One of the people most responsible for my love of the outdoors is retiring this week, and that would be my mom! Amy, the boys and I are heading to Florida this morning to attend a surprise retirement party for her, so I will have to write this post quickly. However I did want to relate a short story that, while just one example, perfectly illustrates how hard she tried to make sure I had ample opportunities in the woods as a young man. And being a single mother, that was definitely not always easy!

Normally she would arrange for me to hunt with family friends, but we were just stopping to visit here for a day on our way home from a Christmas trip up north. I was about 13, and I only had one afternoon that I could hunt before we continued on back to Florida. I really wanted to hunt so I begged her to take me. And my Uncle J.O. (sr) said that I could sit in the oak tree stand in the back of Jenkins field on Cubbedge Hill if she would.

Well, our small hatchback car was loaded down with clothes and Christmas gifts, but she said as long as I didn’t kill anything, she would drop me off. I said no problem since I figured that it was 50/50 that I would even see anything that late in the season to shoot. So she put me out, and I sat watching over the field until near dark when a couple of does (couldn’t shoot them then) came out followed by a spike. I watched them all the while trying to remember my mom’s command not to shoot anything. But, I just couldn’t take it.

I put the cross hairs on his shoulder and dropped him. I then went and dragged him over to the edge of the field by the road to proudly wait on my mom to pick me up. I don’t even want to repeat what she said when she arrived, but to say that she was not counting on me having a deer would be an understatement. However like she always does, she made the best of the situation by rearranging the entire car’s worth of luggage and presents so that the back was empty enough for my deer to fit. However the only thing we had to keep the blood out of the car was her hanging clothes bag! So down it went, in went the deer, and off we went to the deer processors.

My mom still tells this story to this day as an example of the many problems I have caused her over the years. And I wouldn’t trade the memory for anything. Thanks mom!

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I think of myself as a real hunter. As a matter of fact, I think of myself of a real good hunter. However my older son seems to have much more of the mindset of a true hunter than even I do. He thinks of nothing else anymore. To say that he is obsessed with hunting would be an understatement.

While he still watches cartoons and kid’s videos like Cars, Babe, Open Season and Bambi, anymore he is more likely to ask to watch a big buck video from Realtree or a coyote hunting video from World Hunting Group (his absolute favorite). And while we did not allow him to even have a toy gun until just recently, he now has several including one that is a friend’s muzzleloader stock with a dowel attached as a barrel. He carries these around at all times and even sleeps with them! He is also constantly “shooting” big bucks, mama does, coyotes and hogs; he also carries around his giant stuffed animal Easter bunny and shows it off as his “trophy” rabbit.

However, if all of that wasn’t enough, Amy and I are now considering an intervention to bring him back to childhood after the following exchange on Friday when we were headed fishing. We had stopped at our local bait shop, and Amy had run in to get some weights and crickets. I turned around in our van to speak to the kids and keep them from getting restless. I thought I would tell them about a couple of wild hogs that I had gotten to play with over at a friends (he had them in a pen)

Me: ” Boys, Dada saw a couple of big hogs the other day.”

Bo: “Let’s go shoot them!”

Me: “Bo, we don’t always have to shoot the animals. Sometimes it is just nice to watch them.”

Bo: “Yea, then we shoot them!”

Me: “Yes son, but sometimes it is fun to just watch them walking through the woods”

Bo: “That’s right. We have to let them walk until we have a clean shot, then we shoot them!”

I tried several more times to get my point across, but it was totally lost on a young man determined to get his first kill under his belt. Bo even told me that I could not shoot any more hogs since it was his turn…

Like the hunter’s wife, I am now in counseling!

Disclaimer: While our boys are obsessed with hunting, I don’t want any one to think that we are neglecting other important subjects like learning. Bo Hunt is 3.5 years old and knows all of his letters and numbers, and is even starting to read! Will Hunt is about to turn 2, and he also knows all of his letters, shapes, colors and most of his numbers. They are truly some incredibly smart young men, they just happen to love what dada does and want to be just like him. I could not be more proud!

I also want to let everyone know that my posting has been a little off due to being VERY busy making some important changes to our lives. I will be posting about them over the next few days, and I look forward to sharing these developments with you.

Jeff

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With deer season just around the corner here in the lowcountry, and with hog season open all year, total scent control is something that every hunter should be working on to achieve the results they want!

