A Great Man Passes

Two weeks ago I wrote about attending the funeral of an old family friend who grew up in Texas County and died just a few days before.  His name was Charlie Hartman Jr., one of the finest men I ever knew. The day of his funeral was exactly 61 years after my father was hurt on the river, and Charlie helped me, as a small boy to retrieve our boat and float it down the Big Piney to a take-out point.

Dad recovered from his accident and from that point on, the three of us hunted and fished together often.   Charlie’s story is too long, too significant to tell it in a short newspaper column, but I have written about him in my winter issue of my magazine, The Journal of the Ozarks.  You’ll love that story of his life. Not many men have lived a life of such consequence to so many others. But what I will expound on today, a little, is how, in that winter 61 years ago and many winter seasons thereafter, Charlie introduced me to quail hunting.

Charlie had a pair of English Setters he called Joe and Fanny.  Were they ever something to see.  When I turned 12, Dad bought me a used Iver Johnson shotgun.  It was a 16-gauge single-shot, a hammer gun that was safe for a boy, short and light enough for me to carry.

I was born into a river family. Dad and Grandpa hunted wild ducks, rabbits and squirrels, and used hounds and beagles, but we never owned bird dogs.

I remember the day I first saw those setters point and hold. I was so fascinated I didn’t even get off a shot.  Then I watched them hunt for and retrieve downed birds.  I would never again be the same.

I missed lots of quail that first year, but I have written often how several singles had flown into a farmers garden and Charlie didn’t want to shoot at them so close to the farmers barn.  So he told me to go across the road down behind a row of multiflora rose and wait for single birds to sail past me.  As they flushed from behind the farmer’s barn, they gave me perfect shots and I downed one thirty yards from where I sat.

I will always remember old Joe the setter jumping the fence beside the road and dashing to the downed quail, picking it up and bringing it to me with his tail wagging, looking for all the world as if he was thinking, “Here ya go kid, nice shot for a beginner.”

That was in 1960 and it is hard to describe how good quail hunting was back then.  There were days when we found six or seven coveys behind old Joe and Fanny.  In 1960 I didn’t down many birds, but I filled the air with number 8 shot, one shell at a time.  As I grew older, I spent so many treasured days with Dad and Charlie.  Memories like we shared were the greatest rewards of my young life.  I wouldn’t trade those days for anything in the world.

I owned my own bird dogs for thirty years afterward, but I watched coveys of quail dwindle to a fraction of what we saw back then.  But I never watch a covey of bobwhites flush, an explosion of feathers in all directions, that I don’t think of old Joe and Fanny and the man that everybody spoke so highly of… Dad’s old friend, and mine, Charlie Hartman.

I don’t know, maybe it is just meant to be that quail are not around in huntable numbers, but I have more to say about this… in a future column I will write about a way that we could have great quail hunting today, if our conservation department would just give a solid idea a try.  Look for that in a month or so.

My outdoor magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal-fall issue, won’t be on newsstands much longer, as we are about to publish a winter issue.   But there are about a hundred of the fall issue remaining which I will send to you free, if you’ll just send 5 stamps to use for postage.  The magazine sells for 6 bucks so that gets you the fall issue for less than half price.  The magazine is 96 pages, full color and has some of the best outdoor, nature and conservation articles you’ll ever read.

I write lots of outdoor articles and you can read some of them, along with important articles concerning the MDC, on my website, larrydablemontoutdoors.  If you are a deer hunter, you need to read the letter sent to me by an retired conservation agent.  It is such a bombshell, most newspapers cannot print it but you can read it on that website.

Write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.