MUSIC TO HIS EARS
Many aspects of the outdoor experience -- freshwater and saltwater fishing; hunting for quail, doves, pheasants, turkeys, squirrels, rabbits; shrimping; handling a throw net; building a proper fire; camping out under the stars; cooking over a campfire; and training dogs -- figure into The Old Man and the Boy and The Old Man's Boy Grows Older. For present purposes, though, let's take a closer look at how he depicts the deer-hunting aspects of his boyhood.

During Ruark's formative years, and to a considerable degree the tradition holds sway yet today, deer hunting in the coastal regions of the Carolinas meant hunting with dogs (Ruark grew up during the pre- and post-Depression era). South Carolinian Archibald Rutledge immortalized the practice of hunting with dogs in literally hundreds of tales, many of which later became chapters in his dozens of books (some of the best of these are collected in the anthology Tales of Whitetails: Archibald Rutledge's Great Deer-Hunting Stories, edited by Jim Casada), and as far back as the early 19th century, the writings of William Elliott in his chronicles of chasing deer figure in regional literature.

Yet for capturing the essence of the experience, the near-indescribable thrills associated with a hallelujah chorus of hounds hot on the trail of a noble stag, no one can touch Ruark. He didn't write a lot about deer hunting, but his recounting of boyhood experiences was superb. With the possible exception of William Faulkner's "Race at Morning," there's nothing to compare with the moving way in which Ruark captures scene and sentiment in the story "Mister Howard Was a Real Gent."

GRIPPED BY BUCK FEVER
No hunter, man or boy, ever forgets his first deer, and Ruark's recounting of a morning in the Carolina swamps stirs the soul. "Maybe you never heard a hound in the woods on a frosty fall morning, with the breeze light, the sun heating up in the sky, and the 'awful' expectancy that something big was going to happen to you. There aren't many things like it. When the baying gets closer and closer and still closer to you, you feel as if you're going to explode if something doesn't happen quick. And when the direction changes and the dogs begin to fade, you feel so sick you want to throw up."

When the dogs drove a fine buck by him, well within shooting range, Ruark did nothing.

As he subsequently wrote, "The thought that I had a gun with me and the gun was loaded never occurred. I just watched that big buck deer run, with my mouth open and my eyes popped out of my head." Although the Old Man, visiting Mister Howard (an affluent gent from up Maryland way), and others participating in the hunt tried to explain that buck fever gripped everyone, the Boy was inconsolable.

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