three loose rusting strands stretched between a fence post on the right and a head-high tree limb attached to an old hay barn on the left. This limb had been cut from the Osage orange trees that grew along the pasture on the river side of the woven-wire fence and it had been worn smooth by much handling over the years. The height and the position of the wire remained constant year after year, and once there was white deer hair wedged between the barbs. It was satisfying to know a deer had traveled through those woods, stopping at the fence, as we always did, listening and studying the woods ahead, testing the air, and then crossing the wire and leaving a tuft of hair, the only sign of its passing. Once we passed through the wire, the trip home seemed complete. We could begin to seriously hunt, focusing our attentions on the woods and listening for the whoosh! of sweeping tree limbs as squirrels made their way from den trees to feeding areas.
We stood perfectly still in the darkness listening to rainwater dripping from the trees and watching for light on the eastern horizon. We speculated, in whispers, on how many squirrels we might see and wondered if we would be lucky enough to have the river fog blanketing the ridges to hide our movements until well after first light. The fog up there hung close to the ground out in front of us. Coming up from the meadows below we heard the stuttering rhythm of cowbells as the animals grazed along through the steep pastures. I stood perfectly still and listened and wished again that nothing here would ever change and that this moment I lived for all year long would remain as sweet as it was for as long as I needed it. It was exciting, always, to see the day developing, like a photograph appearing in the white of the developer tray, glimpses of light and distorted black blobs at first, and then the whole image taking form out of a crack of light tracing the treeline to the east.
Then we heard the squirrels jumping through the rain-soaked foliage as they left their den trees—large, brooding beeches down below us, their lightning-struck tops jutting up like broken, decaying teeth—and then moving along a network of limbs, “traveling” is what we called it, toward the nut trees. We could see the squirrels as they came closer, jumping from tree to tree, bridging the sometimes incredibly long distances between the trees with their outstretched bodies, and then becoming specks, just dark silhouettes, moving silently along through the tops of the tallest trees. We waited to see which direction they were headed, trying to determine the trees they might be feeding in before we moved along the trail any further. At this point in the hunt, I always imagined Daniel Boone standing there on the same ridge, squirrel rifle in hand, waiting to “bark” a squirrel from a hickory limb at fifty paces with a musket ball. I had heard the old timers say during their front porch story sessions at the Persimmon Gap General Store that “Boone damn sure had hunted up in those woods.” I believed it, too, because I was sure I could feel the ancient rhythms and detect another presence in the woods. The old timers said it was so and that it had been told to them when they were young by the old folks who knew about these things.
In August the squirrels were mostly feeding on hickory nuts in Cogan’s Woods, which was filled with old shagbark hickories along the ridge tops and fence lines, and with slender tight-barked pig nut hickories in greater numbers along the flats and at the edges of clearings. The larger nuts of the shagbarks made loud soft thumps in the earth when dropped from the highest limbs of the tallest trees by feeding squirrels, a cherished sound, one that was heard in the ears long after the season had closed, especially in winter when snow-muffled dreams were filled with the expectations of the coming season. When “cutting a nut,” the squirrel’s teeth, long incisors capable of reducing the tough husks of hickory nuts to fine litter, made a familiar squeaking sound that never failed to put smiles on our faces. When we heard it, we listened more intently and tried to mark the exact tree where the squirrels were feeding. Once located, we moved on, with greater care and concern for where we placed our feet.
I always followed in Dad’s boot tracks in the early days. It seemed I spent more time watching his back and trying to guess when he would stop so I would not stumble over his feet and m
ake enough noise to run off all the squirrels in all of Belden County. He always had a smile on his face when he had located the feeding areas. He would turn toward me and point his right index finger toward his ear, pretend to cut a hickory nut, and then point up toward the trees ahead of us. His next motion would be a finger placed silently before his lips, finished off with a grin and, likely as not, his hand fishing for a smoke in his shirt pocket. Dad often smoked a big black I bold cigar on these hunts, and its heavy strong smoke drifted back over his shoulder and across my brow, lingering and said it was so and that it had been told to them when they were young by the old folks who knew about these things.
