THINGS I LEARNED FROM JACK THE DOG

Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.

When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.

When it's in your best interest, practice obedience.

Let others know when they've invaded your territory.

Take naps and stretch before rising.

Run, romp and play daily.

Eat with gusto and enthusiasm.

Be loyal.

Never pretend to be something you're not.

If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.

When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.

Thrive on attention and let people touch you.

Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.

On hot days, drink lots of water and lay under a shady tree.

When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.

No matter how often you're scolded, don't buy into the guilt thing and pout . . . run right back and make friends.

Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.

- 1997


(One-shot Jack, our black lab, dearly loved his trips to the island. He was one of my best friends - a consummate conversationalist. Jack departed this world Thanksgiving 1998 and is buried with his lifelong pen-mate, Julie, the Brittany spaniel, in sight of Faulk's Cabin on Strum Island)

Daybreak
Saturday, October 22, 2006
Holston River, eastern Hawkins County, Tennessee
As seen from the "Holston Hilton" on Mallard Island

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 6
“The Best Laid Plans”
By Mike Faulk

October 21, 2006

While the weather was a simply perfect for the third weekend of October, the hunting had been anything but perfect. As one might expect after a cloudless night with temperatures dipping into the mid-thirties, the river was shrouded in fog until late morning. There was no wind to move the fog about. The leaves were moist with morning dew so anything trying to move quietly through the woods could.

My morning hunting venue was the duck blind in the mouth of the sluice. From this perch three years before I observed - for only seconds - the biggest deer I had ever seen in the field. The rack was at least 12 points and the body was in the two hundred fifty pound range. It was a foggy morning such as this – but later in the fall. Could history repeat itself and give me a second chance at immortality? Of course not! I didn’t see a thing all morning.

Lunch at the cabin consisted of Shirley’s very fine homemade chili with Panola Pepper Company sauce. Having my doubts about the prospects for a successful afternoon, a rocking spell on the front porch seemed in order after the meal.

Having never rocked one rock, my attention was peaked by movement in my right peripheral vision. Sure enough, a doe was working her way toward me through the food plot of shade blend clovers situated just to the north of the cabin. Getting up or reaching for the bow was out of the question.

She reached the southern edge of the plot and turned north toward the river but behind the corded firewood. I grabbed the bow and eased to a position were I’d be able to get a shot when she crossed the six-foot wide trail between the cabin and the river. At least, that was my plan.

As she stopped just before crossing the trail, I drew the bow. The path she was on was almost exactly thirty yards from my place of concealment at the edge of the thicket surrounding the cabin. Centering the 30-yard pin in the trail, I waited. She did, too. The deer then made a ninety degree turn and traveled with the trail toward the river remaining protected by the box elders and wild vines that form a canopy.

Darting across the trail some eight to nine yards further away than expected, the deer presented herself for a shot for only an instant. I had to move the sights and release the arrow in the same motion to have any chance. It turns out I didn’t. The arrow passed low and just under her mid-section.

Note to self: Wasn’t it Steinbeck who said, “The best laid plans of mice and men go awry.”

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 7
“Caught With My Pants Down”
By Mike Faulk

October 22, 2006

We always eat well on Strum Island. Saturday night was no exception.

To canned green beans we added what Jack Frost hadn’t already claimed from the tomato cages. Fried green tomatoes were coated with the same meal mix we created for battering the North Dakota walleye that would serve as our main course. Sister-in-law Shirley blessed us by sending blackberry cobbler with Brother Loy.

About two hours into my good night’s sleep, acid reflux set in. I never really went fully back to sleep. Diarrhea hit at 4:00 a.m. It was a miserable night. The best resolution to this night was the coming of the next day.

In my role as the camp cook, I’m first up. Breakfast, consisting of piping hot coffee, fried bacon, and hot cakes was ready by 5:30 a.m. The morning faire did not help the gastronomical problems.

Foregoing the morning hunt and staying close to the cabin that morning was a good decision. Montezuma had his revenge over and over again.

By 11:30 a.m. it had been a couple of hours since I last occupied the throne so I decided to hunt out of the duck blind. It’s well stocked with potable water, stomach-friendly crackers, and toilet paper. Egress from it would also be much quicker than unbuckling from a harness and descending from a tree stand to nature’s outhouse. The seven minute walk wouldn’t be a problem even if the green apple quick-step attacked swiftly.

