December 30, 2008

Amanda

It was muzzle loader season for deer today, so I fitted Digger with his blaze orange vest. We drove to Amanda to squirrel hunt with a friend I hadn’t seen in several years.

Amanda’s riches lie in its hardwood timber, black loam farmland and Shawnee Indian lore. At least they do when you are in the company of Eric Young, seeing and listening through his filter as you walk the croplands and foothills.

Eric is a logger and his family moved into the community at its beginnings in the 18th C. He has cousins and relatives everywhere and seems to know everyone.

“I coulda got $1000 dollars for this cherry two years ago, and there are problems with it. Couldn’t get $300 today. I won’t cut it for that.”

“This is Toby Creek. The Tobies were Shawnees. There were buffalo and elk here then. The Tobies disappeared, too, only no one knows what happened to them.”

“There are vehicles buried in that field, so my grandfather said. It was a bog before he drained it. Certain times of the year you would drive across it and sink. It grows hellacious corn now.”

“That hay is worth $7 a square bale. Horse people from Kentucky come up after it. Orchard grass and alfalfa, and rich in protein beyond your average good hay. Look at its color.”

“Stave logs are up. Hard times, people turn to liquor. The barrel industry must be doing good, but the Japs just crashed the three-sided white oak market, so the two-sided stave log will likely go down.”

“See how easy you can scrape through the grass to the dirt. Rich, black. The water table is 8 feet below here.”

“The money’s in tie logs for me now. If it’s tough stuff—elm, hackberry, oak, sycamore and the like—and you can box out the heart for a 7 by 9 railroad tie, there’s a market. The railroads are layin’ track.”

“I hope I don’t find who stole my arrowheads. I hope I don’t. But I’m still looking to.”

“Here. I want you to have this warclub. I carved it out of a burl, just like the Shawnees did. It’s longer in the handle than one of theirs. You can’t break it. My great uncle Bill Phillips had dippers and scoops carved out of burls just like this, with straight-grained handles. The revenuers burnt them all and everything else. Folks called him Whiskey Bill. He made rye whiskey. They traced him from the color. Helluva man. They took his farm, too.”

For lunch Eric fried bluegill fillets.

We killed 7 squirrels, let a few get away, and left a snarling coon in the root ball of a huge white oak. Eric kept two squirrels for pot pies.

December 26, 2008

Foggy Night

Invited my neighbor Les Slagle to go coon hunting last night. If you have something that's seized-up, leaking, busted, misfiring, blown, burnt, stripped, or flat, or something that needs welded, dug, poured, trenched, graded, drained, or hauled, and if you live near Ostrander, you know Les. Brawny and of a cheerful disposition, he can grab an 18 lb coon and, without changing his grip, set off across a muddy winter wheat field that sucks at his boots and works his socks past his ankles.

The weather warmed and rained hard all day Friday, turning to a slow drizzle by evening. It was a good time to get after coons near ditches and drainages because the flooding flushes them from the field tiles that empty into them, and also keeps them from returning. A risky time for carrying a camera afield, so I didn't.

We killed three coon, but we also treed a possum, caught another on the ground, pushed a coon into a bridge culvert, treed another in a den and yet another in a tall, thick pine during the densest part of a heavy fog. We also treed a housecat in Leroy Moore's front yard. It was the second time for the cat this fall, so Leroy didn't bother to flip on the porch light.

I'd hoped Digger was done with possums and housecats, but his excitement for the hunt overcame him. Understandable. He's still a young, enthusiastic dog, and he'd been cooped up with me for a week while I waited for stomach flu to run its course.

Coons are entering the rut, as evidenced by the swollen testicles on the boars I skinned. They travel distances searching out mates now. The tracks they lay are sometimes called "feeder tracks" because they wander in all directions, as well as up and down trees. Only the best dogs can unravel one and tree the coon accurately, especially after the track has gone cold. Our last coon laid such a track. Digger struck it in typical coonhunting fashion--after we'd walked back to the truck to head home.

