From the time I was 8 until 14, I lived about a mile south of Norphlet, a couple of hundred yards from Flat Creek Swamp.
As a kid I fished in the creek and bar pits along the road; my catch was usually small sunfish, goggle eye, and a catfish or two. I never threw anything back. From that point forward, I did what was drilled into me: "Whatever you catch you clean, and we eat it." When my dad bought me a Mossberg 20 gauge shotgun, the same premise applied.
When I was a few years older, I hunted with Buddy Henley and his dad Rex; around 4 a.m. we would head to the Little Missouri River to squirrel hunt. We were always there before daylight, which meant we kept Happy, the Henleys' squirrel dog, in his pen until daylight.
Then when it got light enough to see, it was off with Happy leading the way to hunt squirrels. By noon, Mr. Henley and Happy had walked and run (when Happy trees, you run) two preteen boys into the ground and we would head back to Norphlet. Usually we had 20 to 25 squirrels, and it was skinning time when we got back.
The idea that we would clean three or four and toss the rest away never crossed anyone's mind. Every one of those squirrels would be eaten. That's a far cry from riding around in a Land Rover until a guide says, "Shoot that one!" as he points to an animal.
That shoot-clean-and-eat mantra carried on to my first job as a geologist, where I hunted white-winged dove in South Texas. I remember those hunts vividly, and embarrassingly recall firing my first box of 16 gauge birdshot without hitting a dove. It was because hunting in Arkansas required very little lead to hit the birds. However, in south Texas, those doves would come whizzing by with a 30-mile-per-hour tailwind, faster than any bird I had ever tried to shoot.
I figured it out well into my second box of shells and managed to get my limit. I had just finished cleaning them when we were visited by the preacher from First Baptist Church. As I was putting the cleaned doves in the refrigerator, he asked what they were.
"White-winged doves," I replied. "I got my limit down near Raymondville."
He shook his head. "I would never shoot a dove. The Bible says a dove is a bird of peace."
How, do you answer that?
"Well, uh, they're very tasty ..." I could tell Vertis thought I'd blown it.
I didn't regret shooting white-winged doves. In fact, I have only one regret when I look back at my early years of hunting. I was home from college, and went squirrel hunting with Vertis' brother Charlie. We took my dog Sniffer, a pretty good night coon and possum hunter. During the day when possums and coons weren't stirring, he would hunt and chase anything.
That day, after running rabbits and jumping a covey of quail, Sniffer got after something in a little thicket, and I heard him tree. Charlie and I plowed through the thicket to a small tree no more than 20 feet tall. As I got to where Sniffer had treed I looked up and was looking right in the face of a big bobcat. I guess when something like that startles you there is an automatic reaction, because I jerked up my Sweet 16 and shot the bobcat and killed it instantly.
I skinned it to sell the hide to a local fur buyer, but when I took the bobcat carcass out to throw it away, I knew I'd violated my hunting rule. "You clean and eat what you shoot." I regret shooting that bobcat.
With a background of hunting, fishing, and then cleaning and eating, I don't like trophy hunting in Africa or dove hunting in South America where hundreds of doves are shot and left on the ground.
"The locals are going to pick them up and eat them." Sure, they'll pick up 15 or 20, but there will be hundreds left. I know the doves down there are as thick as mosquitoes at Moro Bay, but didn't they say that about passenger pigeons?
When I hear a trophy hunter say, "Well, that giraffe was an old bull that the game officials said was worthless, and don't worry, the villagers will butcher the giraffe for its meat, and your fee to shoot it will go for conservation."
It sounds good, and I guess if you're going to shoot a giraffe, it might let you sleep a little sounder. But surely a rational person wouldn't believe that spiel, and when a trophy hunter blasts away, how much of the 3,500-pound giraffe are the villagers going to eat? Obviously very little, and with no way to preserve the meat, at least 3,000-plus pounds of a magnificent endangered species will be thrown to the vultures and hyenas.
That breaks my hunting and fishing rule. What you shoot or catch, you clean it and we eat it.
Or you can pay a huge fee to shoot a black rhino, and if you believe the entire fee is for conservation, then I have some south Arkansas swamp land you'll just love. Or maybe you want to bow-hunt elephants or other big game, knowing the odds of killing one of them with an arrow are low, and what will probably happen is a lingering death somewhere deep in the jungle.
But I guess when you finally nail big game and post the picture on Facebook to show the world, it will help your image. Do you ever wonder what happens to those huge dead animals? Don't tell me that the villagers butcher them like we butcher cows and eat them. I don't believe even a tenth of the meat goes to feed those villagers.
Our house sits on 37 wooded acres with two fair-sized ponds, and I do my best to allow the overall ecosystem to balance. I fish here but don't hunt because I live in the city limits.
However, if I do get a shot at the feral hogs that come in the night to root up my yard, I'm going to blast away, and if I nail one or two, we're going to eat high on the hog.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.
Editorial on 11/10/2019