SPORTS
Aging and the Outdoors
By Luke Clayton
This week let’s discuss a subject that directly affects all of us sooner or later- how to continue to enjoy our outdoor endeavors as we grow older. In my mid-seventies I feel qualified to share some experiences that might be beneficial to some of those who are a bit long in the tooth. If you are a whipper snapper in your prime, stick with me- the good Lord willing, you will someday be a ‘senior’ hunter, fisherman or outdoor enthusiasts and take my word for it, the years will fly by much faster than you think!
In my younger days, I had a great friend that was about 20 years my senior, Dubb Wallace. Dubb was in reasonably good shape and well into his seventies, he could continue to keep up with a bird dog on a qual hunt or paddle a Jon boat into a duck blind. He was still running heavy equipment into his mid-seventies. We hunted and fished together a great deal and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.
I watched Dubb from year to year as he began to walk slower and avoid obstacles that never slowed him down before. The change was subtle but noticeable. I recall sometimes attempting to push him on at the speed he was accustomed to but Dubb’s body and mind dictated how fast he should walk or how much weight to carry in his hunting pack. He began looking for shallow water to wade across creeks rather than ‘hopping’ across as he did in his younger years.
I learned to slow down to match his abilities and remember him saying, “Watch me closely my friend because one day you too will have to slow down, there’s no way around it.” I’m now where he was back then and I have come to fully appreciate what he was telling me!
Of course, there are health factors that cause us to slow down more quickly, we each have our own timeline and need to be attuned to what our body tells us. I have enjoyed good health my entire life. I lived the outdoors lifestyle of a surveyor in my younger days and after retiring from surveying at age 51, remained active in the outdoors with my career as an outdoors writer, radio show host and later became involved in outdoor television.
At age sixty a buddy asked me to begin outfitting archery elk and bear hunts with him in the mountains of northern Colorado. I was a bit hesitant but after a bit of prompting, I was all in and guided hunts for the next eight years. Outfitting high country hunts is much more than guiding hunters. It requires a lot of work planning meals, packing and making sure all the
necessities are on hand at camp. I thoroughly enjoyed these few weeks each September in the mountains but after several years, my wife made the comment that I didn’t seem to be as enthusiastic about heading to Colorado as in the beginning. She was absolutely correct, but I was so engrossed in the mechanics of getting ready and all the other necessary duties I shared with my partner in the business, I had tunnel vision and was very task oriented.
The last year I guided I could tell my drive had diminished and I was having to push myself hard. Oh, I would have been fine to hunt on my own, but a guide has responsibilities to his client to give one hundred percent and the price I was having to pay to do so was getting greater each year. I hired a younger friend to take my place the last year I was involved and I became the pick up man. I drove the vehicle as near as possible to the guide/hunters after an animal was taken.
The reason I’m telling you this is that there are a lot of changes that take place from age sixty to one’s mid seventies and it’s up to each of us to listen to our bodies and adjust our activities accordingly. When I was sixty, I guided guys several years my junior that were amazed that I could still hunt in the high altitude.
I continue to hunt and fish a lot! It’s a lifestyle that I have enjoyed for many years but I’ve devised ways to enjoy each outing in a somewhat ‘easier’ fashion. Just a few years ago, I thought nothing of packing back into the woods to hunt hogs at night over a corn feeder that I also had to carry in on my back. I carried a home made drag and would drag the porkers several hundred yards back to a trail or road I could access with my truck.
These days, I seem to kill just as many hogs but now I hunt the edge of the woods, areas where I can use my truck as a stand to hunt from. I hang a feeder from a stout tree limb from a chain and back my truck under to fill it with corn. Most of my hog hunting is at night using my ATN thermal scope and I hunt from the bed of my truck, from a comfortable swivel office chain. I have a cold iced tea handy and if mosquitoes are bad, fire up the Thermocell. Parked downwind from where I expect the hogs to appear, they can’t smell me and of course they can’t detect the truck in the dark. When I shoot one, I simply drive close and with the aid of the truck’s headlights, remove the four quarters and backstraps. No more loading the entire hog into the truck. Rather than stay up half the night butchering the hog, I put the quarters directly on ice during warm weather (I carry a 120 quart cooler with ice in the bed of the truck).
I no longer stay out fishing during the heat of the day. I much prefer to begin fishing at the break of day and be off the water by mid-morning during the warm weather months.
So if you too have become a bit long in the tooth, have heart! You can still do much of the things you’ve always done, you just need to devise ways to do them a bit slower and safer.
One last tip! I now hunt from the new see through ground blinds rather than perch myself high up in a tree stand. I’ve enjoyed just as much success and don’t have to worry about a fall that could possibly end my hunting career!
Listen to Luke’s weekly radio show/podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” just about everywhere podcasts are found.
This past week found your outdoor scribe doing some rather mundane things such as yard work, vegetable gardening and repairs around the old cabin. Oh, I also wrapped up a couple of magazine articles. I always enjoy sharing my adventures with all of you in this column but to be perfectly honest, not nearly as much as my ‘field work’ hunting and fishing which is an iatrical part of any good outdoor column. If you’re like me, you much prefer reading about an adventure that you can also partake.
