Daddies are for Making Memories: Father's Day Reflections

We dearly loved to grouse hunt. Initially, at least, it was the challenge that made their pursuit so enjoyable.

The first challenge in grouse hunting is reaching their habitat. Thick, tough under-over growth is their home. In east Tennessee’s mountains, grouse hunting dictates climbing – lots of climbing. Burning thighs at the end of the day are a guarantee.

Nor is grouse hunting for the faint of heart. Flushed grouse don’t just take off. Rather, they explode from low-lying brush in which they hide with a force and sound rarely experienced by bird hunters. There is anticipation when a good dog points a grouse. Yet even with that early warning, the startle from this wary creature’s launch skyward is unavoidable. To this day I marvel at how a grouse instinctively flies out of the woods never giving a hunter a clear shot through the trees.

A single grouse in the pouch of one’s hunting vest symbolizes a good day. Two grouse constitute a great day.

There were other reasons grouse hunting had our affection. Neither of us could name a meal we’d rather eat than baked grouse, gravy and dressing.

The Tennessee hunting season on these primo birds runs from mid-October to the end of February. Rarely did we ever hunt them until the leaves were off the trees in late October. Grouse hunting helped Dad get in shape for the coming rifle season for deer. In those days, successful deer hunting also meant lots of climbing in east Tennessee’s high country.

When I went of to college at the University of Tennessee at Martin in the early 1970’s, my fall hunting was limited to duck. The season opened about the same week as fall quarter finals. Before coming home to east Tennessee for Christmas break, I would take a few days to hunt with my college mates on Reelfoot Lake, on the Mississippi River, or on the Tennessee River and its tributaries in rural west Tennessee. But Dad and I continued to get in a grouse hunt during those holiday breaks.

From college it was off to graduate school and then law school in Memphis. There was more duck hunting in west Tennessee and Arkansas but less time at home in east Tennessee for grouse hunting with Dad. As my law practice was beginning in Memphis in the early 1980’s, this trend continued so there were fewer and fewer opportunities for a grouse hunt with Dad.

Slipping away for a weekend grouse hunt in east Tennessee in February was a great way to stay in the field after duck season had ended in late January I thought; but
this particular February was different. Both of us knew he was suffering from prostrate cancer. Ostensibly, I was making the trip home to grouse hunt with Dad. Privately, I knew I was making the trip to just be with my dying father.

I had no idea how badly he hurt. Then I wouldn’t. Some accused him of being overly private. In all our years, it was the rarest of moments when Dad would share with me one of his emotions or, even rarer, how he felt from a physical standpoint. In the whole of his life, it was never about him. My imagination can’t conceive of a more selfless man.

As usual, he didn’t say much during the half hour drive from our home in Church Hill to the farm where mom grew up in War Valley. But, he didn’t have to say much that day. The trip was heavy-laden with fond memories he had made for me. Down Goshen Valley a ways we passed the old pear tree were I helped him gather overly ripe fruit for making pear butter as we squirrel hunted. Just a bit further down the road we saw the briar thicket where we flushed rabbits in the winter and picked blackberries in the summer. Blackberry cobblers were his favorite dessert.

We turned off of Beech Creek Road at the dam for Mowl’s mill, the place where, to Dad’s delight, I caught my first fish some twenty-five years earlier. One mile up the graveled road, we turned at the old spring house where, after milking, the raw milk was stored in old milk cans awaiting retrieval by the dairy company.

When Dad suggested I climb the ridge alone, I had my first hint as to how much he hurt. He could always walk my legs off traversing those ridges as we hunted together. Under his new strategy, he would wait until I got to the top of the ridge, then he would walk parallel to me along the hollow as I walked the ridge top in the same direction. If I flushed a bird downhill, as grouse are prone to do, we might both get a shot.

Sure enough, I flushed a bird emptying all three rounds at the grouse as it dove down hill toward the hollow. He didn’t shoot but I heard Dad yelling. Though in my late twenties, I felt boyish-pride for having succeeded with my father watching. I just knew I had bagged a coveted ruffed grouse.

Was I ever wrong! Even in his weaken condition, Dad had moved farther ahead of me than anticipated and was peppered by the birdshot from one of the rounds I fired. While he wasn’t injured, he used the incident to once again teach his cardinal rule of hunting – “there is no substitute for safety first; no matter what!” His role as my teacher never ended.

Neither of us killed a grouse that day. But our day reminded me time and time again what a profound influence he had been in my life.

Daddies are for making memories. As it turns out, that hunt some twenty-seven years ago was the most memorable hunt we ever had. It was our last.

First published in Midwest Outdoors June, 2009