THE BORROWED FARM
The word "progress” means different things to different people. To the real estate agents in an area, it usually means commissions. To executives, it should mean lawyer meetings and contracts. To contractors, it can mean long days and weekend work trying to meet grand opening days. To duck hunters, it usually means things are likely to change about your drive to enjoy your favorite time of the year. Some things never really change. Others are forced to change with progress.
I stood in line at the local Ace Hardware with a lawn mower blade in my hand. He was two people ahead of me and checking out. He was there to pick up a load of salt licks he had ordered a week or so before. His overalls, stocky build, tanned leathery skin, very worn-looking boots, and polite nature gave him away. He was a cattle farmer and wasn’t new to it.
“If you pull around to the side of the building, Mr. Jackie,” claimed the pretty, young cashier, “I’ll call out there and the guys will load you up.”
“Sweetheart, they don’t need to bother with that, I’ll get ‘em,” Jackie Spears answered back, grinning a gentle smile.
“Mr. Jackie,” she kindly scolded him, “Mrs. Linda would have my head if I let you load up 50 salt licks!”
“Who does Mrs. Linda think is going to unload ‘em and put ‘em out for the cows?” They both giggled as he continued, “Anyways, what Linda don’t know won’t hurt her!”
“The boys will be there anyway, Mr. Jackie. You have a good afternoon, sir,” she smiled and handed him his receipt.
“You too darlin,” he quipped. “Tell your folks I said hey.”
“Will do, Mr. Jackie!” she said as she began to ring up the next customer.
Hmm, Mr Jackie has a cow farm close by, I thought to myself, I need to speak with that man. This gal needs to get on with it.
Jackie ambled out the front door, and I knew he wasn’t making great time. I stood there in line impatiently, hoping I could catch him before the boys loaded 50 salt blocks onto his truck-bed. Must be a decent sized farm, I pondered, hopefully it will have some ponds.
Finally, I was at the cash register after enduring the usual pleasant banter of the checkout girl and the former customer. Usually I am all about being talkative and pleasant and all that stuff. The new knowledge of a relatively local, large cow farm had me feeling a little rushed and less talkative.
“Will that be all today, sir?” she smiled a cute country girl smile at me.
“Yep,” I answered quickly. “Tell me…” as I counted out the bills for the lawn mower blade, “That Mr. Jackie, he have a big farm close by?” I was counting on her knowing since it sounded like they had been familiar with one another for a while.
“Oh yes sir!” she almost shouted, happy that suddenly I was engaging. “He and Mrs. Linda have a beef cattle farm down in Mansfield. My daddy fishes down there every summer. Has been for all my life, I guess. I love Mr. Jackie!” She went on to start telling me about Mrs. Linda and how she is so sweet to her mama, and it all ran together and began to trail off as I was inching my way to the door.
Smile, I thought, nod and wave and smile; I continued to encourage myself to be kind. “Okay! Thank you! Have a good one!” I obliged as I ducked out the door and made a quick pace for the edge of the building, just hoping the boys had not been too hasty loading up all those salt blocks.
I made the turn at the corner, and he was just getting into his truck and thanking the young men for their help. I didn’t want to alarm him, but I was tempted to run to catch him. Right before the door closed, I spoke up, “Mr. Jackie!”
Farmers have this way of looking at you when they don’t know you. Jackie did that well. Somehow, his smile really didn’t ever disappear, but he still seemed stern and looked through my eyes into me. It’s almost like they are running a ‘soul-check’ to make sure you are genuine. I must have passed the test.
I introduced myself and explained that I guessed he had a cattle farm. He sat and listened cautiously with that same look on his face. I am sure over the years, he has had many people approach him for hunting rights or the chance to catch a fish. You could see the expectant hesitation on his face. He confirmed that he did, in fact, have a cattle farm. I begged his forgiveness for the minor interruption and for my direct approach. I told him I believed the Bible is right, you have not because you ask not.
“Can I assume that you have a pond on that farm?” I asked. That made him smile even more as I think he finally knew what my intentions were.
He nodded and said flatly, “Yep. We’ve got a pond or two.” I noticed the apparent lack of an invite. Then I surprised him.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any geese on those ponds, would you?” I asked.
His eyes lit up, realizing that he had assumed wrong. “I sure do. Hate them dang things! They make a mess everywhere they go!”
“They sure do,” I nodded in agreement, “that’s what I was hoping you would say. I hunt geese with a couple of friends of mine. Do you think it would be possible to come out and try to rid you of that problem?”