I thought Digger was with us. Called for him, but nothing. When I looked on the gps, he was 500 yards south and working the track east. The track warmed, he jumped the coon and drove it further east, bushing it in a fencerow in the middle of a section. You can have a head filled with thoughts of a warm bed and relief for a tired body, but nothing invigorates a coon hunter more than setting off cross country into a wind in the dark of the night, a wind that carries the sound of a tree dog telling anyone who cares to listen that he’s pieced a puzzle and likes the results.

I put the lead strap on Digger on the way back. He didn’t require it, but I needed to look like I was doing something for the bargain since Les was left to carry the coon, and the muddy wheat field spanned over half a mile.

December 16, 2008

Coons On Ice

Heard Digger this afternoon around 1:30 when I went to the henhouse to feed hens and gather eggs. He was bayed at the pond. Went for a looksee and then went after the camera.

When I returned, the coon backed away from the bank, and then broke for the other side of the pond without going through thin ice. Digger circled, met him and went nose to nose.

I lost my last dog, a Blackmouth Cur, to rat poison. Was slow to recognize the cause of her lethargy, and when I did, it hit hard because I was responsible for setting out the poison. Grabbed her up and with Mary rushed her to an animal hospital where she died several hours later. Her name was Dixie, and for four years she patrolled the property here, requiring permission of all trespassers.

Shortly after her death, I was hunting in South Carolina and Mary called to report that a fox had come into the yard after our laying hens. Before Mary could pen them up, the fox cut the inventory in half. I went after a replacement dog upon my return home, purchasing Digger O'Dell, the Friendly Undertaker, a Mt. Cur, as a 7 week old pup.

Digger is an all-around farm dog, hunting dog and family friend going on three years old. Every year we raise a hundred Cornish Rock broilers that range free during the day. He protects them and at night even helps me usher them up the gangplank back into the henhouse. He's a squirrel and coon dog deluxe, and my constant companion.

This coon got too close to the henhouse.

December 14, 2008

Nutcrackers

My sisters came Sunday to help crack two big onion sacks of black walnuts and a cardboard box of native pecans. Some of the walnuts were cultivars from a neighbor's farm. Very nice in that the meats are larger and the shells thinner than your typical black walnut. The native pecans came from Joel Young in Missouri and are of a superb flavor.

I have an affinity for old cast iron nutcrackers, and have collected various kinds, concentrating on Wolderts for pecans and C.E. Potters for black walnuts. Once seated at a pecan station, with a tray in my lap and a pile of unshelled pecans to my left, my right hand on the throttle lever, I can crack pecans without much busting the meats at the rate of almost one per second. And the Potter, with the flip of a ratchet lever, can do a controlled crack on a walnut shell tough enough otherwise to attract only patient squirrels with tiny, nut-stained chisels. The Potter minimizes damage to the nutmeat while reducing the thick shell to rubble. They are built like siege engines and as inevitable in their conclusion as fire on gunpowder.

These nutcrackers are brothers to the vintage cast-aluminum pressure canners which I also collect and use, and which also date from the early part of the last century. Their mfr's. names reveal them: "National" and "All American." They once represented the face of America. We've improved our condition in many areas, but not in these matters. You can still see in them reflections of a rural past characterized by perseverance, ingenuity, frugality, hard-scrabble living close to the bone, simplicity, independence and pride—an uncompromising independence and a fierce pride. I'd love the damned things for the memories alone, having once lived in that America. My dear mother-in-law kept her pressure canner steaming from late summer into winter, canning low acid vegetables, rabbits, squirrels, beef, and every bit of the hog they couldn't salt preserve, including stuffed sausages, all for a large family. We haven't always had freezer chests, grocery stores, or the money for them.

Of all the choices I gave them, including seared venison loin medallions, my sisters, Ann, 83, and Kathryn, 82, requested squirrel for dinner. I was happy to oblige, as I had four brined fox squirrels of similar age in the refrigerator. When all the nuts were cracked, but before we finished shelling them, we swept up and prepared for supper.

Lightly dusted in a seasoned flour, I browned the squirrel parts a little at a time in a 12" enameled cast iron skillet, the same one used for braising them. While they browned, I Frenched four large cooking onions, then sweated them in olive oil and bacon grease (from home-smoked bacon), deglazed with a cheap red wine, added a can of Swanson's chicken broth, a quarter cup of veal stock, placed the squirrel parts on the bed of onions, sprinkled the top with oregano and basil, added a few sprigs of rosemary, two bay leaves, covered the lot, and placed it to braise in a 300° oven for two hours, until it was fork tender. I'd intended to add some dried morels for an additional layer of flavor, but I forgot.

