05/28/2026
The Old Man and his Farm
Four years ago a dart thrown at a map landed a friend and I in a small town in the midwest. Four gobblers in a yard lead us to knocking on the door. Knock Knock Knock… three steps back, stand straight, shoulders back, slight smile… like I’ve done a thousand times before. An old man shuffles to the screen door, favoring his right side with obvious signs of a previous stroke. “Yeaaahhhhhh?” he hollered, as if to say, why the hell are you interrupting my coffee and westerns. “Well sir, we came up here from Tennessee to hunt turkeys, and we couldn’t help but notice you have four big ones in your yard.” He replied.. “You sure drove a long ways to shoot some turkeys….. come on in.” And so it began. The stroke had impaired his speech to where he was hard to understand. The first year I understood 50 % of what he said, and just nodded and grinned to the other 50%. The second year I was up to 60%, and by the fourth year I could understand dang near everything he said. I came up for a week every fall for deer and again in the spring for turkeys. He loved the company and no matter how tired I was I spent every break between hunts drinking coffee, talking about that day’s topic, and ordering whatever he had decided he needed from the internet since the last time he had seen me. No matter what I was there hunting, the midday talks always began the same.. “Welllllll how many did ya get?”
The soil was black. The kind that produces 300 bushel an acre corn, massive antlers, and long spurs. I got to go toe to toe with some giants and made some hell of some memories.
The old man was 81, born in November of 1944, right where we had found him 8 decades later. He passed away in January from complications after a surgery. He didn’t have kids, so his siblings and their kids handle matters of the farm now. I was able to go back for a turkey hunt and spend what will likely be, the last time on his farm.
The drive to the little town seemed longer and when I turned onto his road my jaw dropped. Was I on the right road? The neighboring farm, what was big old growth woods and beautiful clover fields, was completely up rooted and lined with the biggest dirt moving equipment money can buy. Progress, economical growth, expansion… whatever you want to call it. Where the most game per acre that I’ve ever seen once lived, was now barren and strewn with hundred foot high mounds of dirt. After all… you have got to have the right dirt and a sturdy foundation for multi story apartment buildings. A year from now the apartments will be full of residents, and none will know that they reside on what was once the finest wildlife habitat in the county. At least the old man was gone before he had to see it.
The hunting was good but the birds on the old man’s farm were scattered and out of their normal routines. I made the most of it, reminisced about past hunts and the old man’s story’s of how things used to be. On the last day I got a text from one of the family members…”get your cameras and stands before you go, the farm will likely be sold before deer season”. In no more than five years the old man’s farm, where his dad had plowed the dirt with mules, will fall victim to the little town that is bursting at its seams.
Cherish your favorite wild places and never take them for granted. Like the song says, “The only thing that stays the same is everything changes”.
*I typed the above words into my phone with my back against a huge oak log on the lower end of the old man’s farm. It was the last hour, of the last day, of the last hunt. When I saved the story in my notes and set my phone down in the leaves, I heard the deep purr and course cluck from a curious gobbler. Through a space beneath the log, behind me and to my left, I watched the feet and spurs of two big Toms parallel the log at ten feet until they rounded the end into the open. Those two gobblers stamped an exclamation mark to the end of that chapter and somehow made it just a little easier to say goodbye to the Old Man and his Farm.
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