Mustangs Rule
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2021
- Messages
- 840
A month ago, I lost one of the cornerstones of my life.
This loss was forecasted months earlier when my phone rang and Barrie began speaking erratically. She was loosing her great mind. I called her son. He confirmed that not only was her mind going, but so was her body.
She was 97, lean as a plank, had been fast walking for an hour everyday unless the weather was simply terrible. She died peacefully in her sleep. Her huge heart simply beat it’s last beat.
I met Barrie and her husband Steve in the fall of 1966.
Steve was my Botany professor during my first semester in college.
If there was an announcement bell when first meeting people who will be your friends forever, it would have been ringing loudly.
Steve was on the short side, very trim, and prone to sudden bursts of excitement when describing some nuance about a plant. His eyes would twinkle, and his words filled with respect came out faster than normal.
I did not want to be attending the state college where he taught.
Instead I wanted to be studying fish and game management at a school in the high west but could not afford the much higher tuition as a non-resident and to be honest, I did not have the grades.
During my first two years in high school I set records for tardiness and truancy until one day while playing hooky fishing, I saw a strange impression in the bedrock. I drew picture of it and showed it to my science teacher.
It was a dinosaur track.
At that moment I decided to become a biologist.
Despite my poor overall grades average, straight “A’s” for my last two years got me accepted into this state college on probation.
Looking back now, I was so lucky not to have gone to that Fish and Game factory school out west. Too easily I could have become another cookie cutter biologist, seeing wildlife as a cash crop and the environment as a “game animal factory” to be manipulated for maximum yield.
Instead I got a well rounded formal education and graduated without any debt.
Except for the athletes, most of the male students at my college seemed physically wimpy. They were products of cities and the suburbs.
I came from a small rural town with 26 dairy farms and my maternal grandfather owned one. I had been doing hard physical labor long before my first whiskers. The other side of my family were builders, and I began the carpentry trade helping my Dad build our home. Steve saw my hardiness and asked me work around his home.
It was modernistic and built right into a steep hillside just outside of the city where the taught. That was how I came to meet his wife Barrie and their kids.
I felled trees, cleared land, cut firewood, built outside stairs from railroad ties and constructed several outbuildings. All the things I learned to do on the farm and working with my dad.
At first their modern home and how they lived seemed weird. They had no TV. Surely they could afford one! There was no rec-room with a bar. Next, it was passive solar with it’s windows facing the winter sun all day long, but during the summer the sun rolled overhead.
Then what was really was weird, was how they saved their garbage in a pit and used it to grow food in their garden. Smelly!
Inside their walls were covered with his plant and wildlife photographs and they had so many books their house looked just like a library. Their new house was smallish but all needs were met
One wall was totally covered with photos of eastern white-tailed deer, many were grand bucks and in the corner was a collection of what seemed like every book written about Odocoileus Virginianus, but there were no big bucks on his walls. He knew more about deer than any man I ever met, yet he did not hunt!
That was when I asked him how he got so close to these magnificent animals. I will never forget his answer. “I just sit and wait for them to come to me”.
I took every class he taught. Botany 101, Field Natural History, and one honors class in which he offered his life’s knowledge about all Natural Processes, earth, sky and beyond.
Their home bordered a huge track of land owned by a water company. He had permission to access it, but no hunting, fishing or camping. During college, after graduation, even decades later when I visited , he would take me into that forest and share his knowledge. He never went into nature without a professional field journal. In waterproof ink, he took notes and drew sketches, even though he always had a camera.
He drew maps of the forest openings, named the plants there and timed just how much more sunlight specific openings got. This extra sunlight meant more photosynthesis and sugar production. He knew these sweet spots were magnets for deer.
Twice he drove out west in his vintage Chevy Suburban and photographed plants and classic western wildlife. Even with telephoto lenses, his shots were obviously taken at incredibly close range.
Again, he did not stalk them but simply waited for these animals to come to him, sure they had the highest probability of showing up where extra sunlight happened!