But have you read all of the scent control articles in the many hunting magazines, and yet you still continue to get busted before you can pull the trigger on the monster whitetail or giant boar of your dreams?

That’s because most of the outdoor writers’ greatly oversimplify the truly difficult, and monotonous task of becoming and more importantly staying scent free. Most of the them just tell you to bathe in scent free soap, wash your clothes in scent free detergent, spay down with some type of scent killing spray, wear rubber boots and scent-adsorbing clothing and you will be fine.

However while saying this is going to save your hunting, the writers then insist that you stay down wind. Well, were I hunt, that just doesn’t cut it. Not only does the wind change all of the time, but on the small tracts of land that most sportsmen get to hunt in South Carolina, you must work darn hard to put a great buck, big hog or even an fat doe in front of you. Because with deer rifle season running from August 15 to January 1 and two bucks a day allowed in most of the low country, the deer that survive even one or two years become masters of evasion. Also, while some may disagree, the feral hogs that are hunted year-round are just as tough! So while taking the normal outdoor writer’s casual approach to scent control will help, it still won’t keep you from burning out a couple of hundred acre track over so long of a period without some important additional steps being taken.

Probably most critical to my success is NOT wearing rubber boots. Most rubber boots, even the ones that say they are scent free, are not. Smell them. If you can smell them, the deer and hogs certainly can. And since your feet sweat in the rubber, the bacteria builds up on your feet, their leftovers causing odor to be left on the ground as well as sent air born as you walk.

I wear Rocky snake boots pretty much all year round since it rarely gets that cold. And even when it does, my feet breath with the help of some synthetic socks, so they don’t sweat or get cold. More importantly, with some additional steps, they don’t stink. I soak them in Atsko’s sport wash for an hour, scrub them out and rinse them in fresh water before letting them hang in the sun all day. Make sure to start this process early in the day so they don’t stay damp overnight and get moldy, or put them in front of a strong fan until dry.

Next I wash all of my hunting stuff, not just my clothes, in sport wash as well. That means my sling, calls, pull up rope, and bino buddy in addition to my hat, gloves and head net. I also wash my rain gear and anything else that I plan to put into my also washed scentlok backpack.

I then spray anything that can’t be washed down with Atsko’s no odor spray. While it doesn’t absorb odor like some of the newer carbon-based sprays, it actually kills the odor molecules and prevents bacteria from growing while still being safe enough to wash out your mouth. Which, by the way, actually works to kill bad breath, another culprit of many hunts gone bad. Just as importantly, No Odor kills ALL odors not just human odor; this includes gasoline and oil! This is vitally important since hunters are likely to pick up all kinds of smells on the way to the stand.

I then suggest that you store everything in scent-tight bins until your ready to hunt. Or if you can, do what I do and just leave them out on your screened porch or on your clothes line. But watch out because there is something irresistible about scent-free things to animals. They just feel compelled to mark it in some way! And of course shake them out before you put them on; I say this because I haven’t been the same since a spider with a foot-wide diameter crawled out of my pants leg one day!

Next I thoroughly clean my weapon of choice with slip2000, a remarkable scent-free synthetic oil that blows away traditional gun oils. Not only does it not stink but it can actually make your gun shoot faster and better by greatly reducing friction in the barrel over standard oils.

The day of the hunt I shower with Atsko’s no odor soap and apply some scent-free deodorant just prior to walking out the door. I then quickly drive to my hunting area where I finish dressing and then dust down with Knight and Hale’s Stealth Dust. It’s a clay based powder that absorbs human odors that you apply by lightly rubbing a sock filled with it all over your clothes and in and on your boots. It works like a champ, even when my clothes are soaked with sweat from hunting in the 100 degree heat, I just keep dusting down throughout the day to keep all odors from forming.

Then after getting totally packed up and ready for my walk to my stand, I give my boot bottoms a spray with no odor to make sure that I am not transferring any truck odors to the ground in my hunting area. And while walking to my stand, I also try not to touch anything I don’t have to as well as not making any sound in case deer are bedded near by or already headed my way.

Once at my stand and having quietly climbed up, I periodically spray down with no odor and then redust myself. I also chew some of the new gumoflage gum that is on the market. It tastes like your eating a pine cone but it does kill the stench of anything that you have eaten. It also has cloraphyll in it which is supposed to help kill your body’s odor from the inside out.

