The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com.
In this recording Moultrie Bateman tells a series of hunting stories and shares recollections from his childhood. At the beginning of the audio he replicates box wild turkey calls, then he recalls a time when three hunters saw turkeys with abnormally long beards. At 3:28, he reminisces about trapping and sending hides to F.C. Taylor Fur Company in St. Louis, after which he expands upon the casing processes for muskrat, otter, mink, and fox hides. At 4:32, Bateman tells a joke about a hunting dog responding to a scent, then he tells a couple of tall tales about bird dogs, including one from Crawford County, Georgia. At 8:57, Batement tells a joke about a man named Lem Griffith who taught catfish how to walk due to a drought. Then he recollects hunting and fishing with his father, who was a peach farmer. He also recalls Ocmulgee Swamp locals, including moonshiners, saw millers, charcoal burners, fish trappers, and a bear hunter. At 11:05 Bateman discusses the profession of distilling moonshine and how his father exchanged peaches for moonshine. At 13:38 he reflects on Henry Jackson, a farm tenant who told him ghost stories, went rabbit hunting with him, and cut trees while hunting racoons. He also remembers their cook, Aunt Lilia. At 21:07, Bateman continues to tell stories about hunting dogs. He also talks about buying and selling hunting dogs, including how to value them. Then at 23:54 he remembers hunting foxes and bobcats, followed by recollections of raising gamecocks and cockfights. At 31:05, he explains that Louisiana and Florida were the last states to criminalize dogfighting. At 31:31, Bateman tells a ghost story about an overseer who was visited by two women while living alone. Then at 32:47, he reminisces about sitting around the fire with raccoon and fox hunters, eating barbecue, and using flambeaus (bottles with kerosene and a wick). He also recalls hunters competing to have their dog in the front while on a hunting trail. At 36:00 Bateman looks back on bear hunting, specifically a local hunter and trapper named Jim Johnson, and how common deer were. At 40:40 he talks about hunters falling from trees and the development of tree stands.
Thomas P. Nerney (1948- ) was born to Phyllis W Nerney (1921-2013) and Francis X. Nerney (1913-1987), the fourth of six children. He attended St. Pius X Catholic High School in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated from Georgia State University in 1974. He lived in Belmont, California, and married Sandra K. Craig (1943- ) on December 22nd, 1983 in San Mateo, California. Moultrie Warren Bateman (1918-2005) was born in Byron, Georgia, to Oliver J. Bateman (1889-1938) and Elizabeth Buford (1887-1960). In 1938 he graduated from Georgia State University, and on October 12th, 1940 he married Marian Frances Rainey (1918-2005). They had one child, Beverly Bateman (1952- ). Bateman worked as a high school principal, a newspaper and magazine writer, a baker, and in advertising at Georgia Power Company.
COLLECTING PROJECT FOLKLORE 301 DR, BURRISON SPRING 1973 NERNEY, THOMAS P. COLLECTOR, THOMAS P, NERNEY DATE COLLECTED: 5 MAY 1973 INFORMANT: ADDRESS: MOULTRifWARREN BATEMAN S, r.J, 1975 CHILDRESS DRIVE,~ATLANTA, GEORGIA TYPE OF STORIES: SEVEN LIES (HUNTING TALL TALES), ASSORTED PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD The informant, Moultrie Warren Bateman, is a fifty-five year old~ Caucasian male, born and raised on a farm near Byron, Georgia and rocabcd in Peach County. As indicated in his remembrances, he was the son of a fairly prosperous peach farmer and an avid hunter in the middle Georgia style. He graduated from the University of Georgia and has worked as a high school principal, a newspaper and magazine writer, a baker, and is presently the head of the advertising department at the Georgia Power Company. During the recording,style changes became evident. When approached for a recording session, he was readily agreeable and took some pains to have props available (animal callers and steel traps for example) and obviously planned the first part of his story telling session. After he had ended the hunting stories, he became relaxed and expansive and his narrative took on a rambling, informal tone, During the hunting stories, he took pains to make an effect upon his audience. During the second part of the session he was much more natural and direct, While the personal remembrances of the second part of the recording are not precisely folktales, the teller's method and style as well as as his subject matter are authentic middle Georgia rural material and as such are included as part of this collector's project, In fact, it is my opinion that the first part,of the recording (the hunting stories) are rather artificial since they were carefully planned and that the second part of the tape, due to its spontaneity and naturalness, is much the more