Steve was a master botanist, with advanced degrees from both Rutgers and Cornell Universities. So humble, he said his knowledge about plants and animals equaled that of a ten year old wild Native American.
He did have more technical knowledge about scientifically “why” things happened, but Native People once had far more working understandings about how things all connected. The word Ecology was baby butt new then. When he went out west he paid attention to areas getting more sunlight = more sugar.
Long after Steve died, I was hunting late season antler less elk on a private ranch in Utah.
I saw some plants known for a high sugar and protein content, that also had a natural antifreeze and could photosynthesize below freezing. I saw where those plants got that extra sunlight, so critical in the winter.
As soon as the sun goes down photosynthesis reverses and sugars fall back to less sweet and less nutritious compounds. If undisturbed the elk would come to these high sugar places a good hour before sunset to browse when these plants were still at their best.
Many hours before sunset I walked out, no driving, and was waiting for them to show up at these botanical sweet spots with my old Belgium Browning Safari 30-06 in my arms. It has the same fixed 3x scope on it as when I bought it used in 1970, for whopping $180. I had to make payments.
I figured in wind and made a little “nest” overlooking this sweet plant area. My longest shot at any elk ever has been well under 150 yards. I waited for them to come to me. I made “meat” with one shot.
On my grandfathers farm we always cut our hay in the late afternoon when sugar and nutrition were highest. We had to wait till the next day to dry and bale it, but we had hay our cows loved.
Steve died of Alzheimer’s' Disease. So sad, to see that great brain get frozen.
I have seen videos of seniors with this disease who, when listening to their favorite music of their youth, would suddenly “wake up” for awhile. That happened when Barrie took my calls and passed the phone to Steve.
She had me write his obituary. I recall my first sentence. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you describe a person who is an “11” ?
When I met Steve and Barrie, I was pretty rough around the edges. I loved my guns more than knowledge and had a bad case of “trigger itch” as a young hunter. Now, if my house was on fire and I could only grab one object, it would be my lifetime field journal.
I went from reading Jack O’Connor to the Olaus Murie while growing up under their influence. Steve and Barrie, were both non-hunters, not anti-hunters. They respected me as a hunter and encouraged me to hunt in ways that matched field natural history and always be a biologist first.
This I have done.
I will never shoot either the first or last cow elk. They are the book end keepers of herd knowledge. Now, that I know better, I will never again hunt with lead core bullets. The huge damage from lead fragments left behind from one lead core bullet in a gut pile is inexcusable. I never hunt for big horns or big antlers. Hunters always selecting out the best for centuries have weakened the gene pools of so many species. And yes, I value predators and have never shot a single one in my life. And there are many more hunting/outdoor ethics that I, with good cheer, abide by.
When I asked Barrie for some object that Steve loved, she sent me his favorite necktie, bright green. It is my “hunting tie”. I wear it with a Scottish Tweed wool jacket. Scottish tweed was the first camo clothing, with patterns to match the local heather.
Seven years ago when I was still a young lad of 70, I decided to move from the wild place where I lived, to the city. I wanted to end my science educator career teaching in one of the lowest performing schools. My specialty was teaching science by bringing the outdoors indoors and using nature as the medium to teach all the science standards.
The fall teaching schedule, wipes out being able to have any real long hunts.
There is no hunting season, merely a few hours here and there. I chose to spend them wisely.
I taught there for two years, and took a fine meat buck each fall when I was done with school at 3PM and it was dark by 6PM.
One day, I went home got my Browning rifle, drove a half hour to a place on public land that was overrun with hunters on the weekend.
Scouting earlier, I found a patch of a high sugar plant that got that very last long burst of full sunshine. It was 10 minutes from the parking lot. I was there by 4pm, sat invisible in my Scottish tweed wool sports coat and waited for them to come to me.
Two bucks came out to eat around 5pm. I shot the lesser one from 75 yards away.
