Larro Darro
Member
Using my silver "ice cream" spoon, I chased the last of my breakfast around the bottom of the Greek yogurt container I was using for a cereal bowl. Once the last grape, pumpkin seed, soybean and chunk of granola was captured and eaten, I washed out the yogurt residue with water, then drank it. Without anything to pack for lunch except a small apple, I was going to need all the fuel I could get.
Lighting another candle, I packed a little GV2 into my Dogwood bowl and stepped outside the tent for a hit. I was careful to stay under the tarp hanging overhead to keep the drops of rain from going down my collar. The taste was a little harsh since I hadn't had a chance to flush any of the Grape Vine patch. Five days of steady rain had done a little flush for me, but the manure teas I had been using were strong. Blowing out the smoke, I could already feel the high coming on. What it lacked in taste it more than made up for in head. I quickly took two more hits, then banged the ashes out on the oak tree nearby.
I stepped back inside and took my 12 gauge over to the sleeping bag and ejected the shells. My sole #00, two #1's and two slugs. My 870 Express, the real deer hunting gun back at the house was full of #00, but I had brought my house-gun, a short barreled Mossberg because of the brush. Putting the buckshot and slugs away, I loaded five #6's, and slipped five more into my jacket pocket. Yesterday afternoon I had done some deer hunting for real, but today I planned on killing a mess of squirrels for the old fellow whose land I was camping on. Since his stroke he only went where his UTV could carry him, but you never outgrow the taste of fried squirrel.
I checked my pockets for compass, watch, knife and nippers, then slung the gun over my shoulder with the barrel point down and drank down the cup of last night's cold coffee. Even with daylight coming so late, I still didn't have the time to start a fire just for coffee. I stopped by the truck on my way out, just to see if there was anything I was forgetting. Even through the heavy overcast you could see the sky starting to lighten to the east, so I left my little LED flashlight, but took my camera.
There was a good three trail road around the property, first going east, then south. By staying in the middle a person could walk without getting soaked from the bushes encroaching from each side, but the sky was still spitting rain, so I headed out on a deer trail, going east by southeast.
Sleeping on the ground had helped my back a little, but I could still feel all of my fifty five years. I had started hunting this land fifty years ago, about the time my weapon of choice went from slingshot to Daisy BB-gun. My Daddy was a believer in the old adage, you shoot it, you eat it, so Mamma had cooked a lot of Blue Jays when I was younger. My Great Aunt Bess had even baked me a Black Bird pie a little later when I had advance to a 410.
Fifty years ago we had run cows on about 1500 acres of family land. It was later that I learned family land didn't mean our land. We only had a little over 250 acres at the high point. And after selling off a few small pieces to city cousins with a sob story, we were down to 220 when Sister and I split the land between us. This 40 had been family land, but had been sold when my 2nd cousin had died 20-25 years back. A few messes of peas, squash and cucumbers, and a big watermelon on the 4th had got me into the good graces of the new owner, and I have camping and hunting rights.
I passed two tree stands by without stopping. My days of climbing were long past. The sons of the owner come down from the frozen north once a year to hunt. That was one of the reasons I had to get my little walk in today. One of the sons was coming in at the end of the week. I would tear down my campsite before he got in. After he has come and gone, I will put it back up until this time next year.
The trail curved around a wetland and went into deeper woods. This land had had the pines sold off it right after my cousin had died, and it was grown up as only logged and left along land can be. But there was good deer trails that could be walked with only a minimum of ducking under wet bushes.
A few hundred yards and I came to my shooting house. A fancy name for a 4X4 shack with a bench along the back wall. I picked up the coffee can of corn inside and scattered it over the last few grains of yesterday's corn. The corn pile was only seventy yards from the shooting house, but in this thick brush a rifle was about useless. Propping my shotgun in the corner, I headed due East on a big deer trail. Fifty yards into the brush I removed a camo tarp to reveal twenty five gallons of my hot mix Darro Dirt and ten of the mild in three big pots, three five gallon buckets, a trashcan full of leaves, shovel, hand saw and two bottles of water. Twelve years ago when I gave up growing, it would have been nothing for me to carry four buckets at a time. But I knew not to overdo it in the beginning, so I put the water, shovel and handsaw in the trashcan with the leaves and poured five gallons of hot mix into a bucket.
