re: Best outdoor memory with dad or grandfathers

Mine probably wouldn’t be hunting related. It would be farming related.

When I came home from college, I worked on the farm my dad was managing. I had the business education, but had to learn the agronomy under him... After a couple years, I had gotten to a point where they couldn’t pay me what I was worth. There just wasn’t enough to go around. I had to start looking around and had the opportunity to move on and manage the farm I run now. I interviewed and took the job in the middle of harvest with the understanding that I’d finish the soybean harvest with my dad and then move on to the new job before cotton harvest.

That year we had two combines and Dad and I ran them. We had a great crop, so we got to cut some beautiful soybeans together for the next couple weeks. He told me multiple times at the end of the day during those couple weeks he enjoyed it before we left for the night. At the time, being young, I never thought much about it. The master plan in my mind was he’d work for 15 more years, semi-retire, and come work part time for me to finish out his working life.

It never happened. He had a stroke a couple years ago, and while he’s alive, has complete understanding of everything, and is fairly mobile, he’s not able to work and it affected his speech to a point where he can barely put together a sentence.

That’s a specific memory that I think back on, and wish I would have been a little more grateful at the time, but whatever. Life is good, and I’m blessed to still be able to go scoop him up for the day and we go take a ride or he spend the day with me at the farm.


As far as the outdoors goes, I don’t have a specific memory. We’ve been hunting buddies since I was 10, and we’ve always just had a good time chasing horns.

Called my dad on a pay phone and told him I would never visit him again while he was married to my stepmother. I was 13 or so, 39 now, and never spent another weekend with him. We went years speaking once or so per year. As a father now, I can’t imagine this.

For those of you with kids, cherish your moments.

Uncle Paul, my dad's uncle used to take me to Cat Island to go squirrel hunting. He would take me to a trail and we would sit and eat breakfast. He would then tell me to walk down the trail and kill a mess of squirrels.

Man, I miss the squirrel & deer sausage gumbo and the biscuits.

P.S. He would only let me have 8 shells.

Remember my Uncle Bob coming to my high school one morning during my senior year. I get called to the office and I'm like WTF? Tells Brother Andrew he needs me out of school for the day. Go outside and the boat is behind the truck, my granny had thrown some clothes in a duffle bag and we were heading to the camp down the river. Made a drag on the way to the camp and filled our first ice chest of shrimp. Get to the camp and notice a lot of swirling at the end of the canal. The redfish were boiling in the water. Don't know how many we caught, but had to be over 100. Kept thinking about my friends in class and I'm having one of the greatest days of my still young life. Miss you Uncle Bob.

Fishing with my Dad in the Old Violet Gang fishing rodeos and fishing in general

Not much with my grandpa or paw-paw-- they were rather too old for outdoor activities by the time I was old enough to enjoy them.

Now on the other hand my dad and I have a lot of fine memories about outdoor activities. Although he and my mom divorced when I was 7, and I wound up growing up over 100 miles away, we often did a lot of outdoor things together. He's never been a hunter, so we don't have that, but we've always done things like boating, fishing, and trail-walking and such together over the years.

When I became a teenager he taught me to play golf, and that's one of the things we still do on a regular basis. I enjoy just spending a few hours with him talking while we play a round in the cart and on the course. Old man is 80 now, and I still have never beat him. Then again he shot an 89 right when he turned 80 -- he plays about once a week while I play about 3-4 times a year.

But my favorite outdoor memories of my dad were our canoe trips (or, as he called them, "float trips"). My dad worked as a copy machine repairman and his territory was south Mississippi around Hattiesburg. He knew every back road and bridge across every creek and river in those parts from running his route and assignments. We would rent a canoe and take a float trip every summer for about seven years in a row from when I was 11 until I entered college.

We had some really fun and memorable trips. One time we saved a blind calf that had slipped down an embankment into Black Creek-- my dad roped it and we got it to shore. Another time we helped out some folks whose canoe overturned in the rapids on the Okatoma. And there was another time we were going down Red Creek with another canoe of friends behind us. I spotted a big trout swimming upstream past us in the knee-deep clear water. My dad alerted the fellow behind us, Bennie, who saw it coming and proceeded to jump out of his canoe and whomp the trout silly with his paddle, grab it and throw it in his ice chest.

The 1st of these trips, though, best show what I admire about my dad. That summer he and my stepmother had just gotten married, and had also just bought a house. Money was very tight, and the canoe rental was probably something like $25 bucks back at that time, money he probably couldn't spare. But he really wanted to take me on a 'float trip' and was determined to do so. So my dad, who was regular smoker-- maybe a pack or two a day-- quit smoking for a week, saved the money he would have spent on cigarettes to basically pay for the canoe rental.

The good news is that it gave him the power to quit smoking altogether and hasn't since.

My grandfather was a King at catching white perch. We'd go to Cross Lake. He had all his locations where he sunk Christmas Trees, but no markers. It was based of judging distances from the bank and lining them up with something on the shore. He showed me how to hook the shiner so it still was wiggling and say....(old grumble Italian voice) Throw it right there. Boom, we'd catch a fish.

The most impressive thing though... Was he said we have to pull out the driveway at exactly this time. We hit 12 consecutive green lights.

My dad and I went hunting and camping a few times. The only one that really sticks out was a deer hunting trip. We were sitting together on the ground. I was probably 11, and sitting still is not my best attribute. He kept saying, hey I can hear them around us stop moving. Two other people on our trip shot one that day.