Calling all Squirrels in Section Five

 

So, here's the deal Lane and I worked out: He would operate the tin whistle squirrel call, and I would operate the .410 bolt action shotgun. It wouldn't have bothered me to switch roles, but at eight the gun's stock is too long for him, and I was afraid I might swallow the tin whistle.

Somebody had to drive us home and buy dinner along the way, about all I could handle anymore.

What's a kid for, if not to use? Teach them their value. Put them to work. Put them into wars. If they survive, put them into running the country before their acquired wisdom is overrun by their acquired cynicism. Turning oneself into a person is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

We were going to meet my old friend Jerry Ballard at his home atop what I call “Ballard Mountain” just north of Hominy at four o'clock in the afternoon for an evening squirrel hunt along the wild upper reaches of Pond Creek near where it empties into Hulah Lake.

Jerry was born a hundred years too late; maybe two hundred. He already lives so deep in the woods he kills an occasional rattler on the patio of his log home, and runs deer, coyotes, and bobcats out of his driveway all the time. He keeps two turkey gobblers penned behind the house just to hear them gobble. The turkeys live close to the coon dogs. What kind of man is that? My brother? Maybe yours, too.

Thirty plus years he has been fighting the “Insurance Wars” for Farm Bureau. Now, most of the time when I see him, he is looking down a long road somewhere not near here. Doing that, a couple of years back he found an obtuse-shaped little piece of property, maybe a hundred acres, that somehow the giant ranches surrounding it had overlooked; certainly not paid attention to. It came up for sale; Jerry was looking right at it in the county logs when it did, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I pointed out the Osage tribal casino water tower, and the Conner's Correctional Center observation tower, to Lane as we drove by them on the way to Jerry's house.

“I wish Bubba was there so we could visit him,” he said.

“Me, too,” I said.

We met Jerry in his drive, drank ice water in his kitchen, gathered and loaded gear into his truck, and headed for his retreat up on Pond Creek. He calls the place “Section Five” referring, I think, to its survey location. Remote? Think of a penny lost in a seldom visited corner of your biggest purse, girls, a penny you haven't seen in three years, and don’t even know is in there. That's Section Five. Where we want to be. The place where your cell phone shows no bars.

We split up at the fence separating private from government property behind Jerry's two room cabin with the nice metal roof, the outhouse that Jerry made good enough, he said, “to take to the state fair,” and dropped down into one of the biggest, darkest, creek bottoms up yonder in the Big Osage. The Pond Creek Bottoms. The Forest Primeval. Certainly, a place with no cell bars.

“I'm going this way. You guys go wherever you want. Meetcha' here at dark,” Jerry said, and then he and his scoped .22 disappeared into the deepest part of the deep, dark woods, the sound of swishing grass trailing along after him. I could have sworn I also heard mortal cares thudding to the ground all about him, but, then, sometimes I get carried away.   

I know why 10 and 11-year-old boys and girls win so many turkey calling contests without knowing diddly-squat about the actual hunting of turkeys, a sport they may never actually experience first-hand, in spite of all the trophies on the mantel. It's because a game call is a toy, and not a tool as is so often implied by the “experts.” A kid can pick up a toy and hand it back to the inventor five minutes later and know 10 times better how to operate it. Think, “Rubik's Cube.”

I could not make the squirrel call I bought at Atwood's some time ago work to my satisfaction. On the way to Jerry's, I handed it to Lane. The toy's technique was to produce sound by sucking air in over the teeth; not blowing air out. By the time we got to Hominy, he was making the device positively sing. We had to keep the truck's windows rolled up to keep the city squirrels from jumping inside with us.

Up yonder in the deep, dark woods, we could not have bought a squirrel with a fistful of $20 bills. If it was the land of no bars, it was also the place of no squirrels. A half-hour reconnoiter found one old deer stand, an abandoned feeder, but no food for squirrels. There were no fruiting mulberries, no budding cottonwoods, at least a month past that last, and we were a good two months away from the year's first fruiting hackberry trees. Squirrels have to eat. No food, no squirrels, no matter how good the country looks.

I kept Lane at the tin whistle anyway, tapping him on the head whenever I felt a sufficient passage of time had slipped by and we needed some more calling. He was up to the task. He called up dozens of birds, drawn like perch to chum by the strange chirping, squealing whistle of the little pipe, and I'll be danged if right at dark he didn't get a grey squirrel headed our way along an aerial highway from the southwest about fifty yards away.

I nudged Lane, and pointed at the squirrel coming towards us, which I shouldn't have done, but I wanted him to see the results of his efforts. I never saw it again, although Lane said he saw it run down the tree trunk while I was looking up into the top of the same tree. Sure: ships passing in the night.

We were standing at the fence when a lighter, smiling Jerry came swishing up out of the dark creek bottom. He said he hadn't seen one blessed squirrel, but that he had a good time. So did we, we said. Lane said he was hungry.

“Well, I'll tell you what,” I said, “you get the gates on the way out, and I'll get the dinner in Pawhuska.”

There were two gates to get, one that had to be locked; in the light of day, they did not look all that imposing. On the way in I had made Lane stand next to me and watch as I got them for Jerry. Now, it was dark; the wolves and panthers were about. Everybody knew that.

“I don't know how to get a gate, Papa.”

“Yes, you do. Just like I did them. Mr. Jerry will step on his brakes and make it light enough for you to see what you're doing. You can do it. Go on.”

He did it. And I bought dinner in town. What's a Papa for, if not to use?

Copyright © 2020 Conrad M. Vollertsen