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We would be out, my old man and I, at a boat landing, or along a riverbank, along a fenceline, at a trailhead, and he’d bend over to pick up a discarded aluminum can – this being before plastic bottles were widely used and discarded – and he’d smile and shake his head, and say under his breath, “Sportsmen…,” so that I learned to confuse irony and sarcasm very early.
This is a more reasonable take of that old Woody Allen joke in “Annie Hall:” “I would never want to belong to a club that would have THEM [wink wink] as members.”
Have I ever told you about the time once in January when, after a very good and cold day of ice fishing with a pair of newlywed out-of-towners up on a stocked trout lake – over ‘round a certain point and down a certain depth, a local fisherperson got me alone in a corner that evening to educate me, as a new resident of the county, about “territories,” which I later realized referred to special fishing spots and some people’s claims to them?
I don’t think I’ve mentioned the lakeshore property owner who came into the store to see me, me being the designated fishing guy apparently – or doormat, to have a talk with whoever at our store was sending all the tourists up to fish on his lake – sorry, the lake which he – and only he – had property on. His was the only place on that lake and he’d been fishing that lake for something like forty years, and he’s never seen so many people, and such disappointing fishing, as this year (2021).
Yeah, I’m James, and yeah, sometimes I do recommend people go to your lake to fish. Especially families with kids who want to fish, or someone who doesn’t have a boat. It’s close by, has a nice public landing with a dock. And it’s a damn fish factory. Yeah. So, sue me. It’s E – G – A – N.
Guy comes into the store to get a special small game license for people on Social Security disability. I’m not sure how to issue it, and ask him for any information from the past I can use to look it up. He ain’t got it. I phone our Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to get some direction on how to proceed. DNR rep says there is no special small game license for Social Security disability (only for angling or deer hunting). I explain it to the guy, and tell him I can only proceed with a regular small game license for him. He says he ain’t gonna pay for a license; he ain’t givin’ this muckin’ state any more money. He’ll just hunt without a license. He’ll just poach. Et cetera, et cetera.
M’kay. I go back to the job at hand, and he goes on again, about the poachin’. I stop and think to myself, “I’m at work; I pay my taxes; I buy my fishing and hunting and trapping licenses every year.” I turn to him and tell him I don’t want to hear about his poaching anymore, even though I’m not a Conservation Officer; I don’t work for the DNR.
The only thing worse than the Duck Dynasty generation of duck hunters are the deer hunters who hunt from their trucks, or the partridge hunters who hunt from their ATVs. Or, like me, trout fisherman who take photos of their fish out of the water, or, like me, “sportsmen” who shoot their grouse out of the trees.
The other joke from “Annie Hall” is relevant:
“The food’s no good there,” one old lady says.
“Yeah,” the other replies, “and the portions are so small.”
So sometimes being an outdoorsman isn’t fun anymore. Sometimes the outdoors isn’t fun anymore. But I’ll just keep going out for more.
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