I made it to the river, down the bank, and the first three steps out into the river. From the island side, it’s only 35 yards to the toe head isle called “Mallard Island” where the duck blind called the Holston Hilton is situated. But wading across the river in hip waders is a slow process and climbing the bank up to the “Hilton” is strenuous.

Somewhere between Strum Island and the sluice the surrounds it, Montezuma and Cuervo got their revenge. There was no time. A log fall was conveniently above water for me to keep my compound bow out of the water. My pants wouldn’t come down very far because of the height of the waders. My attention having been diverted all morning from deer hunting to personal comfort issues, I immediately assumed the position.

There I was, answering nature’s clarion call, pants down, squatting with my buttocks not six inches off the water about three yards out into the Holston River looking down to be sure I didn’t get my pants wet. Satisfied I was close enough to avoid a big splash but far enough off the water to avoid soaking my clothing, I looked up.

Across the river approximately 105 yards away where a major trail comes off the Holston Army Ammunition Plant property, a doe was staring at me. Unsure of what she was seeing, she hesitated but then came out into the river.

When she moved between the remains of a fallen tree and the duck blind, I was able to reach back to the log that held my bow high and dry. I was standing now – pants not yet buttoned but held up at least as high as the tops of my waders. Shifting focus, I knocked my Easton arrow tipped with a 100 grain Muzzy broad head.

The deer emerged from between the obstacles and set a course perpendicular to the river bank that would take it to a point some 60 yards from where I stood. It would be a long shot and she would bust me if I moved a muscle while she was crossing.

But I got my chance when geese in the main channel honked. In the time she took to look to the west in the direct from which we were both surprised by the Canadas, I was able to draw the bow.

I raised the bow so the 45 yard site pin was on top her shoulder above the standard "kill zone", took a deep breath, and coaxed the trigger to release the arrow. It sailed directly underneath her body just behind the front legs. In a single leap, she reached the bank and was gone forever.

Note to self: you cannot set your feet the proper distance apart when you’re caught with your pants down in the middle of the river.

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 1
“The Muddy Truth”
By Mike Faulk

September 26, 2006

Since I had to miss opening morning, I was excited to get the time after church to enjoy an afternoon on Sturm Island. I chose the ladder stand near the largest food plot with a good view of one of the draws that funnels deer off the Holston Army Ammunition property to the river’s edge.

Nothing stirred until late afternoon. I was facing west with the food plot to my left. As usual the noise came from behind me. Now I could tell something of size was shuffling toward me from behind – right to left. It was close.


The arrow was already knocked and my release was attached. I might get a shot if I were able to do a 180 degree turn after the deer passed to my left.

I’d performed this maneuver many times before. Much like a ballerina, I’d need to rise to my toes on one foot and raise the ball of my other foot to do the pirouette.

Just as I arose, “clink”! It was the sound of mud that had been lodged in the treads of my boots hitting the mesh metal gird of the footstep of the ladder stand.

Just as Santa’s reindeer, the whitetail was “away in a flash”!

Note to self: make sure the mud in your boot treads is cleared out before mounting the tree stand.

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 2
“Don’t Count Your Chickens”
By Mike Faulk

September 29, 2006

I finished my workday early at 5pm so I could steal a couple of hours of hunting before dark. The ladder stand near Loy’s log was a promising location on this windless Wednesday afternoon.

Within minutes of climbing the ladder after having checked my boots for clinging mud, I saw in my left peripheral vision a deer silently approaching the stand some 30 yards away. My bow was hanging on a hook on the tree behind me and to my left. I was already wearing the release.

At about 25 yards trees obscured my vision and consequently the deer’s vision. Slowly I reached for and secured the bow. My arrow as already knocked. The deer did not see me retrieve the bow.


She was going to pass in front of me at 10-12 yards if her current course continued. At about 16 yards there was another tree separating us. When she moved behind it, I’d draw. The freezer was going to be full again!

At just the right moment, I put the release to the bowstring. Curses. The release didn’t immediately attach. I diverted my eyes and learned the release didn’t attach because it was closed – not open.

