The Old Woodsmaster

Hoppe’s #9 and gunpowder are the strongest smells tied to my memory. The old wooden gun case in our basement still holds a stronger smell in my memory than does the case itself. Back then, there were fewer guns in our repertoire, just enough to fill each slot, and just enough for the birds we chased and the occasional deer we hunted.

Dad had one rifle then. It was a .30-06 Remington Woodsmaster that my mother bought him on their first anniversary. I seem to recall she found it at a sporting goods store that also sold hardware and endless cups of coffee to the old men who loitered around the front desk. Hughes Hardware. Mr. Hughes used to give me a penny for the gumball machine every time dad took me by. Back in different times, of course.

I killed my first deer with that gun sitting in his lap overlooking a scendaro in Texas. It was a small doe, but she was mine and the story and the memory never seem to get old.

We had been hunting with a family friend who was part owner of a big ranch just outside Alice, way down by the Mexican border. Deer were everywhere. I was seven years old and had only deer hunted a few times around North Alabama and southern Tennessee where we were lucky to see a track during the course of an entire day. When three does fed close enough to the tall shooting house where we sat, Dad gave me the nod. I crawled over into his lap and shouldered the big rifle. Back then, it was the biggest and most awesome thing in a seven-year-old’s eyes.

“Now make sure you put the crosshairs on the biggest doe,” Dad said. “Do you see her?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Whenever you’re ready.”

I’d never had proper instruction about where to shoot a deer. We didn’t have all the training videos back then and it wasn’t until a few years later that Outdoor Life became an integral part of my existence. Perhaps that was the very moment—sitting in dad’s lap, my pulse pounding in my head as I steadied the gun—when the outdoors truly pulled me to her bosom and laid out the path I didn’t know I’d one day walk.

The does were facing us, their heads down and feeding.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he repeated. “And make sure you pick out the biggest one.”

Yeah, Dad. No problem, I thought.

BOOM! The rifle spoke, sending me back into his lap, the empty casing rattling around on the floor of the metal blind. My ears rang and my vision was momentarily blurred and dad was saying something I couldn’t understand.

All the deer, hundreds of them it seemed, had evaporated into the brush at the report of the rifle. Out in the field lay one small doe, half of her head missing. I didn’t know.

But even at that age I did recognize the value of a life. We thanked her for her’s and I didn’t dare leave her side until we were picked up after dark, even as the coyotes’ wails grew closer.

In my teens, the Woodsmaster slowly became mine. I hunted with that rifle, cared for that rifle, and still cherish the memories and scars it has left for eternity. But just as the eternal evolution of the cycle of life continues its quest on a never-ending sphere, the rifle has become my father’s again—back to its rightful owner.

Dad has never been too crazy about shooting a deer. It’s more about sunrises and sunsets, the world waking up in all its glory, and the wild creatures rightfully going about their business. Life is visceral. The message in the wind and what our Maker is trying to say. “If you listen closely, you will know,” dad always said.

The flutter and utter explosion and whistling of wings was what got his blood boiling. Cutting feathers! From Labs to setters then pointers, back to Labs and now with Brittanys, watch ‘em run son and watch ‘em work. You might learn something. I’m always learning.

When I turned 16, a family friend gave me a bolt-action Remington .30-06 he’d won in a golf tournament. It was black, synthetic, and with a new Simmons scope, not the old Redfield with crooked crosshairs I was so used to on the Woodsmaster. As happy as I was when I opened the box to a brand new rifle that had never been fired before, something was amiss. The grips weren’t chipped, the action wasn’t worn. There weren’t any scratches or dings to tell the story of the time dad rattled up a big buck in the early dawn of Thanksgiving 18 years ago.

I had begged and pleaded for him to let me carry the gun into the woods that frosty morning. I looked forward to settling into our spot, inserting the magazine of perfectly aligned brass-cased rounds, and working the action, putting that first one into the batter’s box.

We walked down a steep hill into a bottom where we had seen a lot of sign while scouting the weekend before. Halfway down, walking on my heels, I slipped and my feet went higher than my head as I hit the ground shoulders first—the shoulder where the Woodsmaster found itself sliding against a covered rock that chipped the wooden stock.

Tears welled up in my eyes as my dad sat down beside me with his hand on my shoulder. Boy, was I about to be in trouble. Calling up my courage, I looked into his face. He was smiling.

“One day, we’ll look back over this gun and listen to the stories she’ll tell,” he said. “Let’s just sit still for a few minutes and the woods will let us know what to do next.”

I was thankful for the gift of a brand-new rifle, and still am. I’ve never been one to turn my nose up. It’s just that certain things, each with their own quality, affect me differently. Give me the story of a life, not the riches of a wealthy king.

Josh Wolfe

It didn’t take long for me, following in my father’s footsteps (literally), to develop a deep appreciation for the outdoors. Because it’s there in the wind, in the rain and a cool summer sunrise where I’ve learned more than in all the classrooms combined. My journalistic work is the sum of all I’ve taken from the outdoors and all I want to give back.

It was during a long, grueling two-year stint working as a banker in Huntsville, Alabama, I finally realized I needed to follow my dreams. After sojourning several places across the country, I now call Asheville, North Carolina, home, where I am the co-founder, publisher and editor of The Golf Sport (www.golfsportmag.com) magazine and editor of Sporting Classics Daily (www.sportingclassicsdaily.com). I am also a contributor to OutdoorHub and Global Outfitters, and hope to really inflate that balloon over the next couple years.

For me, it’s the power of the pen that makes the outdoor adventure live forever – as it is resurrected on the page in front of me. I am so fortunate to be a part of the outdoor community and make my passion a career.