by Jay Cassell
And like a lot of pioneers who listened to their flintlocks go pffft as arrows flew over their heads, we would pray for blue skies, dry air and no rain.
Mobley Pond
DAVID FOSTER
Sixty million years ago, give or take five or ten million, some theorists believe the Earth either struck a small comet or passed close enough to it to create a massive meteor storm that struck most of what is today the Southeastern coast, leaving strangely shaped craters from the coastal lands of Georgia all the way to Nebraska. Or, some 175 thousand years ago, give or take five or ten thousand, hydrologic, soil and geological conditions along the same path shifted and flowed in such a way as to cause the same effect. Either way, what we got was some 500,000 wetlands from the size of backyard bathing pools to 24,000-acre behemoth swamps called Carolina bays, named not for the water that may or may not stand or have stood within them but for the bay trees that often line them, especially in the South. What makes Carolina bays unique—and mysterious, not to mention controversial—is that they are shaped like teardrops, the fat end of the tear facing southeast.
From this tower stand I can peer out across one of the largest of these tears, though not one of the best known as it sits on private land. Locally, this Carolina Bay is called Mobley Pond, named for the man who first tried to tame it more than two centuries ago. Or maybe somebody else. Depends on which local lore you choose to believe, just as its origin depends on which scientific theory you care to believe. Being a fellow who loves a good fireworks display, I go with the comet.
Mobley Pond isn’t a pond, not in the way you think of a pond: a depression full of green water, lined with cattails, shallow at the back where the basses and other sunfishes congregate to make their lives and provide you sport. In fact, nowhere in Mobley Pond will you find standing water, but it is home to monster alligators, not to mention panfish, coyotes, fox, rabbits (cottontails and their larger cousins, the swamp rabbits), weasels, opossums, bobcats, the late-coming armadillo, songbirds too numerous to enumerate in this space, wild turkey, ducks, geese, bobwhite quail, mourning doves, wild hogs and deer, not to mention for a fleeting time during late December and early January, woodcock.
But it is the deer that bring most folks to ask for an invite back. Big-racked bruisers, the kind that make a hunter’s pulse race when seen from a distance; close enough to shoot, they can give even the veteran hunter a bad case of gun-quivering, mirage-making buck fever.
That kind of deer. And shooting one looks as though it would be so easy. Mobley Pond isn’t home to a tree larger than a scrub. Not one, except for the alders and bays that line the old alligator-inhabited drainage canals and the odd pine sports growing short in wet loamy soil where the aquifer kisses the surface. It is just approximately five square miles of natural grasses and boggy black dirt, crisscrossed by deep-rutted deer and hog trails and 155-year-old canals dug by W. W. Starke, looking to turn a swamp into cropland. Except at the edges, none of these labors amounted to much. And nobody’s tried to tame it since.
Interesting thing, that lack of trees. Early histories speak of some large cypress, but those are long gone. Instead, as you sit in this tower you see almost a mile of waist-high brown grasses and briar heads to the front, with a few agricultural fields creeping tentatively into the crater from the sides. Behind is a 40-foot “hill” that rings the entire crater/sink with tall hardwoods and, at the top, massive pines, where the wet black loamy soil ends and turns mostly to sand.
Hence, the plethora of wildlife. There is vastly more cover, feed and browse than a casual tourist could ever comprehend, from wild grasses and the shoots thereof to the weeds and seeds and berries that grow with them. Normally you hunt deer at Mobley Pond two ways: from stands in the fields above when the deer come out to feed in the green patches, and from stands in the pond itself when they pass into and out of the pond to the same green patches. More does are taken here every year than at any other location on the farm. Bucks, however, are, as they say in the nearby town of Girard, a whole ‘nother story.
It’s enough to drive you crazy. Hunting in Georgia, even in a bean field, isn’t really all that much of a long-distance project; down in the forests and swamps, shooting is so close that, unless you just love your rifle so much you can’t do without it, a shotgun is often a much better tool. But in Mobley Pond, the bucks know the routine much better than the humans, and they prove it almost every season.
It is true, I suppose, that deer seldom look up, hence our love for stands. But with only that waist-high grass to impede vision for up to half a mile, it’s easy from a deer’s field of view to see a stand and the fellow wriggling around in it from a long way off. Second, the agricultural ditches are three to five feet below the waist-high grass, which means the ten- to 14-pointer you’re looking for can walk past fewer than 50 feet from the best setup and the hunter will never know he was ever closer than New York. Third, and the cruelest deer trick of all, is seeing through your binoculars a huge rack attached to a hidden body making its way nonchalantly through the grasses, always—always—600 or more yards distant. This brings on the commonly heard whine back at camp: “Oh, Lord, you should have seen . . .”
Four years ago, a hunter took a very nice ten-pointer in one of the green patches at the pond. Another shot one at dusk seven years ago along the very edge of the wild grasses. An eight-pointer fell at dawn three years ago in a fallow cornfield. And that was the end of big bucks after 15 years of hunting the pond for one week every year. You can almost hear that old big-racked Boone-and-Crockett champion laughing from the bottom of a canal. No, you can hear him.
