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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Sporting Classics: The Oldest Song, presented by Bernard and Associates

The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles, in association with Bernard and Associates, proudly presents Sporting Classics. Widely recognized as the premier outdoor magazine, with award-winning graphics and the country's top writers, Sporting Classics focuses on the best hunting and fishing throughout the world. Whether it is wingshooting grouse on theScottish Highlands, stopping Cape Buffalo on the plains of Tanzania, or landing delicate rainbow Trout on 2 weight bamboo fly rods, Sporting Classics and its stable of renowned authors covers it with class and finesse.

And now, The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles has been chosen as one of the few Outdoor Bloggers to share content from a well respected and well known magazine in the outdoor community!

Please enjoy the following advance publication. I would like to thank the Bernard and Associates team and Sporting Classics for choosing The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles  as a partner in their endeavours!



The Oldest Song

"He could no more stop hunting than he could stop breathing.
The music played too loudly in him."
by Dr. T. C. Jennings

Five a.m., opening day breakfast hadn’t changed much. Hank, Frank and Floyd, two of the brothers nursing hangovers, Pastor Fred, Harry and Earl still commandeered the corner table, raucous as crows in a cornfield. Earl owned the place, “The Shot,” he named it, one of those small town bar/breakfast joints that smelled of coffee and smoke and burned bacon and eggs, good smells to a deer hunter. Folks ladled out jam and jelly with a communal spoon and poured cream from the same pitcher and sugar from the same jar. Winston still tasted good like a cigarette should, everybody carried lever actions and wore wool, and most downed a deer by season’s end. A shot of Earl’s coffee in the morning, a shot at a deer during the day, and a shot of Earl’s whiskey in the evening . . . no matter what, everybody took a shot. Hence the name. Time seems to stand still in a small town.


"The Shot"

Jack Troutwine sat in a back booth sipping bitter black coffee and listening to their voices. Twenty years gone as a boy and back as a man, no one had recognized him but he remembered them, the rhythm and cadence of their words familiar as old friends. Snippets of conversations reached across the restaurant and across the years to his booth, making him smile.

“Dogs and dopes are going to inherit the earth and I hope it’s the dogs,” Father Fred intoned, disgusted with some chicanery somewhere.

“Not the poor?” Frank winked at Floyd, figuring he’d goosed Pastor Fred in the gospel for once.

“Hell no. That’d mean dopes like you two would be in charge. Give me a Chihuahua anytime. At least it has enough sense to sit in an old woman’s lap instead of chasing her from bar to bar half the night and throwing away good money hand over fist.”

Whistles and jeers greeted the retort, flushing the brothers deep red as the Woolrich coats that hung from their chairs. “Don’t think I didn’t hear about you two boys stuck in a poor man’s hoist last night.”
The brothers glared accusations at one another before Frank spoke. “How’d you know we were in the ditch? We didn’t tell anybody, did we, Floyd?”

Floyd shrugged. “I sure didn’t.”

Pastor Fred grinned like he had God in his back pocket. “The Lord is my shepherd, boys, and keeps a good watch out for the wolves who threaten my flock.”

About then Earl’s wife dropped steaming plates of breakfast around the table, stilling the din for a second, long enough for Hank to lambaste the food starting with the bacon, an opening day tradition.

“Hey Earl, these pigs of yours fly?”

“What do you mean, Hank?” Earl winked and played along while everybody leaned in for Hank’s jibes, wondering how he’d outdo last year’s tirade.

“Pardon me, Pastor, but for chrissakes, Earl, the bacon looks like a couple of hummingbird tongues, the eggs look like scrambled canaries, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say the toast is burned blacker than the stain in a hobo’s undies. You expect us to eat this mess?”

Laughter and disgust drowned most of the conversation and as the restaurant filled, the last voices Jack heard were Harry’s complaining how his deer-chasing shorthair always ripped his tongue on briars and bled like he’d “swallowed a box of knives,” and one of the brothers bragging how his new girlfriend could swat down grouse like she was “backhanding stepchildren.” From their gestures, though, he knew they’d turned to buck stories, each measuring invisible spreads bigger than the others.

Finishing his coffee, Jack rose to leave, never able to eat on opening day, his nerves likely to jitterbug with anything in his stomach, his excitement keen as ever.

