Beardly = Manly

I have a beard. In fact, I've had some form of facial hair almost constantly since my peach fuzz turned into whiskers. Sometimes an actual beard, sometimes a G.E.D. of beards(also known as a goatee). Once or twice I even took it all the way down to a nice, trashy 'stache. I love my beard, and we rarely part ways, which is why I don't understand when people act surprised to see me with a beard. I've gotten the "Grizzly Adams" thing a lot, which gets old, but whatever. He did train Grizzly bears and have a nice beard, so he couldn't have been too bad of a dude. The newest jab at my man-hood, is just plain stupid though..."Are you trying to be Duck Dynasty?" What the hell does that even mean? I have a beard because men should have beards. I can't help it that God gave me testicles that produce enough testosterone to make me do manly things like hunt, fish, grill meat, drink whiskey(WITHOUT Coke in it), grow my own food when I can, and grow a beard. Phil Robertson and his clan have nothing to do with my beardliness. Now there's nothing wrong with that bunch of rednecks on Duck Dynasty. They're a bunch of God fearing, intelligent(for the most part), duck killing coon-asses, and those qualities combined can't make a bad person. However, no, I'm not "trying to be Duck Dynasty", nor am I trying to be like one of the Robertson guys(even though I would shoot a duck and drink a beer with them). I just don't understand why people automatically think of those guys when they see a beard now. And why do I have to be trying to be them? I mean, some of the greatest men in history have had a beard:

Jesus Christ himself

Gen. Robert E. Lee

The Hag

Ernest Hemingway

Thomas Green Clemson

Hank Williams Jr.

Kris Kristofferson

Capt. Woodrow F. Call

Why doesn't anyone ever ask me if I'm trying to be any of them?

Women love beards too. Don't let them lie to you and tell you that they prefer a smooth face. A woman that will tell you that, isn't really looking for a man...more like a gay friend that they can share girly secrets with. Here's a secret ladies; men that have a beard(or one of the other studly fashions of facial hair), will take care of you. A man with a smooth, shiny face is going to have a hard time changing a tire or cooking you a fancy candlelight supper(he might also steal some of your fancy face lotion when he runs out of after-shave). We bearded ones have qualities that come only with beards, and those qualities increase exponentially when plaid is thrown in the mix.

Now sometimes nature just won't let a man grow a beard, and I feel for those people. I really do. You have to do your best to maintain manhood with your patchiness. And as long as you're man enough to give it all you've got, you get an "A" for effort in my book. ZZ Top's beards didn't just show up overnight, you know.

For the most part, beards almost always equal a great man. Almost. There have been times when beards belonged to bastardly people. That sonofabitch Gen. Sherman is the first one that pops into my mind, but I don't have time for negativity, so enough of that.

In closing, the next time you think about asking a man if he has grown a beard to "be like Duck Dynasty", don't. That's like a slap in the whiskers to all of the truly great bearded men throughout history. Instead, compliment them on their manliness and tell them that Papa Hemingway would be proud of their accomplishment. And please, don't smirk at beards or any of their kin-folk; goatees, mustaches(which also have a special place in history), Civil War-esque sideburns, etc., that's just rude. Besides, if beards are so wrong, why do they keep trying to come back when you shave them?

If you're interested in seeing awesome beards and learning new beard-isms, check out thebeardly.com

What's in a name?

Pilaeu. Perlow. Pilaf. Perloo. It’s got a lot of different spellings, but nobody really knows the correct one. I will tell you this though, it’s not spelled c-h-i-c-k-e-n  b-o-g. That’s something those Yankees from Florence county and above make, and it’s junk. I’m sure some of you don’t have the slightest idea of what I’m talking about, and I feel for you. I really do. But I’m about to change your life for the better. My two favorite spellings are Pileau(I believe that’s the traditional spelling, but our slack jaws threw off the pronunciation somewhere along the way) and Perlow(because that’s how you say it). Pileau is a traditional Lowcountry concoction that consists primarily of rice, smoked sausage, chicken, onions, and some fatback/pork jowls. You can add any kind of game you want; duck, squirrel, venison, etc., and cook it with white or brown rice(I prefer white rice for some reason) as long as it’s long grained rice and not that rice imposter also known as “minute rice”. You can add or remove the types of meat or seasonings, but the two things that you must have in order to cook a pileau are rice and beer. Now I know I didn’t mention beer just now, and it doesn’t exactly go in the pot with the pileau, but I have never once seen a pileau cooked without at least one open beer somewhere in close vicinity of the pot. I don’t know if it’s the aroma that beer puts off or what, but I’m convinced that you have to have one to make this pot of random stuff taste right. 

