To a starry-eyed boy enchanted by anything connected with hunting or fishing, his knowledge of the river had a mysterious, almost magical quality about it.
Similar to pretty much any teenage boy in the time around the onset of puberty, Mollygrubs Messer talked with his buddies about the birds and bees, bragged of planned sexual conquests, boasted around backcountry campfires of upcoming plans to date some “hot chick”...
Mention the word “legendary” in connection with big game hunters and hunting literature, and thoughts of most serious readers likely turn in one of two distinct directions. Most will look back to the wealth of books produced by the pioneers who sampled and savored the...
Aficionados of campfire poetry in general, or fans of the so-called “Poet of the Yukon,” Robert Service, will likely recognize that the title of this piece comes from his eerie yet wonderful poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” The setting for the saga lies far from...
As Mollygrubs moved into his mid-teenage years amidst a seemingly never-ending series of snafus and strokes of bad luck, through dogged determination on his part and patient tutelage from his father, he nonetheless somehow managed to develop modest skills as a...
Although Mollygrubs Messer grew up in a region of the South not known for abundant populations of quail, during his youth that grand game bird Havilah Babcock once described as “five ounces of feathered dynamite” was still fairly commonplace in agricultural regions...
The Misadventures Of Mollygrubs Messer Episode 10: Duxbak Debacle—Redux An earlier chronicle of Mollygrubs’ seemingly unending misadventures involved a prized Duxbak cap, misbehavior, and a “sho nuff whupping” from a high school English teacher who had endured all the...
This venison osso buco recipe is a new, tasty way to prepare tender venison hams without having to grind or cube the meat. While my preferences when it comes to venison tend to run to cube steak, backstrap (too bad the whole deer isn’t backstrap) and ground meat,...
The Misadventures Of Mollygrubs Messer Episode 9: Of Pointers And Polecats Mischance, malarkey, and being the target of adolescent misfortune ran through the teenage years of Mollygrubs Messer like colorful thread binding the top of tow sacks. On one occasion,...
Urination Tribulation Among the many hobbies of Mollygrubs Messer’s father was gardening. He found it relaxing and a welcome escape from a spouse who wasn’t about to dirty her dainty hands with manual toil in the good earth (or pretty much anything else, because truth...