“…Hunting,” the Old Man said, “is the noblest sport yet devised by the hand of man. There were mighty hunters in the Bible, and all the caves where the cave men lived are full of carvings of assorted game the head of the house drug home. If you hunt to eat, or hunt for sport for something fine, something that will make you proud, and make you remember every single detail of the day you found him and shot him, that is good too. But if there’s one thing I despise is a killer, some blood crazed idiot that just goes around bam-bamming at everything he sees. A man that takes pleasure in death just for death’s sake is rotten somewhere inside, an you’ll find him doing things later on in life that’ll prove it.”
Those words from Robert Ruark’s The Old Man and The Boy recently sank deeply in my soul while resting under a large swamp oak with the Spanish moss hanging from the branches lazily tossed about in the warm March spring breeze. I was taking a break on my South Carolina wild hog hunt.
The Old Man and The Boy is a true classic published in the 1950s and is a collection of short stories Robert Ruark first wrote for Field and Stream Magazine. The old man is his grandfather. The boy is the writer, Robert Ruark. Together the boy learns about hunting and fishing while they share time together in and around the marshes, woods and creeks of North Carolina. What makes the book important and a must read for not only sportsmen, but for all young boys or old men, is reflected in how the Old Man takes to learning the boy about being a gentlemen.
On the surface, The Old Man might appear to be teaching the boy how to row a boat, or shoot a duck, or catch big Reds in the surf, but underlining the lessons is the more important lesson of being proper gentleman like in adulthood.
One of the last things I do before leaving for a trip is to grab a few books off my shelf and pack them for the trip. Nothing cures a rainy day in the tent better than a good book. That may have been the original reason for packing the books, but over the years, I have gained an appreciation for reading while out in the woods. The park bench at the local park might be nice, or the comfortable favorite reading chair in the home library might be convenient, but when I read the classic words, of those like Robert Ruark, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain or John MacLean, sitting deep in the woods far from man induced interruptions, the words reach a deeper part of my being.
This is how I came to reading, again, The Old Man and the Boy. And I am glad I did. Those lessons taught by the Old Man in his own special way, sometimes needs reminded to us older folks. My dad taught me well and I’m forever grateful for the example he set forth, however, even an old dog like myself, needs hit on the head once in awhile and reminded how to be a gentleman and a sportsman from time to time.
…”A sportsman, is a gentleman first. But a sportsman, basically, is a man who kills what he needs, whether it’s fish or bird or animal, or what he wants for a special reason, but he never kills anything just to kill it. And he tries to preserve the very same thing that he kills a little of from time to time. The books call this conservation. It’s the same reason why we don’t shoot that tame covey of quail down to less’n ten birds.”
If you have never read The Old Man and The Boy, get a copy and read it. If you know of a young middle school or high school boy, get him a copy. It could just be the book the he will really read. Yep, it is that good.