interesting. Mr. Bateman's style was calm. He did not use many gestures but his facial expression was often in keeping with the tale he was telling, The session was recorded with the teller and his audience sitting around a table, so eye contact was maintained throughCOLLECTOR, THOMAS P, NERNEY DATE COLLECTED: 5 MAY 1973 INFORMANT: MOULTRifWARREN BATEMAN S, l,J-. ADDRESS: 1975 CHILDRESS DRIVE,t\ATLANTA, GEORGIA TYPE OF STORIES: SEVEN LIES (HUNTING TALL TALES), ASSORTED PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD out. Recording took place on a Saturday evening (May 5) after dinner, During the meal, Mr. Bateman had told several hunting stories and since dinner consisted of quail and dove which he himself had shot, talk centered on hunting and game preparation. Mr. Bateman's style of speech did not change a great deal during ! the recording session but in the second part of the tape, certain ruralisms became more noticeable. (Such as his tendency to drop or mix pronouns, to use long sentences punctuated by digressions, and to digress in the middle of a story to comment on a character of his boyhood, His daughter told me later that the informant has a tendency to broaden his speech and countrify his language during similar story telling sessions.) CLASSIFICATION The material classified here comes from the first part of the tape. Generally, the type of story told was a general hunting story (Types "'11'4 1890 - 1909), The tale type indexAused this classification but only included one identifiable type and one approximate type, Several identifiable motifs occurred in the telling. Story #1- Three hunters telling about the turkeys they have seen. Type not identifiable (falls in the general hunting story numbers) Motifs - 271,1 - repetition of the number three (three elements in the story) X905 - lying contest Story #2- The expert turkey caller, Type - not identifiable (general hunting story) Motifs - X1250 - 80 - lies about birds (no reference in index to any stories concerning wild turkeys) Story #J- The dog who caught animals for his master, Type - not identifiable (general hunting story) Motifs - B421 - helpful dog X1215,9 - dutiful dog X1215 - general lies about dogs Story #4- ~he dog who pointed on the fence. Type - possibly a variant of 1889J - the man who jumps halfway across a stream and decides to come back, Motifs - X1215,9 - lies about dogs Story #5- The dead pointer, Type - 1889N - the long hunt Motifs - X1215,9 - the dutiful dog X1215 - lies about dogs B121.1.1 - the infallible hunting dog If one cares to identify stories 3, 4, and 5 as part of a single hunting tale, then there is the additional motif 271,1 (three elements) Story #6- The dog who traps quail in a turtle hole, Type - not identifiable (This story has been collected elsewhere but nothing appears in the type index except the general classification mentioned above.) Motifs - B421 - the helpful dog X1215 - lies about dogs x1215.9 - the dutiful dog Story #7- The walking catfish, Type - not identifiable (tall tale) Motifs - B874,1 - giant river catfish X1J06 - fish trained to live on land The rest of the tape does not have any specific folk tales but the tellerc uses several traditional devices in the telling of his own experiences. He uses the three elements several times, makes use of end formulae after specific stories as well as after his entire narration, makes asides about characters within his stories, and interjected humorous observations or comments during the stories themselves, (The sound of a box wild turkey call) "That's a gobbler sign- a squawk sign. You know what that is? That's a turkey call anyway. Pretty smart bird. You know Benjamin Franlrlin wanted to make him the national bird instead of the eagle. Ah- ever been turkry hunting? You wanted some tall tales about turkeys? I was hunting on Clark Hill one time. It's near Thompson, Georgia. And one of the hunters came back to camp and he was telling about the big turkey he saw. And he said that the turkey had a beard so long it was dragging the ground. And another hunter sitting around listening to that and said that the one he'd seen that morning had a beard so long that the turkey was stepping on it. And still another hunter said that he saw a turkey that had a beard so long that the turkey behind him was stepping on it, So you see, the first liar doesn't have a chance and I guess tonight I'll be the first liar. "But I heard about a guy who was so good with one of these things [indicates turkey callei} that he called up a turkey to the log that he was sitting behind, And the turkey came to the other side of the log and he reached under the log trying to catch the turkey's feet and did- thought he wouldn't have to shoot this one, And he- ah- couldn't pull the turkey under the log so he let him go, And somebody else asked him and said 'What'd you do then?' And he said, 'Well, I just called him around to my side of the log,' And if you know what a wiley ol' bird the turkey is, He's a pretty good turkey caller, "I think I told you about the city boys who wouldn't shoot at the flock of turkeys because they thought they were buzzards. But- ah- I don't think they taste like buzzards, I think most people consider them pretty good eating. 