“Jack? Jack Troutwine? Well I’ll be damned,” Pastor Fred remarked, catching Jack’s eye and rising to stand unsteadily on his cane.

Jack reached across the table, careful not to squeeze the pastor’s hand too hard, and nodded at the others. He noticed a walker behind Hank, his face a geography of gullies and ravines, and grey hair curling from beneath the brothers’ caps. Even Harry, the youngest, wore a web of spider veins in his cheeks, the patina of age purpling his skin. Time had found another entrance, separating then from now.

“Home for the hunt?”

“Yessir.”

“How’s your father? I haven’t seen him in a month of Sundays.”

“Good. A little slower.”

“Aren’t we all.”

“You hunting the marsh or the swamp field?”

“The swamp field, I think.”

“It’s as good an opening day spot as any, I suppose. Been an awful dry summer, though. From what I heard, even the turtles were packing canteens. Collar-up weather today, though.”

Jack grinned and nodded. “How ‘bout you?”

“None of us old farts hunts much more than memories, Jack,” Pastor Fred responded for the group. “We still do breakfast, though, and talk deer like when you were a kid, and Earl still antes up a free drink if you shoot a good one. Right, barkeep?” He slapped Earl on the back and laughed.

Small talk gave way to pause, allowing Jack to leave before the silence stretched to awkward. Good lucks followed him out the door where a light snow drifted across the parked trucks, swirled into small tornadoes by the wind. Backing out, he glimpsed crow tracks walking the edge of his eyes, shook his head ruefully and pointed his headlights toward the swamp field.

Rituals remain, he thought, hearing the whispers of his own mortality, but we don’t. Grateful to still be part of the hunt, he watched the restaurant fade in the rearview mirror.

An hour later Jack Troutwine shivered in the darkness before dawn, happy with his discomfort while awaiting the most important morning of the year. He believed in hunting the hard way, with no blinds or bait, just an overturned bucket in a field overlooking a cedar swamp with the wind in his face. Jack had always hunted this way, believing a level playing field made the experience true.

Pulling the gun to his shoulder like an old friend and aiming at an oak across the field, he felt confident knowing it fired where it pointed and huddled down into the rhythm of the hunt as snow stung his skin like slivers of ice. Weaving among ragged, grey clouds, a half-moon glowed like a gem in the black ear of night and the sky wore a sparkly number sequined with stars, both promising sunrise despite the snow that powdered the trees and clung to his coat. It reminded Jack of an old time ticker-tape parade layering the landscape with confetti.

The snow also coated the fur of a swollen-necked buck resting under a cedar deep in the swamp after a night of carousing. If Jack had known, he would’ve shivered with more than cold.

The morning’s music was sung by the usual choir, owl song and pheasant reveille followed by mallard chuckle and the whistle of wood ducks seeking refuge elsewhere. Woodpeckers banged the timpani, startling loud-winged doves onto the low branches of a hawthorn. Bluejays shouted the sun’s coming as the sky brightened beneath clouds turned to cotton candy in the pink wash of dawn, pools of blue forming between them as if someone had broken through ice. Across the field young maples mixed with birch and poplar began to glow like sparklers in the gathering light, their yellow leaves bright as finches, while a clump of shrubs blushed red knowing nakedness was soon to come. Of all moments, these were Jack’s favorite, the hymn of color and sound that foreshadowed morning.

Minutes later three apparitions hugged the swamp edge. The color of shade, they eased from the cedars cautiously and angled toward him, jittery in the wind, ears alert, ghosting into the brown grass invisible as chameleons. Lifting and lowering their heads in syncopation, they moved with stealth, furtive and shy and impossibly silent as they closed within 15 yards, eyes locked to his, sensing wrong. Jack hung a crosshair on the biggest deer when all three heads dipped.

Pow!

He heard the shot in his imagination and watched the doe fall before lowering his rifle, dry run done. Cutting man-scent in a swirl of wind, the deer whirled, grabbed her sisters by the hand, it seemed, and disappeared as if never there.

“Goodbye, girls,” Jack whispered, staring at an empty field except for the trees and grass and rising wind that loosed snow squalls from a bank of black clouds. The rest of the morning snow and sun traded turns as Jack squinted for another glimpse of the supernatural.

