The Smell of the Hunt
By Mike Faulk

We first meet at a Ducks Unlimited Banquet in Queensport nearly twenty years ago. Fate seated my wife and me with T.C. and Skip – a father/son lawyer team from nearby Bronson City. Classic southern gentlemen they were - sharing my joy rather than showing jealousy - when the auctioneer called my name as the winner of the grand raffle prize, a Mercury outboard motor. T.C. was in his sixties and Chip was nearing forty. They were more than law partners, more than father and son. They were best hunting buddies and it showed in the twinkle common in both sets of eyes.

My initial evaluation was confirmed and re-confirmed many times over the next several years. We first shared a hunt on my little corner of the Holston River. T.C. was the fastest gun among us, sometimes discharging his often used Model 1100 before Skip or I could ever shoulder our weapons – let alone aim and fire. And he was deadly, too.

T.C. was great company with a thousand tales from the good old days of duck hunting on Currituck Sound on the North Carolina coast. It didn’t matter that the three of us were only able to scratch out one limit. “That’s why they call it hunting instead of killing,” he’d say.

Once my teen-aged son, Andy, and I traveled with T.C. and Skip 700 miles to Arkansas to experience the Duck Hunting capitol of the world. I wanted Andy to see first hand why I marvel at the sight of thousands of ducks in one place where you can actually hunt them. I wanted him to hear the raucous, near-deafening sound of hundreds of snow geese in a single flying-V. I wanted him to hear guides expertly persuade the ducks to choose our spread of decoys over all the other spreads. Mostly, I just wanted Andy to be with T.C. and Skip – to see the example of the way I’d choose our relationship to be thirty years from now.

Last year I cried. Skip called to say his dad was now legally blind and for the first time in his memory would not be going with Skip on their annual father/son excursion to Currituck Sound. But my tears vanished as pride welled up within me. Skip asked if I’d go with him to Currituck in his dad’s place. We’d hunt with their old guide of nearly a half-century, Bootie Caldwell. He has his own little setup – a pond of a couple of acres in the middle of the marsh. “It’ll be great,” Skip said, “always is.”

And it was. I learned first hand why T.C. became such a quick and accurate shot. The teal, bluebills, blacks, and cans that come screaming through the spread are on you in a heartbeat. More significantly, if you don’t shoot straight and true immediately, the downed bird ends up in the marsh – a retrieve too exhausting for most dogs and too exhausting for just about all humans.

Skip and I called T.C. to report on our success. The conversation was bitter, sweet for Skip. His tone of voice made it clear he missed his old hunting buddy from all those years. He chose his words carefully, too, not wanting his dad to suffer too much envy. His report, laced with the most descriptive adjectives I ever heard, included all the things we saw during our three-day hunt.

T.C.’s response, with an undertone of nostalgia that would break your heart, reminded Skip and me that we use all our senses when hunting – not just our sight – and that our next report should include what we heard and what we smelled. “Smelled?” Skip asked.

He reminded us how wonderful bacon smells cooking in a pan over a charcoal bucket, how the smell coming from a freshly opened thermos of hot coffee can warm you on the coldest day, how heavy the air smells just before the beginning of a big snowfall, and how recently burned gunpowder has a smell that makes the heart race as fast as it did just after that first kiss.

We cleaned our guns that night in the motel room before beginning our eight-hour return drive the next morning. As Skip cleaned the Model 1100, I noticed tears running down his face. He saw my stare and in self-defense simply said, “It has daddy’s smell.”

- published first in Tennessee Valley Outdoors 2001

Faulk's Cabin on Strum Island