Ron Ellis - Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

OF WOODS & WATERS

OF Woods & Waters

A KENTUCKY OUTDOORS READER

EDITED BY Ron Ellis

FOREWORD BY Nick Lyons

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copyright 2005 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 405084008 www.kentuckypress.com

09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Of woods and waters : a Kentucky outdoors reader / edited by Ron Ellis ; foreword by Nick Lyons.

p. cm.

A collection of reprints of writings and poems originally published from 1889 to 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (p.)andindex.

ISBN 08131-23739 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Natural historyKentucky. 2. Outdoor lifeKentuckyAnecdotes. 3. Outdoor lifeKentuckyFiction.

I. Ellis, Ron, 1949

QH 105.K4034 2005

508.769dc22

2005015813

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Design and typesetting by Julie Allred, BW&A Books, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of American University Presses

For Jim Pruett

who believed in the dream and opened the door

In Memoriam
Adolph Leo Thelen (19102005)

Father-in-law, friend, fisherman

Margery Thomas Rouse (19202005)

Teacher, colleague, friend

Hed lived for woods and waters in those days, he and his buddies, passionate hunters and fishermen Unable to say it, still hed known that certain things were beautiful.

Jim Wayne Miller, His First, Best Country

CONTENTS

by Nick Lyons

by Ron Ellis

John James Audubon,

Dave Baker.

Wendell Berry,

Garnett C. Brown Jr.,

Walter L. Cato Jr.,

Harry M. Caudill,

Dr. Thomas D. Clark,

Soc Clay,

David Dick and Eulalie C. Dick,

Joe Tom Erwin,

Dick Farmer,

Sidney Saylor Farr,

John Fox Jr.,

W.D. Bill Gaither,

Gary Garth,

Janice Holt Giles,

James A. Henshall, MD,

Silas House,

Harlan Hubbard,

Barbara Kingsolver,

Art Lander Jr.,

George Lusby,

Bobbie Ann Mason,

Chad Mason,

Frank F. Mathias,

John E. Murphy,

Thomas D. Schiffer.,

Dave Mudcat Shuffett,

Stephen M. Vest,

John Wilson,

Stephen M. Wrinn,

Harriette Arnow,

Wendell Berry,

Sam Bevard,

Billy C. Clark,

Gaylord Cooper,

Ron Ellis,

William E. Ellis,

Caroline Gordon,

George Ella Lyon,

Jim Wayne Miller,

Fredrick Pfister.,

Jesse Stuart,

Richard Taylor,

Linda Caldwell,

James Gash,

Jonathan Greene,

James Baker Hall,

Stephen Holt,

Charlie Hughes,

Leatha Kendrick,

Jim Wayne Miller.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts,

James Still,

Joe Survant,

Richard Taylor,

Robert Penn Warren,

FOREWORD

WHAT AN EARTHY and eclectic cornucopia this isessays, fiction, and poetry that celebrate the wide-ranging sporting life of Kentucky. It is also a special revelation to me, a passionate fisherman who once spent seven months in the state without once fishing.

Ron Elliswhose introduction to this unique volume is itself wonderfully full, wise, and personalhas done a fine job of ferreting out and collecting immensely different approaches to the states world of spirited contrasts. There are pieces by and about such historical figures as Daniel Boone and John J. Audubon (who finds the better part of a suckling pig in the belly of a catfish); a fine selection from James A. Henshall, the father of bass fishing; and there are stories, poems, and articles that present the disparate group of activities that limn the unique character of the state, including trotline fishing, tickling, fox hunting (in essay and story), frog hunting, bass fishing, carp fishing with a fly rod; hunting deer, ducks, turkey grouse, and squirrels; recipes for barbecuing groundhog and baking possum; close looks at deer camps, a dove hunt, some hilarious profiteering with the carcass of a gigantic catfish, and much more. There is a memorable profile of a great old muskie fisherman; historical reports on the Kentucky long rifle and those first great bait-casting reels made by George Snyder (as early as 1810) and then Ben Meek and Ben Milam. Legendary men pursue legendary bass, the catfish grow to one hundred pounds, and an old Cherokee can persuade a hunter not to take a certain black buck, a spirit deer of high consequence to his people.

Folded into this ample portrait are works by authors of national importance: Robert Penn Warren, Barbara Kingsolver, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Wendell Berry (always one of the worlds finest writers on the natural world and our relationship to it), Bobbie Ann Mason (whose story of an older womans struggle, to her own near-death, after catching a huge catfish, you wont forget), a selection from Caroline Gordons classic Aleck Maury, Sportsman, which Ive admired for more than forty years, and Ron Elliss own vignette of Christmas in the hills, grouse hunting, from his superb Cogans Woods.

MY OWN EXPERIENCES with Kentucky sport are slender but perhaps worth recording. An old friend, then in his eighties, once pointed to a large painting of an austere old fellow above his piano in Long Island, New York, and said that it was Great Grandfather Milam; and I later learned that his grandfather was the famous Kentucky bourbon distiller, George T. Stagg, whose name he bore. George was a passionate fly fisherman and the closest fishing companion of the pioneer angling entomologist Preston Jennings. Along with the painting, he had an exquisite German silver bait-casting reel produced by Meek & Milam, and a bronze medal from the 1893 Columbian Exposition honoring B.C. Milam & Sons. I arranged for the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort to take both items as gifts. George also showed me a large drawer in his basement full of thousands of loose parts for reels and I assumed at the time that this was the last resting place of the famous reel company. Some years later, after George had died, his son-in-lawhis last surviving relativesent me a brief notice announcing a tag sale to be held at Georges house. I went, bought a few items as keepsakes, and asked the fellow about the reel parts. Oh, he said, we threw all that stuff out last week with a lot of other trash. Only recently did I learn, from Michael Hudson at the Kentucky Historical Society, that they had in fact been given, many years earlier, a full complement of tools and parts from the company. Fortunately, I guess, what I had been shown, what had been thrown away as junk, was less than the final resting place of a great firm.