When I moved to Pike County in 1981 the house I bought had a functional wood burning insert in the fireplace.  I was young and dumb enough to decide to heat the house exclusively by wood that first winter.

    The house was two stories but the master bedroom and all the other rooms we used were on the ground floor.  I tacked sheets over the stairwell to keep the warm air from going up them, helping keep the lower level warm.

    Although I had never cut wood with a chain saw, I felt like I could do it.  I went to Sears and bought a mid-size saw and learned how it worked, always fearing it a little, especially after reading and hearing about accidents folks had with them.

    There was and old tree house in the edge of the woods and I tore it down and built a wood shed with the tin and plywood.  Then I started cutting down some of the trees behind the house.

    The four-acre lot my house was on was covered with trees with just a small front and back yard. I wanted a garden, so I started by cutting an area behind the house, trying to open it up enough. 

I cut about 16 big oak and hickory trees and a few sweetgum and popular, cutting each piece about 18 inches long to fit my insert, and splitting the trunks by hand with a maul and stacking the wood.

    I was much younger then!

    But I really enjoyed using the saw and splitting the wood. Those trees more than filled up my small woodshed so I expanded it some and had enough wood for the whole winter, keeping a fire going all the time.

    I learned a lot about wood that year.  The few sweetgum and popular trees I cut taught me popular splits very easily and has pretty colors inside, but burns fast and does “pop” while burning.  I had to keep the insert doors closed!  Sweetgum burned fast, too, and its twisted grains made it almost impossible to split. 

But I never wasted any wood, I burned the sweetgum and popular as well as any fast-burning pine I got during the day. At night I wanted slow burning oak and hickory.

    My favorite wood to split was red oak, its straight grains made it easy to split up into chunks just right for my fireplace.  Hickory was next since it split easily and burned very slowly. Whiteoak was fairly easy to split and also lasted a long time.  With any of them I could fill my insert at bedtime, shut the air vents and still have heat the next morning.

    For five years I heated exclusively with wood, even turning the pilot light off on my furnace.  Linda learned to bring in the wood and start a good fire with the kindling I kept in a big box, and she did a good job when I was gone on fishing trips.

    Then one spring I went to a Top Six tournament for five days. It was April and the weather should have been stable but a cold front dropped the nighttime lows below freezing and highs were only in the 40s.

The day I left there was a good supply of wood in the house and plenty in the woodshed.  But the day after I left Linda got sick and developed pneumonia, making it impossible for her to bring in wood and keep a fire going.

We lit the pilot light when I got home.

I continued to burn wood but never shut off the furnace again.  It was great supplemental heat and saved propane. But cancer three years ago weakened me to the point I have not tried to cut wood since then. I miss it and am going to get out my saw and try to use it.  I desperately need the exercise, and maybe I will do something I enjoy!

 Fall is in the air.  For the first time in months I was happy to fish in the sun in the Sportsman Club tournament a week ago last Sunday.  It got hot later, but at daylight it was a bit cool on the water fishing in the shade.

    A sure sign its fall is the preparation for the annual three club tournament at Lake Martin. We look forward to this tournament we hold the second weekend of October each year.  We usually catch a lot of bass, mostly pound size spots, but it is a lot of fun getting lots of bites.

    Last year 24 of the 29 fishermen had limits both days, two more had a limit one day and four keepers on the other day, and no one weighed in less than five keepers. And many of those fish were caught on topwater baits including the 3.74-pound spot I caught on Saturday.  That one gave me a thrill!

    Members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club also get ready for our Club Classic, held the first weekend in October.  To qualify to fish it, members must fish at least eight of the 12 tournaments during the year or finish in the top eight in the club for the year.

Some of the entry fees from monthly club tournaments are reserved for payout at the Classic. The top five get a check as well as the big fish winner.  There is a good bit of money paid out, much more than in regular tournaments.

The Potato Creek Bassmasters also has a Club Classic with similar rules and pay-out. It is held the last weekend in March.  It is much anticipated, too, and adds to the special spring feelings.

