I haven’t seen many ducks but it is duck season and I can’t wait to go out with my Lab to try to find some. If you have never owned a Labrador, you have missed out on one of the greatest things in life, and if you have never watched ducks come into decoys on cupped wings, rocking back and forth with those red legs extended you have missed something.
Recently I sat up against a tree scratching my dog’s ears while he slept beside me. I rested; watching empty skies and realizing that I couldn’t remember how much money I had left in the bank nor how old I was. Other things are more important when you’re out in the woods or on the river.
You may not believe this, but in a local pharmacy they have a blood pressure machine, and I can take my blood pressure. It remains pretty good until I get mad, which town traffic usually makes me. If it is too high then I can set back and take it again while I close my eyes and envision a flock of wild ducks circling above me, and then dropping like fall leaves into my decoys. Then the second time I take it, my blood pressure will have dropped ten or fifteen points!
It seems sad to me that we have arrived at a time when the men who truly understood and knew the ways of the wild are old men, or long passed away. Most of what they knew, we are losing. But this much is true; there are more self-proclaimed experts in the outdoors today than you can shake a stick at.... more pros and champions and authorities than fish in the sea.
For an outdoor partner, give me someone who doesn’t proclaim himself a pro at anything. Someone who will slowly walk the ridge tops and the valleys from dawn to dusk and be sorry the day has ended. Give me someone who loves it so much he can't tire of the songs of birds, nor experience enough the sound and smell of rain coming across a still valley…someone who notices the scent post of a fox as he passes, who finds the pellets beneath an owl roost and knows what they are.
Put me in a boat with someone who can paddle down the river so slowly and quietly even the beaver and the mink and the wood ducks are unaware of his presence. Give me a man who leaves nothing but his tracks, and takes only what he uses and wastes nothing. Give me an outdoorsman who has learned more from experiences beneath a hardwood canopy or along a flowing stream than from books. Such a man needs no trophies or acclaim. He seeks the treasures which God bestows on those who walk in wild places men have not yet ruined.
When we come to the end of 2025, may there still be such places, and such men. May the values and convictions of our ancestors still be strong with us.
I write too much I guess, about those days when those old men I knew were young. Those days when being poor still had its blessings. Why…when I was a kid, I really did go to the local army salvage store to buy hunting clothes and a variety of items used in my hunting and fishing forays as a youngster. At the time, I was so poor I had to get used haircuts. I was so poor that I had a burlap bag for a lunch pail, with a hammer and a handful of walnuts in it.
This column comes out weekly... If your newspaper misses a column or two you can read them and dozens more on a BlogSpot called larrydablemontoutdoors. My website with my books and magazines on it is larrydablemont.com. I have written 12 books and more than 100 magazines which you can order on that last website. If you want to get in touch with me just email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com
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