re: Favorite outdoor memory with your dad....

He took me on my first squirrel hunt and after killing my first squirrel I said, "man that thing is warm." His reply, "son, you'd be hot too if you just had lead shot up your arse."

Words. To. Live. By.

Really missing him today. More so than past Father's days.

All the best to you guys.

Tiger Stadium LSU-FLA 1964

My dad spent alot of times taking us three boys and my cousin on hunting trips. Mainly duck hunting, we had a hotel blind in the trees in a brake. Killed the shite out of mallards, also had some rocking fried honey buns on the camp stove in the back of the blind. Now that I am a dad, I see all the work these trips took.

Me, him, my brothers, my two nephews, and my four year old and 20 month old spent some time on the pier today catching some nice bluegill and a few chinqs. My nephews are in their mid twenties and they take care of my boys, they get to reel theirs and their own in! My four year old likes it better than Christmas, Easter, Birthday and Halloween rolled together.

sitting on the back patio and watching his Purple Martin houses full of birds, also getting to shoot the sparrows and starlings ....

we talked a lot, which now a days doesn't happen enough

My dad not might like this, but I still laugh about it to this day.

We were fishing out of Dulac with my pawpaw one day and my dad landed this nice red. Like a wall hanger red, and he was all proud and happy about it. He put it in his old red coleman and started fishing again. Well a few minutes later, we hear the fish flopping around in the ice chest like they do, but this time the lid flies open and the fish leaps out. My dad lunges for the fish trying to grab it but to no avail; it leaps out of the boat back into the water. He's covered in scales cussing up a storm, and me an pawpaw are just trying not to fall out of the boat from laughing so hard.

For the next two years, he put a bungee cord over his ice chest.

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Took seriously 5 minutes of us arguing over who got to shoot. Finally convinced him that he deserved it. Was an awesome experience to see my dad kill his first deer in a few years, and watch his reaction to it. For 10 minutes he was a 50yr old kid again.

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I would have tripped him, of course he would have been trying to shove me out of the way.

Day after Christmas, 7th grade. Richland Parish rice field, but on the dry side of it. Pea Soup Fog.

We had at least 5K snow geese 100 yards away on the ground and with the thick fog, the incoming flocks were working about 15 yards above us. They couldnt see us and we couldnt see them until they were almost straight overhead.

Sat in that dry stubble with my dad in the thick fog, picked out a few specks based entirely on the sound they were making (too thick to tell what they were), then shot snows until one of us had the sense to say, "alright, what the hell are we going to do with 20 snows?"

Same rice field, the next year. Dad let me hunt out of the blind by myself. Big deal for me at the time, and picked out my own spot. Although, for some reason, I didnt think that I could kill anything without him sitting next to me. He called on radio after hearing me shoot a few times and I got to say "hang on one second, dad." Then he heard my final boom from across the field where he was. Killed my fifth and final bird in time to say, "sorry dad, I'm done now. How'd you do?" He came over and killed a few himself. Kinda a random memory, but I felt like Phil Robertson when I "guided my father" to his own limit after killing mine.

My dad worked a lot and also worked shift work but we went squirrel hunting every chance we got so I guess mine would be just going into the woods carrying my 12 gauge and spending time with my dad whether I killed a squirrel or not.