Here’s a simple pileau recipe that tastes good enough to make most people slap their mama at least once(especially if their mama never cooked them a pileau). It’ll feed about 4 folks, depending on how many plates they have.

• 2.5-3lbs of chicken quarters or thighs on the bone
• 2 cups long-grained rice
• 1 med onion, chopped
• 2 packs of smoked sausage
• Small handful of fatback/hog jowls/belly meat/bacon ends(this is mostly for flavoring, so you don’t need much)
• Liquid smoke
• Salt/pepper
• Beer(I prefer cheap beer for my pileau cooking as it seems to evaporate really fast. I think it's the rice that does it.)

Take you a stock pot and add 4-4.5 cups of water to it. Add the chicken, put the lid on, and boil the chicken until it’s done(usually 45 minutes or so). 

While the chicken is boiling, dice up your onion, and cut your sausage and fatback up into whatever size pieces tickle your fancy and brown it all in a pan.

 When the chicken is done pull it apart into as-small-a(yes, I just made that word up) pieces as you want and put it, along with the bones, back into the stock you just made.

 Add the onions, sausage, fatback, and some of the drippings from the pan in with the chicken. Add a few splashes of liquid smoke, and some salt and pepper. 

If you aren’t sure how much hair your guests have on their chest, go easy on the pepper. They can always add more if they want. I personally like to add a little Old Bay seasoning to my pileau too. If you don’t know what Old Bay is, google it. It’s kind of like God’s own mixture of seasonings, and it’s great on everything. Once you have added all that goodness together, add the rice and mix it all up. 

Simmer until the rice is done. Don’t expect the rice to be nice and fluffy(you did put grease in that pot, remember?), but it shouldn’t be too boggy either. It normally takes somewhere around an hour and a half, give or take 15 minutes. 

When it’s done, pile it onto a plate and eat. You can serve it with white bread, bread & butter pickles, chow-chow, or pear relish, and some good ol’ hot sauce can be tasty on it as well. 

Congratulations, you’re life has now changed for the better. If you aren’t an actual Sandlapper, you just came one step closer to becoming an honorary Sandlapper. Experiment with it. Come up with your own personal touches for it, but whatever you do, don’t call it chicken bog. 

How to enjoy lemons

During the short time that I have been breathing oxygen, I have seen some pretty drastic changes in the landscapes that I see on a daily basis. I grew up in a swamp, went to college in the foothills, spent a year in the desert on a military base, moved to Central Texas, and moved to another desert in New Mexico.

Texas was wonderful. The people were great, the food was great, the music is the best in the world, and the hunting and fishing opportunities are almost endless. I would move back in a heart-beat, and I remind my wife of that on a regular basis. The Texas coast is one of my favorite places anywhere on the earth. If you like to fish and duck hunt(which just happen to be two of my favorite things), you can keep yourself fairly occupied for the majority of the year. I was just learning the ins-and-outs of Texas when we found out that we were moving even further west to the dry, dusty and windy city of Las Cruces. I wanted to lay down on the floor and throw a temper tantrum like you might see in Toys-R-Us. I pouted, I moped, I sulked. Not only were we moving further away from anyone that we called friends or family, but we were moving to the desert. Remember what I just said were two of my favorite things? Yea, well water is vital to both of those hobbies, and water isn’t very readily available in the desert, hence the name. The area of southern New Mexico that surrounds Las Cruces is hot, dry, windy, dusty, and anything but green and lush like I was accustomed too. I was not optimistic about my new hunting grounds, to say the least.

We flew out to look for a house a couple of times, and after talking with our real estate agent(who has turned into a good friend), I didn’t feel quite as pouty as before, but still wasn’t thrilled about the move. The Augustus McRae look-alike and I hit it off when I brought up hunting and fishing opportunities in New Mexico. In fact, our wives made us stop talking about hunting and fishing multiple times during each of our visits. Moving day found us, even though I tried hiding from it, and we packed up our life and hit the road. Once we pulled off of I-10 and got our stuff unloaded, I started looking for any kind of outdoors clubs to join. I found the Mesilla Valley Shotgun club, and they had just opened their skeet and trap fields. I had also just acquired a stylish new 20ga scattergun and needed to get acquainted with her before the fall rolled around. I ended up becoming a regular at the range, shooting pretty much every weekend from July to the end of August and picked up on bits and pieces of info from the old guys who had been out here for a lot longer than I had been alive and stashed those away in the hunting folder of the file cabinet between my ears for future reference.