    Last week I smelled burning leaves for the first time this year.  I love that smell. Often when fishing on a very cold day a whiff of burning leaves can seem to warm you up a little. 

It takes me back to raking pecan leaves in the yard, piling them in the ditch and burning them. My favorite part was going back out there when there were just embers left, usually a cool late afternoon, and scratching around for missed pecans.

They usually seemed to be roasted just right. I think since they settled to the bottom of the pile against the ground, most of the heat went up and did not burn them.

We roasted pecans in the oven most of the year, too. Daddy also ordered 50-pound bags of peanuts every year and the bag was always available to get a pan out and put in the oven. Most nights the family sat around the den watching TV after dinner eating roasted nuts or a bowl of ice cream before bed.

Now the whine of leaf blowers replaces the rhythmic scraping of a rake and disturbs the peace. Blowers may be a lot faster, but I hate fishing on a nice peaceful morning only to hear someone crank up a leaf blower and make a lot of noise for hours on end. On a lake with lots of houses it is a constant sound all day.

I heard a DJ on the radio today say there was a sure sign fall is here.  The dollar stores are putting out Valentine stuff.  Seriously, Christmas stuff is already showing up in some area stores a month before Halloween.  Seems a big early to me.

Are we in too big a hurry nowadays?  We can’t wait to a holiday in a couple of months to the point of missing the excitement of the ones coming up. And it seems the same for hunters and fishermen. Bass boats scream around the lake, trying to find that perfect spot. Hunters can’t sit still in deer stands, they have to ride their four wheelers in the woods scaring the deer for everyone else.

My favorite season is a toss up between spring and fall. I love the warming weather in spring, the new growth of plants and animals and the fantastic fishing. Planting gardens is always a great anticipation of coming delicious vegetables.

But fall starts hunting seasons and great fishing again.  And the bounty of the garden is ending but still producing delicious fresh meals, with digging potatoes one of my favorites.  And fall crops of broccoli, cabbage and other cool weather veggies are another anticipation.

One of the best things about fall, the opposite of spring, is the disappearance of bugs.  Cooler nights seem to lessen them and the first frost makes most mosquitos, ticks, flies and other irritating bugs disappear.

Many people travel to the mountains to see the colorful leaves each year. I much prefer seeing them from a deer stand. Mountain and valley vistas are nice but sitting in a tree on a ridge over a creek valley is even better to me, since the anticipation of seeing a deer is there.

Deer camp the first week of November is something we look forward to every year, too. Every club has different camps, but all involve fires, good food, great companionship and an escape from the reality of modern life.  It takes most of us back to simpler times when the world was not quite so crazy.

Roughing it at deer camp can also make me appreciate the conveniences of modern life. Going four or five days without a hot shower is not something I enjoy, but fortunately, my camp is close enough to drive home every other day for a shower.

Cooking on an open fire is fun – a couple of times.  But having to do it every day makes me appreciate the ease of cooking a variety of things an open fire just can not produce.  Biscuits, pies and cakes are some of the things you really need an oven to cook!

Enjoy fall – winter will be here soon enough.

 Spending as much time outdoors as I have is bound to present some unusual encounters.  Nature has many wonders and they always fascinated me.  While growing up and most of my life I have had many books to identify plants and animals in the wild. Now I have apps on my phone to do it.

    On a church group camping trip when I was about eight years old, two events stand out in my mind.  We camped at an old mill pond and could not wait for the weekend of fishing, swimming, cooking on fires and trying to stay awake all night.

    The first afternoon I went off by myself, fishing along the small branch below the dam.  I noticed something in the shallows and when I got close, I got nervous, I had never seen anything like it.  It looked like a big, thick 16-inch-long mottled brow slimy looking lizard with a red frill around its neck.  For a minute I was afraid it was a baby “Godzilla,” growing like the one I had seen in the original movie grow from a leg that was blown off the adult.

    Being a kid, I killed it with a stick and took it back to camp. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.  When I got home I looked it up and found that it was an “Eastern Hellbender” salamander, the biggest salamander in the US. North Georgia is the extreme southern end of its range so to find on in middle Georgia was very unusual.

