Sun, Jul 05 2009
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Published September 07, 2008 12:16 am - Teaching grandsons the ways of the outdoor world It’s about time to teach my grandson to hunt.
He’s doing pretty well with his fishing already. He just turned six, and if he is going to eventually become a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman like his grandfather, I am going to have to be the one who teaches him how to get there. You may remember that his mother is the one who became a doctor, the only one of my three daughters not inclined toward the pursuit of outdoor adventure and the filling of the freezer with freshly caught fish and wild game. Lori fished a little, but she never did hunt. I took her rabbit hunting when she was about 11 or 12, and she shot her pellet gun at a sitting rabbit and missed. I noticed that tears were filling her big blue eyes at the prospect of killing that rabbit, so I took the pellet gun from her and told her that maybe fishing would be a better choice of pastimes. She was responsible for me intentionally breaking a game law when she was about that age. We went out on Bull Shoals, and little sister Christy caught a nice crappie, which we made a big to-do over and put in the live-well. Shortly afterward, Lori caught an under-sized bass, which was nearly as big as the crappie, and to her, just as important. So I made a big thing of it as well, and she just beamed as we added it to the live-well and talked about what a great fish dinner we were going to have with those two little fish. Had I been caught with that bass, it might have been the end of my career, but back then I didn’t know I had a career anyway. Lori caught a lot more fish as she grew older, but against my strong influence she developed some good habits I never had when I was young. She studied, and made good grades. From the time she was a first grader to the time she graduated as her class valedictorian, she never made one grade that wasn’t an A or an A plus, and she won all kind of scholarships which prevented her from doing any serious hunting or fishing since then. She was never once thrown out of any libraries, as her father had been, and she drifted away from my influence. I found out that after she left home she had gone to a couple of operas. I knew right then I had lost her. She began to join educational societies and organizations that wouldn’t even have considered an application from any Dablemont I ever knew. And then she ended up in Boston furthering her medical career, and married my no-account, computer-friendly, golfer son-in-law, who didn’t know the difference between a goggle-eye and a shikepoke. He has been trying his best to become an Ozarkian, so you have to admire him for being willing to try, but frankly I doubt if he will ever be able to paddle a boat or call in a wild turkey. Fortunately, it was him who made it possible for me to have grandsons, so remember that the worst possible scenario can become a blessing if you give it enough time. When you realize that I never had any brothers or sons, you might wonder if I am up to teaching two grandsons to be Ozarkians, and eventually grizzled old outdoor veterans, especially in light of the fact that I did such a poor job of raising their mother. Ryan, who is the older of the two, was reading my books when he was four. He can now read anything, and is writing his own books as well, perhaps advanced to a point where he might be too smart to teach things like whittling and spitting and casting an open-faced reel equipped with 12-pound line. It appears that his little brother Alex, who has just turned four, will be more like me. He even looks like me, and shows no sign of being really, really smart, so he probably has a lot of my genetics. Ryan worries me. Out on the pond bank recently, I asked him if he ever remembered a summer with this much rain, and he remarked that he thought it was a result of atmospheric disturbance perhaps as a result of man’s manipulation of the environment. Faced with that, I am afraid he might end up being a fly-fisherman, or at least someone more inclined to fish a spinning outfit with light line. He may want to eventually smoke a pipe and wear a felt hat and hunt woodcock. How will I take a kid like that out in the boat at the age of 12 or 13 with Uncle Norten? 
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