“You eat them things?” Jackie asked inquisitively.
“We do! My daddy taught me a long time ago, you don’t shoot what you don’t eat,” I offered. “You have to cook ‘em right, but when done correctly, they’re great.”
“How many of you would come?” he pondered.
“Well, usually there are two or three of us. You kind of want to hunt geese with a few guns, and it’s a little dangerous to go alone,” I answered, “but we won’t have more than you want down there. If it’s two, then it’s two.”
“I get it,” he piped in, “that’ll be alright, I guess. I’ll need to show you around a bit and make sure you know which gates to use. When you want to come out?”
We made a plan, and I met him shortly at the farm. We took a long, highly detailed, very informative tour of the property. There were two bodies of water on the farm. One pond of about fifteen acres and a small puddle of a pond nestled into an oak grove down in a valley of sorts in the middle of a large pasture. They both looked promising.
Jackie was that kind of guy that could go on for hours and simply did not get in a hurry. He was finicky about how he wanted the gates locked back. He was very specific in the pastures we could use and drive through. He was direct about the things he wanted and didn’t want but overall, he was as nice a man as I had ever met. I asked him if he cared if we shot ducks, as well as the geese, while we were hunting.
“Well,” he chuckled as he began his story, “if you can hit ‘em, I recon you can kill ‘em!” He then relayed a long story about him and his brothers hunting on the big pond when they were younger. They had been down there running rabbits and jumped up some ducks. They decided to try out duck hunting the next morning.
“We didn’t know nothing about duck hunting but we figured we could just set down there close to where they was sitting that day and they’d come on in. Daddy told us there weren’t no sport in shootin’ ducks on the water, so we had to shoot ‘em on the fly, ya know.”
I chuckled as I listened. “Well, I was half-a-box of shells in before I knowed it and didn’t neither of us have a thing to show for it,” he laughed. “That was about all I needed to know about duck hunting. I don’t think any of us ever went again.”
“They can be quite challenging, that’s for sure,” I agreed. “If you ever want to go with us, you’re more than welcome, Jackie. We have some tricks up our sleeve to get them a little closer and slower. Otherwise I would have quit a long time ago!”
We continued our conversation for a while as he never ran out of things to chat about. I obliged him for as long as he wanted to talk. I hoped this was the makings of a long lasting friendship and it brought me much joy to listen to him go on and on about growing up around that area and on that farm. It would still be few weeks before goose season opened but Jackie had told me to come back out and scout the place anytime I wanted. I just needed to give him a call and let him know I was going and needed to close every gate behind me, paying close attention to how they were latched so I could “chain ‘em up right.”
A couple of Saturdays later, as the sun began to peak above the horizon, I crept across that grassy pasture in my truck. I drove slowly through the knee-high, wet grass to keep from spooking up any birds that might be there. It was only minutes after daybreak. I stayed back from the pond about seventyfive yards and cut the truck off. Through binoculars, I glassed the fifteen acre lake and petted the head of my yellow lab, Drake.
“What’s out there, boy?” I whispered to him. He sat on the front seat, peering out the windshield like he knew what we were doing. We were partners on a stakeout, and his eyes were glued to the lake. Drake knew exactly what his job was. I rolled down the windows to let in the cool fall air.
Heeeeronk! Heronk, ronk, ronk ronk. We heard the distant Canada goose nervously letting the rest of the flock know he was watching something strange up on the hill. I moved to the right with the binoculars, and Drake whimpered a little and quivered in the seat beside me. There were no less than sixty geese in the cove to the right, and they were gently moving out into open water and becoming slightly talkative. Further back in the cove, there were a few mallards tooling around at the edge of the grass. I lowered the ‘nocks and reached for the keys to back away. Suddenly, on the other end of the lake, I saw about six more ducks set their wings and drop in, disappearing behind the small trees that bordered the lake.
“My goodness, Drake. What have we found? This might just be a little slice of heaven,” I told the dog quietly. He looked at me and back at the lake and then back at me, ears perked up, eyes wide, and head wrinkled. He wanted to go play right that instant, I could tell.
“We can’t go right now, puppy. But we will be back soon,” I informed him. I started the truck and just backed straight up for a hundred yards or so before even turning around. The geese stayed put, as did all the ducks. No harm, no foul.