Dan(the Augustus imposter) took me along on a couple of fishing trips to Elephant Butte lake over the summer. He showed me how they caught white bass, and I showed him how I catch black bass. We had some great trips and we both learned a lot from each other. On the first trip, I actually caught a very nice(@ 3lbs) smallmouth. I never really had the chance to catch any before(I did catch one or two tiny guys in the Medina river outside of Bandera on a fly rod),  but they might be my new favorite fresh-water fish. New Mexico was looking a little better.

The aformentioned tiny Medina Smallmouth

The closer it got to September, the more giddy I became. I had discovered that what this part of the world lacks in greenery, it makes up for in doves. And not just mourning doves, but the pigeon-sized white-wings too. It’s always exciting getting to hunt a new species in new places, but add to that the fact that I had a new pup to train, and no job yet(which normally isn’t a good thing, but during hunting season, it can be dealt with) and I was like a redneck in a Cabela’s for the first time. Dove season was a blast. I shot great, I didn’t ruin my pup, and I killed a lot of doves. New Mexico was looking a little better.

A limit of New Mexico doves

Duck season was coming up, and I had seen a few birds flying up and down the river during dove season and managed to scratch out a couple of teal during teal season, so it was time to get serious about finding my web-footed crack. I ran into a very large problem here. There was water in the Rio Grande up until early September. It turned into more of a tiny creek about the time teal season hit, and now, in October, it was a dry canal. I didn’t realize that the Rio was more of an irrigation ditch than a river in southern New Mexico, but it is a sad reality. I put the rubber to the road and headed north, and found ducks. I’m not going to get much detail about duck season, because us duck hunters(the real duck hunters, and not the punks that learned everything they know from a tv show) are the most paranoid sumbitches that ever walked the face of this earth. In fact, we normally loathe other hunters. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even like hunting with more than 2 people at a time, and chances are, I know those people well. And I’ll take 3 ducks and no other parties anywhere around over a limit of birds and having to deal with a bunch of rubberheads any day. Let’s just say that I had a great season, and leave it at that. New Mexico was looking a little better.

A couple of limits

Once duck season was over with, my brain switched gears, and the longer the days got and the closer we came to spring, the more I got the urge to start puffing out my chest and gobbling at the crack of daylight. I did all the researching I could on turkeys in New Mexico and found that for me, the Gila and Lincoln National Forests were my best bet. I had been through the Lincoln on the way to Ruidoso Downs a few times, but that was about it. I contacted a fella whose name was listed on the NWTF website as being the president of the local chapter, and he was nice enough to give me a few jumping off points. After lots of maps scouting, I pointed the truck east and made the 5,000ft climb into the land of milk and honey to look for turkeys. Now if you know anything about the Mesilla Valley, you’ll know that it sits somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000ft above sea-level. Add 5,000ft to that and you get 9,000ft. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not in the best of shape, but put me on flat ground around sea level, and I can walk through the woods all day long and then some. Put me in the mountains at 9k feet, and I can get around about like Jared did before he discovered Subway(ok, maybe not that bad, but it damn sure feels like it walking up a mountain at that elevation). I got in a good days worth of scouting before the season, but unfortunately, I had one of those inconvenient things they call jobs at this point. I had one during duck season too, but 90 days is a lot longer of a season than 25, and it’s hard to drive 3 hours at 3am by yourself when you only get one day off at a time. I was able to go back one morning during the second week of the season and got on a pair of gobblers, but I’m pretty sure they were henned up already. My best friend was able to make it out for 4 days of hunting during the last week of the season, so I called in to work temporarily dead, and headed back to the mountains for 5 days. We found birds, but they were ridiculously call shy and the people hunting off of 4-wheelers made it even harder for us to kill a bird. We did kill a feral pig, and we saw elk and deer and even a few turkeys, but we were never able to get a gobbler to work for us. Even though I didn’t get to add a Merriam’s to the bag, New Mexico was looking better.

Mountain meadow in the Lincoln at almost 10,000ft

I got my chance to finally go to the Gila National Forest this past fall. I drew an archery elk tag in unit 16a and I was stoked. On my scouting trip before the season, I saw a bear, turkeys, elk, deer and antelope. It was awesome. The Gila is a little lower in elevation than the Lincoln, so I could actually walk more than 20 feet without my lungs throwing one of those Toys-R-Us style temper tantrums I was talking about earlier. I found where I wanted to camp and the main area I wanted to hunt, but I had a tough time finding someone to be a potential pack mule. I did have a friend come up and hunt the first morning with me, and I also had some friends that camped with me for a couple of days while they were deer hunting, but that was it. I arrowed a rabbit while I was hunting(which was some great camp grub) and actually had a chance to kill a cow elk, but I had a brain fart and aimed with the wrong pin an sent an arrow right across her back. Even though I came home with a tag still in my pocket, I felt like I had a very successful hunt. I was on my first elk hunt, by myself, and stalked in on a small herd of cows and calves, by myself, and was able to take a shot at a tasty looking cow. I just muffed the shot out of excitement.  New Mexico was looking better…

Yes, it was delicious.