This step by step fanatical approach allows me to go undetected as I slip into and out of my hunting area year round, and to take some great bucks and hogs. This program has also helped many of my friends like Will pictured above with his nice 9 point. However this is not a one time thing… You must do this each and every time you enter the woods for the program to truly work. Otherwise you just burn out your area and there are no animals left to shoot, even if you do happen to show up scent free a few times.

Try it, and I think you will find that even when that wind changes paths, your quarry won’t.

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My friend Will and I were turkey hunting a couple of years ago on a tract by the Garnett post office when this coyote came sneaking in. We had just stopped on the logging road so that I could hit my favorite locator call, the high-pitched peacock, and when nothing responded, we kept walking. And since we were not scent free, that is the only thing that kept Mr. Coyote from getting down wind of us as he came to investigate the sounds he was hearing.

We were just slowly making our way up to one of my favorite spots to set up for a mid-morning session when I happened to see the dog heading towards the spot we had just left. I whispered to Will to stop and hold still, then eased my gun around to the right. The coyote slipped on through the brush, and when he hit the logging road, I let him have a load of 2 3/4 inch heavy shot…

I thought that would do it, so I didn’t fire again as the dog flopped all around. Will on the other hand figured that more is always better, and let loose with two rounds of 3 1/2 inch heavy shot in an effort to finish him off. However when the yote kept moving, Will grabbed his .22 pistol and put one round in to his head. That DID it. We grabbed our dog, high fived and called it a day! The coyote’s head now sits prominently on the top of a specially-made mount showing off my collection of predator kills.

Man, I love hunting in the lowcountry! You just never know what you will run in to while you are out in the woods here…

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Well here we are… the last day of turkey season here in the lowcountry of South Carolina. And unbelievably, I still have not killed a big gobbler.

To say that it has been a tough season would be an understatement: quite a bit of rotten weather to make the hunting tough, lots of wedding work to keep me out of the woods and of course the Gobblinator. I guess that I could whine about it, but instead I think I will take comfort in the fact that I have been in this situation before and managed to shoot one with time running out.

I killed the thunderbird four years ago, and it was truly one of my greatest hunts ever. I can only say that every once in a great while, the stars align and everything in the hunt somehow goes perfectly. It so rarely happens that you can’t ever count on it, you just have to spend enough time in the woods for something like this to happen occasionally.

My wife stopped our Toyota corolla at the head of the dirt road leading to our 180 acre lease. Ahead lay two miles of muddy, torn up trail full of giant potholes that sometimes came close to claiming my Jeep Cherokee 4×4.
It was already 4:30pm, and the last day of turkey season was quickly coming to an end… without me having killed a turkey. I needed to get to my hunting area quickly, but the four wheel drive was out in the truck, so even attempting the drive in was out of the question. The only option left was to have my understanding wife drive me the mile and a half from our home to the road’s entrance and put me out with my Cannondale mountain bike. From there I would ride when I could, hike around the muddy craters when I couldn’t.

I unloaded my ultralight racing bike that I had converted into a hunting machine by adding an atv gun rack, and quickly assembled my gear. The sweat poured off of me in the South Carolina lowcountry’s May heat, but I was determined not to let my tag go to waste - No matter what it took!
I had already blown a chance with two big gobblers right at daylight near the back of the property by taking one too many steps towards them before deciding to set up. After that it was pretty quiet (if you discount the swarms of mosquitoes circling your head with their incessant buzzing) until 10am when I rode out, again on my bike, to shower and attend a small family reunion for a few hours.

Now I was back. I peddled to the far front corner and called loudly a couple of times. I figured that I needed a hot bird looking for some late season love to pull off this miracle, so why not give it all I had.
Nothing.
I didn’t even hesitate, I had already made up my mind that if one didn’t respond immediately, I was headed to the very back of the property. To the exact spot that I had squandered a sure thing this morning.
The mud was flying off of my knobby tires all over my back as I tore down the old logging road the split the property; I had to hurry since, not only was time running out, but the sky turning black with impending rain and the lightning was getting closer along with its booming thunder.
At the far end, about two hundred yards from the line, I ditched my bright yellow two-wheeler and grabbed my gun. While walking towards the corner, I pulled out my MAD high-frequency diaphragm, said a small turkey hunters prayer (you know the one, where you promise anything, just to hear that gobble), threw it into my mouth and prepared to call once I got into position.
My plan was to stalk up near the line so that I could glass the neighbors fallow fields for a strutting bird before calling. I always like to be able to see a bird I am calling to if at all possible; that way you can watch his reaction and adjust your tone or cadence accordingly as well as move to intercept them if they don’t come right in. I also hoped to possibly hear one sound off to the now startlingly loud claps of thunder.
I eased up to about 50 yards from the line, glassed the grown over field ahead of me and strained my ears after each burst.