2 "You know what that thing is over there? Do the words Victor, Oneida, Newhouse mean anything to you? They're all steel traps. When I was a young boy I trapped- places- Ichiki creek, Mule Creek, so forth. Sent the hides- even back then- ah- oh, thirty-five, forty years ago- St, Louis was still a fur trading center- p'haps, still does some, But I shipped the hides- we shipped the h~des- to St. Louis. To S, C, Taylor fur company, I remember, in St, Louis. Ah- one fellow, he didn't have to use the steel traps much. He had a dog, And you know most of the hides you case, You skin 'em like a glove. You don't- an open hide is a racoon that's stretched almost square and open. Most of the hidesotter, mink, mushkrat[sic], fox-are cased. Skinned-ah-that way the furriers can use them the way they want to and that's the way they want them. The beaver hide is stretched almost round- round as a silver dollar. Ah- you can steam or hook and tie it with rawhide and stretch him in that frame, in a round frame, But this guyah- had a wonderful dog and- ah- one day he walked out on the back porch of this little shack he had with one of his stretching boards where you stretch these case hides, Well, the dog looked up and lit out for the swamps and came back with a mink and that was a mink stretching frame. So the next day he was out there with some mushkrat stretching boards and the dog came out and saw him and ran and took off to the swamp again and came back with a mushkrat, Then he caught on to that so he walked out with a fox board- stretching board- and the dog took off and came back with a pretty red fox with a white tip on his tail- prime hide, And that just went on so he didn't have to put out these steel traps anymore. Well, one day he lost the dog. His wife walked out on the porch with an ironing board and his dog took off and he never came back. "That dog was almost as good as a bird dog I heard about, Of J course, I heard one fellow say that his dog, one time, smelled a bird just as he was jumping over a fence- a barbed wire fence, And he said the dog caught the scent of the covey just as he was jumping that fence, balanced himself on the fence, and pointed in a perfect point. Another guy said that his dog was so good, so sturdy on point, that he lost him one day and walking through those woods a year or so later, He found the skeleton of his dog-- knew it was his dog 'cause the collar was still there, And he says he was walking around there in front of the dog and flushed a covey of birds, He thought that was holding 'em pretty good, " 'Bout the best dog I ever heard about was- once I was walking down in the swamps and- ah- with a friend, And this friend had a pretty good bird dog and- ah- this was, I think, on Deep Creelc, in that sandy country of Crawford County where some of the sand from south Georgia runs up in kind of a finger in Middle Georgia, Andah- it had gopher holes in there now, We're not talking 'bout your little hairy gopher, We're talking about your gopher turtle- tortoise, Ah- burrows under the sand sometimes with a fox or two and a rattlesnake or two and so forth, I've trapped thosegophers. Claim they got nine different kinds of meat in 'em. I'll tell you how to trap those sometime. But, anyway, that ain't part of this story. Ah- this- ah- bird dog pointed there and a bird got up. Man killed ~im. Another bird got up and the man killed him. And five birds got up and ~Ro meR that was back in the days when your shotgun could legally hold five shells. And- ah- the man killed five birds right there standing in his tracks, And- ah- he reloaded, And then another bird got up and four more birds got up 'til he'd shot all those shells, And he reloaded and he thought that was a little remarkable standing there in his tracks and killing ten quailsingle. And- ah- so he reloaded and another bird got up and one at 4 a time four more birds got up, He killed fifteen birds standing right there and he couldn't figure out why those quail were acting so peculiar. So he walked up a little closer and there was his bird dog standing with his foot in a gopher hole- the covey had run in there 'cause it was so cold that morning- and he was letting 'em out,\ one at a time. "But that was almost as smart as ol' Lem Griffith's catfish, Lem Griffith was a character who lived down on Okefenokee Swamp. And- ah- he said it got so dry down there one time that he taught one of those big cats- catfish- how to walk, And one day one of my buddies wanted to know what happened to 'em, He said, well, he and the catfish were walking' crest a bridge one time and the catfish fell off and drowned, "Well, those are a few stories about hunting. There are a lot more. If you want to talk about 'em some day, we will, [Interviewer: You were born and raised in south Georgia?] "Middle Georgia. Peach County, Been hunting in south Georgia and middle Georgia and some in north Georgia. But mostly middle Georgia and south Georgia, "We've had some stories. 