Friends add spice to hunting

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Larry Lewis is one of those men who is as likely to toss a well-placed but good-natured jab at a friend as he is (when the friend isn’t within earshot, of course) to offer an impassioned speech that proves, with no room for doubt, how special that pal really is.

The longtime educator from Sorrento is a storyteller. He’s a joker. He is – at different times – just as likely to be a bit profane as he is downright profound.

And (this is the important part) he didn’t want to be a big part of this column.

“I don’t have to be mentioned at all,” the 75-year-old Lewis told me the other day, as we milled about in a previously harvested Aroostook County barley field … waiting for Canada geese who had apparently decided to take a layover in Canada. “This is about them.”

The “them” in question were a few of his friends. Jack Turcotte of Brewer. Herbert Huckins of Steuben. And Carroll Strout of Addison … the man whose experience had prompted Lewis to call this paper, several months ago.

He taught Huckins at Milbridge High School. He spent time in duck blinds with Strout, who was a few years younger, but an avid waterfowl hunter even then. And now, 50-odd years later, Lewis was making a point.

Friends matter. And we shouldn’t forget that.

“To bring these two guys up here to go goose hunting is a real thrill for me,” Lewis said. “It’s kind of a way to say ‘Thank you,’ I guess.”

Lewis has a soft spot in his heart for both Huckins and Strout. Huckins was an underachieving student at Milbridge High back in the 1950s. Lewis was the man who got him to see his potential.

“Herbie is an intriguing character,” Lewis said, chuckling low and deep, the way smokers sometimes do.

“I trapped him when he was a sophomore. He was bright and he was lazy, and he was a duplicate of myself in high school. I recognized all the symptoms,” Lewis said.

Lewis assigned a biology term paper that year, and Huckins, he says, politely declined to complete it. Then Lewis laid the trap.

“I said, ‘I wanted you to write a paper on what black ducks eat in the summer, and what they eat in the winter, because if you know that, you’ll know where to set your [decoys],”‘ Lewis said he told his student.

“Herbie said, ‘I don’t know where I’d be able to get any material on something like that,”‘ Lewis recalled. “I said, ‘Well, that’s why I sent to the Augusta library, and here are three books on my desk. But I’ll find somebody that’s interested.”‘

As it turns out, Huckins was interested.

“That set the hook on him,” Lewis said. “And he wrote a hell of a paper.”

Lewis left Milbridge for Belfast before Strout got to high school, but the two remained in touch, and hunted off and on in the ensuing years. Several months ago, the relationship changed a bit when Lewis found out that Strout had had a leg amputated.

“I had him buried in my will for $500,” Lewis said. “He’s the only nonfamily member. I went to see him when his leg came off, and I told him, ‘Carroll, you’re coming out of my will.'”

“He was just as cheerful. He said, ‘I didn’t know I was in your will, so I haven’t lost anything,”‘ Lewis said. “I said, ‘No. I’m gonna take you goose hunting next fall, but you’ve got to be able to walk a hundred yards out in the goose field.’ This was April, I think. He looked at me and said, ‘Hell, by October I can run a hundred yards.’ That’s his attitude.”

Strout remembers that meeting well. On Tuesday, he admitted that his good-natured prediction about running into the field to hunt turned out to be a little optimistic.

“I don’t know about running,” he said, grin pasted to his face. “I have to be careful. My make-believe foot here doesn’t bend that much. But one way or another, I’m gonna get out there.”

He did. Believe that. Goose hunting, after all, is special. Strout knows it. And so does Lewis.

“Duck hunting is one thing, but goose hunting is entirely different,” Strout said. “There’s something about the call of a goose when it’s flying in the air that is mystic, intriguing, and intoxicating. It kind of draws you in like a magnet.”

Lewis agrees … in uniquely Lewis-ian terms. What intrigues him about goose hunting? Silly question.

“You ask the same question after you’ve seen 50 geese circle twice, brace their wings, drop their feet, and come down and [crap] in your left eyeball,” he said, his grin widening. “That’s what does it. They’re a marvelous bird and they’re bright as hell.”

So there they were on Tuesday: Huckins and Strout and Lewis and Turcotte – a longtime school superintendent who shares Lewis’ passion for education … and goose hunting. They headed to Bridgewater. They met up with guide Dave Hentosh, who owns Smoldering Lake Outfitters, and who (Lewis states, with no room for debate) is, among other things, a genius with a goose call.

Hentosh is also quite an artist, and a moose-caller, Lewis pointed out. But on Tuesday, his expertise with geese was in highest demand … most of the time.

Hentosh spread out more than 200 goose decoys, put down some of the stands he invented (picture a legless lawn chair with a camouflage head shroud and you’ll get a pretty good picture), and instructed the hunters to wait for his command.

The geese, as I may have mentioned, weren’t exactly plentiful. One small flock did circle a few times, but didn’t get into the shooting zone. But ducks? There were plenty. And moose? Well, they showed up, too. And Hentosh showed his skills at calling the hefty brutes is as impressive as Lewis had claimed.

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Hentosh called to a young bull who ambled into the field 600 yards away.

Hentosh called. The moose perked up. Hentosh called again. The moose began to walk. Hentosh called yet again … more urgently … and the moose broke into a trot. He headed our way.

“What happens when he gets here?” one concerned bystander, who may or may not resemble this writer, asked. “Oh, we’ll just talk to him,” Hentosh said. “And if we all keep quiet, we may be able to get him up to 20 yards.”

That didn’t happen, as a shift in wind direction notified the moose that his love interest might not be quite as enticing as he’d initially thought.

No matter to Strout.

“It’s been a pretty exciting morning,” Strout said at about 8:30 a.m. – after three hours sitting in a frosty barley field. “We’ve seen three moose, I don’t know how many ducks, and a half-dozen geese.”

A half-hour later, the steady flow of ducks slowed. The geese hadn’t arrived as expected. And at least one member of the hunting party decided that catching a bit of shut-eye might be a good idea.

Take note of this: When you’re hunting with a bunch of old friends … and a guide with a good sense of humor … that’s not always such a good idea.

Whispers in the barley field told everyone awake that something was going to happen. Lewis, who may or may not have been asleep, didn’t hear the whispers. He didn’t hear Hentosh hatch the plot.

He may have heard Hentosh’s brisk command: “Kill that goose!”

And he surely heard the loud report of Strout’s shotgun, as his old friend fired at an imaginary goose.

A few minutes later, Lewis told the crowd he’d had enough.

“If you go in early, I’ll go with you,” he told me, as Strout sat nearby, listening. “I’ve had enough of Carroll Strout firing off a gun in my ear.”

Of course, we didn’t go in early.

It may have seemed that Lewis was too busy razzing his friends about missed shots, or fictional faults. All you had to do was look at the smiles to know Lewis was actually just too busy saying “Thanks.”

In his own inimitable way, of course.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.