On the other hand, you come to appreciate his victory over our high-tech tools. You can bet the Native Americans had only slightly better luck, unless they burned the grasses and forced the deer out, and the early settlers, once the canals went in during that fruitless battle against Mother Nature, probably didn’t fare much better than us. Mobley Pond has fought the plow, pollution and well-armed men. It has protected its wildlife well without the help of a government or the first tree hugger.
So another season comes around and again it all looks so easy, though you know come Sunday the chances of having Old Mose in the cooler are much smaller than not. But you love the red sunrise over Mobley Pond. Maybe you ponder on that comet while glassing the seemingly empty, yet, you know, so full terrain. Here the animals win almost every time, even against you. But ask yourself: Does it really get any better than this?
As Near to Perfect
BOB BUTZ
Given the choice between a plane trip and a road trip, I’ll always hit the road. There’s something liberating about throwing all your belongings into the back of a pickup and driving day and night to some faraway spot on the horizon.
Still fresh in my mind are those echoings of Kerouac and those long, lazy summers when my half-baked college friends and I left responsibility behind for the uninhibited freedom and possibility we found on the road.
Even though I work for a living now and have what my boss calls culpability, I still have chronic, fevered bouts with restlessness; no doubt a consequence of all those summer road trips, all those unabated meanderings fostered in my college years.
But perhaps I’ve always been a vagabond and a heathen at heart, for truthfully that urge to roam has always been there. It’s been a chronic infection that comes in waves that ebb and flow with the changing of seasons. This, of course, makes me think that my propensity for wandering is rooted in some primitive instinct held over from the days when human beings were joined together in nomadic tribes that hunted, gathered, and moved over the land with the animals.
At least, that’s my excuse anyway.
For another one of my shortcomings is that I just happen to be a hunter—a bowhunter. And to hell with the social implications and political correctness of it all; my desire to sneak around the woods with a bow in my hand is like an itch I gotta—yes, gotta—scratch. My need to move is insatiable sometimes. It’s a hunger th
at grumbles in my belly and makes my bones ache, a voice in my head like a siren’s song that calls me out into the fields and forests in the fall.
A note came over the fax machine early last November (neighboring tribes don’t use smoke signals anymore). It said: Bob, the rut is on. Call me. It wasn’t signed or anything, but the Mahaska Custom Bow Company letterhead told me the note was from my friend Kent Ostrem.
The whitetail rut was just beginning to peak down in southeast Iowa. According to Kent, who sounded downright giddy over the phone, the bucks were madly running scrapelines. According to Kent, the river bottom where he hunted was “an absolute zoo,” what with all the bucks around chasing does. And one particular buck—a four by four that Kent said was gargantuan—got particular mention for having twice been in bow range that week alone.
I suspected from the obvious omission of any further details that a miss or two had probably occurred. Kent was calling for reinforcements, a call I was all too eager to answer. By the end of the conversation I was already plotting my temporary escape from the nine-to-five.
It was not so much the story of the big buck that helped me make up my mind (although it certainly didn’t hurt). It was Kent’s breathless enthusiasm, his bewilderment at seeing so much chaos in the woods. “I’ve never seen so many deer,” he kept saying. “They’re running around like rabbits.” Morning, afternoon, and evening. Every time he got on stand. In the past week, Kent had seen close to a dozen bucks. “All shooters,” he said, “plus that big boy who’s been givin’ me fits.”
Kent’s never been one to exaggerate the details. But the whole thing sounded easy, as if getting a shot at a deer would be incidental to simply getting my butt down to Oskaloosa by daybreak Saturday morning.
Now I appreciate a hard hunt just as much as the next guy—perhaps even more so. In fact, most of my hunts where the longbow is involved tend to fall into that category (most would be dubbed unsuccessful, too, but that is another matter). By design or happenstance, I seem to walk more miles, miss more shots, and get myself into more wild predicaments than other hunters prowling the woods with more high-tech weaponry. Call it a lack of efficiency or downright foolishness. Because of it, I seem to eat up more vacation days than anyone else back home in the office (doing things like missing your boat and getting marooned on a small island in Alaska for an extended period of time has a way of really cutting into your personal days—but again, that’s another story.)
My motives then for sneaking out of the office for a couple days without telling anyone were made even more lecherous by my want of an easy hunt. Though I relished the idea of watching many thick-necked, rut-crazed whitetail bucks tearing through the woods with reckless abandoned, the fact remains: It had been a very lean year. The Gods had not been good to me, you might say, which simply meant my freezer was near empty and I longed to pack it full of prime, Iowayan venison.
I being a sneak, yes: my boss was away on business and my girlfriend was down in Grand Rapids for a few days doing something with computers I don’t understand. The plan was to get down to Kent’s by Friday evening, hunt all day Saturday and Sunday morning, if need be. If I played it right I’d be home by Sunday afternoon with nobody the wiser. And if I got caught . . . well, there’s an old saying: “It’s always easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.”
