Losing Stuff — Requiem for a Hat – Genesis9:2-4 Ministries

I was asked to join the pro staff of Heirloom Turkey Calls this year. Brian sent me a bunch of calls to try, and after bagging a good gobbler, I managed to lose one of the calls. It was one of his Single Barrel calls– easily the most beautiful call I’ve ever used — a turned wooden scratch pot with matching stained glass and a picture of a gobbler under the glass. I went back time and again to the spots where it could be, but it was not there. The good news is that the call was fantastic, and I got lots of good action out of it, and wrote some good copy on it, and Brian says he’ll forgive me. Still, it’s not the way I would have wanted to start a relationship.

I also managed to lose my hat. It was a Trebark boonie hat that I’d had for well over twenty years. If memory serves me correctly, I’ve never taken a turkey without it. I lost it on an unfamiliar hillside at the edge of our farm. I took it off for a moment, put it under my arm and forgot it was there. I scoured the hillside for a while until I heard a neighbor complaining to his buddy about the goof on the other hill that was walking around scaring all the turkeys. I figured it was time to leave.

We went back on the last day of season, and I had KYHillChick and Angus out helping. We found a coyote skull, and several turtle shells, but no hat.

The ArmyNavy Superstore in Gastonia, NC said they still had original Trebark hats in stock, but they called me later on in the week to tell me their inventory was wrong, and all they had were the new camo patterns. My new one is exactly the same style of hat, and I had some Trebark netting and made up a veil for it. It works the same. It might even be a better hat, but just can’t be the same.

Every March, returning to camp, I opened up the chest with all the turkey stuff in it, and there it would be on top of the gear. It had remain fairly new looking despite its years, because it only saw action for a couple of months each season. I’d bought it from the the surplus store down near Music Hall, back before I had ever seen a turkey in the wild. The guy behind the counter had gotten his buddy and they had both stared at my credit card for some time until I asked what was wrong. It seems that both of them remembered the name of the guy at the draft board who had inducted them. It was the same as mine. These two guys had remembered that name all those years and they were still bitter. Some guy with my last name had sent them both to Iwo Jima.

I told them that none of my relatives had served on a draft board, and that my Dad had been drafted a few months later from the same office down at Knowlton’s Corner, and that if he had seen a relative there, I am certain he would have remembered it, but that was not good enough and I got to hear what a dirty so-and-so that guy who shared my name had been, until I had enough and left with my brand new Trebark hat.

The veil had come from a roll of camo netting that they kept at Cincinnati Sports Headquarters. It was green with splotches– very old school, but this was still the fashion in the early 80’s. I bought a 2-foot piece and cut it in half for two veils– one for turkey season and one for deer season. I later found fancy Trebark netting. For a number of years I had an all-Trebark camo outfit for hunting, and when I started dating my first wife, I got us matching Trebark coveralls, hats, and the works. Trebark was the new magic camo back in those days. She hunted with me for several seasons early on.

I still have the coveralls. #2 son fits them just fine now. He is the spawn of my union to Satan, my first wife. Out of that bargain, I managed to produce a hunting buddy of the finest quality, so I did retrieve something of great value from that relationship. I consider myself lucky.

Most of the turkey gear made it out of the first marriage, and gradually was lost to the forest. I managed to lose the first wife in 1996. Unlike the other trappings, I did not leave her in the woods, but she turned out to be a sincere impediment to my turkey hunting. The Trebark gloves fell out of my pocket in 2003. All that was left from that kit was the hat.

I suppose that is just how it is to be a turkey hunter. You start out lusty and exuberant and full of fancy new gear and little by little it all gets lost to the woods, until you end up an old fart with an old shotgun and and old hat and a box call carried in a bread bag. All you have to show for it is a mantle full of trophies and a head full of memories. In time those too will be mingling with the mulch. For now, however, you can sip your coffee, listen to the chorus of snoring from the back rooms and and look at the mantle and know you haven’t done so bad.