I’ve got a lot I could write about individual hunts and excursions, and I’m sure that I will eventually, but not yet. Folks, life is good. It’s real good. And you only get one go-round. I love the South. It will never leave me, and I never really thought I would leave it either. But life happened and I did. People that know me will tell you that the desert is the last place they would expect me to be. I could have been bitching and whining from the time I left College Station until now. And my better half will tell you that there are times my distaste for the desert comes to a head and I’ll piss and moan for a day or so, but I’ve learned that if you aren’t willing to get out and make the most of what the good Lord has given you, you’ll be a miserable soul.  New Mexico has grown on me considerably, and luckily I was able to look past the dust and wind and lack of water and really see what was put in front of me. I'm grateful that I've gotten the chance to live in a place as beautiful and unique as the Land of Enchantment, no matter how different it is. When life hands you some lemons, do like I did and cut those babies in half, squeeze the sourness out of them and into a glass with some ice cubes, pour in a double shot of sweet tea vodka, and start digging some shins.

 

All I can do is write about it...

I don't know if that song really fits with this post, but the song title seemed to. And if you don't know what song that is, you really need to brush up on your Lynyrd Skynyrd. Here's a little excerpt for you non-civilized folks:

 

"And Lord I can't make any changes
All I can do is write 'em in a song(or blog)
I can see the concrete slowly creepin'
Lord take me and mine before that comes "

I’m not real sure what I can say about all of this gun-control garbage floating around the internet that hasn’t already been said in some form or fashion. Yes, I despise the notion of any slimy politician and shitty government trying to take away the rights granted to me by the Founding Fathers, but instead of doing the same old song and dance, I’ll try to put a little different spin on the subject and take it down a different path. Away from the pot-hole ridden Chicago streets of magazine restrictions and assault weapon bans and towards the prettier Charleston-esque cobblestone avenue(which lasts for generations) that leads to the core of how people behave. Parenting. No, I’m not a parent myself, but I was raised by some salt-of-the-earth people, so I know a thing or two about how kids should act.

I grew up in a little town. I think we had somewhere around the neighborhood of 3,500 people that lived in town and 36,000ish people in a county that is larger than Dallas County. We were rural. We hunted. Guns were basically thought of as an extra appendage. I was armed with an awfully dangerous Red Ryder before I was 5 and my management of the local bird and squirrel population began soon thereafter. There has been a loaded gun in my house for as long as I can remember(and it wasn’t in a safe with a trigger lock on it).  I could walk into any of my friend’s house and find at least one loaded shotgun propped up behind a door. We weren’t taught that they were scary objects that were just made for killing. We weren’t led to believe that guns are made to assault people with. Our parents didn’t freak out at the sight of us holding a gun that was probably as tall as we were at the age of 7. We were taught to respect guns. We were taught that once you pull the trigger on a gun, you can’t un-pull it and the bullet can’t be brought back. We were taught that every gun is loaded at all times, until you open the chamber and see for yourself that it’s not. We were taught that they were to be used for sport, grocery shopping, and protecting your house and your family. And when we slipped up and forgot something that we were taught, we were reminded with a swift belt to the ass. Guns safety was serious, but guns themselves were a common, everyday type of tool.

 Our parents did something different than many parents seem to do today…they parented. We were all given responsibilities and jobs to do as a child, and we were expected to do them. We were taught to respect people. Old people, young people, black people, white people. Even those jacklegs that went to the school in the next town over. We might not have liked everyone, but we damn sure respected them. We picked on each other like there was no tomorrow, but if any of us needed a shirt, there would have been 15 bare-chested kids in the blink of an eye with their shirts in outstretched hand. We were raised to be respectable young men and women who knew right from wrong(even though we didn’t always pay that any attention) and didn’t talk back to anyone older than us. We were taught to not expect any handouts and that we are supposed to take care of ourselves; that we aren’t anyone else’s responsibility(especially the governments, but that’s a rant for a different time). Funny how a parent, of all people, can teach that. We didn’t cuss our teachers or coaches, and shooting up a school because we got picked on sure as hell never crossed our minds, because we lived in the real world, thanks to our parents. Did I mention there were at least 15-20 shotguns or rifles in the school parking lot during any particular hunting season, and a hundred pocket knives floating around the hallways every day? Our parents made sure that we could function in a society made up of all kinds of people; from good to bad, mean to nice, and everything in between. We were mostly expected to have hobbies that included real human beings and not just some computer animated graphic. Sure, some of us played video games. Yes, we watched TV. And of course we got angry at our parents for doing their jobs and thought that they didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground every now and then. But our parents made sure that we lived on planet earth, feared our God, and taught us how to make it through life’s struggles(albeit in a weird way at times) without going on a killing spree.

