CITY HUNTERS    By R.E. Massey

Field & Stream, February, 1984 – Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 10

Every small town has its group of oldtime sportsmen who, blessed as outdoorsmen and orators, unite against outsiders.  Now, living in a little town automatically makes one a local, but I was twice blessed.  My father was Dutch Massey, one of three men known in our town as “The Old Boys.”  I was always let to know my natural superiority over “city boys,” and those three got positively bigoted around hunting season.  No sir, nothing could rouse them to such a fever pitch as the arrival every fall of their ancient nemesis, the city hunter.  Every fall two major migrations occurred simultaneously—one brought us birds from the north, the other brought us “birds” from the East.

When I wandered into the old Red Diamond Café on that October day, my aged father was seated with two of his cronies in the back booth.  As usual, a large coterie of interested citizenry had gathered to hear them declaim.  The old boys were chuckling and recounting horror stories featuring the inane antics of “Great City Hunters of the Past.”  As I slid into the booth with them, Earl was repeating that old standby, “The City Hunter and the Swan.”

“It was down on the refuge road one foggy morning,” Earl bagan.  “Me and Ole Winger were pass-shooting mallards up on the hill by the lookout.  You know the sheepherder’s cabin…well, we were on that fenceline.” 

“Yah,” my old man says.

“This guy comes walking up the hill from the west, right along that fenceline,” Earl continued.  “I saw he was carrying something large and when he got up to us I could see what he was for sure.”  Earl paused to let us appreciate and savor the litany, and then he went on.  “Brand new canvas he was, from hat to pants.  He carried a double ten with engraving from one end to the other.  I couldn’t take my eyes off that gun.  It was the most beautiful piece I’ve seen before or since.  I knew it would take a real jolt to jar my mind off that beautiful double, but that swan he was carrying sure did the trick! 

“Realizing how confused that city boy was, I decided to add a little fuel to his fire so I yelled, ‘You’ve shot a swan!’  That fellow charged out of there as fast as he could motor it, still carrying that big bird.”

The whole crowd exploded in laughter, but Stan shifted his cigar and reached down in his memories to find a topper.  That’s one thing I like about elderly sportsmen; they remain competitive till the day they die.  Stan always began by prefacing his story with an introductory remark. 

“Complex behavior all right,” he mused, “but my favorite, based on complexity, still has to be the city hunter who got lost, wandered past the NO TRESPASSING signs, and strayed down to the headquarters field in the refuge.  That swan was nothing but an error in judgment caused by the fog and all that other shooting going on around him.  It could happen to you,” Stan said, patting my old man’s shoulder.  “But I don’t think even you would carry the damn thing home!” he bellowed, dodging a cuff from Dad.

“But like I said,” Stan went on, “for sheer complexity you have to hand it to that specimen they caught in the refuge.  To begin with, he must have known he was near a refuge, since that’s what draws all those city boys here in the first place.  Second, he must have been unaware of the limit, as he had killed ten honkers before they got to him.  Third, he must not have seen anything unusual in a cornfield holding 70,000 geese and not another hunter around.”

“Unless he thought he had found an out-of-the-way spot,” Earl interjected.  “What if he believed the wilderness was not dead, and if a man could get away from the crowd, he might hit a jackpot?”

“You see now what I mean by complexity,” Stan resumed.  “Imagine what those wardens thought when they heard him open up down by the barn!”

“Really though,” said my old man, waxing philosophical, “it’s clear that in both cases the problem was a breach of etiquette.”  He gave them a few moments of what the radio people call “dead air” so that they could wonder what would come next.  “They’re like tourists.  They blunder in here and start to operate like they do in the city.  Follow the signs to the goose refuge.  Follow the signs to the numbered blind.  Carry those six shells each hunter is allowed, and check in after your hunt to register your bird.  They don’t take the time to learn the ropes and get to know the country.  They don’t have a feeling for freedom.  They’re content to follow the signs.”

“Creatures without proper deportment and refinement,” scoffed Earl as he dunked a doughnut in coffee.

The three old boys were so puffed up with the job they had done on those city hunters that I couldn’t resist trying to pop their bubble.  “Yeah,” I said, “can you imagine what would happen if you took one of those guys under your wing and showed him what he was missing?”

“Yeah,” broke in my old man, hopping to the bandwagon like it was his own idea.  “We’d have to find one in a government blind along the firing line and just get out of the car and invite him along.  We’d follow a flock out to a field, set him upwind, and drive them right over him!”

“Or get him into the schoolhouse slough for a sundown shoot on pintails!” announce Earl.

“No,” said Stan with finality.  “We’ll get his name and phone number on opening day right down on the firing line like you said, but we’ll wait until November when none of them come out from the city anymore and the mallards are feeding out to the cornfields around Holloway.  We’ll get him out from the city and into a field.  We’ll keep him patient till those old greenheads come marching and leapfrogging right up to him, and then turn him loose to jump ‘em!”

That was the end.  I began to get scared.  What had I done?  I could envision them launching a crusade to educate all city hunters.  I could see legions of them learning the best spots, making friends with farmers, outwitting the local hunters and beating them at their own game.  I imagined a world where all of them left their ghetto by the refuge and began to move into the countryside, actually hunting!  This thing was rapidly getting out of hand.  Why had I opened my mouth? 

“Should we adopt one and show him the ropes!”  I heard Earl say.  In that moment of silence, I waited to hear the verdict, leaning forward to listen with all my might, like a condemned man.

“Nah,” said Stan, “that would be like getting a dog drunk.  He could never do it again for himself, and the memory of that much fun would be painful!”  The booth rocked with laughter as I tripped the latch and escaped to find relief from the insanity of the “older generation.” 

Once outside, my head cleared and my fears dissipated.  Hadn’t I just read a fable by Aesop the Greek in school called “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”?  City folk and we “country bumpkins’ have been feuding that long!  Since B.C.!  Get together with city hunters?  How preposterous!  Why should they?

Why should they?  Time has given me the answer to that question.  It is the 1980’s now.  Earl is gone, Stan is gone, Dad is pushing ninety and too old to hunt.  The rivalry is still very much alive though.  “They” arrive in town the same time that the ducks and geese do.  Each year the locals declare how much better off the world would be without “them,” but I no longer join in the harangue.  The threat of city hunters in my favorite duck slough now pales in comparison to protectionists “rescuing” our wildlife.  When drainage rears its ugly head now and threatens our few remaining wetlands, only a coalition of hunters, both city and local, can stand up to the awesome onslaught of “progress.”

The kind of thinking that focused on city hunters vs. us was wrong, but I didn’t know that then.  I was like a fish.  I had lived a lifetime in water without ever knowing I was wet.  Besides, there was no need to change my thinking then.  But there is now.  Now we all must work together.  We are not city hunters or locals.  We are hunters.  Either we stand together, or we fall alone.