Wednesday, January 27, 2016

This & That

There are two employees who work here whom I have never met, but would certainly like to do so. Their names are " I don't Know" and "Not me". Whenever a piece of equipment goes missing or is damaged , I always ask who did this, and it's always one of those two guys mentioned above. I've never seen their names on a pay check, but they must be very active Riverview employees.

I'm often asked when I'm gong to write my memoirs of my career at Riverview, and my answer is always the same, " The statute of limitations has not run on all of the perpetrators yet". However, I have decided to share two stories this morning, one involving a guide and one involving guests.

I was sitting at my desk many years ago when a guide called me and asked if I could come pick up a dog of his. Before I continue with this story, please know that our guides go through an extensive training program before they are ever allowed to take paying guests out. This training program includes one month of class work, one month of field work, a two week apprenticeship riding with an experienced guide, and then he must pass a trial hunt. The trial hunt is always the owners or managers pretending to be paying guests, and we try to do everything wrong that we can do to see if our young man is ready. So now back to the story. I drove out to the course to pick up the dog, and the guide met me with his dog way back from the guests. The exchange went like this; " What's wrong with the dog", I said. To which he responded, " There is nothing wrong with the dog. I'm lost. I've ridden around this field three times, and can't find my way into my course, and the guests are getting suspicious". I pointed out a small  trail leading down a steep hill, and told him that he would find the Cabbage Patch hunting course opening up on him when he got to the bottom of the hill.

He let out a big sigh, and started back to the jeep with the dog, and I had to say," Whoa, Bubba, you told the guests that dog was sick; so I need to take him back with me". " But, that's one of my best dogs", he responded. I told him that he should have chosen a second stringer to drag with him, but that I had to have the dog. At any rate, he found his course, had a great hunt, the guests were happy, and never smelled a rat.

 The next story involves two gentlemen who had never seen a shotgun or a quail. Their company sent them down here to check us out. Why you would send two non-hunters to check out a hunting operation, I will never figure out. But, there are a lot of things that large companies do that make very little sense to me. We showed them our safety video, taught them how to shoot, and put them with our most experienced guide who had been forewarned that they didn't know a thing about quail hunting. Just before they climbed on the jeep, I added an admonition that I have rarely ever uttered to any guests. I very sternly said, " You listen carefully to the guide, do everything he says, and do everything he does".

Well, they returned three hours later. They had shot six boxes of shells, and had killed five birds. They were thrilled, but I could tell that my guide was about to bust wide open to share something. When they went back to their cottage, Wayne said, "Boss, they can't shoot a lick, but they sure can follow directions". I asked him to expound on that a bit. He told me that when he flushed the first covey of quail, he squatted to the ground to make himself a smaller target, and waited for the shots that never came. When he glanced to his left and right, both guys had hunkered down on the ground just like he was doing. I guess that " do what he does" might have been misconstrued a bit.

That's all for now, folks!

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Weather

One of my young friends who goes to church with me took me to task this past Sunday about writing so much about old age. That is easy for him to say since he's a specimen of a young man in the prime of his life. But, in deference to my young friend, I'm going to leave that subject alone for a while with one caveat; I want to quote my old friend and late, great Southern humorist, Lewis Grizzard, who wrote a book titled, "Elvis is dead and I don't feel so good myself anymore". I miss Lewis. He was a great satirical writer, and I have every book he ever wrote.

However, I will move on to the subject at hand, the weather. As I am writing this, I am watching what the weather channel is calling  a snow storm of epic proportions moving in on the Atlantic east coast. I hate that for you folks who live north of the " Smith &Wesson" line, but I will remind you that all of life is a trade off. We have the heat, humidity, and gnats in the summer, but we are looking at crisp, cold hunting days, and green grass at the moment. Should you desire to escape that white stuff for a few days, give us a call.

I have also been seeing some temperatures in the far northern part of the U.S. that have a minus in front of the numbers. I think that because we grow up in the south, our blood must be thinner than Yankees. I'm reasonably certain that I could not survive a negative temperature. Maybe that is how y'all won the "War of Northern Aggression" by making us rebels fight on cold ground. I bet our poor soldiers froze before they could mount their rifles.

In closing I will quote my old friend Lewis Grizzard again who spent one year in Chicago working for a newspaper up there. Lewis said," Chicago has two seasons--The Fourth of July and Winter". I'm glad that I live in the south, but please don't remind me of this comment in August.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Winter half of season

Well, Mother Nature finally decided that it was time for winter here. We spent Christmas Day here at an all time, record breaking high of 82 degrees. However, this week we finally had our first killing frost. As many of you know, I go to a little country church located in this community. There are actually a good many folks in my church who are older than me. I have asked all of them if they ever remembered a year that we went this late without a hard frost, and they all answered with a resounding,"NO".

