Campfire - Autumn In August

The first ripe mast and sweltering days of late summer mean one thing hunting season is here again

- Will Brantley

AUGUST, sophomore year at Murray State—I was skinning squirrels in the dorm parking lot when a classmate walked by. I’d never met him, but he was wearing a faded camo shirt and boots. He was obviously a kindred spirit. “Where you going?” I hollered at him, wiping my blade across my pants. He was carrying a to-go tray from Wins low Cafeteria.

“Getting closer to a crapper before I attempt to eat this slop,” he said. “My guts still aren’t used to it.”

“Come over here and help me with these squirrels, then,” I said. “I got three good young ones, all out of hickory nut trees. We’ll fry them in the community kitchen.”

He smiled and introduced himself as Ryan McCafferty. “Shoot,” he said. “I’d as soon eat a squirrel as steak.” He tossed the dinner tray into my truck bed, where it rode for some time, and opened his own pocketknife. “Were they cutting good?” he asked. “Because I keep a little .410 in my Jeep, if you want to go again.”

The next morning, a few hours before class, we cut through a thin fog and across a cattle pasture into a 20-acre block of hardwoods. I’d hunted there the last half hour of light the evening before, and I’d have sworn most of the gray squirrels in Kentucky were piled into half a dozen shagbark hickories on the edge of that woodlot. It was already 80 degrees.