Chainsaws, Deer and Southerners

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

Last week I met a nice guy. He was a “furriner” from one of those places where they talk funny, New—-somewhere or the other. As I said, he is a nice guy and is going to be an asset to the community. On the other hand, he is having some interesting experiences learning how to live country. He’s going to do fine because he didn’t tell me how we were doing things wrong or why his adjustment was our fault. The quickest way to annoy a Southerner is to say, “Up North we did it this way.”

First he found there was a tree in his yard that he didn’t like, didn’t want and wanted to kill. As I understand it, the thing up “Nawth” is to hire someone to kill anyone or anything you don’t like. The Southern way is to do it yourself.

He purchased a chainsaw, gas can and a little bottle of oil mix. He was on the right track but a native would have borrowed a chainsaw for the first tree. “If you need it once, borrow it. If you need it twice, buy it.” On the other hand, you need to know someone pretty well before you borrow their stuff which is hard to do when you are new in the area.

His story was that he had watched hundreds of trees being cut on TV and it didn’t look hard. He read the instructions, started the saw, cut a notch in the direction he wanted the tree to fall and cut the tree. “So,” I asked, “did it fall on your house, car, shed or in your wife’s favorite flower bed?” Any country boy could have told him all of that TV tree cutting stuff is done with stunt trees, camera angles, smoke and mirrors. Trees always fall on something unless you are a professional. It is usually cheaper to pay an expert than to pay for the repairs.

In any case, he did several thousand of dollars worth of damage to his house. Another guy I know planned a little better. He climbed the tree and tied a rope to it. Then he tied the other end to his bumper. As the tree started to fall (in the wrong direction) the driver of the truck pulled it in the correct direction. His problem was that he used a 100-foot rope on a 125-foot tree. This is a “tiger by the tail” situation. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He totaled his truck.

My new friend, or at least he was until he finds out I wrote about him, also decided it would be a good idea to kill a deer and get some free meat. Again, any one of us could have told him when you go hunting the meat isn’t free. By the time you pay your expenses it is the most expensive meat you can get.

He had a novel approach to cut the cost of hunting. Every night several deer walked past his shed on their way to wherever it was they were going. He had the basics correct but made a few miscalculations. First, he put a blind near the deer trail, which is according to all usual hunting practices. In a creative flair he used an automobile for a blind. He apparently knew it was illegal to hunt from a vehicle so he stood on top of the vehicle.

As the unsuspecting deer walked by it was surprised to find it had been lassoed with a clothesline falling from the sky. The deer did what all surprised deer do and ran. The hunter was more surprised than the deer in finding himself being dragged around the field. He had wisely (or unwisely) tied the rope to his wrist so the deer couldn’t escape. He can be loosely quoted as saying, “Deer don’t look that big and strong but he dragged my large dark-complected hirsute posterior (or words to that effect) all over 20 acres. Finally the clothesline broke and he let me go.”

He has already passed Country Living 101, how to tell a hunting story.