Now I’m not trying to say that we were perfect little kids that never got into trouble. In fact, that’s about as big of a lie as I could tell. We got into all kinds of trouble. Tearing up a field in our trucks. Tearing up our trucks in a field. Sneaking beer. Staying out too late. I could keep going, but that’s not the point of this rant. The point of this rant(as convoluted as it may be) is a lot of all of this horrible crime that has been happening lately, in my eyes at least, has to do with parents not being parents. “But these aren’t highschool kids doing the shooting” you say. Well if you feel that way, then I guess you think it’s always the guns fault too, don’t you? Respect for people, common decency, a fear of God(whether it be my God or yours doesn’t really matter) , and how to cope with the real world are all things that children begin learning at a very young age(and continue learning until their last breath) when a parent is doing their job. I’m not trying to say that disasters like Columbine or Sandy Hook will cease to exist if all parents did their jobs, because that’s just not true. Evil has been around as long as man-kind and unfortunately, it’s not going anywhere. I know not everyone is going to be raised in a rural, small town, firearm-friendly setting and that’s not the point I’m trying to make either, but if that’s what you took away from this, either your reading comprehension level is down around the level of a whale crap, or I’m a terrible writer and I’m ok with either situation. Regardless, what I am trying to say, is if more children were raised the way we were, by real parents(and grandparents and friend’s parents) rather than letting them live in some fantasy world, more people would be able to deal with reality when it gives them a 5-finger slap across the face and less people would be taking out their anger and frustration with the world on innocent lives.

So if you’ve got parents who raised you right, give them a call and tell them thanks for turning you into a decent person. Maybe you thought they were crazy back then, but I’m sure you see things a little differently these days.

It feels like the first time...

This blogging thing is something that my wife talked me into. She said that she thinks it's something I'd be good at. There's a good possibility that I will absolutely suck at this, and her views of me and my talents may be a bit skewed, but I said to myself, "what the hell", and decided to give it a go. I don't really have any particular direction for this blog, so it will probably be about anything and everything and nothing all at once. There will most likely be a very healthy dose of snippets about hunting, fishing, and other topics related to the Great Outdoors as those things are what really makes me, well...me. I'm sure you'll get some entries about cooking(but no sissyfied baking crap), or tasty libations, or politics too. It seems the "older" I get, the more I enjoy these as well(ok, so maybe I don't actually enjoy politics. In fact, I loathe them. But I have become a lot more interested in what I can do to stay in the know, and what kind of crap is getting shoveled my way). I hope that I can keep this thing somewhat interesting for anyone that decides to follow it, and that includes myself.

For those that are interested, I'll tell you a little about me:

Sandlapper n. - One who eats dirt; by extension, a low-class or countrified white person. Chiefly South Atlantic. Derogatory. Compare to Clay-eater

Clay-eater n. - In black and white usage, not necessarily biased, a reference to someone from South Carolina or Georgia, especially a poor white person or farmer, or any Southern rustic.

I don't know who felt the need to include those rednecks from Georgia in our high-societal definition, but alas...

I grew up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Thanks to one helluva woman that I call Mama Jean(that would be my Grandma), I learned to handle a gun about the time I could walk and could clean a deer by the time I was 7 or 8. I was in the woods and water and on the baseball field as much as I could be when I was a kid and on up through highschool. I got lucky when I was 15 and got a job at a local Thoroughbred training track as an exercise rider. Those folks became like a second family to me for quite sometime, and I've got them to thank for opening my eyes to the world outside of my tiny little town. After highschool, I enrolled at Clemson University. I say enrolled because I didn't really start attending classes until my second semester there(who knew attendance was necessary?). I met my wife while I was there and even though she thought I was just some stupid kid at first, I eventually won her over with my witty charm and dashing good looks. Once our tenure at Clemson was over, we headed west to College Station, Texas for a couple of years and most recently we've settled in dusty Las Cruces, NM. 

I think that's enough of an intro. I'm sure if you or I stick around long enough, you'll hear more about what I've done and where I've been. But now this shitty little dinghy is shoving off, so hop on it if you'd like. There should be plenty of B.S. to keep things interesting.

PS - I don't think all people from Georgia are lowly rednecks, but they are fun to pick on sometimes.