Mashed potatoes go as well with squirrel as rice does. Today we opted for rice, Mediterranean style, the way our mother cooked it. Melt a little butter in some olive oil. Add three cloves of minced garlic, stir to infuse, and as soon as the fragrance hits you, add long grain rice. Stir the rice around over medium heat until it smells good. Add chicken broth at the rate of 2 parts per 1 part rice, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. When the rice is cooked, season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper, add the juice of half a large lemon, and fluff with a fork.

After the rice is lidded and simmering and the cooked squirrel rests in the warming drawer of the oven, it's biscuit time. I'd cut shortening at the rate of 5 parts butter and 1 part lard into unbleached, all-purpose flour (to which I'd added salt, soda and baking powder) the night before, refrigerating the goods until it was time to add the buttermilk and make biscuits. This I did while preheating the oven to 450. Since biscuits need to be hot to be really good, I also placed a cast iron Dutch oven in the oven. When the biscuits were done, I layed a dish towel in the hot Dutch oven, dropped the biscuits into it, folded the towel over them, and lidded it until our warmed plates were ready to fill.

Mary steamed some broccoli, sprinkled it with salt, lemon juice and olive oil, and it was game on. We sucked the squirrel bones clean and went back for seconds. After dessert and coffee, we finished up the nuts, except for one sack of walnuts which Ann and her husband Hal took home in the company of a spare Potter. It was a memorable day with two inseparables—family and kitchen.

December 12, 2008

Monkey Balls

Hunted a creek bottom this morning. Our dry summer shrank it to a few scattered pools when I last hunted it three weeks ago for coon. Recent rains have overflowed the holes, enough that I had to search out riffles for crossings. Found out in the process that my rubber Burley boots leaked where a coon bit through to my toe. Without looking, I'd hoped they were self-sealing punctures. Turned out to be divots. Gonna have to patch them.

The creek bottom was littered in places with these. Do you recognize them? The seed of Osage Orange, maclura pomifera, variously known as hedge apples, monkey balls, and horse apples. After several freezes, they break down enough for the squirrels to dive into them. They disappear by spring, eaten by varmints or melted into the duff, to germinate and grow into bow wood.

Worked longer than usual for three fox squirrels. I usually stop with three. That's enough to clean (they don't strip out as easily as greys). Three is enough to remove from a woods at one time (they are a resident squirrel, unlike greys, which travel distances to food sources). Finally, three squirrels makes a large meal with leftovers for two people.

Squirrels weren't moving much, perhaps due to the drop in temps from yesterday, and DIgger treed deep down the creek each time. I don't approach the tree closer than required to see the squirrel. Doing so only creates peekaboo games, as the squirrel works to use the trunk for a shield, or a nervous squirrel that bails for a den tree. I'll come in slow, with binoculars, intent on snipe-shooting from the first sighting. That's why I took pictures of Digger on the retrieve rather than up close, treeing.

Shooting a brand new .22, a CZ 452 American. After some work on the trigger, the bedding and the bolt, I've taken to it. Five shots so far, five head shots, no wasted body meat. Took a late one hour squirrel hunt yesterday evening and shot two with it. One was a tough shot revealing only an ear and an eye nestled in the crotch of the tree. WOuld not have seen them without binoculars. The second had a small limb bisecting the squirrel's head, forcing me to shoot to either side of it. I try to brace up for every shot.

Squandered an opportunity at a 3rd yesterday when it was getting low light. Couldn't see the squirrel during a wide circle around the tree, so I went in close to take pictures of Digger treeing. The flashes and my presence spooked him. He bailed. Digger almost grabbed him on the first bounce, but he ran through the slash in the background of the last photo to scrape off the dog, making it to this den.

Cooking for my sisters this Sunday. Braised squirrel, biscuits and gravy on the menu. May try a new biscuit recipe.

Newer entries...