'Course I was born on a pretty good farm, And- ah- Q father had five thousand acres and- ah- we had a lot of hunting, We always had good coon dogs and possum dogs- I hunted those as a boy, My father had the bird dogs. Occasionally I'd go with him bird hunting, And- ah- on the back of our farm ran this Mule Creek Swamp which was a good swamp- interesting swamp- full of wildlife. And it ran for- ah- several miles into a larger swamp called Indian Creek Swamp- big Indian, big Indian, And that ran, in turn, into the Ocmulgee River, And- ah- so we hunted and we fished and- ah- the creeks and the river, And- ah- knew a lot of characters who lived in the swamp- charcoal burners, trappers, fish 5 trappers, Jim Johnson, a bear hunter and- ah- sawmillers and- ahinteresting people- moonshiners. That was before all the moonshiners went to work at Warner-Robbins. They're good people. I think moonshining was a fairly honorable profession then, Ah- particularly those who didn't use the galvinized tin tub but used good copper vats and- ah- didn't poison you. Ah- it was like up in north Georgia, around Dawson- Dawsonville, Ah- people did that for years and years and neighbors wouldn't tei1 on 'em, even. You couldn't get a county agricultural agent or vocational/agriculture teacher to tell who a moonshiner was, These moonshiners been doing it all his life- his parents and his grandparents, And- ah- I think the law was the interloper. So, they were good people, I think- hardworking people, I've got nothing against them, I've hunted- they let me hunt on their land, When I'd find a buckboard and barrels and a lot in barrels in gullies behind their homes and they knew that I could turn them in. They also knew that I wouldn't, I've seen their fires at night when I was coon hunting and possum hunting and never thought about turning them in, I didn't think it was my job to do so, That was back during the depression years when it was as hard as hell to make a living and- ah- they made a living by making good shine, Ahthey'd come to our packing shed and get peaches and- ah- I'd wonder why the dickens is daddy giving these people a truckload of peaches? Well, they were tree ripe peaches- the very best- but they wouldn't hold in a refrigerated car to ship to Chigaco or New York, We even shipped some of 'em to England, I remember- one car load to England trying to find- ah- a good market during the depression, And- ah- later I learned they would come in the yard sometime in the early fall and- ah- leave fifteen, twenty gallons with my daddy, He'd put it in the smokehouse in charred kegs and that aged it, I think, and turned it a beautiful amber color, And- ah- then 6 you couldn't come without having a toddy- unless you were the preacher and you might be invited if you were the preacher. ''But- ah- I 'member next to the house was- ah- the barn. Al'l:and- for twenty mules and back in those days- my boyhood- you were judged by the number of plows you ran, And- ah- twenty, twentyfive plows- pretty big farmer. And- ah- they had two saddle horses and a couple of cows- only two milk cows. Only cattle we had in the early days, Later we got Hereford during a drought in Texas, An an't make oui} but didn't have many then and the lan't make out] as they said was a tenant house where Henry Jackson lived, Henry was my- my coach, mentor, guide, and everything else. He liked night hunting as I did and he could also 'zarn rabbits, He was the only one I knew who could 'zarn rabbits. And- ah- by'zarning rabbits I mean he could bed rabbits. Henry knew that they turned their backs to the wind and- ah- their big shiny eyes- lustrous eyes- were the first things you saw and you look for 'em down wind, And he could find 'em but he couldn't hit the tin side of a barn with a ten guage if he were locked inside, And- ah- I had to shoot 'em with a little twenty-two rifle after he saw 'em, And, you know, it was years later that I realized what Henry was saying when he said he was 'zarning rabbits, He was discerning rabbits. Ah- it took me a while to learn that, 11I guess I was a pretty wild kid 'cause the cook- Aunt Liliabecame the cook for us when I was six months old and stayed until I was twenty-one or twenty when we moved to town and my father died, She said that boy needed 'chactizing,' And, you know, I still think her way of 'chactizing' is better than chastizing .an't make outJ 'cause I knew what she meant, ,/ Well, anyway, Henry was a great teller of ghost tales, And.