Gary Greene’s Memories from an Old Hunter………#20
On Saturday, October 22, 2016, driving to and from a Green Bay open water duck hunt, Jesse Jablonski and I had plenty of time to discuss hunting and other aspects of our lives. Our third hunter, Brian Jablonski met us at the boat launch. On our way home, our thoughts were on our successful journey out on the bay, and shooting a three man limit of Bluebills and one bull Canvasback. While driving North at 2:00am, with three hours of sleep, our conversations roamed through numerous topics…..one such topic was my trucks.
For years, being on a limited budget, I drove those small, non-four wheel drive Toyota trucks. In 2007 near Miller, South Dakota, I remember driving down a snow and ice covered, gravel at best road. With my Toyota, it was a constant challenge. I never knew if my slightest maneuver would find my truck in the ditch. You might ask: With this vehicle, why was I dumb enough to be driving on such a road? The reason was that I had just received some hot tips from a local farmer that there were some great pheasant hunting pockets just beyond the next correction.
Side note: What is a “Correction?”
When driving, and seeing good habitat, we have been known to stop at South Dakota farmers’ homes to ask permission to hunt pheasants. The locals will many times give us directions to different hunting locations. Their directions could include: “Turn East one road past the asphalt, then turn North after the correction.” The first time, that we were given those directions, we just looked at him as if he were talking in Lakota. We were dumbfounded, so we had to ask about the terms correction and asphalt? We learned that a correction is what the original surveyors needed to do to offset the curvature of the earth. It is a small offset or “jog” in the normally straight North-South road. As for asphalt, that applies to any blacktop road. The asphalt roads are usually in towns and for highways with the norm being gravel roads. I have to say that I love those non-asphalt roads. It is all part of the charm in hunting the Dakotas.
Saturday, October 22, 2016, finds Brian Jablonski setting the decoys for a Green Bay open water hunt.
Those non-paved roads make me think back to my early childhood trips in Three Lakes, Wisconsin. With my parents, I remember walking an old sandy road and in the middle of that road there were three giant White Pines. Those cathedrals were impressive enough, but they also divided the road in two. Next to those pines, in a mud puddle, for the first time, I found tadpoles. My parents had to drag me away from those tadpoles. 20 years ago, I went back to that spot of memories. The trees are gone and the old sandy drive is an “Asphalt” road.
During a hunt, with my Toyota trucks, every time I pulled off the road into a field, I had to be extremely mindful of not getting stuck. Then when I became single, I gave myself permission to buy a real truck. I purchased a 2010, 4WD Ford 150.
Mishaps with my Ford truck started with the purchase. The first week working in the woods, I bent the running boards and permanently dented the back tailgate. Weeks later, I had just finished guiding a pheasant hunt and I was backing out of a field and uncontrollably slid sideways on ice into a large fence post deeply denting my left rear quarter panel. That morning of work cost more than five of my guided hunts. Another time guiding, I was in the club house waiting for my hunting party to finish lunch. While they took an extraordinarily long amount of time, Nyjer, my……was sleeping in the front seat puppy, ate through my driver’s seatbelt strap. That afternoon of work cost me a $375, seatbelt replacement unit.
In a state hunting ground parking lot, as I let two of my labs out of my truck, two mongrel dogs charged them and a fight endured. Their owner was 100 plus yards from her dogs and had no control over them. I broke into the fight and started kicking at her dogs to break up the tangle. By the time the lady arrived, I had the dog fight broken up, but she had just begun. She swore at me for not controlling my dogs and was spitting mad, with real spitting at me…..she was quite a lady. As she continued to swear and yell, I headed into the field with my dogs. When I returned to my truck after running my dogs, I found two giant pictures of a human finger carved/keyed into the front left panel of my truck. Again, obviously, she was quite a lady!
Greene, with Jesse and Brian Jablonski and their successful Bluebill hunt results plus a bull Canvasback.
In yet another hunting ground parking lot incident, I knew that I had to be cautious, because Elsie was in heat, but not yet accepting suitors. No one was around, so I let her out of the truck, she was right next to me and again with no one in sight, suddenly, from the field, a retriever comes sprinting directly at Elsie. I attempted to keep the golden from her, but in a matter of seconds, another fight broke out and Elsie practically bit his tail in half. It hung there like a broken green tree branch. This time the hunter apologized, as did I.
I know that this is not a smart or safe technique, but I enjoy all of my dogs riding up in my truck cab with me. Nyjer, my now five year old alpha male, who gets a little edgy before a hunt, sits alone up front and the other dogs share the back seat. During the hunt, if they are not in the field, the dogs are in crates in the truck bed, except the matriarch Hershey gets to have the cab. After ten years of hunting service, she has earned that privilege.
My truck becomes so full of dog hair, that I could make three or four large, stinky, dog hair pillows. Every time, my wife Chris hops up into my truck, she will comment: “This sure is a working truck!!!” I do clean it, but that act becomes depressing, because it means the hunting season is over for another year.