“See you boys in two weeks,” I warned them as we pulled up to the first of four gates I had to memorize. Jackie sure did have a crazy way to latch each gate. I laughed at each one, thinking I should take notes. They wouldn’t be so easy to undo and do back in the dark, even with a flashlight in my mouth!
The first morning we set up on a little island on the opposite side of the pond, not far from the only place we could park our trucks out of sight. I placed a small group of duck decoys out of the wind, tightly in a small cove beside us to the right, leaving a landing spot over the shallow point directly in front of us. Carefully, I moved through the water, finding every little stump with clumsy big wader-toes. I almost took a swim in the drink a time or two. While I tended to the decoys, Big John and Adam cut small trees and limbs for a make-shift blind. They positioned our bags and bucket-seats for optimal watching and shooting. I fiddled with the last of the duck decoys while one of them tossed four goose decoys on the deep-water side of the little island. A light breeze made them move to and fro naturally.
The sky was beginning to lighten in the east as we settled into the blind and began to make ready our tools of the trade. Drake sat to the left of me, as is always the case. I shoot left handed, so I sit on the far left side of the blind, and he sits to my left. He shook with anticipation. He was four years old and in his absolute prime. Seventy eight pounds of yellow lab peering out of a small hole in the side of the brushed wall over looking the goose decoys. Adam fiddled with his side of the blind trying to make a decent spot to miss from. Big John sat in the middle and made sure all his stuff was easily accessible as if he were getting ready for hundreds of birds to come in and some fast and furious shooting. He always hoped large. I slid a shell into my 15 year old Winchester pump 1300. That old gun had its share of stories to tell and it looked like it should. I made sure my duck call and goose call were on my lanyard and then reached out to pet Drake.
“It’s almost time boy, “ I told him as he whined a little. The last few minutes before shooting light always seem to drag on and I checked my watch as we waited for the first sound of whistling wings overhead.
We didn’t have to wait long. A handful of wood ducks flew directly over the island.
Sip, sip, sip, sip, sip, sip, sip….. the tips of their wings giving their presence away as they flew over. They had come out of the cove way back up in the woods to the left. The lake was fed from two creeks. It was shaped like huge lower case ‘r’. The dam was at the top and creeks from the base and the right arm both flowed into the body. The island we were on is just below where the two parts come together in the curve facing the dam. We would learn that very often, about two minutes before legal shooting hours started, wood ducks would buzz that island at mach-one and about fifteen feet overhead. That was the first lesson of the lake. Drake, incapable of understanding the concept of legal shooting time and large fines, always looked at us as if we were daft. We would always make empty promises of getting the next ones.
Adam, the best caller of the three of us, called at a couple ducks flying over the dam about a hundred yards away. They didn’t heed his beckoning. We watched quietly as the colors of a fall daybreak began to paint the sky above the treeline. Deep oranges and streaks of grey-blue clouds caused me to take pause. The reds faded to yellows pushing through the gaps in the trees. The wind sat still for a moment as if it was catching its breath from the beauty of the sight. All the earth around us seemed to see it. It wasn’t enough for the sun to simply make its way onto the scene. It had an entourage of artists dancing their way up the dark canvas to announce its arrival. Every hue of yellow, red, and blue mixed ceremoniously to usher in the brief moment. In all of outdoor past times, I have yet to experience anything as glorious as the sunrise on water’s edge.
The faint sound off in the distance, snapped me out of my appreciative trance.
“Geese!” John whispered hoarsely as if we didn’t know that was what we all heard. The unmistakable voice of the Canada Goose can be heard for hundreds, if not a thousand yards when things are right in the world. Instantly, the breeze came back to play its part in the muse. I reached for my goose call but Adam had already spoken back. We waited. It is best to be easy on the call at first. Seconds passed. We waited, ears straining for the sound, holding our breath. Heeerronk, hronk hronk. They had turned towards us.
“Here goes nothing, Drake,” I said to the dog on my left as I reached out to calm him with a gentle pat. He trembled with excitement.
It sounded like they were behind us maybe eight hundred yards out. We dared not move as our backs were not covered very well. I leaned forward a little and blew into my goose call. Adam did the same. That did it. The flock began their “Where are those geese? Lets get down there before they eat all the breakfast! Here we come guys!” kind of calls. The entire flock lit up. We answered back with abandon. They were off to the right before we knew it, but still at ninety yards. The conversation was full tilt. We were downright seductive.
The leader shouted orders at them and they were all in agreement. “Bank left, follow me!” They announced their coming. We all kept our heads down and glanced out of the right corner of our eyes.