I pulled the trigger to open the release. Instead of smoothly and slowly pulling the trigger to open the release, I got in a hurry. I pulled the trigger just as if I were cutting loose an arrow.

“Click” in that distinctive metallic sound causes such a sickening feeling when a deer standing 15 yards away bolts.

Note to self: control your excitement, silently pull the release trigger, and “don’t count your chickens before they hatch”.

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 3
“Consistency is a Virtue”
By Mike Faulk

October 1, 2006

Hurrying to complete my chores Sunday afternoon might just get me into the woods in time to hunt a few hours this evening. I took the poke boat – shaped like a kayak but larger – to Strum Island. It’s much easier to handle than the Jon boat – especially so in low water, which makes trailering the Jon boat quite a chore in and of itself. The only drawback is ferrying a deer and me across the river in such a small craft.

It had been a month since I shot any arrows. My practice regimen had progressed nicely over the summer so I was confident on most any shot of 45 yards or less. But one loses arm strength as time passes. So, I thought I’d better take a few shots with some field points before mounting a tree stand.


My first shot at the full-bodied target was from 30 yards. It was precise – landing pretty close to dead center of the clearly marked vitals. I backed up to the 45-yard marker, aimed, and scored another hit within and inch of the first arrow. Since my third pin on the bow sight was set on 15 yards I thought I’d better check it, too. Sure enough, the arrow was within an inch of the other two. The three arrows were within an inch and one-half circle. Not bad.

I admit feeling both confidence and pride as I made my way to the stand hunting buddy Rick Hartley and I had erected just before the season began. It was on a well-used trail downriver a couple of hundred yards from the ladder stand that had not been so lucky for me.

At about 5:45pm my cell phone vibrated. I had remembered to disengage the ringer. Just as I felt the buzz in my chest pocket, I noticed a deer moving right-to-left at 55 yards. The deer moved into a saxophrage giving me time to check the call. It was Rick. “This call can wait,” I thought to myself.

The deer took a 90-degree turn down the trail I’d used to access this stand. Would she bust me because of my smell? I had also remembered to spray a little raccoon urine on my boot bottoms as a little cover scent. The deer kept coming.

There was time to attach the release – silently this time. The arrow was already in place in the whisker biscuit arrow tray and knocked. As the deer moved behind some brush at 30 yards I drew. There was an opening at 25 yards on the trail just in front of her.

The deer quartered into the line of fire giving me less of a shooting lane than anticipated. I put the 15-yard pin on her shoulder. It looked good. I took the obligatory calming breath and away went the arrow.

I missed low.

Seeing nothing else the rest of the evening, I dismounted the tree a little early to retrieve my errant arrow. I’d clean the dirt off the broadhead at the cabin and lament my missed shot on the 5-minute walk from stand to cabin.

As I put the cleaned arrow back into the quiver, I noticed for the first time the arrow that was most convenient in my quiver stuck out farther than the others. Maybe I didn’t seat it into the quiver as deeply as I should have. But no, it was fully seated.

Then I pulled it and another and then another from the quiver. Behold, the arrow I shot was an inch longer than the others in the quiver – and an inch longer than the arrows with field points I had shot only a couple of hours before in target practice!

Notes to self: make sure the target arrows with field points and the hunting arrows with broadheads weigh the same and are the same length, ignore Rick’s calls, and remember, “Pride goeth before the fall.”

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 4
“Friday the 13th”
By Mike Faulk

October 13, 2006

Friday the 13th couldn’t possibly be my lucky day deer hunting. It wasn’t.

Brother Loy and I arrived at the cabin about 1pm. We turned on the propane stove, hot water heater and space heaters. We filled the firewood box. We stowed the food for the weekend in the refrigerator. We made the beds. We did everything necessary while there was good daylight. We were ready to hunt by 3pm.

I choose the stand I’d hunted from last Sunday. It’s good especially in the afternoon because the descending western sunlight illuminates everything behind me. One can stand with the tree shielding him from anything coming onto the island from the river – a favorite course of direction for deer just before sunset.