From here I could stay on the same trail all the way to last year's CP patch, then go south. But when I came to an indentation in the ground leading to the Southeast, I turned off the trail. This was what was left of the Old Wire Road. Back in the 20's when Daddy was a boy, this was an interstate highway. It came down from Alabama, twisting and turning it's way to Lake City before heading further south. A mile to the north it passed a few yards in front of what was left of Aunt Bess's old house. Daddy had said they always looked forward to travelers passing through. You were expected to put people up for the night if they came by close to sunset, even if it was in the barn with the livestock. His family did business with the old peddler whose wagon was called the Rolling Store, while Mamma's daddy thought his goods too high priced. They took the mule and wagon the seven miles to town for a better deal.
But then my Granddaddy "Larro" made and sold drinking whiskey, so he had more of the ready cash than most. Thinking about the drug trade back in the day reminded me of my job today. I had spots scouted for six holes in a patch that was most likely going to be known as 3DT or DTT. I hadn't made up my mind what was going in that patch. As a rule of thumb, I never liked to use seeds from my tallest plants, so GV1 was most likely out of the running. But because CP1 would have been CP2 if it hadn't have been for CPDA {deer ate} getting topped by the deer, it was a possibility. I did have lots of Slo seed, so that might end up there. What had been Slo1 was the male I chose for breeding and the other Slo plant had changed her name to Herman, so Slo wasn't the tallest plant in that patch.
The sharp thorns of a Wait a Minute vine across my neck decided I need to set my load down and regroup. This was not going to be my last trip today, so I used my nippers to cut the vine, making sure to cut it off at the ground and pull it out of the trees. My watch said it was almost time for sunrise, so I didn't rest long. I picked up my load and headed down the faint trail that was the Old Wire Road. Another hundred yards and it jogged to the southwest, so I left it and headed east by southeast for the corner where four pieces of land came together. This was the most dangerous part of my walk this morning. There was a logging road around the edge of the timberland to the south, and that fellow was know to ride his golf cart along there. I could have walked straight across a pasture if I had got here a littler earlier, but even on a overcast day, I always assumed a plane would be flying over soon.
Stepping over an old hog fence I was on Uncle Jim's old place. His kids had split the land when he died, and so far they had not sold it. I walked through the gap in the fence to the south, I passed onto another cousin's land. Luckily for me, they all were city cousins, and didn't come down very often. And when they did, they didn't tromp through brush to where I was going. The rain had just about stopped by the time I got to the site where three dead trees had fallen, each one 120 degrees from the others. They had come down a few years back, and the brush was just right for growing in. I set my load down and headed back toward the Old Wire Road.
Lighting another candle, I packed a little GV2 into my Dogwood bowl and stepped outside the tent for a hit. I was careful to stay under the tarp hanging overhead to keep the drops of rain from going down my collar. The taste was a little harsh since I hadn't had a chance to flush any of the Grape Vine patch. Five days of steady rain had done a little flush for me, but the manure teas I had been using were strong. Blowing out the smoke, I could already feel the high coming on. What it lacked in taste it more than made up for in head. I quickly took two more hits, then banged the ashes out on the oak tree nearby.
I stepped back inside and took my 12 gauge over to the sleeping bag and ejected the shells. My sole #00, two #1's and two slugs. My 870 Express, the real deer hunting gun back at the house was full of #00, but I had brought my house-gun, a short barreled Mossberg because of the brush. Putting the buckshot and slugs away, I loaded five #6's, and slipped five more into my jacket pocket. Yesterday afternoon I had done some deer hunting for real, but today I planned on killing a mess of squirrels for the old fellow whose land I was camping on. Since his stroke he only went where his UTV could carry him, but you never outgrow the taste of fried squirrel.
I checked my pockets for compass, watch, knife and nippers, then slung the gun over my shoulder with the barrel point down and drank down the cup of last night's cold coffee. Even with daylight coming so late, I still didn't have the time to start a fire just for coffee. I stopped by the truck on my way out, just to see if there was anything I was forgetting. Even through the heavy overcast you could see the sky starting to lighten to the east, so I left my little LED flashlight, but took my camera.
There was a good three trail road around the property, first going east, then south. By staying in the middle a person could walk without getting soaked from the bushes encroaching from each side, but the sky was still spitting rain, so I headed out on a deer trail, going east by southeast.
Sleeping on the ground had helped my back a little, but I could still feel all of my fifty five years. I had started hunting this land fifty years ago, about the time my weapon of choice went from slingshot to Daisy BB-gun. My Daddy was a believer in the old adage, you shoot it, you eat it, so Mamma had cooked a lot of Blue Jays when I was younger. My Great Aunt Bess had even baked me a Black Bird pie a little later when I had advance to a 410.
