40 Years of Our Heritage--- Is It Dying?

Years ago when I was young and full of life hunting and fishing was my world.It was the only thing that I could do that I did well as far as a hobby. It didn't matter what time of year it was I always had someone ready to go hunting or fishing. That was when I lived at Lascassas, Tennessee and had grown up there knowing everyone and they didn't care back then if you hunted or fished on their property. Now days I live at Sparta, Tennessee and it seems as though you have to go through an act of congress just to find a place to hunt or fish and then it takes you a year or so to learn the woods and waters to be able to do any good at taking game when you go on an outdoors adventure. Now days you either have to lease a farm to hunt, know someone with a big farm to hunt or own a big farm yourself just to hunt unless you go to a management area where your hunting with alot of other people around you which lessens your chances of taking game. Even people with big ponds full of fish who don't even fish the ponds don't want you fishing them. The world has changed so much in the past 40 years and most of it is the people in the world doing the changing. Land being cleared, land being sold of for homesites and condos, land being posted as " no trespassing " and land changing hands from farmers to large holding companies that you don't even know who owns them and can't find out cause they live in another state somewhere. Then there is the cost involved with going on an outdoor adventure which is getting to be outrageous as well. The cost of tackle, putting your boat in the water, licenses, bait, gas, leasing land to hunt on, hunting gear, scouting trips, ammo, processing, taxes and even your health keeps going up every year. What are we to do watch our heritage die out before we do in years to come?. As we grow older we tend to hunt and fish much less then when we were younger and thats one reason we all look to find young adults who we hope will get interested in hunting and fishing enough to carry on our heritage. Schools are teaching our children and grandchildren our heritage sports now but what good does that do if theres nowhere to go?. Many of them will find it just as hard to find a place to go on an outdoors adventure as we do and may end up giving up the heritage due to lack of a place to go and cost. Everything in our heritage today has to do with money. Greed has driven and is driving the price of our heritage to a place where none of us want it to be--- extinct. With the rising cost of everything beginning with taxes and filtering down from there, everyone wants a piece of the pie. They all want their share of the growing economy which includes our heritage. From my view point the government is working in a way to prevent any of us from having a heritage to pass on to our children and grandchildren within years to come. They want us to give up our guns so they rise the price of taxes, our licenses and anything else that has to do with our outdoor adventures that they have a hand in which makes it harder for us to be able to afford our heritage sports. Then everyone else rises their prices to offset those price increases and it snowballs from there as it has for the past 40 years. Though many of us don't see the really big picture here it is a growing trend that our heritage is dying off faster then we think. Take a good long look around you at our young adults and find out just how many of them are really into outdoor sports today--- not as many as when we were growing up. Our heritage is dying fast and we have to find a solution to preserve it if it is to survive. What is the answer? I don't know but we have to do something soon or it will be gone forever and we'll be left with only our memories of our heritage.

Memories of My Dad

My dad has been one of the most influential, outstanding, and knowledgeable men in my life as I grew up and to this day. I've seen him do things that would have been thought impossible with almost nothing to work with and in the most unbelievable places. I guess the memories that stick out most in my life of my dad would be back when I was around 8 or 9 years old. On almost every Sunday morning when we would all get up the first thing we would do is, us boys would go out with a coffee can to hunt for worms while mom would fix a big breakfast. As soon as everyone ate breakfast we would load all the fishing gear into dad's old 68 Chevy truck and head down to one of the rivers close to home for a morning of fishing. It didn't matter where we went fishing though cause we all enjoyed just been out away from home relaxing along the riverbank taking in the scenery,playing in the cool water and spending time with dad.Dad would always try his best to make sure that everyone of us boys would at least catch one fish before we would leave for home. When we would get home it would be us boys that would clean the fish we had caught and that's what we would usually eat for supper Sunday night.Fresh fish,homemade hush puppies and homemade french fries with homemade tartar sauce, man what a meal that would be(can you taste it?). After returning home and cleaning the fish ,us boys would get several of our friends to come over for a few games of football and dad would fire up the grill for some big fat hamburgers for lunch while watching us play football. In the fall I remember dad taking me squirrel hunting to a place behind this old country church with nothing but big hickory nut trees behind it and we would still hunt with our 22 rifles cause mom didn't like any wild game that had been shot with a shotgun( she didn't like picking buckshot or the hair from her meat). As I grew older I practiced with the 22 and got good enough to shot rabbit sitting or running just for mom. Dad was always there to help me work on my truck regardless of what I was doing to it and would always tell me I was doing things the hard way then show me the easy way of fixing it(and he's still there helping me out whenever I need him today).My dad has alot of health problems today and most he doesn't even tell mom about or go get checked by the doctors but he still gets around fairly well for a man to be 83 years old. I don't do funerals very well and don't like to think about his passing coming anytime soon. Mom's health is bad and dad takes care of her really well, I only fear that when one goes they both will go at the same time due to the closeness of their companionship as I have seen all to many end up the same way.God help me when this day comes.