Several years ago, I was reacquainted, by accident, with one of those backwoods-type magazines – a unique magazine for folks who enjoy the old ways of doing things. There were articles on how to make a knife or how to make dill pickles, plus recipes, and folklore and such.
It’s a very interesting magazine if you like learning about and making things with your hands. I am a guy wo loves to tinker with things and create things, to make or repair something. So, this magazine was right down my alley, as my dad used to say.
This was about the second week in January. I was working out of town, and one night I was bored to tears, what with being holed-up in a motel room and the poor selection of programming on the TV. I had forgotten my Kindle, so I had nothing to read. I hopped in the truck and went to the local bookstore. While strolling through the magazines, I discovered several copies of The Backwoodsman magazine. I hadn’t seen one in years. I grabbed one and headed for the motel, where I read the whole issue several times that week.
By the time I got home, that magazine had me all pumped up, and I was ready to make something. I was already to be creative. Being creative soothes my soul. So, out to the gun shop/guitar house/man cave I did go. That is where most of my puttering takes place.
I had started building a Carolina-style long rifle, .45-caliber percussion, for my grandson several months before but I hadn’t touched it for a while. Finding the magazine is just what I needed to get me back on track. I just love to build flintlocks. I have built 12, I think. I built one for each of my kids (two girls and a boy) and several friends. All my guns are researched and historically accurate.
My 15-year-old grandson had begged me to build him one since he was 6. And since he was about to quit growing, I decided to build him a nice one. It was about half built then, with a long way to go.
I had been into buckskinning for 45 years or so, and had made all the gear over the years. I had built numerous powder horns, knives, moccasins, possibles bags, colonial clothing and all the other proper gear to be a longhunter.
But my most prized possessions are the muzzleloading guns that I have built. Not kit guns, but custom guns. Kit guns are a very good way to get a good muzzleloading rifle at a decent price. Custom guns can go for $2,500 easily. If you have any talent at all, you can build a gun. And if you build it, it becomes a special treasure to you, or to whomever you give it to.
I build flintlocks mostly. Oh, I have all the modern stuff: all the usual guns a fellow might have. But, the old, traditional guns are my passion, especially the flintlocks.
Anyone who shoots traditional muzzleloaders, percussion or flint, is going to do things the hard way. Shooting a flintlock is like shooting a traditional longbow. They are not as foolproof as modern firearms. So, when you do bag any game animal, you feel different about it. It means more to me to have accomplished a successful hunt the old way. It’s kind of reverent. Things can go wrong when you are using the old-style equipment. Once your target enters your hunting area, you can’t make any mistakes, and your gun has to fire without complications. When it finally happens, you appreciate the entire event a lot more.
My grandson, Jacob (we call him Jake,) read and studied that magazine, as well. We both were inspired to try some of those recipes, or make a knife – those sorts of things. Old Jake decided to make himself a powder horn to go with the new rifle I was building for him. I began working on his rifle again. I still had several months to go before I would finish it. We were having such a fine time hanging out in the shop together, talking over things we had done together and places we had gone over the years.
He always referred to our adventures as “makin’ memories.” He was 6 months old the first time I took him fishing, and he’s been in my shadow since.
Finally, the March/April magazine came out. I found a copy and took it to the shop. Jake snatched it out of my hands and said, “Me first!” with a laugh. “Look at this, Papa. It’s a story about a guy squirrel hunting with a muzzleloader. Heck, we’ve done that before, several times.”
We’d already been discussing the upcoming squirrel season. And there, on page 42, was a story about a black powder squirrel hunt. He said we should do a hunt of our own. Well, we would have to wait two and half months for squirrel season to open.
I’ve been hunting squirrels with a black-powder gun for 45 years or so. Do it every year. The kids love it as much as I do. Squirrel hunting is a perfect excuse to get back in the woods after a long winter. I have used a .22 or a shotgun or my Diamondback .22 revolver. When I was about 5, my grandpa made me a slingshot. I carried it in my hip pocket, and my pockets were full of hand-picked rocks. My first squirrel was bagged with it when I was 7.
Opening day, May 15, was on a Tuesday that year. But other obligations delayed us getting into the woods squirrel hunting until May 21. We call them day trips. We have our cooking gear in a pack basket along with everything needed to bag, cook, and eat a squirrel.
I’m toting a Lehigh Valley style .32-caliber flintlock rifle that I built in 1986. It is the first long rifle I ever built, and it’s my favorite. Jake is carrying a custom 16-gauge smoothbore fowling piece. A flintlock to be sure, for the occasion. Each of us had our own gun belt with our favorite items. Since we live in copperhead and rattlesnake country, we have our snake guns. Mine is a .357, and his is a .38. Both are loaded with snake shot. We each have a leather “fire bag” on our belts. We made the bags, and inside is our flint and steel, char cloth, tow for tinder, a magnifying glass for building a fire, and a candle for hard-to-start fires when it’s damp. We both had a possibles bag, or shooting pouch, with patch and ball and other necessities, a powder horn and measure, and a priming horn for priming the flintlocks.