Fifty years ago we had run cows on about 1500 acres of family land. It was later that I learned family land didn't mean our land. We only had a little over 250 acres at the high point. And after selling off a few small pieces to city cousins with a sob story, we were down to 220 when Sister and I split the land between us. This 40 had been family land, but had been sold when my 2nd cousin had died 20-25 years back. A few messes of peas, squash and cucumbers, and a big watermelon on the 4th had got me into the good graces of the new owner, and I have camping and hunting rights.
I passed two tree stands by without stopping. My days of climbing were long past. The sons of the owner come down from the frozen north once a year to hunt. That was one of the reasons I had to get my little walk in today. One of the sons was coming in at the end of the week. I would tear down my campsite before he got in. After he has come and gone, I will put it back up until this time next year.
The trail curved around a wetland and went into deeper woods. This land had had the pines sold off it right after my cousin had died, and it was grown up as only logged and left along land can be. But there was good deer trails that could be walked with only a minimum of ducking under wet bushes.
A few hundred yards and I came to my shooting house. A fancy name for a 4X4 shack with a bench along the back wall. I picked up the coffee can of corn inside and scattered it over the last few grains of yesterday's corn. The corn pile was only seventy yards from the shooting house, but in this thick brush a rifle was about useless. Propping my shotgun in the corner, I headed due East on a big deer trail. Fifty yards into the brush I removed a camo tarp to reveal twenty five gallons of my hot mix Darro Dirt and ten of the mild in three big pots, three five gallon buckets, a trashcan full of leaves, shovel, hand saw and two bottles of water. Twelve years ago when I gave up growing, it would have been nothing for me to carry four buckets at a time. But I knew not to overdo it in the beginning, so I put the water, shovel and handsaw in the trashcan with the leaves and poured five gallons of hot mix into a bucket.
From here I could stay on the same trail all the way to last year's CP patch, then go south. But when I came to an indentation in the ground leading to the Southeast, I turned off the trail. This was what was left of the Old Wire Road. Back in the 20's when Daddy was a boy, this was an interstate highway. It came down from Alabama, twisting and turning it's way to Lake City before heading further south. A mile to the north it passed a few yards in front of what was left of Aunt Bess's old house. Daddy had said they always looked forward to travelers passing through. You were expected to put people up for the night if they came by close to sunset, even if it was in the barn with the livestock. His family did business with the old peddler whose wagon was called the Rolling Store, while Mamma's daddy thought his goods too high priced. They took the mule and wagon the seven miles to town for a better deal.
But then my Granddaddy "Larro" made and sold drinking whiskey, so he had more of the ready cash than most. Thinking about the drug trade back in the day reminded me of my job today. I had spots scouted for six holes in a patch that was most likely going to be known as 3DT or DTT. I hadn't made up my mind what was going in that patch. As a rule of thumb, I never liked to use seeds from my tallest plants, so GV1 was most likely out of the running. But because CP1 would have been CP2 if it hadn't have been for CPDA {deer ate} getting topped by the deer, it was a possibility. I did have lots of Slo seed, so that might end up there. What had been Slo1 was the male I chose for breeding and the other Slo plant had changed her name to Herman, so Slo wasn't the tallest plant in that patch.
The sharp thorns of a Wait a Minute vine across my neck decided I need to set my load down and regroup. This was not going to be my last trip today, so I used my nippers to cut the vine, making sure to cut it off at the ground and pull it out of the trees. My watch said it was almost time for sunrise, so I didn't rest long. I picked up my load and headed down the faint trail that was the Old Wire Road. Another hundred yards and it jogged to the southwest, so I left it and headed east by southeast for the corner where four pieces of land came together. This was the most dangerous part of my walk this morning. There was a logging road around the edge of the timberland to the south, and that fellow was know to ride his golf cart along there. I could have walked straight across a pasture if I had got here a littler earlier, but even on a overcast day, I always assumed a plane would be flying over soon.
Stepping over an old hog fence I was on Uncle Jim's old place. His kids had split the land when he died, and so far they had not sold it. I walked through the gap in the fence to the south, I passed onto another cousin's land. Luckily for me, they all were city cousins, and didn't come down very often. And when they did, they didn't tromp through brush to where I was going. The rain had just about stopped by the time I got to the site where three dead trees had fallen, each one 120 degrees from the others. They had come down a few years back, and the brush was just right for growing in. I set my load down and headed back toward the Old Wire Road.
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