Back in college, the provisions that went into any roadtrip consisted of simple amenities such as an ample supply of beef jerky, pork rinds, and beer. Even now I have a hard time leaving one of those all night convenience stores without a bag of chips, a pack of cheap cigars, or one of those big bottles of Crazy Horse in hand.
However, it was fourteen hours to Oskaloosa from my tiny rat-shit cabin in northern Michigan, so granola bars and a big cup of coffee were on order that morning.
I left a note on the kitchen table should my girlfriend come home early (she, as always, would understand) and a cryptic message on the answering machine at work. The phone at the office has a crackling-bad connection somewhere, made even worse if you finger the cord when you talk. Its come in handy when talking with salesman or irate customers and it proved its worth again; if you took up a handful of the cord and twirled it around, the cracks and whines that came out of the receiver were quite enough to make all of my erroneous babble completely undecipherable.
After packing my longbow, tube full of arrows, and a change of clothes, I was off. The drive itself passed like a dream. I rode most of the way with the radio turned off and the window rolled partway down.
Because of suicidal deer and the reputation of small town Iowa police, Kent warned me to keep the pedal off the floorboard after turning off 180. And it was a good thing, too, as I avoided one speed trap in Montezuma and a small spike buck that jumped up onto the road and froze up in my headlight five miles outside Oskaloosa. Still, I was standing at Kent’s door at one hour under time.
Kent Ostrem founded Mahaska Custom Bows in his basement almost a decade ago, back when competent traditional bow makers were scarce. He started by making longbows and recurves for himself and friends. But the operation grew. The orders started coming in. So many, in fact, that he up and quit his regular job and build a little shop out behind his garage.
It’s where I found him that night, working late as always. Kent came to the door covered with sawdust and wearing a thing that looked like a gas mask and goggles. He shook my hand and said something inaudible before pulling the mask down and smiling. “Hey Bob. C’mon in,” he said. Then, looking outside, “What the hell time is it?”
I told him it was eight and he said, “Cripes. Where’d the day go, huh?”
He had taken my hand upon opening the door, and hadn’t let go until I was standing inside. “Be done in a minute here. Just hold on.” He fixed the mask on his face then and kicked on the belt sander. In his other hand was a bow—always a bow. He bent over the machine, and while he labored away over the drone of the thing I stood there looking around.
The shop was small, like a hermit’s den, dusty and smelling of sawdust. Wood and machines for making bows occupied every inch of the place. Bows hung from clasps on the ceiling, all in various stages of production. Longbows, recurves, and flatbows. Everyone with a tag made out in black marker with names of bowhunters as faraway as Australia and Spain.
Kent shut off the sander and fingered the tips of the bow he’d been working. He was transfixed for a moment, turning the bow this way and that in the light. Then he said something aloud, but to no one in particular; something that was garbled what with the respirator on his face. I imagined for a moment him spending his days like that—alone. Airing his every thought in that tiny room. He walked over to me still holding the bow—scrutinizing it—and finally, handing it over for a look.
“Perfect, huh?” he said, to which I soon agreed.
Like all of Kent’s work this bow was exquisite. Its gently curving limbs, smooth and elegant. There is a beauty in a finely crafted bow, just as there is beauty in the painting and the sculpture and the written word. But the bow is a living art, one that can never be fully be realized unless used as the maker intended. It’s the difference between reading a Shakespearean play and watching one acted out on stage.
Kent had gone from the room, walked across the yard to the house, and returned a moment later with a six-pack of beer. “Long day,” he said. He scrutinized the bow I was holding one last time before fixing the corresponding tag back on the riser and placing it gently on the workbench.
His is akin to an artist life, one totally enveloped by his devotion. In fact, whenever Kent and I get together we rarely talk of anything other than bows and arrows and hunting. We like retelling the same old stories, tales of animals we’ve killed and shots we’ve missed. We laugh a lot. But admittedly, it’s mostly caveman talk—banter that’s best shared in the firelight or off in some ramshackle hunting cabin where men can still talk like men.
That late night spent in dull light of Kent’s little shop, we talked as we
always did—as I hope we always will. Kent, damn near old enough to be my father, turned giddy as a teenage retelling the events of the previous week. “That big buck,” he said. “God! What a whopper.” He stretched out his hands to show me the size of the rack. Then he pitched back in his chair and stared at something on the wall. Remembering.
“Man, I feel good about tomorrow,” he said. “Real good.”
Though my friend is a little unorthodox when it comes to bowhunting, it’s hard to debate his proficiency at taking deer. Throughout the years I’ve known him, he’s never gone a year without bringing home a whitetail. Almost all of them have been bucks, and everyone was taking at close range on the ground. Kent was never that fond of heights; therefore, he makes it a point to stay out of the trees. He also doesn’t believe in using scents or lures, he doesn’t wear camo, and if the impulse strikes he’s not at all worried about smoking a cigarette or two while sitting on stand—that is, of course, as long as the wind is right.
He’s one of those guys who make deer hunting look remarkably simple. Therefore, hunting with Kent has always been something of an education, not so much in whitetail habits and habitat (Kent keeps all this knowledge to himself), but rather in what a bowhunter can get away with while hunting for whitetail deer.