Re: Sept. 04 can't get much better. Opening day of Dove season,

Dove are most excellent fried, the breast only of course, but quail, the whole quail, marinated then grilled is definitely the best way to go.

Do you eat the shed and the row or just the roe? We eat both. No self-respecting outdoorsman wastes good fish. Actually, if you want to see something fascinating, search YouTube for people that fillet shad and are able to get those extra bones out and have a clean fillet.

Now the real question is when you use squirrel to make perleau do you include the heads and eat the brains? I vote no, my dad votes yes! Needless to say we never argued over their heads.

How about hog head cheese and hog head stew?

Chitlins?

But my favorite game to eat is without a doubt an Edisto River Wood duck!

Then again I love crappie and it’s hard to beat a whole fried fat Edisto River redbreast!

Lowcntry_Tiger

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I grew up in Dorchester County.

Aug 23, 2021, 12:46 PM

My family was good friends with the Bell family. They had a big family farm near Harleyville. Farming went back in their family several generations. When I was a kid one of them was an attorney that my mother worked for for a few years and his brother was the third or fourth generation running the family farm.

They were a big gamecock family and they had a lot of political ties. Typically at least twice a season they would have a big hunt on their farm. Naturally whenever the gamecocks were playing on the road. They were season-ticket holders and never missed a home game.

They would slaughter a couple of hogs and cook them over a pit in the yard the old fashion way. The next day they would have a big pig picking’ around noon. Following the big BBQ the trucks would take you out to the fields for the hunt.

These hunts would often have 30 people sometimes more. I have met congressmen, state and federal, governors, judges, and more than my share of gamecock football players and coaches, among other luminaries at these hunts when I was a kid in the 70s and early 80s.

While you were out in the fields they would have the occasional truck drive through with cold beer and soda or take people back to the farm for those that didn’t want to stay all day or maybe had little kids. They would go back and have more BBQ! LOL

After the hunt some people would go home while other people would go back to the barn and have more BBQ and drink some beer, and a few would hang around and listen to the Carolina game on the radio. There would be Clemson people too and some would have a transistor radio with an ear bud to listen to the Clemson game while out in the field.

Of course pretty much every game warden in Dorchester county would be there. Some of them would come to the barbecue. They rarely checked anyone for a license or gun plug and usually didn’t even come in the fields. They just hung around their trucks by the side of the road and listened to college football on the radio. They knew everybody was following the rules and they knew plenty of people by first name. Of course they were all good friends with the Bell family.

I have some really fond memories of those hunts.

My mother grew up on a farm in Orangeburg and we would dove hunt there sometimes, as well as rabbit squirrel and deer, and my grandfather had a couple of big ponds that only got fished by the family and close friends.

One of my best friends came from a long line of tobacco farmers. They had a big deer hunt club but they would also have some really good dove hunts. He and I did a lot of quail hunting on their farm as well.

I also grew up hunting and fishing out at Brosnan Forest, which is owned by Southern Railway (Norfolk Southern now). They used to have some great turkey hunts.

My dad is a self-taught gunsmith. Back in the 60s and 70s he had the only gun shop east of Columbia that could re-blue guns. My house and garage looked like an arsenal when I was a kid! LOL The joke in my family is I was born with a shotgun in one hand and a rod and reel in the other. We actually have pictures of me as a baby in my little roller in the kitchen rolling around holding a rod and reel.

So needless to say my dad was the man when it came to fixing and working on guns in Dorchester county, which gave me some unique opportunities as a kid to go on some great hunting trips. People would come to his shop from Walterboro, Orangeburg, Charleston, when they couldn’t find someone to fix their gun properly. Even today right before hunting season someone will occasionally drop by my parent’s house on Lake Marion and ask my dad to take a look at their shotgun or rifle.

We typically did our duck hunting on the Edisto River and around the wildlife refuge on Lake Marion. But occasionally we got invited to the WMA hunts down in the ACE Basin at Donnelley.

Speaking of hunting and fishing, have any of you ever been fishing out at Bulls Island in the Cape Romain wildlife refuge? Decades ago they put a #### where the creek went up into Bulls Island. Over the years that became brackish and they stocked it with bream and largemouth bass but it was also full of trout and Spottail. They don’t allow outboard motors and you can only get there on a high tide. It’s basically an all day trip and the tides have to be synchronized with sunrise and sunset. You go early in the morning when the tide is high so you can get up the creek to the #### and you take your outboard and your gas tank and you chain them to a big pine tree and you take your boat and you drag it over the #### and use a trolling motor to navigate inside. Some people will carry on their boat a canoe. We would usually have 2 to 4 boats and carry a Coleman stove and everything you need for a fish fry and everybody would meet at a certain time and spot. There is nothing like fresh fried fish, hush puppies, and ice cold beer sitting on the bank on a trip like that. We haven’t done that since the late 70s so I’m not sure if they still allow that. I know there are boat tours of Cape Romain and Bulls Island.

That’s also where we get our oysters because there are no rivers running into Bulls Bay. Once you get north of Charleston Harbor there’s no fresh water until the Santee River. So that water is very clean and Bulls Bay very shallow and exposed to the ocean so that water is especially clean and salty. Best #### oysters you’ll ever have! And that’s where we do our shrimping.

Cape Romain, Bulls Bay, all of that is an unbelievably beautiful place!

Being a kid in the lowcountry back in the 70s is something that words cannot describe. I truly had a Huck Finn childhood.

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Sept. 04 can't get much better. Opening day of Dove season,