When dressing him out, I took Steve’s green necktie off. I did not want it to get a single drop of blood on it.
This loss was forecasted months earlier when my phone rang and Barrie began speaking erratically. She was loosing her great mind. I called her son. He confirmed that not only was her mind going, but so was her body.
She was 97, lean as a plank, had been fast walking for an hour everyday unless the weather was simply terrible. She died peacefully in her sleep. Her huge heart simply beat it’s last beat.
I met Barrie and her husband Steve in the fall of 1966.
Steve was my Botany professor during my first semester in college.
If there was an announcement bell when first meeting people who will be your friends forever, it would have been ringing loudly.
Steve was on the short side, very trim, and prone to sudden bursts of excitement when describing some nuance about a plant. His eyes would twinkle, and his words filled with respect came out faster than normal.
I did not want to be attending the state college where he taught.
Instead I wanted to be studying fish and game management at a school in the high west but could not afford the much higher tuition as a non-resident and to be honest, I did not have the grades.
During my first two years in high school I set records for tardiness and truancy until one day while playing hooky fishing, I saw a strange impression in the bedrock. I drew picture of it and showed it to my science teacher.
It was a dinosaur track.
At that moment I decided to become a biologist.
Despite my poor overall grades average, straight “A’s” for my last two years got me accepted into this state college on probation.
Looking back now, I was so lucky not to have gone to that Fish and Game factory school out west. Too easily I could have become another cookie cutter biologist, seeing wildlife as a cash crop and the environment as a “game animal factory” to be manipulated for maximum yield.
Instead I got a well rounded formal education and graduated without any debt.
Except for the athletes, most of the male students at my college seemed physically wimpy. They were products of cities and the suburbs.
I came from a small rural town with 26 dairy farms and my maternal grandfather owned one. I had been doing hard physical labor long before my first whiskers. The other side of my family were builders, and I began the carpentry trade helping my Dad build our home. Steve saw my hardiness and asked me work around his home.
It was modernistic and built right into a steep hillside just outside of the city where the taught. That was how I came to meet his wife Barrie and their kids.
I felled trees, cleared land, cut firewood, built outside stairs from railroad ties and constructed several outbuildings. All the things I learned to do on the farm and working with my dad.
At first their modern home and how they lived seemed weird. They had no TV. Surely they could afford one! There was no rec-room with a bar. Next, it was passive solar with it’s windows facing the winter sun all day long, but during the summer the sun rolled overhead.
Then what was really was weird, was how they saved their garbage in a pit and used it to grow food in their garden. Smelly!
Inside their walls were covered with his plant and wildlife photographs and they had so many books their house looked just like a library. Their new house was smallish but all needs were met
One wall was totally covered with photos of eastern white-tailed deer, many were grand bucks and in the corner was a collection of what seemed like every book written about Odocoileus Virginianus, but there were no big bucks on his walls. He knew more about deer than any man I ever met, yet he did not hunt!
That was when I asked him how he got so close to these magnificent animals. I will never forget his answer. “I just sit and wait for them to come to me”.
I took every class he taught. Botany 101, Field Natural History, and one honors class in which he offered his life’s knowledge about all Natural Processes, earth, sky and beyond.
Their home bordered a huge track of land owned by a water company. He had permission to access it, but no hunting, fishing or camping. During college, after graduation, even decades later when I visited , he would take me into that forest and share his knowledge. He never went into nature without a professional field journal. In waterproof ink, he took notes and drew sketches, even though he always had a camera.
He drew maps of the forest openings, named the plants there and timed just how much more sunlight specific openings got. This extra sunlight meant more photosynthesis and sugar production. He knew these sweet spots were magnets for deer.
Twice he drove out west in his vintage Chevy Suburban and photographed plants and classic western wildlife. Even with telephoto lenses, his shots were obviously taken at incredibly close range.
Again, he did not stalk them but simply waited for these animals to come to him, sure they had the highest probability of showing up where extra sunlight happened!
