A TIME TO BE THANKFUL
Thanksgiving Day most of us will gather in family groups to celebrate a truly American holiday. In most cases headlining the feast will be turkey roasted a golden brown. Today’s Thanksgiving turkey is a pen raised variety but the turkeys who helped the pilgrims through the winter of the first Thanksgiving were wild birds that fell to the hunter’s gun and were part of the bounty of the new world wilderness.
If you sit down to a wild turkey feast, duck breast, wild pheasant or roast venison this Thanksgiving; be proud of your resourcefulness and skill. Also, take time to thank America’s great conservationists who have helped make such a feast possible and our God who created the great outdoors for us to enjoy and take care of.
CRAPPIE FOR THANKSGIVING
If you’re lucky enough where you live to have 3 or 4 straight days in November of above 60 degrees you need to take some time off from hunting and go crappie fishing. Fried crappie with the Thanksgiving turkey would be a really special treat this year or just sitting around watching football games and eating fried crappie sounds pretty good too.
WATERFOWL AND WEATHER
With the low visibility of heavy fog ducks and geese don’t like to fly much. But when they do, they become very vulnerable to calling. Cold fronts do push ducks and geese south but not all the time. Sometimes, when they can find suitable areas to roost and feed, they will stick around.
DEER CAMP PRANKS
I love playing pranks on hunting buddies at deer camp. One year I took a very real looking fake rattlesnake and put it in the floor of the outdoor john. I watched as several hunting buddies went in to do their duty only to come stumbling out with their pants down around their ankles. They did pull them up before they started chasing me.
We also had a guy who is deathly afraid of mice. He has found fake mice in his sleeping bag, in the camp box, dangled on a line above his face while sleeping and in the toilet role container in the outdoor john. He promises me he will get even.
When we have a new guy at deer camp, I take tootsie roll midges, tear off pieces and roll them up until they look like deer droppings. I then take the guy out, act like I find them and show him how to tell what deer are feeding on by popping them in my mouth and chewing them. The look on their face is priceless.
WE ALL NEED THIS
Sunrises and sunsets in the outdoors are better than any TV show. Lying in a tent listening to crickets, whippoorwills and peeper frogs is better than the finest hotel room. Being with your son, grandson or granddaughter when they harvest their first turkey or deer or catch their first fish is a memory you will never forget.
The outdoors is a stress reliever and a worry reducer that slows down the hectic pace of life and brings the world back into perspective and we all need that nowadays.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world.” – John Muir
