The Eagle Outdoors

First rattle out of the box, here's wishing each and every one of you a most wonderful, blessed, and safe Thanksgiving. If you and your immediate family see eye to eye, I hope y'all have a great afternoon. If not, remember the words 'tolerance' and 'patience.' I've been on both sides of the stick, and both can be...well...interesting to say the least.

Thanksgiving reminds me of an outdoor story. Years ago, the late Tommy Weldon, with whom I used to work at the Ohio Division of Fish and Wildlife, was rabbit hunting in central Ohio the week after Thanksgiving. In central Ohio in late November, the weather was often cold, snowy, and windy. Tommy's out hunting rabbits, and his Browning Auto-5 shotgun doesn't want to work properly. Tommy Weldon was a wonderful, huge-hearted individual; however, he wasn't all that big on shotgun maintenance. "Once a year," I heard him say on several occasions. "Whether she needs it or not." So here we were with a shotgun that doesn't function because (A) it's dirty, and (B) it's dirty and frozen. Fortunately, though, as Tommy is wandering about with his inoperable A-5, he stumbles upon, likely literally, the farmer's Back Forty trash dump. Here he finds the remains of the family's Thanksgiving turkey, complete with congealed fat. Did someone just shout, "Eureka"?

Tom Weldon would have never been late to a Mensa Meeting, but the proverbial bulb comes on. He sees congealed turkey fat, which translates into grease, which translates into "I wonder if I could lubricate my shotgun with that?" Well, he does, and, surprisingly, it works. The hunt continues, a cottontail or two are bagged, and Tommy Weldon goes home a happy man. He puts the now-functioning A-5 in the case, the case in the corner of the cold (operative word being "cold) garage and calls it a day.

Fast forward to April. It's turkey season now, and Tommy Weldon, being a turkey hunter, goes in search of his Browning A-5, which just so happens to serve double duty as both a rabbit piece and a turkey getter. After a search, he locates the case, throws it and his turkey calls into the truck, and heads to Athens County, Ohio. The next morning, he's out before daylight. The woods that morning, as they sometimes are during turkey season, are quiet. Dawn yields to mid-morning, and the chill of daybreak to unseasonably high temperatures nearing 70 degrees. 'Round 11 o'clock or so, Tommy begins to notice a funk, a not-so-pleasant aromatic cloud that, despite his trudging over hill and dale, follows him like a hungry kitten. For the longest time and as the awful "ole factory" aura surrounding him grows, he scratches his balding head, thinking until, finally ...

That's right, dear reader. What you have here is a mathematical equation consisting of variables such as time, fluctuating temperatures, poor maintenance and storage habits, increasing temperatures, and, ultimately, the improper use of congealed turkey fat. "What gave it all away?" I asked my friend, sincerely hoping to shorten what had become a long drawn-out tale. "Well," Tommy said in his quiet southern Ohio drawl, "When the flies came and started landing on the barrel, I reckoned it was time to go home."

Is there a moral to this story? I'm not a betting man, but if I were, I'd bet that 99 percent of you reading this will not, in your lifetime, have occasion to grease an old Belgian Browning A-5 with days-old congealed turkey fat. I feel pretty safe there. However, for you remaining "one percenters," remember this: yes, the process may work; it may even work well, but will the assault on your sinuses be worth the rabbit or two you bag? Life is all about decisions, folks.

The Outdoor Speed Round

Some time early on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 22, a little white car failed to negotiate the corner below our place in the Elochoman Valley. The car went about 300 feet through the neighbor's yard, somehow missing a telephone pole and guy wire cable, tore off the entire rear bumper, sideswiped a huge white fir tree, went airborne for 18 to 20 feet after hurdling a small retaining wall, careened straight through the center of a pretty damn big brush pile, and came to rest 40 feet inside the wild grapevine thicket. If anyone has information, I just wanna talk to the driver, who, based on his/her ability not to centerpunch any of the immovable objects along their off-road path, I'm assuming was Jeff Gordon. As for the passenger, what with the passenger side airbag deployed and a broken windshield, I hope you got your britches clean.

There's still trout fishing to be done the weekend following Black Friday. There's quite a few geese around the area, some deer seasons (e.g. the Battle Ground Unit) remain open through mid-December. There's plenty of razor clams to be had on the Long Beach Peninsula, and, until we get a hard freeze, there still might be a chanterelle mushroom or two up in the hills. There's a lot of outdoorsy left to do, folks, so after you're done rubbing your belly and taking nap #2, get outside and be safe.