- ah- Henry could tell you- he could curdle your blood, And- ah- he 7 would tell me about seeing ghosts that would role across the road like a culvert or something- just a big spiral, And then he would tell me tales - ah- about a ghost beating his dogs- beating his hounds, They would threaten to jump up and their tails would go between their legs and they would just howl in utter misery. And- ah- I thought maybe his hounds had a bad diet and these were running fits. I knew dogs like that myself and I climbed a tree once, I remember, threw my gun down and climbed a tree when the dog was running around frothing at the mouth, Thought something had gone wrong but it was a running fib, An~ after a while he quit running and I came down, "But- ah- Henry said that- ah- you could see ghosts if you were born with a veil over your face, And- ah- I didn't know what that magical quality that ol' Gan't make ou"LJmeant. But later- ah- I found- thought- it meant afterbirth- the membraneous tissue of the afterbirth, If the infant had that across his eyes then he could see ghosts, he could see spirits. So I 'member one night we were possum hunting and we were going through some farmer's cane patch on the way home and he came out on the porch- heard the screen door slam as we were going up the hill chewing our sugar cane and a shotgun banged and- ah- well we were going up that hill and wasn't very concerned about the farmer shooting at us, particularly at that distance with a shotgun- didn't sound like a rifle- so I asked Henry if he would please show me a ghost, the next one he saw. And he said he would try to, So we walked up the hill and turned into 'nother larger road and we were walking down there and Henry stopped in his tracks and he said, 'There he is,' except at that time I think Henry said, 'Thar'e is.' And- ah- out in this newly plowed field was something that was just sparkling, just scintillating, just shimmering and shining to beat the band. And- ah- I was probably about twelve years old and I had my first gun which was a 8 little four-ten single barrel with a single shot. And I thought I could kill anything that was short of a grizzly if I got close enough. So I was determined to take a good look at this ghost, So I- Henry stood squarely in the middle of the road ready to run- I walked out in the field to look and- I had a little trepidation about it- 'til I got closer to it and it was quivering and shimmer- ing some and it was a full moon night, And what it was was a big ol' harrow disk that was worn to a- almost a pure silver and the moonbeams were hitting, So that's what it was. That was Henry's ghost, But- I'm not sure that I a{sWcount all of Henry's stories, Perhaps he did see some, ''Henry impressed me then as being in his middle years but to a twelve year old boy that was probably thirty-five. He was a tenant on the farm- one of the farm hands- and a very good one, Henry could cut a tree, Henry couldn't climb, (City boys say shinny. I heard that twenty, thirty years later.) But Henry couldn't climb a tree. Like these power linemen call beginners, he's a 'clum-some.' That means he's clumb some and he's also pretty clumsy, I think. Ah- but Henry could take me and then station me- ah- oh, seventy, eighty feet from a tree and give me the leashes or chains of two big coon hounds- probably ninety pounds apiece- blue tick or red bone- to hold. And he says, "I'm going to pitch the tree right over here, He's in the top of it now and you stand right here and the tree's going to fall six or eight feet over there. So if a limb comes off it won't fly and hurt you all that much." And he says, 'When it hits the ground, you turn the dogs loose 'cause I don't want this coon to get away,' And he would go over there and he could fell a tree so it would fall exactly where he said it would fall. And the tree would come crashing down and limbs and leaves and everything would cover me up and I'd turn the dogs loose 9 and they'd catch the coon. And- ah- we didn't want 'em to tear up the hides because the hides- a good, prime coon hide would bring eight dollars- extra large, fine- would bring eight dollars in St, Louis, And we didn't like 'em to be tearing it up so- ah- we found out a way, Some of the bird hunters- the dogs with the tough mouth.s, hard mouths- haven't found yet how to make a dog turn a bird loose, But it'll work just as well with a bird dog just as it will with a coon hound or a possum hound, Just lift up that ol' long ear, kneel beside 'em an' lift that ol' long ear up, Blow in it and when you blow in his ear his mouth will fly open and while it's open you take the coon out, But you have to do it fast, "Course if the coon is still alive you're going to wish you hadn't taken it, Ah- we shoot them sometimes but- ah- sometimes we'd knock 'em out and let the dogs fight 'em because that makes a good coon hound, Or you found out you didn't have a coon hound at all, "They 're most valuable dogs, I've heard of 'em costing fifteen hundred dollars, Ah- I think there was one called Nightrider that