We put our cooking gear along with an onion, potatoes, flour tortillas and water into a pack basket, which Jake gets to carry because I’m so old and all. Now it was time for the games to begin.
It’s a perfect morning: 62 degrees, no wind. We ease across a shallow creek into the hardwoods, and the hunt is own. From the creek bottom the land rises up gradually to the top of a hill, leaving a strip of timber about 100 yards wide. We are about 20 yards apart, paralleling the creek most of the time. We stop for a while and listen, maybe sit for a bit, then move on to another likely spot. We stop again and watch, not just for a squirrel but for anything. Not to shoot, just to watch.
We see a hog, a dog, and a couple of rabbits. And birds, of course. An owl comes sailing through, and squirrels scatter and chatter ahead of us. We sit for a while to let things calm down, and I spot a doe in the distance. I turn to see Jake looking up a tree behind us a few yards. He sees me and points high up and nods his head. We begin to circle the tree. He says he saw one, but we can’t find it. We continue to circle and then I see a knot hole. The little rascal is hiding in that hole. I tell Jake we’ll just move on and maybe come back later.
I’m mostly watching Jake. He’s stalking the way I’ve been teaching him all his life. His Papa is plenty proud.
We see several squirrels way out in front of us. Just be patient. Then I see one coming right toward me on a big limb, out of nowhere. I cock my hammer back and raise my rifle, but the critter disappears in the leaves. Jake was watching the whole thing play out.
I lower my gun. But in a second or two, I see the red tail flash. Jake couldn’t see it, so I took the shot. It was a little bit humid, and flintlocks don’t like humidity. But this ain’t my first rodeo. I held the sights on target after I pulled the trigger and was rewarded with the “thump” of that squirrel hitting the ground. Jake yelled, “You got him, Papa!” It couldn’t get much better than that. And a head shot, to boot!
Since Jake is always hungry, he said, “I’m hungry. Let’s go cook him.”
We fetched our pack and found a nice flat place next to the creek. Jake proceeded to start a cooking fire with his flint and steel. That’s a pretty good trick in itself. It was so humid that the char cloth was a little damp, and he struggled a bit. But he had a nice fire going in 10 minutes or so. I taught him to use flint and steel when he was 7. He’s pretty good at it now.
We skinned and cleaned the critter, and cut it up proper, and put the pieces in a bag of flour along with slat, pepper, and garlic salt. Then Jake peeled a few potatoes and diced an onion, added his own favorite secret spices, and fried those spuds and the squirrel to a light golden brown. While I was making some hot jasmine tea, Jake was heating some tortillas on a forked stick over the fire. We said a blessing for our food and our fun, and dived into a simple great meal.
We only wanted one squirrel, to eat. That was plenty. Of course, Jake wished he had been the one who bagged the meat for our meal, but that’s just the way it turned out this time. “Besides,” he said, “squirrel season lasts until January. We can go again next week.” The only way this hunt would have been better was if old Jake could have bagged one as well.
In the early 1950s, my dad and his buddy hunted rabbits, dove, and quail with original double barrel muzzleloading shotguns, way before it had become popular.
I grew up watching those two guys and fell in love with those old guns back then. My dad taught me to hunt, fish, and to work with my hands. He was a jeweler, and he passed his artistic side to me.
I have taught my three kids all the same stuff.
Jake is now 24 and is teaching his son all of it now. And, of course, the lad runs with me quite a bit, so I get to teach some lessons too. You might say it’s a family tradition!
I have a friend; he’s an old guy, too. Retired now, and a cranky old bird. He likes doing this sort of stuff. He’s always putting me up to something. Back in 1990 or so, he decided we needed to make a video of a flintlock squirrel hunt and air it on the Outdoor Oklahoma TV show. So, we did.
We had a great time making the video. We even bagged a squirrel on camera. The old man was the cameraman this trip, along with Steve Webber. We always had a grand time when videotaping and did several shows for Outdoor Oklahoma, all with muzzleloading guns.
For me, our hunts are never about bagging something. It’s about the hunt, about being in the outdoors. It is the only place I know where I can put my mind in neutral and think only about my surroundings in nature. I forget about truck payments, bills, and all that stuff.
The older I get, the less I want to wrestle with the hassles of life. Sometimes I just need to go play a little. I hope you can find time to seek the solitude of the woods, whether it be squirrel hunting, hiking, or whatever tickles your fancy.
I also hope you are blessed enough to have a grandson or son or a friend who will go with you to enjoy not just the woods or nature, but life itself. Pass your hunting legacy down to the young. It seems we don’t have many young folks in the field these days. We surely need them!
Oh yeah. The old man’s name is Neil Keyes. He’s a hoot!
The talented Neil Keyes and Steve Webber are both former producers of the Wildlife Department’s Outdoor Oklahoma television show. Watch episodes on our YouTube channel.