Schoby Michael - Hunting Booger Bottom life lessons from the field

MICHAEL WADDELL, MY BLOODBROTHER

T he ultimate compliment one can give to another is to say that they are grounded. That means they are stable, reliable, trustworthy, sensible, and solidly in the asset column of life, beaming with positive energy and aliveness. The term means exactly what it says: of the ground, connected to the good Mother Earth, functioning in harmony and at one with our surroundings. My life has been immeasurably enriched by the long list of great men with whom I have shared spiritual campfires for sixty years, so far. Men like Fred Bear, the great conservation visionary who baptized an entire generation of American families in the soul-cleansing world of hands-on resource stewardship via the mystical flights of our aboriginal arrows.

A heart-, body-, and soul-warming campfire brings out ones true colors. Sitting together by a campfire allows deep, powerful relationships to form. I think of my mother and father, brothers and sister, wife, children, and grandchildren first and foremost. My aunts and uncles, cousins and bandmates are with me by the fire also. So are Bob Foulkrod, Dick Mauch, Ward Parker, Rick Perry, Scott Young, Jim Lawson, Paul Wilson, Marv Leslie, Bob Blevins, Steve, Gary, and Mike Sims, George Nicholls, Randy Rifenburg, Michael Waddell, and many, many more.

Michael Waddell is my BloodBrother. It wouldnt matter when or where we shared these fires, we would still connect, whether it was the year one or 2010. Michael is the real McCoy. Down-to-earth, clever, genuine, well-grounded, funny as all hell, kind, generous, decent, and surely one of the best natural hunters and woodsmen I have ever grilled a sacred backstrap with. A natural born predator of the highest order, Michael is truly a master bowhunter, rifleman, shotgunner, game-caller, and instinctive naturalist who stands with the best that have ever lived. I can honestly say that he ranks right up there with what legend makes of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. If I were to be stranded on a jungle island, I am confident that I would not sacrifice any quality of life if Michael were there with me. I know that we would eat well and laugh heartily.

Michael has risen to a well-earned position of leadership in the world of hunting, fishing, and all things American-outdoor-family-fun. Some would use the term celebrity, but I would not. Celebrity is too shallow. Leadership better identifies his influential role in recruiting new sporters into the glorious world of hands-on conservation environmentalism and the exciting shooting-sports disciplines. With his sincere enthusiasm and contagious, believable authenticity, Michael never apologizes but rather promotes and celebrates this last, perfect, values-based respect for Gods magical natural creation of tooth, fang, and claw. To watch Michael call in a cagey old long-beard tom turkey or spirit-rattling bull elk is to witness sheer poetry in motion. His hunting moves are as graceful as a hungry lion stalking and killing its prey, like a life-and-death ballet.

Buy this book for everybody you know, for the life that Michael Waddell lives is not only available to every man, woman, and child in the Free World, but will bring an immediate quality-of-life upgrade as the healing powers of nature permeate your very being. Be like Mike and celebrate this fascinating, thrilling Spirit of the Wild with all the gusto you can summon. Live life to the fullest and get grounded ASAP. It will cleanse the soul.

TED NUGENT

I grew up in a little area of Georgia called Booger Bottom. You wont likely pass any road signs saying Booger Bottom. There aint no stores, or stop lights neither. You probably wont find it on any map, but its there all the same, just stop and ask somebody. Theyll point you in the right direction.

Booger Bottom is located down among the crick bottoms and the moss-covered oak groves. There are a few old farmsteads left over from the old days, and some are still planting row crops in the red dirt. Booger Bottom is a small community made up of very country, very rural people. It was no secret that a lot of moonshine was made back in those hollows along the cricks. I am often asked where the name Booger Bottom comes from, and rightly, I really dont know. If you ask some of the locals, they say it had to do with the federal agents who came in and busted up moonshine liquor stills during the Prohibition (federal agents were often called boogers in parts of the South); others claim the area was inhabited by a boogera kind of animal that supposedly looked like a panther mixed with a rabid wild dog. If you talk to some of the older folks they all can tell you of their stepbrothers cousins friend who ran across the beast one night walking home. Some stories go all the way back to the FDR days, when he came into Warm Springs for treatment of his polio. Evidently the federal agents had to walk from Warm Springs back through this here valley. Every time they did, something would get after them, running in the bushes beside them, which they referred to as a booger, or spook.

Hunting has been part of my life for as long as I can recall. People often ask why I hunt, and I really dont have much of an answer, as I cant imagine life without it. I guess the simple answer is, because hunting is me. It is in my blood, it is in my culture, and it is in my family. Hunting comprises my earliest recollections of my dad and my uncle Morgan Whitaker. They hunted not just as a pastime or part-time recreation, but as a full-time obsession. It was their lifestyleand our familys main source of food.

I was probably around nine when I realized my dad hunted just because he liked to. Sure, we needed the meat, but he was a sport hunter all the same. Not in the negative sense associated with the term today, but in its true sense as in sportsman, as a gentleman. He just simply enjoyed being afield after game.

My father worked anywhere from fifty to sixty hours a week, Monday through Friday, so Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to hunting. Eventually this caused a rub between him and Mom cause he was so dedicated and so on fire to go hunting at the drop of a hat. One time in particular my mom said, If I come home and see your gun gone, then I know your hunting means more to you than me.

When I came home from school I was praying that Dads gun would be in the cabinet and he would be there waiting, cleaning up around the house, maybe with some roses on the table, but when I walked through that door that cold November afternoon, there was no worn 742 Remington Woodsmaster in the cabinet and no Dad. Even though I hoped he would be there, I knew deep down that he wouldnt be. At that time I hadnt started to hunt yet, but I knew enough from listening to him and Uncle Morgan talk to know that the rut was on, and when the temperature drops, it was the best time to be in the woods. I knew Dad wouldnt be home before I walked in the door.

My momma was furious. She started crying and saying I cant believe he went hunting, over and over.

Somehow I knew how important it was for my dad, so I immediately went on the defensive for him. Mom, the rut is on. Daddy has been working hard, this is something he enjoys. I realized right then and there that hunting invoked some serious passion, because there was something about hunting that pushed my dad to a point he could not return from. Whether it was competitiveto kill a big buckor whether it was just him being alone out there in the stand, away from everythingjust him and nature and his ability to go one-on-one with an animalit all blended together. I learned then that hunting was an emotional disease, something akin to an addiction. I knew that my dad loved my mom and his family, but there was nothing that could keep him from the woods that cold November day.