sold for that and the owner had a certified check- aH- had a photostat of a check, I'm sorry, I don't know what kind of a deal he and the other man made but- ah- when to think that you can sell the pups for so much- a hundred dollars apiece or so- in eight weeks, it's not a bad deal, And- ah- it takes many things to make a coon hound, First he has to be- have no fear of water- swim a creek or a river and break the ice to do it, if he has to, And then he has to be bold enough to tackle the coon when he hits the ground and not get timid because he gets whipped and things like that, He has to be crafty and not be afraid of water, He has to have good scenting power. He has to be open on the trail and that means he barks frequently enough to let you know how he is, He has to be solid tt tree; that means he rares up on the tree or sits down at the tree 1.0 and that big bawl that the- bawling bark that he uses when he runshe settles to a steady chop, almost like a woodman cutting a tree when he's sitting at the tree. And that's what they call steady at the tree. And then he can't be an old potterer who fools around with a cold trail the coon made as long as the night before. And you want a dog with a hot nose, I think, rather than a cold nose if you want to catch a lot of coon. And back in those days for a boy a coon hide was money and I think there was a rage right at that time for coonskin coats. When that passed, the value of the coonskin passeri,,. ' Fox hunters- they know their@ogsj voices as well as you know mine now. Or as well as you know Arthur Godfrey's. Ah- 'That's ol' Lou. She's opened on 'em,' and 'That's big Ben' and 'That's ol' Whip' and 'Now listen to little Anne.' Surely you Jmow thw voices just like you know your mother's voice, You can pick them out of a pack of ten, ~ty, thirty dogs. Any hunter can do that. If he's hunting with other hunters and their dogs, he may not know all their voices a!'l.J 1'le eool'l: lmoue but he knows his dogs' voices and he soon learns the others', We've hunted bobcats one time or two and we hunted with one banker and a few of his friends who had a pack of good Julys and they started getting off and running varmints and bobcats and that was so much fum that we got the best pack of cat dogs in the county, in the country. We quit hunting foxes because hunting bobcats was much more fun. 'coon hounds are bothered with bobcats. Late at night and sometimes, they tree, and they think they've treed a ghost or it's gone and tapped the tree)on 'em and went on down the swamp- something like that. But a lot of times it's a bobcat who just can't stand the sight and sound and smell of men with flashlights and lanterns coming to his tree so he jumps out of it and runs again, 11 Ah- but we had a man with these very fast July hounds that could run a red fox to earth. We hunted 'em with those dogs. We'd hunt early in the morning- we'd take 'em out early in the morning, strike a hot track and most of the chase took part in the day, And unlike the northern bobcat which will climb a tree, the southern bobcat won't, The dogs will bay him and he'll fight on the ground. At night he'll go up a tree- in the daytime he'll stay on the ground and fight. I remember one morning I took off about two hours running and the cats- all cats have small lungs. They're good in the dashes but they can't hold out in the marathons, They're very fast but they can run only a short distance, before their sides are heaving, But then if they can hide or get far enough ahead so they can duck or dodge and that's what they depend on- these branch heads and bamboo bogs and canebreaks of the swamps- they depend on things that the dogs can't follow easily, But they caught with him and there was an awful lot of noise like two or three sawmills running wild there for awhile and I thought I wanted that cat's hide because he had been giving us trouble for a long time and now it's all torn up. So when we finally found him we found the cat sitting down there with seven Julys lying on their bellies looking at him and the cat didn't even have a hair turned on him, And we clapped our hands and shouted 'Hie! Sic 'em!' and they looked at us like 'You stupid fools- You sic 'em!' And- ah- we didn't even have a side arm so we didn't know what the hell to do. The other hunters were out of sight and out of hearing and maybe in the next county, we didn't know. We had sil!r dogs and one mad cat. So- ah- this fellow with me, Wallace Peevy, who's never without his pocket flask and. had a good snort thaft morning, too, and. maybe a few later, but he'd. cut a big dogwood club, stick, something like that, He says, 'You 12 take this in there, Warren, and you hit 'em in the head and the dogs will kill 'em,' So I get through the vines and try to clear a few vines out and I was exciting the cat and he was up snarling and spitting and_ waving his paws. Wallace said something and I turned around and he said, 