A Different Experience

OPEN SEASON | by TF&G Humor Editor REAVIS Z. WORTHAM

 

 

WITH HER HANDS ON BOTH HIPS in the back forty of our Lamar County place, the War Department stared upward at the 55-gallon barrel feeder sitting a hundred yards from our deer stand. “It’s awful rusty.”

“Willie helped me put it up when we got the place.”

“It hasn’t been here long enough to get this rusty.”

“It’s really old, but I was trying to save money, instead of buying another one.”

“So you bought an expensive motor instead.”

Wrong Willie and I would have spent half an hour going back and forth over that subject, but with her, I had no defense. “Not the same thing.”

He and I usually put up and fill feeders before deer season, but he’d been tasked with helping with grandkids for the past several weeks, so it was the War Department at my side. I quickly learned she does things differently than the Hunting Club membership when it comes to outdoor projects.

She pointed at the ladder she’d insisted on bringing. “I’ll hold it steady while you get the lid off.”

“When it’s me and Willie, I usually stand on the top edge of the four-wheeler, or maybe balance on the edge of the truck bed. He stands over there and waits for me to fall so he can laugh.”

“That’s too dangerous.”

“That’s why he’s always ready.”

“Use the ladder.”

“It’s heavy.”

She put those hands back on her hips and I sighed. “We have to take the feeder down, anyway. There’s rotten corn in the drop funnel, so it needs to be cleaned out.”

“How do we do that?”

“I tilt it up, get on the back side and we let the barrel down.”

“It’s ten feet up.”

“Yep.”

“That’s dangerous. You could drop it on yourself.”

“Willie and I have never had one fall on me.”

“You’d put him under the barrel.”

“See?”

She neglected to comment any further, ending that possible fun exchange.

We tilted it, eventually getting the assembly on the ground without damaging anything, including myself. When I took the cover off, the interior was filled with half a bushel of wet, black, rotting corn that smelled like a feed lot.

I waited for the War Department’s comments at the stench that would gag a buzzard off a tub of guts, but she just wandered away to find something else to do. If Willie had been there, the air would have turned blue with choice words about how horrible and nasty the job was.

He’d have complained that we should have cleaned it out earlier, that deer hunting wasn’t worth it, that he wished he brought a rifle to shoot the barrel and put the inanimate object out of its misery so we could go buy another, despite that he’s tight as Dick’s hatband with money.

Instead, she stayed upwind, cleaning out the shooting lane with a machete and small hand ax.

I finished dragging out the sopping mess that plopped on the ground with the sound of a calf with the scours. She came back. “Don’t step in that.”

We blinked at each other for a moment.

I waited for something descriptive, but there was only silence as she pondered her husband’s blank expression. In my head, I heard Willie talk about cow flop and how it reminded him of sometime in the past when he got it on his feet and tracked it into our deer camp, or the camper, or the pop-up trailer, and we had to smell it all night long.

Nothing.

It was abnormally hot that day and sweat soaked my shirt and poured off my forehead, getting into my eyes. “Why are we always doing this out in the sun!!!???”

My logical wife felt she needed to explain. “Well, you said that the feeder needed to be out in the open so we could see the deer and hogs coming in. It wouldn’t have been so hot if we’d put it down there in the shade.”

Now it was my turn to explain. “It’s harder to hit a deer in the shade, because they just suddenly appear and disappear, and we’d have to clear out a space in those trees that would block the shots.”

“You didn’t kill either one last year anyway.”

Sigh. Willie would have commented that yep, it was hot, but it’d cool down after dark and we’d feel better with adult beverages.

There were a couple of holes in the side of the barrel, so I ran big screws in there to fill them. The bottom edge was rusted bad, and that’s where rain had leaked in for several months to rot the corn. Like a true outdoorsman, I used a piece of tin, some silicone from an almost dried up tube, and four screws to apply a patch.

Looking like a cartoon version of a deer hunter’s nightmare, it reminded me of Wrong Willie’s hunting clothes, and I smiled. “Okay, let’s stand it up.”

“How?”

“Pick up the barrel, walk down the two legs, and you stick that third one on as I balance it.”

“That sounds like a disaster.” The look on her face told me that if I gave her half an hour, she’d figured out a better way. Nevertheless, it went up with a minimum of female frustration and I anchored the legs.

“I have to adjust the level on this motor so it won’t throw out too much corn. Willie always complains about the volume when I set it.”

She peered upward, watching. I tightened the set screw and set off the test button. Corn flew everywhere, but there was no cussing, because Willie wasn’t there to get hit in the forehead.

“I think we need to throw more,” she said.

Love filled my heart! She’d taken up the torch and now we could have some back and forth banter, some witty repartee, some fun at complaining at how we wished we did something else other than hunt and fish.

“I want to attract the deer, not fatten them up.”

“Suit yourself.” She went silent and took a seat on the four-wheeler to watch the sun go down while I finished up, vowing to call Willie when we got home and chew him out for not being there.

 

 

Email Reavis Wortham at ContactUs@fishgame.com