On 'sidebar' hunting, fishing memories

Sometimes our strongest memories of hunting or fishing trips are not about the main event.  I call these sidebars – fringe benefits. The sidebar many be an unusual natural phenomenon, awesome scenery, an unusual person, or an object picked up.

Having made hundreds of hunting and fishing trips in my life I have experienced many unique sidebars.  In next few columns I will tell about some of these fringe benefits.

Last year my wife, Beth, and I enjoyed a great salmon fishing trip on the Talkeetna River in Alaska. We have fished on the Talkeetna many times. The jet boat ride up the river to Clear Creek is always exciting.  It’s really a neat sidebar to the fishing.  

The salmon fishing was fantastic. We caught many big Coho (silver) salmon, pink salmon and huge dog salmon. My arms ached at the end of each day.

But each day was overcast and rainy. No view of the great Denali (Mt. McKinley) was possible.

The mountain is about 60 miles from the Talkeetna River but on a clear day is visible and stands out like a great snow-capped monument. We had been blessed to see it several times on previous trips.

It was now time to drive back to Anchorage and catch our plane home.  As we drove out of the Talkeetna valley to higher ground I looked in the rear-view mirror and there it was.  Big as Dallas. Totally snow-capped and majestic. We pulled off the highway and absorbed the awesome sight. I can’t remember all the salmon we caught but the picture of that mountain is forever etched in my mind. It was an awesome sidebar.

Many years ago Dad and I was hunting squirrels in the Big Thicket. I was not a teenage, so I must have been on a visit home after Beth and I married. We always had great squirrel dogs and chasing cat squirrels in the Thicket was high adventure. When the dog treed we would run to him, shake a vine and when the squirrel blasted out of the tree we would commence shooting. But on this trip squirrels did not turn out to be the main event.

We heard hogs grunting and squealing far back in a swampy area. It was my first encounter with  wild feral hogs. Dad didn’t want to chase them so I traded my shotgun for Dad’s .22 Winchester semiautomatic  rifle. As I stalked the hogs, their squeals became louder and louder. Hogs have poor eyesight, so they didn’t see me approaching. I crawled to a big cypress and laid the rifle across a big root. I picked out a nice pig that looked to be about 80 pounds in weight.  I put the bead on his neck and squeezed the trigger.  He dropped in his tracks.  Hogs began to run in all directions.  I squeezed off a round at a huge running boar.  The little 40 grain bullet struck him just behind the shoulder.  He never even flinched.  Many years later, after killing many hogs, I knew why he had not dropped. Big hogs have thick, cartilage shields that cover their vitals. The little bullet never penetrated that shield. But we did have a nice hog to butcher and carry out in our hunting vests.

I don’t remember how many squirrels we killed that day but I can still hear that group of hogs squealing. Quite a sidebar.

Years before, Mom and Dad had a sidebar adventure with hogs.  They were hunting squirrels in the Thicket off of Pine Island Bayou.  They were trying to locate a squirrel in a tall tree when a group of razorbacks started harassing Mom.

“Glenn, what should I do?” she screamed. Laughing, Dad said, “Shoot ‘em”.  She pointed that little .22 rifle at a big porker and pulled the trigger. He dropped dead.

Dad shouted, “Let’s get out of here. I was just kidding.”

In those days there were no stock laws. Old forest nesters branded or notched the ears of their domestic hogs and turned them loose in the forest to fatten up on acorns.  Mom had killed someone’s hog. They got out of there pronto.

Why has that story been told in our family for so many years?  You could guess – the sidebar.