In August the squirrels were mostly feeding on hickory nuts in Cogan’s Woods, which was filled with old shagbark hickories along the ridge tops and fence lines, and with slender tight-barked pig nut hickories in greater numbers along the flats and at the edges of clearings. The larger nuts of the shagbarks made loud soft thumps in the earth when dropped from the highest limbs of the tallest trees by feeding squirrels, a cherished sound, one that was heard in the ears long after the season had closed, especially in winter when snow-muffled dreams were filled with the expectations of the coming season. When “cutting a nut,” the squirrel’s teeth, long incisors capable of reducing the tough husks of hickory nuts to fine litter, made a familiar squeaking sound that never failed to put smiles on our faces. When we heard it, we listened more intently and tried to mark the exact tree where the squirrels were feeding. Once located, we moved on, with greater care and concern for where we placed our feet.
I always followed in Dad’s boot tracks in the early days. It seemed I spent more time watching his back and trying to guess when he would stop so I would not stumble over his feet and make enough noise to run off all the squirrels in all of Belden County. He always had a smile on his face when he had located the feeding areas. He would turn toward me and point his right index finger toward his ear, pretend to cut a hickory nut, and then point up toward the trees ahead of us. His next motion would be a finger placed silently before his lips, finished off with a grin and, likely as not, his hand fishing for a smoke in his shirt pocket. Dad often smoked a big black Ibold cigar on these hunts, and its heavy strong smoke drifted back over his shoulder and across my brow, lingering and mixing with the heavy dampness in the morning air. I could see the smoke and watch the paths it took on the air currents, and it was easy to see how scent could travel in so many different directions in the woods.
Walking the trails in silence was a skill not easily learned, particularly in those years when drought made the leaves so dry and crumbly it was as if we were trying to sneak along on a bed of potato chips. These trails we traveled had known, no doubt, the cautious, careful steps of Indian moccasins. As a kid of the 1950s, I was more than familiar with the Indian’s legendary stealth. This was something known to every boy in Kentucky, whether from the many tales told to us by our parents and grandparents, or through the TV exploits of Fess Parker as the legendary pioneers Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. It was known, too, in local legends that these same trails, which offered commanding views of the Ohio River and the valley below, had served as travel routes for parties of Indians, primarily Shawnee from north of the river, during incursions into the “dark and bloody ground,” as “Caintucke” was sometimes called back then, to hunt or to slow the influx of settlers floating down the Ohio in flat boats to reach river ports to the west.
We drank silently of the sounds and smells of the country we had dreamt about and yearned for so many nights down river. I loved the fresh smell and look of the woods, especially after a morning rain, with the newly washed grasses of the fields a brilliant green and the abandoned rusted farm equipment shoved tight against the tree line, as if resting in the shadows that ran out from the woods and traveled into the meadows and lipped away over the ridge to the railroad tracks and the river below. We stood there for as long as it took us to feel satisfied, and then we moved farther into the woods through a passageway of wet foliage and emerged beneath a dripping canopy of hickory, wild cherry, and maple.
Dad was a sentimental man with a great heart. His whole life, or so it seemed to me, was an honest attempt to illuminate for me some of the best things in life, at least as he saw them, those little things in a person’s life that went mainly unnoticed and unappreciated by so many people. He loved to point out the names of the trees and plants we encountered in Cogan’s Woods. There were many, and he knew most of them: ginseng, staghorn sumac, wild grapes, ferns, beech, ash, wild cherry, poplar, hickory, blackberry and raspberry canes, Devil’s toothbrush, persimmon trees, and paw paw patches, to name a few of his favorites. His eyes danced when he talked about the plants and the trees and about the people he had shared these woods with over the years. I was injected with his enthusiasm for the telling, and I listened with my heart.
