I guess I have my Grandpa Willie to thank for my love of the outdoors, as well as my enjoyment of hearing, telling and a career of writing stories about hunting and fishing. Grandpa Willie was a hunter, with a particular passion for chasing squirrels. He was a hard-working man, a heavy machinery mechanic. The same gentle hands he held me with while mesmerizing me about his hunting trips could also tear down the diesel engines of cranes or front-end loaders, and then rebuild them until they roared to life. He lived in Houston at the peak of the Texas city’s boom era, working on the giant machines that help build skyscrapers and even the Astrodome.
After work each day, he’d come home and soak the grease off in a tub and scrub the rest off with lava soap. Then he’d hold me in one hand and a beer in the other and tell me stories.
Willie loved beer. Reckon I got that from him, too. I still remember the smell of aqua velva, lava soap and Falstaff beer, which he drank with a little salt around the mouth of the long neck bottles.
I worshipped those afternoon stories, about how he and his friend Skeet, a gentle black man who lived in the country, would stalk squirrels on their days off. Back then, in the swamps between Houston and Galveston, they’d kill about a hundred on a weekend. I’m not sure there was a limit on squirrels then and if there was, I don’t think they cared.
They killed whatever they felt they could clean, and maybe enough more to feed some of the poorest members of Skeet’s rural church. They killed a deer or two extra each year for those families who really needed it.
This I know for sure: A couple of weekends each fall provided enough squirrel that we had it for breakfast nearly every day I was there, and, if not for breakfast, we’d have it at night with dumplings.
Grandpa always told me that the day would come when I would be old enough for us to hunt together and then he would teach me the woods.
After his health forced him to retire and move back to Mississippi, to Hattiesburg where I lived, we got only one full squirrel season together and part of another before he was too sick to go anymore.
But he taught me so much in that short period of time. He showed me deer scrapes and rubs, and what they meant. He showed me a deer hoof print and how to tell which direction the deer had been moving.
He taught me to listen to the woods and hear what they were telling me. Things like the bark of a squirrel, deer blowing, owls hooting and, one morning late in the season,as we walked to one of his squirrel havens in the dark, we shared the first turkey gobble I’d ever heard, as well as the second and the third.
I was fascinated.
Finally, after our second trip, he decided that on our next trip, it was time for me to hunt. I was 13. He handed me the .410 pump shotgun, his squirrel gun, and told me it was now my squirrel gun. Then we went deep in the woods, in the dark, until we separated. He told me to sit at the base of this tree, and watch. The squirrels would be coming to another tree, a big oak, about 20 yards away to feed. Just be quiet, he said, and watch and listen. I’d hear them coming.
Then he left. I was alone in the dark woods for the first time in my life. I remember being a bit scared as he walked away. I could hear him leaving, 20 yards, 40 yards, 50 yards, and finally he was gone.
Seemed like it took forever, but it was probably only 10 minutes before the skies started getting a little bit lighter to the east.
I was stunned when a deer that didn’t have antlers, a doe I guess, walked right in front of me about 30 yards away, and crossed through a shallow slough without ever knowing I was there. We didn’t have a lot of deer back then in South Mississippi and it was the first time I’d ever seen one up close.
Then, I heard something different. I knew from Grandpa’s stories exactly what it was. It was a squirrel running and jumping through the trees. I looked for it and finally spotted the bushy-tailed gray squirrel coming right to the tree where Willie said he would.
I waited until it went behind a limb, and I raised the .410 up to my shoulder. I put my finger on the safety and waited. The squirrel ran out on a limb and stopped. I could see it was eating an acorn that it held in its two front feet.
I eased off the safety, moved my finger to the trigger, and noticed I was shaking pretty bad. But I remembered what Grandpa Willie had taught me and I took a deep breath, steadied and slapped the trigger.
The gun roared.
The squirrel fell, and before it hit the ground I was up and running toward it. I picked it up and was so proud. I remember looking at it before I slid it into the back of my vest and thinking how much I wished he’d been there to see me and share that moment.
When I started walking back to the tree, I looked up and there he was. Standing next to a tree about 20 yards behind me. He’d been there the whole time, having snuck back in after walking away.
He walked over and I never will forget the twinkle in his eyes, which I could clearly see in that dusky creek bottom. They were as bright as the moon.
That was our last day together in the woods. We hunted through the morning and got enough squirrel to clean and have dumplings that night and for breakfast the next morning. He shared a beer with me.
Grandpa Willie died that summer, but because he took the time to share it with me, his passion for small game lived on and continues to do so. It is still my favorite hunting, and that last morning we walked through the woods of Perry County remains my favorite hunt.
This weekend, small game hunting moves center stage in Mississippi. Rabbit season opens statewide and the Zone 2 squirrel season opens in central and southwest Mississippi. Zone 1 is already open up north.
It is the perfect time to take youngsters to the forest, and teach them the basics of woodsmanship. Show them the signs and help them learn to listen.
It is a much better way to introduce children to hunting than sitting in a shooting house over a green field or a corn feeder, waiting on a deer to walk out.
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