A Life Afield

A. Hunter Smith

Description

In A Life Afield, A. Hunter Smith welcomes readers to sit by his fireside as he recounts twelve evocative tales from his extensive experience as a hunter and hunting guide. Though Smith could draw from some 350 years of ancestral sportsman stories, he instead describes his own successes and mishaps with an intimacy that captivates audiences.

Through his narratives Smith shares his philosophy on hunting and rambling in the outdoors and questions what it means to be a true sportsman in today's Deep South. As his stories make clear, the South's outdoor heritage has changed drastically within the last twenty-five years or more. The beauty and majesty of the natural world, as well as the principles of honor, integrity, and humanity found within circles of sportsmen, are seemingly no longer reward enough for the sporting world of today. Many of the age-old and time-proven wisdoms of woodsmanship are in danger of being forgotten or dismissed by a new era of "immediate reward" for minimal effort.

A Life Afield reminds readers what it means to be a woodsman: to hold the woods and waters deep within one's heart. Taken as a whole, the collection chronicles the author's quest to adulthood, influenced by his outdoor adventures and friendships, while also subtly providing solid lessons in sporting ethics, gun safety, and general woodsmanship.

A Life Afield includes a foreword by Ellison D. Smith IV, an environmental attorney, author of The Day the Pelican Spoke and Free as a Fish, and brother of the author.

Sujets

• Sports
• Market hunters
• Gaggle
• Stampede
• The Various
• Thicket
• Rebel yell
• Cap gun
• Bindle
• Warning shot
• Wadding
• Fodder
• Canvasback
• Ruminant
• Wader
• Snipe hunt
• Grebe
• Region
• Recreation
• Trapping
• Regional
• Hunting
• Drainage
• Ruminantia