My boots were clean. I had used scent abatement. I fired three practice arrows to double-check the pins on my bow-sight. All my arrows were the same length and weight.

When Rick and I erected this stand, we used his new laser range finder to mark 30-yard and 40-yard trees. We tried to find 30-yard and 40-yard trees that lined up with one another so we could easily gauge the distance on approaching deer without having to re-shoot the distance with the range finder. Plus, knowing a deer is within this arc adds a great deal of confidence in distancing deer.

Around 6pm I noticed two deer moving northward in the thicket that was in front of the stand to the west. Keeping my cap bill down so the sun wouldn’t illuminate my face, I watched the deer take the same 90-degree turn down the trail to the stand where I had missed the deer last weekend.

The bigger doe was in front and meandered down the trail past the 25-yard hole I’d shot through previously. I was calm, the bow was drawn, and all was ready when the deer stepped into a clean lane where the trail doglegs back underneath the tree holding my stand. She took a step off the trail toward the river. I knew she wouldn’t be coming directly under the stand.

It was now or never. I could see the 30-yard marker on a tree behind her. She was almost exactly half way between that 30-yard marker and me. I centered the 15-yard pin and fired. The deer jumped but ran only 10 yards away. She stood there! I waited for her to fall over. The other deer had taken off.

Then to my chagrin, the targeted deer started walking slowing away toward the tree with the thirty-yard marker. I had time to knock a second arrow. When she was about 5 yards from the tree with the red surveyor’s tape, I cut the second arrow loose.

My stomach fell as I watched the arrow fly just underneath her. This second intrusion was too much for the doe as she sped away.

“What this time?” I thought. I found the closer arrow right away. There was no apparent defect. “Surely it could not have been operator error”, I thought. Then as I looked for the second arrow, I saw the most recent error in my ways - the latest example of "messin' up."

The ribbon I used to distance my shot was masquerading as the 30-yard marker. As a little breeze kicked up, I saw through its well-conceived disguise. You see the true 30-yard ribbon waived at me from behind and to my left as I looked with disgust at what in reality was the 40-yard ribbon.

Note to self: If relying on markers rather than instinct, make sure you know what distance a ribbon marks.

MESSIN’ UP – Vol. I (2006) No. 5
“Within an Inch of My Life”
By Mike Faulk

October 14, 2006



While I hadn’t seen anything all morning, I was beside myself after hearing Brother Loy tell about seeing the biggest deer he’d ever seen in his life - in the field at least.

Loy is in his seventies. He’s hunted since Uncle Shag took him deer hunting as a teenager. He’s harvested deer in several states. He knows deer. A few years back he took a monster eight pointer on Strum Island. The deer field dressed at 207 pounds. Like I said, he knows deer - especially a big one.

His report at lunch described this granddaddy with foot-long tines and a rack that stood above the paw paw trees that separated him from a clear view of the riverbank and old Granddad. With the buck was a doe and two yearlings.

As you might imagine, I was excited to get back to my perch on the trail some 200 yards downstream from Loy’s ladder stand and - especially so - since I had heard commotion and splashing in the river shortly before coming to the cabin for lunch.

The stand I was hunting is in a multi-forked tree some 20 feet above the main north-south trail. My left foot was on the 3rd peg and I was pushing off that foot for the next step when it happened.

The folding step had been in the tree nearly 10 years and with the natural growth of the tree, the step was not at a 90-degree angle to the tree – it was more like 45 degrees. That old footstep came out of the tree as I pushed off. I was able to catch myself somewhat with my arms but my torso slammed into the tree. Unfortunately, my groin was impaled on another of the tree steps that was the same height as my waist. I had to use all the arm strength I could muster to lift myself off the impaling step. I fell some 5 to 6 feet to the ground landing on my buttocks.

My pants and boxers were ripped and there was blood already. After a quick inspection of the wound I knew I needed to get back to the cabin for help. Loy was still there finishing up the lunchtime dishes. The look on his face told me all I needed to know. Since there wasn’t a rush of blood down my leg, and because I hurt but wasn’t in unbearable pain, I thought the wound might be superficial and we could just clean up the injury site and I’d be fine. I was wrong.

My afternoon hunt was spent at the hospital where, one after the other, medical personnel each displayed the same look on his or her face that Loy did when he first saw the wound.