'Hell, don't turn your back on 'em. He'll light right in the middle of that leather jacket.' I didn't like that so much. I said, 'Hey! You take the stick,' He took another drink first. Then he went in and he hit the cat and I watched his eyes fill up with smoke and the hounds were on him then and that was the end oi big Tom and the end of the hunt and we had a good hide- the dogs hadn't torn it up any, I'll tell you that, Bobcats is some animal. I think probably pound for pound he can whip any animal, And if you ever hear one scream some night in a creek swamp or a river swamp, you'll never forget it. Or you'll be reminded of a woman who's being raped. "Long time ago in the cruel days or the careless days they used to catch 'em and put 'em in pens with bulldogs or something like bear baiting, I never saw one like that but my father did and it was amusement, I think- probably cruel making a cat fighting a dog. "I've :never been to a cockfight but they had cockfights. AhI used to travel around writing a farm magazine, And on a desk here and there I'd find a magazine- I've forgotten the names of 'em, but something like the silver spur or the golden spur or something like that, Ah- I've @an 't make ou} with gamecocks. Andah- you could find your way to any cockfight just by following the rags tied to the bushes on the road, Ah- they had cockfights. They didn't raise the gamecoclcs just for fun or to look at. They' raised 'em to fight. They had 'em then and I expect they still have 'em now. Well, I think Florida and Louisiana was the last place to give up dog fighting. I !mow they still raise the pit 13 bulls in Florida and I think they probably still have some fights in Florida and Louisiana, [Ehere is a break in the narration here] "I remember the overseer telling that when he was sleeping in the ol' big house made of square logs, Covered now with weather boarding so that you wouldn't know it's a 1mg house but it is, Ah- up in the loft there's an old spinning wheel and I think still is a loom put together with pegs, And he was telling me about batching it there one time, Batching it means a single man living alone, And- ah- two beautiful women came to the mabtlepiece where the fire was just dying embers late at night and he wakes up to see these two beautiful women walk into his room, walk to the mantlepiece, take off a letter and read it and walk out again. I don't think he was much of a bachelor. He wouldn't have let 'em out. "But we didn't have all our powerful lights you had, We had kerosene lanterns and, in my boyhood, little flashlights, Sometimes, if you were rich enough, you got a five cell flashlight. Butah- sometimes when we hunted if we didn't have anything else, we hunted with pop bottles filled with kerosene and a wick and we called 'em 'flambeaus.' And sometimes we go- to a tree with a lighted knot which would probably give the biggest and brightest light of 'em all, We had some good times, sitting around the fire like the coon hunters sometimes- most of the time we didn't have time for that- and push sweet potatoes up in the ashes and bake them like that and eat them and tell stories and- it was a simple life and a lot of fun, Fox hunters in that country couldn't hunt with horses because it was fenced and cross-fenced- barb wire and hogtight and wire and they just got on a hillside and built a fire and eat barbecue they'd cooked the day before or something and it takes about a day and a night to cll!ok good barbecue and that's what I 14 enjoyed doing with them the most as well as the music- hound dog music, It was a kind of music. Pack striking a trail was kind of like an orchestra settling down to play and it reaches a crescendo and it goes all throughout, I think, the- all the movements of an orchestra. Lot of fun, Beautiful voices- some are turkey mouthed like a turkey gobbling. Some are bugle voiced like ol' Bugle Anne of book. Ah- some are chops, some are bawls, some are squealers and- ah- quite an orchestration. I always liked the deep bawling voices myself with a few chops thrown in to break the monotony. I knew one fellow had a hound called Champion. He weighed over a hundred pounds- had an ear spread of thirty inches tip to tip and a voice like a lion and when he barked the hickory nuts came down. But- ah- that was really something to hear. Good music, I think I'd enjoy it still, But that's something you have to understand it, I think, to appreciate it and there's rivalry in it. You want your dog out front. You want your dog out front and running and you want your dog first at the tree and you take pride in it. It's not nearly as much fun when you don't have a dog in the race, I imagine you feel on the Kentucky Derby more keenly if you've got a horse in the race. But those boys had their Kentncky Derbys every Friday night or Saturday night, My father would never let me go during the week on a school night but I could go Friday night and I could go