“Don’t move!” John hissed as they came around the point where the two legs of the lake meet. “Seventy yards out,” he announced, playing his part in the scenario. I wondered if he was ever going to learn to call ducks or geese.
The distance was closing fast but we weren’t convinced they were going to continue the hard left turn it was going to take, to get them right in front of us. I hit the call again while Adam stayed frozen on his side of the blind. He was too exposed to be moving much. I poured into them with all the loving sweet-talk I could muster. I was telling them there was plenty of food and all four fake geese on the water were cute girls… and anything else I thought they wanted to hear. The turn was on, and they began to set their wings as the formations began to break rank.
“Coming in straight out front,” he informed us in any Cleveland Ohio accent that still lingered in his voice. That was all we needed to hear and the almost inaudible “clicks” of three guns coming off safety had Drake keyed up and ready.
“ Kill ‘em,” Adam said softly as we all stood from behind our well placed hide.
Twenty five years later I ran into Jackie while coming out of the big lake after hunting. He was in a wheel chair telling Linda what to do, near the front gate. I hopped out of the truck to help her. My youngest daughter sat in the truck with young Winston. He didn’t look healthy at all and his feet were terribly swollen. Linda was mending a section of the fence near the gate and we were finished in a moment. I ambled over to Jackie before loading up in the truck.
“Ya’ll kill any?” he asked with that sideways grin he always seemed to have.
“Killed one, missed one,” I answered as I glanced up at the little sandy blonde-haired girl half hanging out my driver’s window. The dog poked his head out beside hers. She rolled her eyes because she knew that was a jab at her for missing.
“Hey! I killed that other one though!” she retorted as I gave Jackie a wink…
“Yeah, Abs, you did!” I agreed.
Jackie just smiled at her and back at me, “That’s a great hunting partner you got there.”
“The best. Hey Abby, what do we say to Mr. Spears for letting us hunt?”
“Thank you Mister Jackie!” She shouted as he laughed and waved me off.
“You know you’re always welcome darlin’!” He grinned at her.
I asked him if I could pray with him about his health and we did. Then we stood around and talked about a whole lot of nothing for a while longer and cut up about being old. He informed me I was still young and only had more “fun stuff” to look forward to. It would be the last time I got a chance to talk to Jackie. Linda called me a couple weeks later, right after they had his funeral.
Twenty seven years go by way too fast. A lot of “firsts” happened on Jackie's lakes. Every one of my kids that ever went duck hunting with me, hunted in Mansfield for their first hunts. My brother, nephew, son, all three daughters, my dad, and my father-in-law. Lots of friends and their kids started right there. First of many types of ducks too. Mallards, Redheads, Ringnecks, Bluebills, Ruddy ducks, and Pintail were all killed there first. Adam’s kids, John’s kids and several other friends would hunt with us there. Jackie never did though. Drake lived fourteen years and hunted until he was thirteen. Mick, Big John’s dog, retrieved there for us as well. Then Woody, Drake’s grandson, and eventually Winston, Woody’s grandson, hunted with us there. Many youngsters were turned into duck hunters in the grass around those lakes. Even a Brazilian foreign exchange student, named Nico, had killed his first ducks there and then returned years later to hunt with Big John and me.
We fished and camped and pretty much had run of the place. Even had a cow head-butt my truck once driving out towards the gate. Not once did we ever leave a gate open. Not once did we ever leave a piece of trash. I left a boat there for everyone to use for about fifteen years. We put up wood duck boxes a couple of times and we built semi-permanent blinds for a few years. We froze our butts off there, got skunked a million times but more often than not, we came home with fare for the table of some kind. We always came home with a story to tell.
Linda had tried to keep the farm going but family land is family land. Jackie’s daughter’s deserved their inheritance and Linda wouldn’t stand in the way of that. She had gracefully given us to the end of the season.
Late January can be stinking cold. The grass was all covered in frost as we eased the truck down to the edge of the lake to unload. There was simply no way to count how many times I had performed this ritual in this very spot. I locked the trolling motor onto the back of the boat as Justin, the new kid, and Big John loaded decoys. We wanted to hunt the island one last time.
