Shepherding Outdoors

BY WALT MERRELL

As a young dad, I worried as to whether I met with my children’s approval. That’s not to say that I wanted to be their “friend.” No, on the contrary, I always made it clear that I was a parent first, but I still wanted the girls to have a good time when we did things together. I wanted to give good advice. I wanted to give great softball swing instruction. I wanted to always make sure they saw a deer in the green field when we went hunting. I wanted to … well, you get the idea.

The fear, if I am being honest, was that if they were bored with the expedition, they would then become bored with me, too. Thankfully, time promoted maturity in my parenting, and now I rarely find myself worrying about whether my children approve of the expedition. In fact, just last night, I told Cape that Travis Martin (@Martin Homestead on Facebook) and I are planning an adventure down the Tombigbee River. We plan to take Cape and Anna, Travis’ daughter, with us. They are both the same age and have been friends for most of their lives. Whether Cape has the grandest of times on the Tombigbee is not a concern … whether she learns something from the experience … well, that is important to me.

But, like I said to begin with that was not always the case ….

Cape is our wild child. She once remarked, “The only day I feel normal is on Halloween.” Of course, she was four or five at the time, but I’m fairly convinced she was serious. She also had on her Halloween costume … she was dressed as a wild Indian (with a bathmat substitute for a bear rug cloak) and her sister, a cave woman, complete with chicken bonesin her hair. “That’s my girl … that’s what normal is in her world,” I thought to myself – bathmats, feathers and chicken bones, she gets that from her Momma.

I must confess though that it was her wild side, out-of-the-box methodology that helped me understand and learn that meeting my children’s expectations shouldn’t be a primary objective. In fact, she helped me realize that my fears were inhibiting the girls’ growth … and it all happened one fateful midday hunt in Pickens County, Alabama.

I had planned to get up early and go sit in what we called “The Bottoms” with the hope of catching a late rut bruiser buck cruising through the hardwood timber. My alarm went off at 5 a.m. and the heat in the old farmhouse was working overtime trying to warm the drafty house. I felt the chill on my feet as they met the hardwood floors, and a shiver ran up my legs. Quickly, I slid into my long johns and tiptoed into the kitchen. Hannah shuffled a bit in the bed as I tried not to wake her, but the cold got to her, so she grabbed a big armful of the covers from my side of the bed and double wrapped.

Standing in the kitchen, the electric eye on that old stove felt good as the heat rolled up my chest and around my face and ears. My hands cupped over the fiery orange circles of the eye like parachutes catching the hot air. In my groggy state, standing over the hot eye seemed more sensible than actually putting on clothes … so, slowly, I rotated from my left to my right, like a weenie roaster at the truck stop, trying to warm my entire body off the stove. Each time I rotated past the small kitchen window that sat over the aluminum sink, I fixed my gaze out into the darkness of the November morning. The moon was D-shaped and sat low on the horizon, I couldn’t remember if it was setting or rising, as it hovered over the pine trees on the other side of the 40-acre field behind the house.

There’s not enough light for me to see … I thought to myself. I stepped away from the stove and peered harder into the darkness. I was “looking” to see how cold it was … and I could see Jack Frost glistening in the moonlight grass across the field. “This ought to be a good morning ….” The red needle on the songbird thermometer hanging outside the kitchen window sat on 27degrees. Turning the stove off, I muttered to myself, “Let’s roll.” Then I eased into the girls' bedroom.

Cape and Bay were piled up in a bundle under three generations' worth of quilts and old electric blankets. How they slept in such a rat’s nest of tangled arms and twisted legs was beyond me.

“Cape.” Shake, shake, shake. “Cape.” Poke, poke, poke.

Apparently, five-year-olds twist their “v’s” and “b’s” in the predawn sleepiness of a hunting trip. “Cape, we gotta get up.” Shake, shake, shake … kiss on the cheek.

She rolled over and turned her back to me. “Unnnuh. Don’t wanna go.” By now, my feet were chilled through and through, and whatever had remained of the warmth from the stove eye had evaporated. Honestly, I didn’t need much discouragement on the crispy cold Pickens County morning … so I crawled back into the bed and wrestled a few covers away from Hannah.