There it was! A gobble… about 350 yards away, just off to my right but far enough down the road and out into the tall weeds so that I couldn’t see him.
My heart almost leaped out of my chest. It was all coming together perfectly. I had located a bird without even calling and that eliminated the possibly of getting busted while trying to set up closer. I was mapping out the rest of my plan when another, closer burst of thunder made him gobble again. Then again! I knew he must be fired up already, so I gave him what he wanted. I sent a string of moderately loud yelps his way followed by a quick cut.
Grrrobbb-grrrooobbble he fired back. I called again, this time with even more passion. Another double gobble. If this bird was any hotter, he would burn up I told myself as I dashed forward towards the other line that lay about 100 yards ahead. A little over half way there I called again. Grrroooble. This time he was definitely moving closer.
I unhooked my Bucklick creek vest and plopped down against a small pine 35 yards from the line, where I could see out into this grown up field and hopefully watch my bird’s progress. And what I really needed him to do was take a few extra steps beyond the field on to our side, and into the range of my old Winchester 1400 12 gauge.
And it sounded like he just might do that since he was really coming now. I knew because he was gobbling almost incessantly at the cracking thunder, giving his exact path away and keeping me from getting impatient and over-calling.
I just sat there in total amazement, drunk off of the sounds of this gobbling gift, waiting to unwrap him with some #4 heavy shot while he closed the distance. Finally I could see his tail feathers over the weeds. He was strutting down the road about 125 yards out. He was coming, but not as fast as the rain drops were starting to fall.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something if he was going to make it to me before the bottom fell out and ruined my hunt. I called one last time, pleading with him and surely making all kinds of dirty promises in turkey lingo.
He hammered back, but continued his crawl my way. I just knew the rain wasn’t going to hold off long enough. But then, there he was, 40 yards out into the field, but still technically 75 yards from the barrel. I tightened my grip, eased the safety off and waited while he just basically stood there, strutting back and forth.
There was nothing I could do. So I waited, and waited. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but in reality was probably only another 10 minutes, he started to slowly strut my way. A step here, another step there. I was getting nauseous just watching him.
He eased up to the edge of the field and peered deep into the woods for his lover. I was afraid to even blink. My red-headed savior was now just feet from the line and a mere 8 yards out of range.
Gooobbblle, he hollered into my face, still burning holes into the brush with those beady eyes. I held fast, knowing one small mistake would cost me everything.
He dropped out of strut, took a few more steps while cautiously scanning his surroundings, then caught a face full of tungstonalloy, knocking him right down.
I was up instantly, gliding over the humps in the planted pine rows towards my trophy. I was in total disbelief as I snatched him up and tried to admire his 11 inch beard and 1 inch spurs. But I couldn’t. The heat and excitement had gotten to me, and I crumpled to the ground on the verge of a heat stoke. I just sat there in a total daze while memories of so many hunts on the tract flashed through my mind. One of the most important ones was just to listen to the turkeys with my dad.

Just then the rain started coming down heavy and that helped me cool off enough that I regained my thoughts, packed up my bird and started peddling back to the highway. Once there I rode right down 321 with my bird bird sticking out of my vest and my gun on my handlebars. I just couldn’t wait to show my wife. She was as happy as I was and couldn’t believe that I had managed to kill a turkey on the last afternoon of the season. She grabbed the camera and we took some pictures before the sun disappeared. One of the shots was of me walking my bike down the old oak avenue by our hose. It is one of my alltime favorites and it now hangs in our den. On the opposite end of the house hangs the Thunderbird.

What an incredible hunt. Let’s see if I can do it again!

Jeff

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I hate to say it but my Toyota Corolla is a better hunter than I am… It racked up two kills this weekend while I am still turkeyless.