I am far more comfortable telling you about an outdoor experience I had firsthand knowledge of rather than the reporting part of my job as an outdoor communicator. So, this week, I’d do a bit of ‘reporting’ and share some planned adventures I have scheduled for the next couple weeks. By the time you’re reading this, I will have already been in the woods in quest of a fat ‘eater’ hog and probably have some freshly caught blue catfish fillets in the freezer, details will follow in the next couple of weeks.
I’ll kick things off early in the week heading down to my friend Jeff Rice’s Buck and Bass Ranch located on the upper end of Lake Fork. Jeff produces our weekly TV show “A Sportsman’s Life” which airs on Carbon TV and YouTube. Our plan is to film a segment of our show on stalking wild hogs. It will be a challenge to capture the shot with all the thick grown spring vegetation. It could happen fast and require a fast shot. We will be breaking in my CVA Cascade scout rifle in 308 caliber. This short barrel little rifle is light and easy to handle in thick cover, ideal for this type of hunting. Our plan is to hit the woods during the last couple hours of daylight and ease along the trails, watching and especially listening for hogs. Wild porkers are vocal critters and it’s common to hear them before seeing them. We will play the wind and attempt to get downwind and then close the distance for a shot but you can never guess how a hog hunt will unfold. Wild pork or not, Jeff and I always have a great time together and I plan to bring a side of wild pork ribs already slow smoked and covered in brown sugar and BBQ sauce with a side of camp baked beans!
After a tasty dinner we plan to get a good night’s sleep and head out the next morning for a planned fishing trip with guide David Hanson at Lake Tawakoni. Both channel and blue catfish are on a very good bite right but it’s hard to pass up those snow white blue catfish fillets when the bite is good. David is, to my knowledge, the most veteran catfish guide on the lake and became friends close to a quarter-century ago when we first began fishing
together. The plan is to use freshy cut shad in shallow water and target eater size blues weighing between 2 and about 10 pounds but as every catfish angler knows, it’s always possible to connect with a big trophy size blue when fishing Tawakoni.
Next week, I plan to join my long-time friend J.C. McCollough on the Red River below the Texoma dam. I’ve been fishing and hunting with J.C. for many years and look forward to getting with him again. I would describe this to catching big catfish in a barrel but in this case the deep holes in the river are comprised of several acres. The water level in the river below Texoma are dictated by the water release at the dam by the Corp of Engineers. When there is a current in the river, fish move upstream to feed on baitfish coming through the dam. When the water recedes, they fish move into the deeper holes where baitfish also seek refuge from the falling water. Catching will be fast paced with the chance to connect with some big fish as well as limits of “eater” size fish. We’ll be rigging with big live gizzard shad fished weightless on a free line, using medium spinning gear. The bigger fish will often nail the frisky live shad and the fresh cut bait is a sure way to connect with lots of smaller fish. There is something very exciting about fishing big live baits on a slack line. One minute your bait will be darting around and you will occasionally feel it taking up slack and the next when a big blue catfish grabs the bait, the rod will bow and the fight will be on. There is usually no ‘setting the hook’, by the time you feel the fish, it will already be hooked and making a strong run to the nearest submerged brush. Your job will be to keep the drag set just enough to keep pressure on the fish but not so much as to cause the line to break.
J.C. uses his airboat to access these deeper holes because of the very shallow water. While it’s not impossible to portage a kayak or small boat in the river, it often requires a few miles travel to get to these deep holes, this is best accomplished by experienced kayakers with plenty of endurance. There was a time when I was game for this type fishing but I much prefer to do my river fishing these days from a boat designed to negotiate the shallow waters.
Squirrel season is underway in many of the east Texas counties and there’s some pretty good fox squirrel hunting here close to home in Kaufman county and I’ve been thinking about how tasty a big skillet of smothered squirrel with rice, gravy and biscuits would be. Bream are on the beds now and my friend Edgar Cotton invited me to come do some ‘perch jerking’ with him and his son David-it’s in the plans! Well, hopefully next week I will have a ‘sure nuff’ adventure of two to relate you you-I’m ready to get some relief from all this work around the homeplace! LC
You can contact Tawakoni/Fork catfish guide David Hanson at 902-268-7391. Contact J.C. McCollough at 580-372-0320.
Listen to Luke’s podcast, “Catfish Radio” just about everywhere podcast are found.
Facing state-ranked Tom Bean in the area round May 8, Nocona gave it its best shot but ultimately saw their season ended by the Tomcats in a 6-1 loss.
Nocona ended its year at 10-8-1 while Tom Bean moves on into the regional semifinal round at 22-1.
The Indians threatened in each of the first two innings. Landon Fatheree and Brody Langford each drew one out walks to the delight of a large Nocona fan base. It wasn’t to be as the next two hitters were retired.
Tom Bean took advantage by getting a run in the bottom of the first. The Indians prevente4d further damage with a double play to end the inning.
For further details, pick up a copy of Thursday’s Bowie News.
Bowie sophomore Brayden Willett and junior Tyler Richey will be competing May 14 at the State Track Meet.
Willett will be competing in the 1,600-meter run at 8:15 p.m. He finished 3rd in the Region 1-3A Meet May 2 in Abilene with a school record time of 4:21.93. He said he feels good heading into the state meet for the first time.
Willett runs both the 1,600 and 3,200-meter run for the Rabbits. He nearly made it in the 3,200-meter run as well but finished 4th. He said while he enjoys both races, the 1,600 is his favorite.
“It’s more my speed,” Willett said. “I thought to myself after the race that I finally made it.”
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