Now, I am certain that the biggest buck I would have ever seen in my life strolled through The Bottoms that morning … but we weren’t there. I was snuggled up cozily to my wife … and slept good for another hour and a half. The trade was a good one, too … we sat on the back porch on the brisk November morn and sipped our coffee and talked of life. She snuggled up under my arm on the swing as I gently nudged us to and fro with my left foot. The coffee’s steam swirled around my face with each sip, and her voice swirled around my ears with each whisper. As a doe and two yearlings crossed the field, Hannah chided me that I was missing out on a good hunt. I simply whispered back in her ear, “I am not missing anything.”

I was quite content.

An hour later, the girls woke … Hannah and I were on our second pot of coffee, and she had breakfast almost ready. Cape stumbled into the kitchen dragging a quilt over her shoulder. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asked with righteous indignation. I didn’t even bother to explain, instead opting to scoop her up and give her a good morning hug. “Don’t worry, booger. We’ll go in a little while.”

“When, Daddy?” came her immediate reply. “After breakfast, we will get dressed and walk down and sit for a while.” She nodded with pouty lips and buried her head into the crease between my neck and shoulder. I sat her down at the kitchen table and wrapped her in the quilt. She laid her head down on the table … Good thing … I thought to myself, “I would have carried her out of the woods sleeping like a log.”

Breakfast came and went and then the girls worked on a puzzle for an hour or so. I tended to a few things around the farmhouse, and Hannah cleaned the kitchen. I wasn’t in any particular rush, as I had little hope that a midday hunt would lead to anything productive. I secretly hoped I might manage to stall until middle of the afternoon, when we could go sit for the rest of the day. But 'twas not to be … as around 10 a.m., the middle princess marched out on the porch in full camo regalia and declared, “I’m ready!” I chuckled and declared, “Alrighty then! Let me get dressed!”

It was a half-mile walk to the best shooting house in The Bottoms. “Let’s drive the golf cart to the top of the hill since it’s midday,” I suggested. Looking down at her own legs, she glanced back up at me and nodded in affirmation. We’d had walked it before, but even she knew that driving the golf cart was a good offer. But we were careful … “Don’t bang anything against the cart,” I whispered. “Just be careful as you get off.” She did, and did a good job of it, and then we hiked down the hill and through The Bottoms the last 200 yards.

And, at about 10:45 a.m., we sat quietly in the shooting house … with not even a squirrel in sight. Twenty minutes later and the five-year-old was fidgety. I was anxious we wouldn’t even see one deer … this is where the “meeting with expectations” pressure began to mount … I “grunted” a few times and tried the “bleat” too, hoping to attract a rutting buck with the animations that might sound familiar to him. I had already sprayed a little doe pee around the base of the shooting house, but I squirted a little more out of the window for good measure. Ten more minutes passed and nothing.

“Daddy, can I blow on this?” she asked, holding up a predator call she had retrieved from my backpack. I tried to discourage her because I knew her wailing away on a wounded rabbit call would likely scare everything out of the woods but the ticks and mosquitoes. She was persistent. “Well, nothing you’ve done has worked,” she reasoned. “So we should try this.” I tried again to explain the difference between the predator call and a buck grunt, but she would have none of it.

“Fine, then,” I finally relented in exhaustion. “Blow on it and let’s see what happens.” She hesitantly blew one little “eeaaakk.” “Like that?” she asked, with a hint of jubilation in her voice. Sensing her joy, I suggested, “You gotta blow harder and more … like a crying baby.” She drew a deep breath and then blew on that predator call like it was a bugle, and this was Reveille. Her “eeaaakkks” and “wreeeeeenttsss” echoed down the holler … and any buck with a half a lick of sense wasn’t about to walk anywhere within earshot … but, she was having fun. So, contented again, I just sat and enjoyed the view and the company as Cape serenaded everything within a half mile of Coal Fire Creek. I leaned back and just listened and took it all in.

“Daddy! Daddy!” She stopped blowing and started tapping my leg. “What is it, sugar?” I asked. “What is that?” Her arm extended straight out with her index finger pointing out toward one of the biggest bobcats I had ever seen in all my years. “That, baby, is what you just called up!” He trotted toward us at a pretty good clip … he was coming to eat, and we didn’t have much time. “Do you want to?” Her head was already shaking … “No, you shoot him, Daddy.”

And, so … I did. But that was Cape’s kill. It was her first … because she called him up. That was what mattered … not the shot, but the call. You know what else mattered to her? How much she enjoyed calling with the call. She cared less that we didn’t see a buck … and she still recalls this busted deer hunt as one of the best hunts she ever had.

She learned how to call a bobcat that day, but I learned a lot more about raising little girls.

Sometimes, they shepherd me.