Losing Stuff — Requiem for a Hat Pt II

Re: Losing Stuff — Requiem for a Hat

Postby Brian on Sat May 10, 2008 1:29 pm

Just a quik update in Bill’s losses. His call has been replaced or will be shortly. As soon as he gets his mail in the next day or so. AND they have told me that the forgetfullness will come and go, I just can’t rememebr where it goes to or I’d send it back myself….LOL
Brian Warner
Heirloom Turkey Calls
http://www.heirloomturkeycalls.com
Haughton, Louisiana
318-949-9008

Brian

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Re: Losing Stuff — Requiem for a Hat

Postby Toby Benoit on Sat May 10, 2008 3:19 pm
Great read there Bill! I enjoyed it; not that I’m finding humor in your loss, but I’ve been in those same shoes a time or two.

I’ve lost many items of little or no value that were easily replaceable, but I have lost two pieces of treasure that I still feel their loss immensely. One was a pocket knife my Dad gave me. It wasn’t much of a knife as knives go, but that little Schrade Trapper model had been in his front left pocket for about thirty years before it came to reside in mine after one of those special moments a son and father share near a campfire. I had it only a year before losing it somewhere in the Ocala National Forest. I searched, but to no avail. It’s lost to the wilderness.

The other was a hand made “Boat Paddle” box call made entirely from butternut wood. Dick Kirby had made it himself and used it on a hunt on the Carlton Ranch down in Hardee County, Fl. Old Dennis Carlton and I had been friends for years and knowing my love of turkey hunting, he invited me out to meet and visit with Dick Kirby, who was hunting on the ranch for a week filming hunts for a video he released called, “Gobblin’ Fever”. Dick was a great guy, just loaded with stories and advise and he was a true Christian Gentleman. I’ve hunted with Dick since then and have found him to be an absolute treasure of a man.

On that first meeting however, Dick had killed a nice gobbler that morning and was using his boat paddle call to demonstrate how he cutt and purred to break that gobbler out of strut and reel him in close enough for a shot. I admired the call (it was a beauty), so he handed it to me and wished me luck with it. I had him sign it later and I absolutely hate the fact that it’s now mingled amongst the litter on forest floor of the Upper Hillsboro Wildlife Management Area in Pasco County, Fl.

Yep, I feel your pain. The good news is, Shaman, I know where you can find a nudder of them fancy single barrel’s. But then, Brian’s already on it. 😀

By the way, check your PM’s!

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Re: Losing Stuff — Requiem for a Hat

Postby scott wilson on Sat May 10, 2008 6:36 pm
Bill,I think they are making the original trebark camo again. Not that you can ever replace something like that. I pulled up another tab on the ole browser and googled trebark. Outfitter Tough is making it again but all they show right now is ball caps. I’ll keep an eye peeled for a trebark boonie for you. 😯

scott wilson

Posts: 215
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:22 pm
Location: Podunk, WV
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Re: Losing Stuff — Requiem for a Hat

Postby shaman on Sun May 11, 2008 3:21 pm
Thanks Brian. The calls came yesterday, but I didn’t go to the mailbox until this morning. Awesome.

Toby, it’s okay for you to find humor in my loss. That’s why God put us here only to have misfortune. Without it, there would be no material for the comedians. If I didn’t want people to laugh, I wouldn’t have posted it.

Which brings me to Scott. Don’t worry, It was a cheap hat, and if I’d lost it on the first trip, it would not have been such a story. That’s why I generally buy cheap stuff for hunting– It’s so much easier to lose. In fact, the Double Barrel call that Brian sent me was probably the single most expensive turkey hunting implement I’ve ever owned. Making a 9-dollar hat last 20-some years was pleasure enough. The new one cost the same, and it’s probably a better hat. The shipping made it cost double, but I would have spent that on gas looking for a good surplus store. All my old favorite haunts have faded like bad Korean camo T-shirts.

No, the Good Lord put cheap turkey hats and butternut boat paddles and all this other stuff in our hands to teach one lesson: it will all be lost in the end. Whatever is in your vest will be eventually gone. It can last one day in the field, or last twenty years, but it will all pass away. What makes it all the more poignant for me was that I lost it on a day that saw me out chasing a turkey that turned out to be off my property. They were also being called by another hunter that was on still a third parcel– hunting a bit close to my line, I might add. I was not mindful that morning– I strayed too close to my own back corner, because the turkeys that I usually hunt were quiet, and I thought I’d go check out a new spot. Who knows, I managed to get between a hunter and his gobbler. There was probably 300 yards between them, and I was in the center, but it’s still a place I don’t want to be. If I hadn’t lost my hat, I could have ended up with a face full of #4. That all dawned on me long after the hat was gone and I was walking back towards the center of my property. I’d gladly trade a 20-year hat for getting out of that scrape before it happened. The stupid part was the hubris that sent me to that back corner in the first place. I always leave that hillside and a couple others as a buffer. None of us hunt there, because we can never be sure who will be on the other side. As it was, that gobbler was the one that gobbled all season, but never came to anyone’s call. I heard him on Sunday afternoon, the last day of season, calling from the same piece of bottom I’d found him on with Moose on Opening Day.

Hats go. Sunrises go. Lives go– too precious to spend too much time on a $9 hat. Still, it makes for a good story after the season is over and it’s raining too hard to go fishing.
Genesis 9:2-4 Ministries of Bracken County, KY

shaman

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