Steve was a master botanist, with advanced degrees from both Rutgers and Cornell Universities. So humble, he said his knowledge about plants and animals equaled that of a ten year old wild Native American.
He did have more technical knowledge about scientifically “why” things happened, but Native People once had far more working understandings about how things all connected. The word Ecology was baby butt new then. When he went out west he paid attention to areas getting more sunlight = more sugar.
Long after Steve died, I was hunting late season antler less elk on a private ranch in Utah.
I saw some plants known for a high sugar and protein content, that also had a natural antifreeze and could photosynthesize below freezing. I saw where those plants got that extra sunlight, so critical in the winter.
As soon as the sun goes down photosynthesis reverses and sugars fall back to less sweet and less nutritious compounds. If undisturbed the elk would come to these high sugar places a good hour before sunset to browse when these plants were still at their best.
Many hours before sunset I walked out, no driving, and was waiting for them to show up at these botanical sweet spots with my old Belgium Browning Safari 30-06 in my arms. It has the same fixed 3x scope on it as when I bought it used in 1970, for whopping $180. I had to make payments.
I figured in wind and made a little “nest” overlooking this sweet plant area. My longest shot at any elk ever has been well under 150 yards. I waited for them to come to me. I made “meat” with one shot.
On my grandfathers farm we always cut our hay in the late afternoon when sugar and nutrition were highest. We had to wait till the next day to dry and bale it, but we had hay our cows loved.
Steve died of Alzheimer’s' Disease. So sad, to see that great brain get frozen.
I have seen videos of seniors with this disease who, when listening to their favorite music of their youth, would suddenly “wake up” for awhile. That happened when Barrie took my calls and passed the phone to Steve.
She had me write his obituary. I recall my first sentence. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you describe a person who is an “11” ?
When I met Steve and Barrie, I was pretty rough around the edges. I loved my guns more than knowledge and had a bad case of “trigger itch” as a young hunter. Now, if my house was on fire and I could only grab one object, it would be my lifetime field journal.
I went from reading Jack O’Connor to the Olaus Murie while growing up under their influence. Steve and Barrie, were both non-hunters, not anti-hunters. They respected me as a hunter and encouraged me to hunt in ways that matched field natural history and always be a biologist first.
This I have done.
I will never shoot either the first or last cow elk. They are the book end keepers of herd knowledge. Now, that I know better, I will never again hunt with lead core bullets. The huge damage from lead fragments left behind from one lead core bullet in a gut pile is inexcusable. I never hunt for big horns or big antlers. Hunters always selecting out the best for centuries have weakened the gene pools of so many species. And yes, I value predators and have never shot a single one in my life. And there are many more hunting/outdoor ethics that I, with good cheer, abide by.
When I asked Barrie for some object that Steve loved, she sent me his favorite necktie, bright green. It is my “hunting tie”. I wear it with a Scottish Tweed wool jacket. Scottish tweed was the first camo clothing, with patterns to match the local heather.
Seven years ago when I was still a young lad of 70, I decided to move from the wild place where I lived, to the city. I wanted to end my science educator career teaching in one of the lowest performing schools. My specialty was teaching science by bringing the outdoors indoors and using nature as the medium to teach all the science standards.
The fall teaching schedule, wipes out being able to have any real long hunts.
There is no hunting season, merely a few hours here and there. I chose to spend them wisely.
I taught there for two years, and took a fine meat buck each fall when I was done with school at 3PM and it was dark by 6PM.
One day, I went home got my Browning rifle, drove a half hour to a place on public land that was overrun with hunters on the weekend.
Scouting earlier, I found a patch of a high sugar plant that got that very last long burst of full sunshine. It was 10 minutes from the parking lot. I was there by 4pm, sat invisible in my Scottish tweed wool sports coat and waited for them to come to me.
Two bucks came out to eat around 5pm. I shot the lesser one from 75 yards away.
When dressing him out, I took Steve’s green necktie off. I did not want it to get a single drop of blood on it.
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