Greetings,

Once in a while I find myself reflecting back upon my youth and all the people that had a big part in my interest in hunting.

Undoubtedly my biggest influence was my father. In these parts he was a legendary deer hunter, and when November first arrived, every young boy around wanted a green and black wool jacket and a model 99 300 Savage so they could be like Lionel Hutchins. It sure is a far cry from the Xbox computer games that spark many young lad’s interest these days.

Another larger than life character was Jim “Fishook” Libby. Jim did it all. He was a great trapper, fisherman and hunter that had the woods savvy of a fisher cat.

Jim was a Korean war veteran and took a liking to his issued military weapon which was a little M-1 .30 carbine. Most of us know that a 30-carbine cartridge is minimal deer medicine at best, but you couldn’t prove that by him. I can still hear his high pitched voice, “Boy, that rifle you’ve got in your hands ain’t nothing but a (expletive) hamburg gun, it staves them deer all to hell!”

You couldn’t argue with his success as he always took a very respectable deer. Any time you examined a deer hanging in Jim’s oak tree you’d notice just one bullet hole in the deer, perfectly placed. He was so good with that little carbine he could have passed for a professional exhibition shooter. Jim was proof positive of proper shot placement.

Another man I had the great honor and pleasure to hunt with was “Stub” Blake from Limington. As a young man “Stub” was a baseball player and as an older man, a great deer hunter.

When you’re a young deer hunter you make mistakes, and if you messed up, he could straighten you out real quick. He wasn’t intentionally trying to demean you, it was his way of teaching “old school” deer hunting tactics, that have paid dividends for me personally.

When the hunt was done for the day, Stub would pour three fingers of Canada’s finest brown water, then hash out the day’s events ensuring that you absorbed something inside your skull that day. After that he would get a big gleam in his eye, and out came the cribbage board in which I always seemed to take a severe whooping. I not only learned about deer, I learned all about skunks, and even double skunks!

There are a lot of legendary men I would like to mention that have fueled the outdoor passions in young people: Doctor Lowell Barnes of Hiram, Jimmy Black of Porter, Charlie Osgood of Bridgton, and George Bucknell of South Hiram.

These great outdoorsmen mentioned in this column have all passed on, but what they shared with us while they were here lives on in many of us today.

So if you have the opportunity to mentor or influence a young person in the outdoor sports, please do so and maybe they’ll be as fortunate as I have been. I am very grateful for all of their influences and their great memories.

Until next time, fish hard, hunt hard, and be safe!

Hutch