Please don’t take this humorous post the wrong way, because I am truly horrified at what happened. However there was nothing I could do about either, so I am left to deal with my guilt by writing about it. But I guess I have to tell the whole story for you to understand.

As everyone knows, I have been VERY busy lately with work, and I haven’t had much time to hunt. And on top of that, the few times I have gone, the weather has not cooperated. And the turkeys sure have not cooperated either. So when I hopped out of bed Saturday morning at 5:15am, I was jacked up and ready to go.

I slapped on my camo and was out of the door by 5:45. The weather was warm and there was no wind as I got in to my Toyota, so I was thinking I may finally kill something. And just seconds later as I turned on to the main road, I did… The neighbor’s cat!

It all happened so fast that I did not even have time to tap the breaks. The cat was in some bushes right off the road, and it shot right under my front tire. BUMP!

I couldn’t believe it. I hate killing anything that I am not going to eat, and I sure don’t like killing someone’s pet, even as an accident. However there was nothing I could do for the poor thing, so I continued on down the road. And as I got back up to speed, all I could think about was how lucky I was, and have been, that it wasn’t a deer.

I have been very lucky over the last few years and have managed to swerve, break or stop to keep from hitting them. And when you live in the middle of deer central, work at all hours and drive on country two lane roads, that is saying something. And it was this thought that was running through my head as I caught movement just one mile further down the road… It was a whole herd of does coming across!

And even though I was not going but 50mph, I had to slam on my breaks to keep from whacking one of the late crossers. Again, my thoughts turned to how lucky I have been not to tear up my car on one of these things, and how I better slow down further and pay even MORE attention. But that chunk of electrical stimulus had not even made it across a couple of synapses when WHAM!

A huge doe tried to make a last second leap from one side of the road to the other and caught the front bumper and hood of my car against her hip. I wasn’t going that fast, so luckily she did not come up and through my windshield, but instead was thrown off in to the ditch. She did a complete flip but was back up and running in a flash.

I don’t know for sure that the impact killed her since I couldn’t find her when I came back by later that morning. However I am sure that she had to go and bed up to deal with the shock, and she either made it or she didn’t. But that still doesn’t make me feel any better about it, nor does it fix my buckled hood. It also does nothing for the mental trauma that I suffered!

I finally made it to the woods about 6am and met up with a friend to hunt. However as daylight came, we could see a huge front moving in. And it must have messed with the birds since we only heard a few gobblers way off. Therefore we walked and called until the wind picked up and the rain started to fall around 10am.

I then headed home and “helped” my wife and kids get ready for their big trip out West. They are headed to California for 3 weeks to visit her grandparents, and I am left here to work, feed the dogs and try to kill a turkey before the season runs out on May 1st. However it looks like I may have to put down my Winchester and just drive through the woods like Mad Max to get one!

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It seems the some pranksters at the Volunteer High School in Church Hill, TN poured deer pee in the air conditioning unit of a classroom and sickened dozens of students. Several news sites are reporting it, and you can read it here at Chicago Sun-Times.

The vandals must have either not had any luck with that particular product or they were idiots and wasted some good urine when pepper spray would have worked better. I for one would never waste any of our secret stash of Code Blue’s Standing Estrus, especially at $40 a ounce. For a poor hunter with two kids and a wife, that is just shy of an ounce of gold at 983 buckskins!

And certainly not when it brings in bucks like these two. I killed both of them a couple of years ago when we were still hunting our 180 acre lease just down the road from the Garnett post office. I was sitting on a little dead end road that cut between two swamps in the middle of the property, when what sounded like someone hitting a rattle bag about 100 yards deep in to the swamp in front of me woke me out of an early afternoon nap.

My buddy Will and I had been hunting hard for the last few days, and I was catching up on some sleep. However I quickly came too and grabbed my estrus bleat call and let our a couple of long waaaahhhhs… I had hardly sat the call down when the bigger buck came charging out of the bush heading right for a tennis ball saturated with Code Blue that I had hung at the bottom of my stand.

I waited for the monster to go behind some big pines, then picked my gun up and got ready. And when he stepped back out at about 75 yards, I let him have it. Unfortunately as the buck went down, I realized that I had just shot a different, smaller buck. Hurriedly I tried to get my crosshairs on the giant, but did so only after he had managed to get 15 yards back in to the thick cypress swamp.