Now some of you may not know this, but the toughest day of the hunting season for our bird dogs to pick up the scent of quail is about three days after the first killing frost. That is because that is the day that the grass and weeds that were killed by the frost begin to sour and stink. That smell tends to mask the scent of the quail for the dogs, and they have a tough time for that one day or possibly two. That day occurred here yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised with the number of coveys located, and the number of dead birds retrieved, but the guides all noticed it and commented on the problems the dogs were having.

Speaking of hunting, I have always found it interesting to hear the disparity in what the guests say about how many coveys they moved compared to what the guides say. I've often heard guests say that they didn't see very many birds.This situation almost always occurs when a group comes in with a very low bag limit. I usually just quietly ease over to that jeep, and count the empty boxes of shells. As best I can figure, these hunters must be shooting at a lot of sparrows and black birds during the hunt because there are a lot of empty shell boxes on the jeep not to have seen many quail.

I think that it is just human nature to want to blame our lack of shooting ability on anything except ourselves. Well, this week, I felt like Diogenes who went around searching for a truthful man. We had a guest come in from his hunt with a very small bag of quail. I was just waiting for it, but he got off the jeep and promptly said, " We saw tons of quail, had plenty of opportunities, the guide and dog work was superb, but we could not hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle". Eureka, an honest hunter !

In closing, I continue to watch the goings on in Washington with complete bafflement. Evidently, common sense is a flower that does not grow in everyone's garden !

Monday, January 11, 2016

Rambling thoughts

There is an old country music song that has a line I love which goes, " Life's a dance you learn as you go. Sometimes you lead, and sometimes you follow". I've always believed that we should never stop trying to learn. However, I have discovered as I get older, that I find myself following more often than leading. In this age of rapid technology advances I find that I have difficulty keeping up . As one of my friends so aptly stated," Cader, you are slowly coming into the 21st century about 16 years after the 20th century ended".

Some of the things I have learned in no particular order are: First, I was wrong to resist the switch to using these little English Cocker dogs for flushing and retrieving birds here. This has been a true game changer here. It has improved both the safety and quality of the hunts at Riverview.

I've learned that I only have to be away from Riverview for a couple of days to realize how beautiful these big piney woods, and moss draped oak trees are. I love to hear the sound of the wind blowing through the tops of the big pines.

I've learned that it is much easier to run an organization than watch one's son do it. However, I had a great role model in my father who would offer me advice, but never tried to snatch the baton back after it had been passed. I believe that I'm doing the same thing, but Pop never told me how hard that would be.

I've learned that there are truly no friends like old friends. While I have been blessed to have the best friends in the world, those with long histories seem to be the ones that both know and love you, warts and all.

I have learned that no matter how lousy my day has been or what my problems are, a smile, a kiss, and an "I love you,Papa" from one of my grandchildren make the problems fade away.
 And finally, this is not something that I have learned, but it is something that I have always known---Our guests are all successful people, and successful people are the easiest people in the world to deal with. I would not trade our guests for any group anywhere.
 Have a great 2016 everyone!

Monday, January 4, 2016

A New Year

Well, the last time that I stayed up until midnight on a New Year's Eve was the year of the famous Y2K. That was the year that the experts predicted that everything would quit working at midnight of the year 2000. I also made all of my adult children stay home, and they still remind me of how I ruined all of their plans on a night that turned out to be a dud.

It's difficult to believe that this is actually the year 2016. I thought that I would never get used to dating anything that did not begin in the 1900's, but now I think nothing of using the 2000's on my dates. I have never been one to make New Year's resolutions primarily because I never kept the few that I made in my younger years. However, after a couple of experiences in 2015, I have made one. I hereby resolve to never agree to serve on any committee again that has the word "search" or "special" in front of the name of the committee. Those bad boys eat up great gobs of time.

As all of you who read my blogs know how much I love dogs. I read two comments about dogs the other day that really struck a chord with me. The first one stated that no dog had ever truly loved a bad person. Dogs are such instinctive judges of character that I believe that has to be true. The second comment was just cute to me. It said that the reason that dogs were man's best friend is because they wag their tails rather than their tongues.

Everyone at Riverview joins me in wishing you and your families a healthy, happy New Year ! If you haven't come for a visit yet this season, give us a call.