On one particularly wet morning, the squirrels were cutting on large green hickory nuts—the kind with deeply etched lines that quarter the husks and that smell so strongly of wet greenery in the damp morning air—and we could hear them making all this noise from a long way off. As we crept closer, I saw that the top of the largest hickory was “alive” with squirrels. The highest branches of the tree scratched at the sky and stood in a group of three old shellbarks—their bark old and loose, peeling away from the trunk and turning up at the ends. I counted five gray squirrels before they began crossing through each other and jumbling up the count, just one short of that mythical limit I was always chasing.
Those squirrels were cutting so furiously that the hull litter sounded like a fine rain coming down through the hickory’s broad green leaves.
“It’s raining,” Dad said, a big grin on his face. “You ready?”
“Sure,” I said, smiling back. I thought that surely he could hear my heart beating through my shirt and shell vest.
“We’ll split up and cover both sides of the tree. You on the right over there and me over here.”
“Shoot the lowest one first?” I asked.
“Always. But make sure it’s high enough off the ground to be safe. Higher . . .”
“. . . than a tall man’s head topped with a top hat,” I said, finishing one of his favorite rules.
Dad smiled and raised the thumb of his right hand. The woods were noisy now. A blue jay squawked in the top of a beech tree, a church bell rang in Persimmon Gap, and a rooster crowed from across the river.
The squirrels were so busy with their feeding that we slipped through the woods and were almost on top of them before one of them saw us and began barking, cracking its tail furiously, while hanging on the side of the biggest hickory. He was up high enough to offer a safe shot. He left the tree on my side and the .410 pump went to my shoulder and at the shot he tumbled out of the sky in the middle of a leap, hitting the earth just after the slender blue paper hull, my “good luck shell,” was ejected into the leaves. The rest of the squirrels scattered and either attempted to leave the tree or to hide, flattening their bodies out along the limbs, almost becoming the bark, their skin pressed so tightly to it. Dad took the next one as it leapt from the very top of the tree, its body crumpling short of the freedom offered by the nearby limbs of another hickory. The third one decided to hide. He killed that one as it hunched in the crotch of two large limbs, thinking it would go undetected so silent was it, except for the movement of its tail, the very edges of the downy fur ruffling ever so lightly in the morning breeze. It was enough.
The fourth one popped around my side of the tree. I made a quick shot that surprised both me and the squirrel, as the young gray dropped and lay motionless at the base of the tree. I pumped another shell into the chamber and missed one as it ran out a low limb headed for the safety of a nearby oak. He leapt from the side of the oak and ran out through the leaves down over the hill. I heard him bounding off in the dry leaves—never stopping, never looking back. Then there was a strange stillness, the kind of quiet that comes after so much noise and commotion in once
quiet woods.
We gutted the squirrels with our pocketknives and poured water from the canteen into the exposed cavities and wiped the red muscled meat with folded paper towels. We threaded the squirrels onto our brass laundry pins and snapped them to our belts. The squirrels hung down and bumped against the front of our legs, staining our pants with flecks of dark red. We buried the towels with the entrails in the loose soil in the woods and covered the place with downed tree limbs.
“This is a good feeling,” Dad said. “Yet, I always want to put them back in the trees so that I can come back another day and find them just the way we found them today.” He picked up his beloved Winchester and slipped two fresh Peters shells into the magazine. He checked the safety and cradled the shotgun in the crook of his left arm. From his pants pocket he pulled out one of the spent shells, the green Remington “good luck shell” I had given him that morning, and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. As always, he held it to his nose and sniffed at the powder residue, as if by doing so he could keep the recent memory close, a reminder of a good day with its bittersweet moments.
“Let’s sneak into the Grove,” Dad whispered. He pocketed the shell and bent under a low-hanging limb of a young hickory that was heavy with the morning’s rain. Water ran off the leaves and an orange spider clung to the center of its web, which was dotted with hundreds of tiny clear beads of water. Dad pushed the limb aside and held it back for me to pass, then returned it to its former position. I looked back at the spider and saw that it was making repairs to the web, which had been damaged with the bending of the limb. The spider continued to work and we slipped along the wet path, our eyes raised to the first light raining down through the tallest trees.