    Ironically enough, in the early 1970s my favorite lure was a Hellbender, an early crankbait. Linda caught an eight-pound bass at Clarks Hill trolling one in 1971.  The lure looked nothing like the real thing, though.

    Back at the camp on the mill pond, someone killed a big fat water snake.  That night around the fire I got out my trusty pocketknife and split it open. It has 17 eggs in it, mama was developing more water snakes.  Someone threw it on the fire against the advice of the adults with us and we all learned how terrible burning snake smells.

    Freshwater mussels always interested me. Their shells litter the banks in most of our lakes. Birds and otters will eat them. I have found piles of them under boat docks on a float where an otter went to dinner regularly. 

    I love all kinds of seafood including oysters, clams and mussels, so I just had to try a freshwater mussel. I found a live one at Clarks Hill that was as big as my fist, so I took it up to the kitchens and steamed it in the oven.

    I might as well have scooped up a handful of the mud it was in and put it in my mouth.  That’s what it tasted like!

    I have never been shy about trying different kinds of food and have always said “I will eat anything that doesn’t eat me first.”  That has produced some interesting experiences traveling with Linda all over the world.

    While on a nature hike in the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil with a survival training Captain in the Brazil Army, he showed us many typed of food provided by nature. 

    He showed us how to tease a tarantula spider out of its hole, saying they tasted good roasted and the fire burned oft the hairs that would tickle your mouth. He then cut a vine up high then cut the bottom, grabbing it quickly. It was full of water, several of us had a swallow of the pure water in the jungle before it all ran out.

    He also cut a palm branch with a small nut looking growth on it and said it was a palm nut, similar to a coconut.  He told us the meat of the nut was good food but inside was often a source of protein, a palm nut grub.  When he split the nut, sure enough there was a grub inside. It reminded me of the grub worms we dig up here.

    He asked if anyone would eat it. After a few seconds of quiet, I said I would. When I put in in my mouth and bit down, it popped. It did taste like coconut!

    About half of us on that cruise ship flew back to Miami from Manus, Brazil on a chartered 777.  When Linda and I were bordered first and put in the two first class front seats, others looked at us and asked how we got those seats.

    I told them it was because I had eaten the grub!

I got a deer this year on the second day of archery season!

Unfortunately, it was with my Chevy Express van on the way to fish Lake Oconee. It was the second one I have hit with my 2008 van, but just the third one I have ever hit.

    In 1971, the first fall Linda and I were married, we left Clarks Hill Sunday night headed back to Athens after spending the weekend with my parents at the lake. For some reason I was driving daddy’s truck, I seem to remember we needed to haul something back to our mobile home.

    On a back road near Washington, Ga, with nothing, not even a farm house within a few miles, a deer was standing on the left side of the road. I slowed to look at it, seeing deer was still not an everyday, or every night, thing. Suddenly the doe ran right in front of the truck. I hit it and it went under the bumper and I felt the tires bump over her.

I stopped and turned the headlights on the deer flopping about 20 feet from the road. I went over to her; the truck had broken her back and she was trying to crawl off using her front legs.

Since I had no gun but did not want her to suffer, I got the tire iron out of the truck and hit her in the head to kill her.

Wanting to do the right thing, I stopped in Washington, Georgia when I saw a police car sitting by the road to report what happened. The cop did not seem friendly and started questioning me about leaving the scene of an accident!

At the time I had shoulder length hair and if I remember correctly, was wearing “hippy” clothes, a tie died tee shirt and paisley pants.  After some discussion the cop told me to go on my way.

The next time I drove that road during daylight I saw there was a fence running along the left side where she was standing, but nothing on the right. I guess she chose to run across the road rather than jump the fence. Not a good choice.

The second deer was just four or five years ago, with my van while pulling my boat to West Point.  A deer standing on the right shoulder suddenly jumped right in front of me. I had slowed a lot and when it hit the right corner of the bumper, it knocked her back off the road.

I stopped in Woodbury where there was enough light to see and found no damage, just some hair on the bumper. Guess the glancing blow was not too bad.

