A love of old things that last
There was a tradition in our bear camp that if you brought a new guy along for the hunt, then you provided a set of brush chaps for him.
This was done with good reason for if one was foolish enough to attempt to hunt bears in driven fashion through the toughest of covers, one might exit the coverts looking like he had just finished hand-to-hand combat with a weed eater at full RPM.
A number of the members made it a point to buy the Filson Tin Cloth version and bestow that gift upon the unsuspecting would-be bear drivers with a twistedly sick smile as the newbie had no idea of the pact that they were entering by accepting this most novel and utilitarian gift. Mine were presented to me nearly a quarter of a century ago by my former principal, Steve, after inviting me to camp.
Our collective killed more than 35 bears in the years that we were in operation. It was the hardest hunting I would undertake. And the most satisfying.
Death, age, sickness, jobs, family, responsibilities and a general dearth of deranged folks silly enough to undertake such a proposition laid our bear camp low. I still have the chaps. Worn, frayed, blood stained, having seen better days … you bet. These days they are relegated to the toughest of grouse thickets, a time or two each season.
Occasionally, I’ll don them to track a deer through multiflora rose and blackberry briars. Good times! Each time I handle them, a flood of memories washes over me. I think of Pastor Ken Alt and Mr. Tom Harmon, who scouted for our party weeks in advance of our outing.
Tom would fly in from his home in Alaska prior to the hunt, just to perform the cursory work. The drives were set up and executed by two slightly built, briar-tough “old” men in their 70s, who walked more miles than the rest of our party put together.
I smile as I think of the good-natured ribbing that took place around the crowded dinner table, 18 in all, and of the delicious smells of covered dishes that traveled from all over the country. I can recall their excitement for any of us who took a bear. The deft manner in which Ken handled his trusty Barlow pocket knife, caping the hide for a bear rug, so we wouldn’t screw it up for the taxidermist, was a thing of beauty. In the late season that followed our bear camp, Ken and I would revisit those same coverts for grouse and he would walk me into the ground, even though I was 25 years his junior.
Recently, my buddy Bob presented me with an old Filson strap vest following our inaugural grouse hunt in Wisconsin. Bob shares my love of durable old things, which is one of the reasons why I continue hunting with an aged codger like him. Not a lot of 75-year-old grouse hunters out there, by the way. I like to pretend I have converted him into a side-by-side man in his senior years. Great memories of our times afield are woven into that same faded, worn, waxed, canvas fabric.
I have a couple of old hunting knives that were gifts from my two favorite uncles, my mom’s brothers, Blair and Jim. Uncle Jim (Watson) gave me a small Buck knife upon graduating from high school and I have carried it ever since.
Uncle Blair did such a good job of rubbing Copenhagen snuff that he earned one of their promotional folding knives decades ago. He gave it to me when I first began hunting. Each time I uncase one of those blades, those men are somehow present with me.
When I am field dressing a deer, I am obligated to use one of the pair, even though I have several other cutting tools that do the job just as nicely. Sometimes I carry both afield, simultaneously. Somehow their memories seem nearer at hand when performing the job with their knives.
The older I get, the more I have come to realize that it most assuredly isn’t the chaps nor the vest, nor the knife that I love so much. These items are simply vehicles for the emotions they house.
It would seem that items that are more durable by nature just get used more or for longer spans of time so there is simply more history attached to them. Thus, there is more feeling alive within an item that has withstood the test of time.
Maybe it’s not the monetary worth of such items but rather an intrinsic value, a personification of those items through their sentimental attachment to the ones we love, gone before us. Possibly, we keep a piece of them alive when we draw that favorite knife from its sheath?
Maybe it’s within the pause between drawing the blade and tightening up on the drag rope where the magic truly resides?
This column is dedicated to my uncles, Blair Watson (1932-2003) and Jim Watson (1920-2004), who paved the way for a spastic young boy’s love affair with the woods.
Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.