Outdoor Columnist Ben Smith looks back at 2023 from hunting season to baseball season and all points in between.
I love writing the annual “Year in Review” column. It gives me the chance to look back over the year at all of the memories, and to also learn from any mistakes that I made. You just never know what each year will bring you, and 2023 had some unexpected twists and turns. Some were good, some not so good, but fortunately I’m able to look back on the year with a smile on my face and happiness in my heart.
Let’s kick it off by typing the same sentence that I typed about this time a year ago, only changing the date. Just like 2022 (and 2021), the year started off much the same: me killing a nice buck. What a nice tradition! To make the moment better, it came in the company of two of my favorite hunting partners after they’d both had good laughs at me getting lost for an hour, or so, earlier. It wasn’t the largest buck that I’d ever killed, but it was definitely the oldest.
Hunting season quickly transitioned into baseball season. Little did I know, our team would make history by winning another conference championship (another tradition I’m becoming fond of) and reaching the NAIA College World Series for just the fourth time in school history, and the second time during my tenure at William Carey University. En route to accomplishing this, the team broke virtually every offensive school record in the process. Many of those records had been around since the 70’s. We fell short of the ultimate goal of winning the National Championship but making it to the semi-finals wasn’t too bad of a consolation prize.
If you’ve never been a part of college athletics you likely just see the surface. You see the wins, the losses, the celebrations, and the tears, but you don’t see the “other stuff” that goes into all of that. From January to June, it’s an absolute grind. Late nights, crummy meals, hotel after hotel, long bus rides, injuries, sickness, and that’s just the coaching staff. Not to mention the piano recitals, dances, and soccer games that you miss along the way. And when you’re home, you’re not really home. You’re always at the field in your mind. All of these things take a toll on you, and definitely your family, as the season progresses. When it all comes to an end, you just want to crash for a few days…so that’s what I did (sort of).
After returning home from Idaho, and catching up on some sleep, I hit the lake for a couple of days. It was hot and the fishing sucked, but the peacefulness of the lake was great…until it wasn’t. You guys ought to know by now that mixing me and the water is like mixing ammonia nitrate and fuel. Nothing good usually comes from it. I decided to pull up my trolling motor and head back to the boat launch when my boat got stuck on a dead tree submerged underneath the surface. I did everything I could to get it off, but it wouldn’t budge. I even got into the water trying to rock the boat off until I noticed the more than eight foot long alligator watching me from a not so safe distance. I thought karma had finally gotten me. Fortunately, there was another boat to come to my rescue or I still might be out there six months later.
After a couple of day trips to the river, or lake, the worst drought in our area in years put a halt to any trips involving the boat. So, what do you do when it’s too hot and dry to fish? You go to the beach. I used to be somewhat of an adrenaline junkie before we had kids. I guess when your children are born something inside of you changes. You suddenly feel like you need to try not to do as many things that might get you killed and leave them fatherless. With the urging of our middle daughter, we put that on hold for a day and I went parasailing for the first time ever. I’ll admit that it was one of the most fun things I’ve done in a long time. However, while up there I realized that you’re suspended from a parasail several hundred feet above the water with nothing in between but lots of air. I was a tad-bit puckered up if you know what I mean.
The end of summer and the beginning of fall only means one thing for me: alligator season. I drew tags in 2023 so our group had another year and another opportunity to bag a big gator. The biggest problem we faced was being able to find enough water due to the drought. After hunting for something over the ten-foot threshold for several days, we opted to make sure we filled a tag and settled for a much smaller gator in the end. Even with the bad luck, gator season is one of the best times of the year for me. It’s a great social event and usually provides me with a memory of doing something stupid that should have gotten us killed. We didn’t sink any boats, or run out of gas on the Mississippi River, this year but we did play chicken with a barge and that was interesting enough.
Summer turned to fall and then back to summer, so deer season officially started. Unfortunately, I missed the opening day of rifle season for only the second time in the last twenty years, but getting to watch my baby sister get married made it almost worth it. Between watching the wedding, then watching our kids during Christmas, I realized just how fortunate I am to get to live the life I live. I don’t know what 2024 has in store for me and my family, but I hope it provides me with some more opportunities to keep churning out these stories of our lives. Oh, and by the way…I’m going to kill a turkey this year if I’ve gotta go to the zoo to do it!