By noon his concentration flagged and his mind sifted through memories of other hunts. He remembered every deer he’d ever killed, from the orchard eight-point to the first one as a 14-year-old boy, a doe taken with a .410 slug on the last day at dusk deep in the cedar swamp he studied now. Searching in the dark, uncertain of his aim, he finally found it dead under a thicket of pin cherries when his flashlight reflected green off the doe’s vacant, iridescent eye. Bending to touch its fur, he choked back tears, overcome with joy and sorrow.

Gathering himself, he struggled the deer to a small stream that meandered among the dense cedars, in his mind feeling again the cold water pressing against his boots as he floated the doe downstream through the swamp on a starry, cold night toward camp.

Hearing the shot, his father had waited anxiously in the light of a gas lantern, the hiss of its mantle sinister to the old man as he watched for his boy before breaking into a grin when he caught sight of him holding his gun in one hand and a hoof in the other. Together they gutted the deer and dragged it to the truck, their breath white as moonlight in the cold, before emotion overwhelmed him and Jack cried openly.

“It’s the way you’re supposed to feel,” his father counseled. “If you felt otherwise, you wouldn’t be a hunter who honors what God gives you; you’d be a poacher, which is the same thing as a killer. Wait here.”

He went to the animal and returned to touch its blood to Jack’s lip. “You’re not a boy anymore.”

Jack accepted the covenant, understanding that hunting had imbued in him a compassion and respect for life unlike any other experience, teachings he would honor for the rest of his life, and he knew that day he could no more stop hunting than he could stop breathing. The music played too loudly in him. The irony of taking a life to revere it, however, was not lost on him, a dilemma he would never resolve, and he knew his elation in taking an animal always would be tempered by grief for its death.

Late that afternoon the resting buck arose rejuvenated and hungry. Sidestepping a downed cedar, he moved silently through the thick underbrush toward the edge of the swamp where a gnarled oak littered the ground with acorns, the same one Jack aimed at in the morning. Wind-gusts paused his pace and the deer stood still as a statue while reading a thousand sights and sounds and smells from the landscape, recognizing them all, sorting safety from each.

Jack saw no movement even after the deer entered the field to follow the doe trail. By now evening veiled the swamp and joined the deer, draping shade over the snow-powdered grass.

Something out of place caught Jack’s eye, something extra, a stump he hadn’t noticed before. Raising his rifle slowly, he laid the crosshairs against the object just as sunset seeped under the clouds to reveal a row of red candles glimmering in the dusk, seven in all, a moment’s menorah.



Swamp buck, Jack thought, noting the reddish-dark horns. Heart racing, he braced his elbow on his knee and aimed. In the instant between the touch of the trigger and the sound of the shot, the buck fell, heart and shoulder shattered by the bullet.

Trembling from the hunt’s crescendo, Jack racked the rifle and watched for the deer to rise and run. Struggling to quell his emotion, he waited 20 minutes before walking toward the oak where the buck lay dead. A red splash darkened the snow like spilled wine. Taking a thin wafer of the dark snow, he placed it to his lips and listened to the wind sing in the field.

“Thank you,” he murmured, kneeling to care for the deer before heading back to Earl’s,
his heart filled with the song of the hunt.

***



Nebraska Hunting Company, Scott Croner

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Chronicles' Interview: Bo Parham and Edge Habitat Conservation Contractors

© 2010 Albert A Rasch and
The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles
$g&m f9bd 45kd q!?5. trochronicles.blogspot.com

An Interview with Bo Parham
And Edge Habitat


Folks, once again a great hello and good hunting to you! It's me Albert A Rasch of The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles. Today we are adding to our interview series “The Outfitters Chronicles.” Though Bo and Edge Habitat aren't in the outfitting business, habitat management is an integral part of game management, and it is only fitting that we interview them as only the Chronicles can.

Our interview today is with Bo Parham of Edge Habitat. Bo and I worked on this over a series of e-mails. I had bumped into Bo's blog some time ago, and like many things it kind of went on the back burner. Through a series of "Blog Hops," I bumped back into Bo's blog, and started our correspondence again. I've always been interested in reclaiming damaged environments, and wildlife conservation management is right up my alley.


EH: Albert, first, let me say thank you for taking a special interest in what I'm trying to do.

