OCR Text |
Show Well, Ye 'ol Ed didn't get his buck this year. It's not the first time, and probably won't be the last. Saturday morning after we were able to pick up the mail we loaded the kids in the old station wagon, and headed out west. We had never been to Lund, so headed in that general gen-eral direction. o At Thermo, we cut into the mountains and traveled a'org until we reached the Wah Wah Range and then done our best to check out the deer, saw one li'tle old doe, and that was it. Later in the afternoon we continued on up the ridge and drove up to the top of Blande Mountain, then dropped down to the Pine Valley Road and journeyed on into Lund, then home. A .nice day, and beautiful beauti-ful trip. Neither the wife's or my mind was really on deer hunting hunt-ing Saturday, it was out in Washington at the funeral of her uncle and my old hunting pardner. Floyd Hamllik was 71 when he passed away last Thursday. For many years until un-til we moved to Milford, I spe.nt a couple of weeks of the hunting season with him in Eastern Washington, hunting chukars and pheasant, and at the same time keeping an eye open for deer. The seasons sea-sons run concurrent there and are regulated by location as to what you hunt. Floyd was ari avid sportsman, a fine fellow, he never married, but had the love of many neices and nephews, whom he treated like his very own. He was a fine gentleman, who will be missed by all who knew him. o We had.n't really planned to end our hunting with Saturday's Satur-day's hunt, or we would have gone at it a little different. But, when my eldest son, Steven. 10 rolled out at 5:00 . a.m. Sunday morning, and I looked out the window to the rain which was so common when we hunted on the Olympic Olym-pic peninsula, I coaxed him into in-to going back to bed. o Many an hour I've spent in the rain and snow, hunting deer or elk, or fishing for the wily steelhead or Chinook salmon. sal-mon. Out o.n the coast it was expected, you just dressed for it, and went anyway. That (rain) was one of the major reasons for our moving to the desert arid Milford. And, I was determined not to get soaked and miserable last Sunday. o I still have a pair of long wooly's, and all kinds of foul weather gear, but somehow, I don't believe that these Cedars which are the prevalent cover will be quite as good an umbrella um-brella as the huge red cedar, douglas fir, spruce and pine of the rain forest. You could hunt for hours in pouring rain under that giant umbrella and never have a drop hit you. Unfortunately, Un-fortunately, you nearly always al-ways got wet before you got into that heavy cover, besides the deer preferred the brushy new growth, that soaked you before you got three steps. Steelheading and salmon fishing provided no cover from the elements at all. Unless you did your fishing from one of the plunking shacks built along the rivers. I preferred to make a float trip, and no matter what the weather was like when you started, you were certain to get rained upon before be-fore you reached your destination. destina-tion. o I don't think I ever caught a salmon or steelhead when it wasn't raining I probably did" of course but it was a rarity. We thought you had to be miserable, before the fish would hit. That's why, so many took up plunking as their method of tackling the elusive, salmon and steelhead. They might spend the whole winter, landing one or two fish, but boy were they comfortable. com-fortable. o Several fellows would often go together and build them a fish shack originally they were lean-to's but, time and an affluent society made Continued on Page Six HERE'S MORE ABOUT JUST BETWEEN Continued from Page One them more luxurious. Few had front doors, because be-cause when your bell rang, you didn't want anyone standing stand-ing in the doorway, but aside from that I've seen them with all the luxuries of home, including, in-cluding, over t'iffed chairs, ice boxes, overstuffed with beer and all the niceties of a party. Always a huge stove, generally wood, but in some case butane for warming of the heart as well as a pot of coffee. Smoked salmon or steelhead, a delicacy in most circles, at $2.00 to $2.50 a pound in the store, was always present, and on a 'help yourself basis. o And, always there was congenial con-genial company. You say you don't like to "Niger Fish!" That's something else. |