SOUTH BEND WMA:
It wuz the Sweetest Little Hunting Spot: South Bend WMA.
Only about 20 minutes out from West Omaha.
Nobody ever went there. Except my son, John, and me.
John was alive then. My Best Hunting Buddy and Best Friend. Before the ALS Monster came to take him. And no matter how hard we tried or what we did, we just could not drive that relentless Monster away.
Any how, South Bend had every critter you would want to hunt, right there and in easy reach. A good sized, ever-changing deer herd. Possums and raccoon. Lotsa rabbits in the brushpiles. Squirrels, even more than your back yard. Coyotes. Turtles under the ice in the little pond in the winter. Crows just for the calling. Once we even heard—but couldn’t see to find--a rattlesnake somewhere under our feet. JUMP!!!!
You could bet hard money that something of real consequence would take place every time you went there.
The week after the Wild Dog Pack ate my beagle, I went back. Carried a Remington 788 in .22-250. Which was one mean varmint-slaying device.
Came out of the woods, looking east down a double-tracked trail that ran along a ridge. In the left track there was a black blob about 200 yards out that under my Nikons quickly resolved itself into a huge feral cat. Just sitting there in the late afternoon sunshine like he wuz the landlord of South Bend WMA.
Threw down my possibles bag, went prone using the bag as the rifle rest. Put the crosshairs in the middle of the black blob, squeezed…………… Pow!!!
The 788 did its work, like always. Went down the track to the cat. HUGE!! It was an enormous Russian Blue. How do I know?? Well, at home my youngest daughter had an enormous Russian Blue cat that could have been the identical twin of this particular cat. Our cat at home weighed 23 pounds, which is a whole lot of cat. So did this feral cat, near as I could tell. Had the weird feeling, “Did I shoot Kathleen’s cat?? How am I going to explain it??”
I remember looking into the cat's huge, luminous eyes, with their glowing pupils, the last things perhaps ever seen by a thousand little prey critters. Anyhow, the cat justified the killing. He was e-nor-mous. And the date was February 28. Backside of winter. He had lived all through the winter on mice, quail, pheasants, meadowlarks, and whatever game birds he had caught that were mine, not his. He had not only survived; he had fattened. All the time eluding the local wild dog pack that would have eaten him in a New York Minute.
I carried him by the tail back to my car, then tossed him up on a ridge where the coyotes could get at him. So I would have a clear shot at the coyotes from behind the hay bales.
Turns out, I didn’t get to go back that time.
Turns out I can never go back again. Because Time Passes and Things Change.
Because now the place is no longer South Bend WMA. Time passed and things have changed. It’s now a place called Quarry Oaks. A golf course. Not quite a country club, but still a golf course. It was “developed”. People come and tee up golf balls, rear back and yell “fore”.
I guess it works for them.
But I guess something really grand has been lost.
Something precious.
At least, to me.