I am a lucky guy. I’ve always known it. The very good Lord watches over me even though I don’t deserve it. The wound was stitched up. I had previously received a tetanus injection. I’ll make a full recovery. The laceration missed my femoral artery by about an inch. My buttock’s is sore, but nothing broke. My pride was hurt. I'm not walking normally. But I'll live to hunt another day.

Note to self: be sure to pray more: "Thank you, Lord."

LUCKY IS BETTER THAN GOOD JUST ABOUT EVERY TIME

By Mike Faulk

Just as the weatherman said it would, the southwesterly wind started picking up in advance of an approaching cold front. There wasn’t much of a temperature drop but the trees began yielding their leaves making hearing the deer a task. Success this October morning on Strum Island in eastern Hawkins County would depend on keen eyesight and deer traveling northward upstream toward, instead of away from, the Holston Ordinance – a 5500 acre preserve unhunted this year due to restrictions imposed after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Fortunately, I heard what was most definitely not falling leaves. Out of my peripheral vision I saw movement on the ground sixty yards away between the tree stand and the river. At first, in the gray morning light on this densely forested island I thought the movement I saw was two or three fawn. They were too low to the ground to be full-grown deer.

My excitement grew when I realized my eyes had deceived me. Those weren’t fawn; instead they were a flock of 12-15 wild turkeys! Though it was deer season, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency granted special permission to hunt wild turkey simultaneous with the opening segment of bow season in seven counties throughout the state.

The flock moved slowly feeding its way toward a food plot of millet some 50 yards north of my location. While they were moving at an angle, their path would take them through an opening some twenty-five yards away for which I had a shooting lane.

While I am at best an average shot with my Fred Bear compound bow, a wild turkey at twenty-five yards wasn’t going to be easy but was within the realm of possibility. But, they were moving to a point where I could no longer see them without moving my whole body. The birds would have to reach the edge of a thicket before I could turn around or reach for the bow.

The pirouette used to pick up the bow, knock the arrow, and set my feet properly took what seemed like minutes. Having moved without warning these wary-eyed woodsmen, I thought I was set. Then I realized I wasn’t wearing my shooting glove [having never learned to use a release]. While trying to hold a bow and put a glove on the right hand with my servient left hand, the turkeys appeared in an opening on their way to what I hoped was the kill zone.

They were now only 30-35 yards away – not in the shooting lane – in an opening through which one might coax an arrow if absolutely necessary. All they had to do was travel 15 yards more through one other area of thicket and they’d be in striking distance.


Single file they entered the brush. As the leader of the single file line of turkeys neared the opening, I drew.

There was a huge commotion. Leaves dropped, wings flapped, birds clucked and my heart sank. I had spooked them with the unnatural noise from the draw of the bow. Instead of exiting the saxophrage into the area with the open shot, they reversed course to the other opening – the one I had told myself just wouldn’t do because of the distance and because of the limbs just waiting to knock my arrow off course.

But lady luck found her way to my perch. In an area of that opening the size of a freezer, three old hens lined up close to one another in single file in a perfectly straight line from me. From my angle eighteen feet up in the sycamore tree, it seemed like one large body with three heads.

Since I was deer hunting I had the range finder with me, but hadn’t shot this little opening due to all the intruding branches in between. My guess was 35 yards, but it might be 31 or 32 yards. I tend to overestimate distances. So, I held the 30-yard pin at the head of the middle bird and cut the aluminum arrow loose.

I sure wish there had been a videographer there to capture my luck on film. To put it mildly, the turkeys reacted to the arrow release. The nearest bird ran into the middle bird knocking it into the legs and feet of the third bird. But for it trying to lift off over the middle turkey, the arrow would have sailed high over its head. Instead, she took the arrow in the body just at the base of the neck.

I know it was a lucky shot. I also wished for a videographer for another reason. There was another aspect of my luck that should have been documented. Field dressing this bird was easier than most. I would just like someone to explain to me and to the rest of the turkey-hunting world how a single arrow can cause a turkey to lose so many feathers. This day “lucky” was so much better than “good’.

-First published November, 2001
Tennessee Valley Outdoors