Saturday night and I could hunt quail the next day. And we had combination hounds. They were just as good as grocery stores. They'd tree coons and possums at night and the next day they'd tree squirrels and run rabbits. And they call those combination hounds, Of course, somebody- a lot of hunters just wanted pure straight coon hounds. They didn't want hounds running any trash at all. "And now we have deer in the country. I was hunting there and 15 I never saw a deer track in those woods in my boyhood, There were deer over on the Ocmulgee swamp and they were taken over thereotter, beaver, and channel cat and I think a friend of mine named Possum McLain who went barefooted the year around knew the swamp about as well as any al' black bear who lived in it, knewstae river 'bout as well as any al' blue cat that lived in it. And al' man Jim Johnson- lived on a houseboat part of the time- kept a pack of bear dogs and- ah- he killed nine black bears, then he quit shooting 'em and he just took other people hunting, And if you could run all day and swim a river with your clothes and your gun and find your way out of the swamp at night, he might take you bear hunting Friday. Like I say, he killed eleven of 'em and he's telling me about sleeping one nmght and he heard this awful ruckus out at his pig pen and he went out there and the bear had one of his sows slung across his shoulder like a sack of meal totin' him off, And I remember one of his hounds ran a bear all day, just about, in a place called Denson's marsh and when he went there he found one hound with the bear backed up on a little tussock swatting at him like a boxer and the other hound he found in the water at the bear's feet and all he carried home was the collar. /1an't make oufJ the dog's name was Trailer and he was a pretty good one. But Jim made his own fish baskets out of willow limbs, willow wires and- ahtrapped and you could bu~ a string of little speckled channel catfish as long as your leg and thigh for a dollar- still wiggling and good and fresh. Made some that way and he also trapped otter and beaver and mink. And- ah- I expect he was one of the best swampers I've ever known. And he had a cabin across the river from a little place called Red Bluff, Red Bluff was a mighty small settlement. All there was was one corrugated tin garage for Jim's car, When he wanted to go to town for something he seldom needed, But- ah- ) l6 you'd go down to Red Bluff and you'd blow your horn after you'd rode a long ways through the swamps and crossed several farms and through the swamps to get there, And you'd sit there and blow your horn and if Jim was in a mood to ana at home- which was seldom- Joq ;re a CA ~ he'd come down- paddle down the river in a barrel\J] and get you and take you back to his cabin, And I guess he could tell by the sound of your horn and the way you blew it whether he wanted to see you or RigR~ not, "There are a lot of deer in that country now- in fact I've killed a half dozen in the past few years down there. And it's a good game animal, too. Was hunting down there one time on the altamaha swamp where they've had 'em, I guess, forever, They never run out of them down there, I remember one hunter coming into camp and telling about the deer jumping six feet high over the tye-tyes as he came by him/ And another hunter says a deer can't jump that high and another says he can jump ten feet, Another said a deer could jump 20 feet with a fran't make oufJ jump, And- ah- they kept on and they finally looked over at one old fellow there and said, 'Uncle Ben, just how far can a deer jump?' And he says, 'Just as dern fer as he has to.' I think that's about right, But now we don't drive 'em with hounds that make 'em run so fast, We hunt them now from tree stands mostly, We build pretty good safe comfortable tree stands. I've seen some people fall out of trees and saw one in a pick-up truck in Grey all bloody and nurse bending over him and people five deep around him and I said, 'Oh my God, some hunter's shot another,' But he wasn't, He'd fallen out of a tree and broken his neck and his shoulder blade, too, I think- two or three other things. He was an awful mess, But we built these good sturdy stands- build the sills out of two by sixes and the steps out of ~o by fours which will even hold me and I 17 weigh two forty and that's excluding a rifle and heavy winter clothing and booting and so forth. All better kind. Just about have to. But one of these boys dmd go to sle~ in one of those big comfortable stands and fell about eight or ten feet, maybe fifteen- we build most of 'em about fifteen feet high, And- ah- we asked him, we said, 'Did it hurt you?' And he says, 'Naw, but when I hit the ground, I nearly scared a ten point buck to death.' ''That's about it,"
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Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions.
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