TROC: Bo, it's my pleasure to sit down and talk to you about habitat restoration and design. After twenty years of construction and related activities, I am super pleased to finally meet someone with the knowledge and ability to either design new wild spaces, or restore damaged ones! But before we go into that, please introduce yourself to our readers.

EH: My name is Jerry Boswell Parham. My Mother and the cops call me Jerry, but most everybody nowadays calls me Bo, a nickname my Dad gave me.

TROC: Then Bo it is! I started right off with how pleased I am to discuss habitat improvement and restoration with you. As a student of biology, it's exciting to know that with a little bit of knowledge and some hard work, you can actually reclaim damaged environments, or improve marginal ones.

EH: That's absolutely correct, Albert. And even in incremental steps, you can make a difference in the quality of the habitat around you. So much emphasis today is placed on feeders and food plots for wildlife, and those concepts certainly have their place. But improving habitat is much more than feeding the animals. And it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg for hi-protein feed sprayed from automatic feeders or high priced food plot seeds planted in a man-made clearing in the middle of the woods. It can be done by simply utilizing the existing natural seedbank and the existing edges on the landscape. And it doesn't have to necessarily look unsightly to be effective. As I see it, the closely manicured landscapes that we see today have eliminated far too much habitat that could be utilized much more appropriately. Man and wildlife can co-exist, but man can't keep destroying the habitat without destroying the wildlife. This sort of thing has become a passion with me. It's more than just being in tune with nature or having a place to hunt. It's not taking from the environment or taking it for granted, and it's giving something back.

TROC: I think that a lot of folks would like to do something, but have absolutely no idea of where to start. How did you "educate" yourself in Wildlife Conservation Contracting?

EH: I studied biology in college, but where I could afford to go had no formal wildlife biology training. It was more of a pre-med curriculum, but I managed to work in my own independent studies, when I could. I almost got a 2nd major in geology, and I studied agriculture independently. So, officially, I'm not a wildlife biologist, but it's where my heart lies. Quite frankly, I am a synthesizer of other peoples research at this point, but I aspire to help improve or restore habitat in any way I can, whether by writing about it, or offering advice or personal labors. I didn't start Edge Habitat to make money, but to spread the word and to improve wildlife habitat. That is why I welcome any feedback from people who know more than I do.

Prescribed Burn: Another habitat management technique.

TROC: Tell me Bo, where are you currently located?

EH: I live in Clarksville, Texas, Red River county, between Texarkana and Paris. It's right on the edge of the blackland prairie and the piney woods. North of the Red River lies the Kiamichi Mountains and the Ouachita National Forest in Oklahoma. To the west of Paris lies the Caddo National Grasslands. It's a diverse environment, filled with excellent habitat in many places and opportunities to improve habitat in many others, not unlike other places I'm sure.

TROC: I'm certain that you've quite a bit of outdoor experience too. How did your outdoorsmanship get its start?

EH: Hunting and fishing have been ingrained in me since childhood when I could walk out my back door and go hunting, all day... Or fish in the neighbor's stock ponds or the creek a couple of miles away. Unfortunately, those times are long gone, and so is that environment in far too many places. Some of the lucky ones can still enjoy that type of experience, but they are few. It is from those roots that my love of nature and the outdoors has grown.

TROC: I've gotten a little hunting in over the years, no where near enough as far as I am concerned. My problem is mostly that of access. I've seen areas that were once readily accessible and well stocked with game, both large and small, become subdivisions almost over night. I see you've done quite a bit of hunting. What are some of your successes?

EH: As for my hunting and fishing successes, they have been adequate. Besides the 140-class WT pictured on the blog, I have a 6X7 bull elk (unscored), a 160-class mule deer, a half a slam so far in turkeys (best being a 23 lb. 11-in. w/ 1.25 spurs)and 3 double digit largemouth bass (best being 10.96) as my personal best trophies. But Albert, as you well know, every encounter in the outdoors, no matter what, makes you live longer...

TROC: You mentioned that you worked in the medical field for quite some time, how did you get from scrubs to overalls?