The little motor whirred to life as we pulled out of the tall grass and made our forty yard sprint across to the island. It was still easier than the walk we had to make two and a half decades before when we parked on the other side and walked to the island. As we pulled the boat behind the trees Winston hopped out and started his happy-go -lucky prance around the place. No one said it but it was in the forefront of all of our minds. That would be the last time we did that. Lots of firsts… but only one last time to do anything. Make them all count. Let them burn into your memory. The sights. The sounds. The smells. Let the small things count. Justin plopped goose decoys off to our left and I began to set some mallard dekes out front and to the right. Leaving a landing hole dead in front facing the east and the dam of the lake. Our headlamps danced around as we busied ourselves getting ready for our last hunt. Headlamps. They didn’t even exist when we first hunted the big lake, I thought to myself.
Friends had come and gone. Family members were grown, married and moved off. Kids had gotten too old and busy to want to be up at those kinds of hours on a Saturday. Dogs had lived good lives and died. If the sound of laughter made waves in the universe that never truly dissipated, there was a stream of waves that had their origin right there beyond imagination. I looked up into the inky black sky over that water, as I had done countless times before. The eastern horizon beginning to show a hint of light. I stood knee deep thirty yards from the bank on a gradual slope and slipped the last decoy from the Texas rigged D-ring. As I clipped the empty D-ring onto the hoop on the front of my my waders I thought, I don’t think I knew what a D-ring was when I first started hunting here. And my waders sure didn’t have special hoops to clip them to!
The great swan high in the sky overhead and the big dipper just above the trees to the south, watched me as I finished tweaking the decoy spread. The sky was so clear in the cold of winter, it amazed me. I thanked God for allowing me to have had this place for so long. Turning back toward the island I stubbed my toe on a small tree trunk that has almost put me in the water dozens of times. I never learned to avoid it. Again, I almost took a swim in the drink.
Winston waited for me on the bank and we all began to sit down and sort through our junk. I sipped coffee from an expensive insulated cup with a closing lid. These didn’t even exist when we first started hunting here. I thought to myself. I checked my pockets and my hand warmers were heating things up nicely. My thin walled, breathable waders were comfy and warm. Micro fleece long johns and alpaca wool socks were all I needed even though it was twenty two degrees. Big John had brushed up the blind and had our folding seats sitting right where they were supposed to be. Winston would be working from my left and I would be shooting my left handed, polymer stocked semi-auto twelve gauge. I changed out my gloves from the heavy, waterproof, decoy gloves to a lightweight, micro fleece shooting glove and tucked the big gloves down into their proper place in the backpack-style blind bag. I then adjusted the collar and hood on my Drake Jacket and settled into the left side of the blind to watch the sun come up. Drake clothing, I thought. Those boys were probably in diapers when we first hunted here.
There were no clouds that morning for the light to reflect from. The sun came onto the scene with brighter, more yellow light than normal. The pinks gave way to orange quickly that morning but none-the-less magnificent. It was 2022. I had been enjoying the sunrises at water’s edge for 34 years. Not a single one ever disappointed me. Glancing at my watch I heard them. Sip, sip, sip, sip, sip, sip… two minutes left, I thought.
“Boys,” I spoke up softly, “I don’t want to make it mushy, but I sure have enjoyed hunting this spot with you guys.”
“Awwwwww, here he goes Justin,” the Cleveland accent in full throttle, Big John chided me, “he’s gonna get all sentimental on us!”
Justin is the newest of the three of us, but had been around by that time, for 8 years. He chimed in, “Good Lord Tim, hang on…let me get some tissue outta my blind bag if you’re gonna start all that crap!”
We all laughed but everyone was thinking it, I just had the emotional fortitude to put it into words and I reminded them of that!
“Ohhh the big writer can get in touch with his feelings better than the rest of us!” John joked.
“Go do some math or something,” I kidded back.
We enjoyed a few more laughs at my expense. Ole Cleveland gets into his comedic routine and is pretty quick witted with funny, playful insults. We took shots back and forth for a few minutes as the sky lightened in front of us. Justin is a cop of sorts, so he makes an easier target for jokes than John. The banter went on and the laughter made the minutes slip by faster.
Then, off in the distance, it stopped us, dead-silent. The all too familiar, unmistakable sound we had come to hear.
“Geese!” Cleveland whispered coarsely. As if they could hear him from a thousand yards away.
“Thank you for letting us know, John,” I poked at him.
I reached for my goose call as did Justin, sitting on the opposite side of the blind. John settled in to be the play by play announcer, because God forbid him ever learning to blow a waterfowl call after twenty something years.
“Here goes nothing Winston,” I said to the dog on my left as I reached out to calm him with a gentle pat. He trembled with excitement.
Thank God, some things never change.