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611174182
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Life Afield
A Life Afield
A. Hunter Smith
Foreword by
ELLISON D. SMITH IV
2015 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, A. Hunter. A life afield / A. Hunter Smith ; foreword by Ellison D. Smith IV. pages cm ISBN 978-1-61117-417-5 (hardbound : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-61117-418-2 (ebook) 1. Fowling-South Carolina-Charleston County. 2. Hunting-South Carolina- Charleston County. I. Smith, Ellison D., 1943- II. Title. SK313.S53 2014 799.2 40975791-dc23
2014023110
COVER ILLUSTRATION : Mallards by Lynn Bogue Hunt (1878-1960); oil on board, 14.5 10.5 inches; photograph courtesy of Copley Fine Art Auctions, Boston, Massachusetts
This book is for my wife, Josephine, a woman of rare patience and support, who allowed me my own heart and time, free of guilt, to write it. It is also for my brother Ellison, who has always encouraged and supported me. It is for Mark Frye and Venable Vermont, two wonderful friends in this world, without whom I d have lost my mind in the academics of it all. It is for all those people whom I ve come to know and love out there, and for the wild and beautiful world that provided us the opportunity to find one another.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Of Sea Islands and Single Birds
On Fragile Wings
Nothing Yet of the Past
All Things Being Equal Between Mr. Scaup and Sam Colt
The Witch
Where Once Migrated Angels
The Last Hunt
A Question of Safety
The Little Things
The Retributions of April
Foreword
My brother Hunter was appropriately named, although I doubt that my parents had even an inkling of that at the time.
Hunter and I are direct descendants of two families that chose to relocate themselves in the mid-1700s to what became South Carolina. Our father s family, the Smiths, settled on king s grant property near the Lynches River, while our mother s family, the Mannings, carved out their king s grant in a small settlement known as Manchester, close to the Wateree River.
Succeeding generations prospered by hard work, learning when and what to plant and, as important, where. While both families raised some domestic animals, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, for food, they heavily depended on wild game and fish to sustain themselves. This dependence on the outdoors lasted for generations. Accordingly how to hunt and fish was passed down to each new generation, because it was fundamentally important. Subsequently and just as important, a reverence and respect for all wild creatures and the places they live in were instilled in us as well.
We were taught to pay attention to detail when we were afield and were taught the proper etiquette of hunting and fishing with others.
We learned the old school ways of training and caring for dogs, and how to properly handle guns and fishing equipment. We were also taught not to be greedy with game and fish. These lessons were at times harsh, but ultimately we learned the importance of conservation. We, I like to think, became true sportsmen. If you shot something, you cleaned it and ate it. It was that simple. If you caught fish, you cleaned them and ate them. It was that simple.
Twenty years separates Hunter and me, so I had the distinct good fortune to begin outdoor activities with him from the time he could first walk. Over the last forty-five years, we have hunted and fished all over South Carolina, and he is an excellent companion and the most accomplished woodsman I have ever known. I think that I can safely say that in our entire time together outdoors, we have spent a considerable portion of it laughing at ourselves and each other, because we have never felt the need to compete with each other while afield.
The stories you are about to read are the product of more than 350 years of inherited observation, knowledge, and training.
When you finish this book, I suspect you will see the woods and waters of South Carolina in a different light and perhaps will have learned some things that you did not know.
E LLISON D. S MITH IV
Introduction
When we are children, we take our lives for granted, for not having seen enough life to know the difference. When I was a boy and young man, I was so afflicted and though I did not live a sheltered life, I realize now that my young existence was a cloistered one and it was such as a product of my own choosing as much as anything else. Though as a child I was as imaginative as any, I never once imagined that I would ever live any other life than the one I was born in to and I never wanted any other. I am a product of a different era, a time when South Carolina, like much of the south in those days, had long lain in a state of antiquation, a time when change was slow to come and crept in like a thief in the night, to whittle away at the foundations of what so many had once known and loved, and leaving little evidence of its crimes, as if it had never been there at all.
But all too soon what lay so long in bucolic repose would suddenly awaken to a quick pulse of modernization, and that slow and irregular beat of life that had evolved over centuries would be out paced in the span of a single generation. I am speaking of times before our streets and avenues were lined, as so many are now, with rank upon rank of gated communities and shopping centers, roads that are dissected in regular intervals, by multipronged lighted intersections and traffic circles. I am speaking of times when in these very same locales, fields were harvested and livestock kept within town limits, where tractor tires and wagon wheels churned dust on sand lanes, and rarely did the flow of traffic come to a complete standstill, unless out of respect for some solemn funeral procession, slowly passing by.
Hard to believe I know, that such a pastoral nineteenth century image could be painted by a child born to the advancement of the twentieth. But such was the South Carolina that I grew to love, and for better or worse, I miss it dearly. I am not speaking of human derelictions or politics, of advancements, or the lack thereof, but of a physical beauty and of a unique character, both naturally contrived and created by the hand of men. A character in the landscape and lifestyles lived by all the races that peopled it that has all but faded from sight, and will never show on this earth again.
IN MY YOUTH I LIVED a life of dreams for an outdoorsman, for a wing shot who lived and breathed for the sound of wild covey rises and the sharp crack and roar of gun fire echoed out across the quiet stands of long leaf and golden swales of broom straw. My mornings were woke to high and windswept flights of waterfowl, passing over the swing and sway of leafless winter timber, and my days passed with the chatter of greenheads, and the acrobatic beauty of pintails filtering down undisturbed, into some wild and frost glistened December marsh. My afternoons faded away on the horizon with long and wavering V s of widgeon, carried beyond eyeshot across sun bled and frigid January skies. I was born to a world of seemingly endless corn stubble fields, hedgerows laced with Bobwhite and cottontail and the constancy of late afternoon dove roosts that appeared to be forever swept in thin gray lines of fowl. I was born to love the liquid beauty of a finely feathered setter, as it coursed its way to widely scattered single birds and to stand with pride and awe, as I watched the gun dogs I had raised up from puppies, make their mark on this world in stands of flooded timber and across wind chopped open waters. My hands were once calloused by lead lines, my neck chafed with a whistle s chord and my shoulder permanently sore from the constant thump of a shotgun. These are the things I was born to know and love and most were no further out of my reach than the back door of my house or any harder to find anywhere else in this state, other than simply loading up the car and choosing the direction you wanted to travel.
But times change and we are all burdened to change with them or be left behind in a permanent state of regret. That is not the fate meant for outdoorsmen, for those woodsmen among us whose hearts are created and filled with a love for the wilder places on this earth and a love for those creatures that populate it. Our destiny is to seek those places out until the end of days, for what other choice do we have?
The work that follows is a documentation of one sportsman s journey in his continuous search for that place. It is a tale of that man s maturing and a story of those people and places that guided him on that quest. And though it is a story of one man and one life, it is a mirroring of many others. A reflection of the lives of all those sportsmen who have been gifted with long years put behind them and who have been fortunate enough to have lived in times and places worth the remembering, and who have had experiences worth committing to memory and those memories, hopefully worth sharing with those who would listen.
I have lived a full and fruitful life as an outdoorsman and as a South Carolinian, and lived during a time when those two labels were synonymous with each other, when the one could not be found without the other and when no one would have ever dreamed to separate the two. It is my wish, my fervent hope, that such a life can and always will be found by those generations of Carolina sportsmen yet to come, because though there are many other ways of living, and I have lived them, I have known no other, more fulfilling than a life afield.
Of Sea Islands and Single Birds
When I first set foot o