EH: I did spend the majority of my life in health care, both as a pharmaceutical representative and a radiology technologist. However, in '08 I was injured moving a patient in the hospital. I lived in Spokane, Washington as a young man, and I worked as a packer and a cook for an outfit in the middle fork of the Salmon River country in ID. Then I went to work as a Hunter Safety Coordinator for the Washington Department of Game in Spokane. There I was able to assist habitat specialists and others in their work. I developed a working knowledge of the subject, along with a sincere love and respect for that type of work. When I became injured and forced into semi-retirement, I sat down and asked myself, "What assets do I have that I can use to make my way and be of service?" and "What would I be most happy doing with the rest of my life?" From that, Edge Habitat was hatched. So, honestly, Edge Habitat is a fledgling enterprise created to try and be of service to both the landowners and the wildlife. It doesn't hurt that it might help an old outdoorsman survive as well!

TROC: What sort of projects have you been involved with?

EH: There have been a few small projects, but nothing special to recall... yet!. I have been trying to get the mayor of our city to hire me to manage the grounds at the local city lake for wildlife; but, there again, there is no money. This would be an excellent project, since it's just across the main highway to the east of me; and it's in dire need of some help. The largest thing that I've done is to advise a friend about how to maintain habitat and prevent erosion post logging on some inherited property of hers. But that was pro bono, and I was happy to do it. It allowed me to put into practice some of the ideas I had been developing, and observe the results over time. Local TX P&W biologists have called me a couple of times about their projects, but nothing has yet to come of it. That's why when you emailed me about this I was pretty discouraged. But that doesn't mean that I don't still think it's a good idea that needs to be pushed. It's a tough sell, especially in this economy, but I haven't given up on being able to get something going.

TROC: Bo, I am always curious, tell me, how did you get started blogging?

EH: The blog idea was a suggestion of my sister to help with cheap advertising. But it soon became a way to express /vent some things and gather information too. Frankly, Albert, the blog, as minuscule as it is, is more successful than the business at this point. People will talk to you about your ideas about the land, but they can't spend the money to do anything in this economy. If they do, they do it themselves; and utilize your ideas or what NRCS or TX P&W has suggested to them. As for suggested projects that people can do on their own, the Edge Habitat blog has got numerous posts to that effect in the archives. Edge feathering, strip disking, regenerating the seedbank, comes to mind. All of these can be done with minimal expense and mostly just some work. I am always open to anyone who might have a question to be discussed; but, mostly, I find I'm talking to myself...

TROC: You know Bo, I used to feel that way also when I first started blogging, but with time, you develop a network of readers and followers. Before long you will be the subject matter expert that folks come to for advise on reclaiming land for wildlife! Now, what would be a dream project for you?

EH: The ideal situation for me would be to land a job with an absentee landowner who has deep pockets and several hundred / thousand acres to manage for wildlife. And I would thoroughly enjoy an opportunity to write about wildlife, habitat, and the outdoors. I think that would be both pleasurable and desirable at my age! But then, there are plenty of younger people out there with more specific degrees in wildlife / habitat / ranch / forestry management to fill such jobs, don't you know. But maybe, just maybe, I can do something by synthesizing information and spreading the word to interested people that will help me find a way. And, like the song says, "Get by with a little help from my friends."

TROC: Bo, I wish you all the best in your endeavours. We need more people in the field that can help us maximize the available habitat, restore damaged habitat, or create habitat out of areas that have been destroyed or altered.

Once again I would like to thank Bo Parham of Edge Habitat for taking the time to interview and introduce Edge Habitat to us.

If you would like to know more about habitat reclamation and habitat restoration. please see Bo's blog, Edge Habitat.

You can reach Edge Habitat at:
edgehabitat@windstream.net


Best Regards,
Albert A Rasch
Member: Kandahar Tent Club
Member: Hunting Sportsmen of the United States HSUS (Let 'em sue me.)
The Hunt Continues...
The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles


Though he spends most of his time writing and keeping the world safe for democracy, Albert was actually a student of biology. Really. But after a stint as a lab tech performing repetitious and mind-numbing processes that a trained capuchin monkey could do better, he never returned to the field. Rather he became a bartender. As he once said, "Hell, I was feeding mice all sorts of concoctions. At the club I did the same thing; except I got paid a lot better, and the rats where bigger." He has followed the science of QDM for many years, and fancies himself an aficionado. If you have any questions, or just want to get more information, reach him via TheRaschOutdoorChronicles(at)MSN(dot)com.