Baker's Branch

  We’re snowbound out here on Baker’s Branch. It’s alright. We have stocked, both in the freezer and the pantry, more food than we could eat up in twenty-five blizzards; a good deal of it wild game and fish. I found a turkey breast snuggled in under some crappie fillets while looking for a deer backstrap yesterday. I pulled out the turkey breast and four plucked gadwalls, and weighed the options in my hand. It was an easy choice. I took both in the house to thaw, one to be eaten tomorrow, the other the day after. I know, I know. What about the crappie fillets, the backstrap, right? It was an embarrassment of riches. There’s this big difference between thawing out meat produced by your own efforts, and that by the local supermarket: You never think about the weather you found along Aisle “J” the day you pushed the cart there, or whether or not you smelled the oak woods there after a rain passing through, or the color of the sky just above the checkout counter around sundown. I...

  I swear, weather changes move me in the middle of the night just the way they do critters in the woods. My company, I fear, is no longer suitable for mixed gatherings. Pam has as much said so. She is on me all the time to cut my hair, shave (I hate it), and to change my clothes (underwear included) at least once every five days. It’s not fun. My own dogs bark at me whenever I do any of those things. Incredibly, I received a round of applause one day this past week after having delivered a little talk on women’s use of guns for protection to a garden party gathering of the same. I mentioned the applause to Pam later in way of justifying my rough and rowdy ways not being an interference in my delivery of one liners, one of which was, “When seconds count, the police will be there in minutes,” which seemed to strike a chord. She said it had nothing to do with clever speech, but that all women, the world ‘round, knew when a man had made a special attempt at cleaning up his perso...

Here at the transition from one season to another, we need to talk a little about the proper role of kids in the out of doors. Where and when, exactly, should a hunter or fisherman feel comfortable taking their children when camping, hunting, or fishing? Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere, anywhere, anytime. No child left behind. If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for them. Everybody should be eating out of the same pork and beans can together. There should be pictures of it: One can, five spoons, five grinning faces. You wouldn't think the subject would even be an issue, but the truth is the nation is raising a swarm of pansies that don't know the red end of a wooden match from a tent peg. There are millions of Moms scattered all over this land that are not satisfied with air-conditioned summer camps unless they come equipped with one camp counselor for every three kids. I was put to thinking about this the other night when our daughter, Sarah, gave her...

Growing up on a farm in Nebraska during the 1920’s and 30s, my father hunted rabbits with a house cat named Lucky. The way it worked was, Dad would pick Lucky up in his arms when the chores were done near dark and head out for the corn cribs and wheat bins stationed along the edges of Pop’s homeplace away from the house. That was where the weeds grew thick and shaggy because the plow and disc could not reach the ground because of the aforementioned tin granaries. Shaggy weed growth also grew snow drifts late in the winter when the wind blew, and if you could jump a rabbit from alongside one of those granaries, then Lucky had a shot. Well, so to speak. The rabbits, there because of their love of the leaking corn and wheat, and the dense cover provided by the weed growth, would be impeded somewhat by the drifts when jumped from their forms where they huddled next to the granaries. It would be the wildest lie to suggest, even, that Lucky nailed every rabbit flushed. By Dad’s own calcu...