Sunday I left home at 3:45 AM and saw several deer between here and Monticello.  About halfway between Monticello and Eatonton two yearlings were standing on the right side of the road. I slowed as soon as I saw them, knowing little ones will often run to mama on the other side of the road.

Before I slowed enough, I was still going about 45, a deer came out of nowhere on my left.  I never got a good look at it, it was just something suddenly there and a big wham and bump.  I slowed and kept a watch on my temperature and oil gauges, fearing damage.

When I got to Eatonton where I had some light, I got out and pulled off both running light assemblies that were just hanging by the light wires. The had been bumping in the wind a lot. Since there seemed to be no bad damage and nothing was leaking, I drove on to the ramp.

Linda has not been so lucky. A couple of years ago a deer ran out on Sixth Street Extension and hit her Avalon on the right side. She was going very slowly, but it still did $4000.00 in damage!  The next year in the same place a deer ran out and she hit it with her left front bumper corner. It came up, hitting the corner of the windshield and shattering it, damaged the roof and then part of the trunk.  

The insurance company totaled out her car there was so much damage!

Be careful out there, get a deer with a bow not a vehicle!

 By this time every December growing up my hunts got more specific. All fall I had kept my eyes open for pretty cedar trees that were the right size and shape, marking their location in my mental GPS. Back then it actually worked and would hold many locations.

    But around the first of December I got serious, searching for the perfect tree. It had to be as perfect shape as a wild tree could be, and as tall as possible without being more than seven feet tall, about as high as I could reach.

    I hunted a lot on an old farm about a mile from my house. The fields were mostly overgrown with broom straw and weeds but the field edges of briar, brush and small trees gave rabbits and quail perfect places to hide. The old fields still provided a variety of food for them.

    Cedar trees grew in the field edges and in the old fields, too. Since they could get sun from all angles out in the field, they were conical shaped and full all the way around.  Trees near the woods usually had a gap on the side that did not get full sun so the ones in the open were the best.

    About a week before Christmas Day I would direct daddy to the best tree I had found.  He drove our old Chevy pickup pretty much anywhere although it did not have four-wheel drive. Since the best tree was usually in the open, it was not hard to drive to it.

    Daddy “let” me lay on the ground and saw the tree down, using a lumber saw. It’s fine teeth made the cutting slow and took a while but for a preteen or teenager, it was not too bad. I tried to get a nice smooth even cut for the tree stand we would make with 2x4s.

    We would also cut some limbs from other cedar trees that were not candidates for “The” tree, even for the future. Those limbs were used by mama to decorate the mantel where our stocking were hung, and a center piece for the table.

    Getting the tree in to the house and set up was not hard with several folks to help. Within minutes the house would smell of cedar, a wonderful smell that would be reinforced by mantel and table decorations that would last until the day after Christmas.

    We didn’t have a lot of money back then and most of our tree decorations, as well as house decorations, were homemade. I brought in sweetgum tree balls and small pinecones from the few trees that produced them. I still do not know what kind of pine tree produced those two-inch-long cones but they were rare.

    We would spray the pinecones and sweetgum balls with silver or gold paint and sprinkle glitter on them.   They were hung from the tree with short pieces of colorful yarn. We would also cut strips of colorful construction paper and make chains out of loops of it for the tree.

We did have bought lights, big bulb strings that were very colorful. The strangest “lights” for the tree were ancient small pans that clipped to the tree and had a spike for  a small candle.  We were not allowed to light the candles except for a few minutes each night while mama and daddy watched carefully.

There were some very old ball decorations that had been in the family for years and we were very careful handling them. They were beautiful, some shaped like angels, some like Santa and some like bells and balls, and all very colorful.

Store bought tinsel was made from metal, I think it was strands of tinfoil, and mama would not let us kids touch it. She hung each stand carefully, placing it just right. After Christmas she would remove it just as carefully and put it back on the cardboard backing and into a pack for next year. I felt like we were rich the year mama said throw the tree out with the tinsel on it, we would buy more next year!

Undecorating the tree was a sad time and I did not help much, I wanted to get out in the woods with my new boxes of .22 bullets and .410 shells!!