I was on him when he stopped. However I only had a head shot, and I would never want to lose a unbelievable buck like this, so I decided I would wait to see if he would give me a better shot. Sure enough, he stuck his nose up, got another wiff of the Standing Estrus doe pee and came running right back to the stand. I let him get within about 40 yards when I put a 30-06 ballistic tip through both lungs. He then ran about 100 yards and piled up just back inside of the swamp.

This is still one of my greatest hunting memories, and I will never forget it. Nor will I ever forget my friend Will’s reaction when we went to load them up. I had not told him the entire story, just that I had killed two deer with one being a giant.

When we got to the 6 point, Will exclaimed, “What a monster!” I just looked at him and said, “That’s the small one” and we went on to retrieve the bigger 8 point. And while Will had not killed a good buck yet that season, he wasn’t upset. Nor was he bummed that one of his special Code Blue tennis balls had helped get the job done. On the contrary, he was ecstatic for me… Just as a good hunting partner should be for a friend!

Now if the young hunters mentioned in the news story would quit wasting their doe pee on school pranks, they too could probably have a great experience like this.

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A while back, Arthur at Simply Outdoors pegged me for a Me/Me - a post about who we are and what we do outside of hunting and our outdoor blog.

That is a tough one for me since much of what we do and who I am shows up here everyday. Therefore I thought I would go about it a little differently and just redo my “About Me” page. I also figured that looking back on my life to see how I got here would be the perfect assignment for a new year as well as for my 37th birthday. In addition, it may help answer many people’s nagging question about how exactly we ended up living so deep in the country of the Lowcountry - because while many are fortunate enough to be born here, I obviously took a more indirect route.

I grew up in Orange Park, a suburb just outside of Jacksonville, FL, where I had a nice childhood playing lots of local sports while also hunting a great deal with my dad and family friends in SC(that is me with my first buck, age 9). However my parent’s divorce when I was 12 took a heavy toll on me, and I spent a lot of time in trouble after that (I have probably done more hours of community service than most people have hunted).

I did finally managed to graduate from Orange Park High School in 1989, right on time despite dropping out in the 11th grade, by going back to high school while also taking classes at night. Fortunately, unlike some of my friends, I was able to escape my downward spiral by using my love of music, the outdoors and my mom’s support to get it together. I then immediately moved to Melbourne, FL so that I could surf while attending Brevard Community College. There I had several GREAT teachers that really helped me find myself including Sensei Steve and Kathy Kabboord at the Okinawin Shorin Ryu karate dojo (that is me with Grand Master Nagamine during his trip over from Japan). I spent several years getting my AA (I had a lot to catch up on), surfing and studying karate. I was also VERY in to punk rock and had a spot on WFIT, one of the five top college radio stations in the country at that time. There I took on another persona, the CANNIBAL, and did the hardcore/punk show every Friday night.

After BCC, my heavy involvement in the music scene helped me make the choice to move over to Orlando where I attended the University of Central Florida to study journalism. There I refined my writing skills by interviewing bands for local magazines while I pursued my interest in photography by shooting concerts. I ended up seeing hundreds of live shows (those are my feet heading into the crowd at a Pennywise show in1994) during this period including numerous bands and entertainers that were mega stars along with quite a few locals that went on to be huge such as Larry the Cable Guy (that is him officiating an Orlando bikini contest in 1995) and Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 (he played in the bar across the street from my house). I also worked as the news and photo editor at the UCF newspaper in addition to freelancing for several publications covering Florida sports teams including the Magic and Marlins.

During college, I also spent every summer traveling to Latin America to catch the unbelievable surf at spots such as Pavones, a wave with a one mile/ 60 second ride (that is me surfing off of the coast of Panama in the picture). And I used the immersion in to the spanish language and culture to help me complete my minor in Latin American Studies at UCF.

After graduation, I took a job at the Sanford Herald covering local news as a reporter and photographer. However was tired of living in a big city and quickly moved back to Melbourne where I went to work for the Vero Beach Press-Journal as a photographer. There, in 1998, I won feature photographer of the year for Florida newspapers with under 100,000 subscribers a day.

Around the same time, my good friend Eric introduced me to a beautiful friend of his named Amy. We have been together now for 11 years and just celebrated our 7th anniversary (we are so perfect for each other that we even went hunting in Alabama for our honeymoon-but that is another post). Interestingly, this was his third major contribution to my life since he had also let me live with him and his new wife when I first moved back as well as changed my career direction by “forcing” me to repay his generosity by shooting my first wedding - his sister’s.

Amazingly, photojournalism coverage of weddings was starting to become very popular, and through referrals, I was able to pick up quite a few jobs. So I quit the paper and worked at a photography store and cleaned carpets with a friend while we built up Jeff Hunt Photography. I also got back in to hunting heavily after meeting my wife. Because while she does not like to kill anything, she loves to go scouting, hiking and camping with me as well as dive! So we would dive during the summer months, if we were not hog hunting out at my friend Drew’s place in Grant, FL. Then we would camp or stay with my grandmother up here while we hunted turkeys in the spring and deer in the fall. And the more we hunted, the more we wanted to incorporate it fully into our lifestyle by living here and running a hunting club as well as writing and photographing the outdoors. We also wanted to one day, start a family in a quiet, rural atmosphere, and we couldn’t think of a better place than the Lowcountry.

So when my grandmother needed help with her care giving four years ago, we moved up and Amy took care of her at night. We also continued to shoot our weddings in Florida on the weekends while we established our photography business up here. Of course we also started the trophy hunt club that I write about so much. And my ultimate goal is to start a magazine that focuses on hunting the lowcountry while I continue to get my work published elsewhere.

However I do love many things outside of hunting, and the biggest would be my family! As you have read here, we have two boys - Bo Hunt who just turned 3 and Will Hunt who is 1.5 years old. We are generally just a wholesome bunch that spends a lot of time outdoors, because there is not a lot to do otherwise. So, everything our family does is related to being outdoors, just like we wanted. If I am not hunting, I am taking pictures of hunting or blogging about hunting. And we are always hiking, scouting, shed hunting, arrowhead hunting, etc.

Again, that is why we moved here. We just have a few neighbors around us, tens of thousands of acres of woods (much of it WMA) and the Savannah River! However we also have several major cities just about an hour away including Hilton Head, Savannah, Beaufort and Charleston. The markets provide plenty of wedding work, and if we wanted to go out, we could. But with two young children, we tend to stay at home a lot. And we don’t mind, because we do get to sit by the fire and socialize with our friends when they are up hunting!

When I am not hunting, shooting pictures or writing, I love to read. I read lots of photography books and hunting books/blogs, but I also love politics, history, philosophy, martial arts, astronomy and physics, so I pick things like the Wall Street Journal, Hawaii by James Mitchner and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. The only sports I like to watch are Ultimate Fighting and the PBR, Professional Bull Riders.

So there you have it. More about Jeff Hunt than Arthur probably intended when he picked me for this project. But I do truly have to thank him for tagging me. Because not only is it great to look back to see where you came from and how you got here, but it makes you think about where you are going! It has been a perfect end/start of a year project, and I’m just sorry that it took me so long to finish.

And I know I slacked, but let’s see if we can keep Kristine’s great idea going. I think I will renominate Darrell at Alpha Trilogy, and he can do it when he gets back to writing (Please make sure and stop by over there to let him know he is not forgotten). I would also like to renominate Jody at the Hunter’s Wife because she says that she “is her own person” and would like to occasionally talk about something other than hunting… And since the picture she put up the last time only told part of her story, HERE’s another chance! My third pick is Kris over at Jakesoutdoors; while he has obviously been blogging for a while, I only recently found him. However I have enjoyed what I have read so far, so please check his site out.

Thanks again Arthur!

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I must have over 50 hunting VHS tapes, however we have not watched any of them in a long, long time. For one, until my mom gave us a new dual format player this Christmas, we only had a DVD player. And two, we have tons of big buck DVDs (of course I could only watch them when my wife was not home - for fear that if she heard one more word about hunting, she would go crazy and kill me.)

However, our two boys love to watch big bucks and gobblers so much that lately she has let them back in the house. Therefore when Bo requested monster bucks yesterday, I immediately started looking for a good one. And since we have watched all of the DVDs many times over, I thought it might be nice to break out some of the VHS oldies but goodies. After a few minutes of perusing the collection, I decided on Ken Tucker.

Ken was an old Alabamian that loved to hunt and produced his own cable show for many years called the Sportsman’s Showcase. He then took the best of these shows and put them on tape, calling them The Best of the Sportsman’s Showcase. We started watching them around 1997 when my wife picked up one of his tapes on the dollar table at Winn Dixie. And since we did not view any regular TV, it was a special treat to have something to watch that night on the VCR.

After that, we regularly picked them up whenever and wherever we could find a new one. And for an hour and a half, Ken would help us step away from the crummy little apartment we lived in at the time and our busy working lives to share with us his hunting trips all over the country, and sometimes the world. He certainly covered big bucks in some of the usual locations, but he also regularly featured great Southern spots such as the lowcountry of South Carolina, Mississippi, and his home state of Alabama. He also pursued rabbits with beagles, squirrels with feists and coons with hounds. Occasionally he would also venture south of the border on cool trips like shotgunning for doves in Argentina and bow hunting river buffalo in Belize. And of course, all of this footage was accompanied by Ken’s commentary on the hunt and delivered through his heavy southern drawl.

Sure, we moved on to Realtree’s Monster Buck series as well as others made by Mossy Oak and Knight and Hale, but we never forgot about our time with Ken. So after watching his video last night, my wife and I debated what had happened to him. That lead to a quick google search which turned up an article on his death in 2003. And even though that was four years ago, I still felt an incredible sense of loss for our outdoor community. Ken was a true sportsman and the inspiration to many, myself included.

I just wonder how many of you guys have ever seen the Sportsman’s Showcase or know who Ken is. I would love to know who else he touched… Or maybe you have your own outdoor personality that you grew up watching that inspired you to spend more time in the outdoors or helped you become a better hunter.

All comments would be appreciated!

Jeff

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You guys know how I love free stuff, or at least trying to win free stuff. I am always over at the Hunter’s Wife looking for her next contest. And now Bill over at Muskoka Outdoors has just announced that he has four copies of Kerplunk, one of Patrick McManus’ great books, to give away. I have always loved reading that guys stuff in Outdoor Life, so I was up for any challenge he would demand for entry into this contest.

Turns out it wasn’t hard at all. All you have to do is write down one of your most memorable hunts. Bill then says that he is then going to assign numbers to the entries and randomly pick the winners on January 19th. I have already completed my entry, so I thought I would share it with everyone below. I also think that I am going to send Jimmy Carter over to supervise the election, I mean drawing, to make sure it is all above board. If he can help the North Koreans, the former peanut president should definitely be able to get me a damn book.

One of my most cherished memories afield was when I killed my first Eastern wild turkey eight Springs ago. I had been trying for several years, but without any luck. Finally my wife and I came up to SC for a weekend of camping and hunting, and it all came together.
We slept in due to rain, then headed out about 9am. We had to wade water every where we went but finally made it to our pre-scouted spot to set up about 9:30. We had been calling off and on for about an hour when a bird finally answered from the neighboring property. He was pretty far off, so we just kept up our light calling for about another half hour. Then, like a ghost, the giant bird just appeared about 75 yards off to my right. This would have been an easy shot for my wife (we were sitting about 50 yards apart), but since she does not carry a gun or like to kill things, he went right on by her. I let him continue circling around until I was pretty sure he was right out in front of us. But with a row of brush in my way, I just couldn’t be sure. So I lightly let out a yelp with my mouth call - the big bird hammered back from just 30 yards away.
However even with him so close, I definitely could not get a shot from my spot, so I Rambo crawled across a muddy firebreak and eased up behind a big pine. There he was, and looking straight at me! I quickly drew a bead on him and let him have it… I couldn’t believe it when he went right down.
But then he was back up and flopping all around. I was so scared that he was going to run off that I looked like Carl Lewis hurdling bushes and sprinting over to get him. Once there, I put my best wrestling move on him and held him down until he stopped moving - I knew we would want to mount him, so I did not want his feathers messed up!
My wife came racing over and gave me the biggest, best hug ever, and we just stood there in complete amazement over what a spectacular hunt we had just had. The 2 year old gobbler weighed 16 pounds, had a 9.5 inch beard and 7/8 inch spurs. That bird now stands in our living room and struts for all of our guests. It was truly a moment that I will NEVER forget!

Thanks Bill for spurring me on to write this memory down…

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