6 Things My Mother Could Do That Would Make Any Outdoorsman Jealous

Those beloved outdoorswomen of the world, who can raise a family or a shotgun with equal enthusiasm, continue to show us why they deserve our honor and adoration. They're altogether strong yet empathetic, have a can-do mentality, and don't shy away from a challenge, especially when it comes from their kids. I should know, I was raised by one such woman. The last thing that you'd ever want to do is to tell mom that she "couldn't do that" or say "I can do it better," because Buster, you'd have been eating those words. Moms that get down in the dirt with you are worth their weight in gold (just don't ask them how much they weigh), and are more valuable than a bucket of crawdads on a full moon.

My mother was more than just capable. She could field dress a deer, fillet a fish, and can some vegetables with the best of them. But she never stopped being just a plain-old mom, either. In 2016, my mother passed at 91. I sure do love and miss her, but it helps to talk about some of the utterly impressive things she could do. How many of these things can you do?

1. Dress Any Bird

My mother grew up in the Sandhills of northern Nebraska and one of her early childhood duties was taking care of the family's domestic turkeys. I would bring home wild turkeys, pheasants, ruffed grouse, and puddle ducks galore, and she would get right to work like no one's business. She learned from an early age how to care for a freshly dispatched bird, and how to avoid wasting any meat or valuable parts (a lesson all of today's outdoorsmen could learn from). She taught me how to dress it all right down to the tendons and ligaments, saving every scrap for the dinner table with no arguments to the contrary. My mom would put it all together, either in a gravy with dumplings or just roasted and served with veggies, and those meals are some of my fondest memories. It was nothing fancy, but man did it taste good!

2. Remove the Y-Bones From a Northern Pike

Thanks to her mother (my grandma Joseph), my mom learned to remove the infamous y-bones from a pike early in life, and to do it like a pro. I have many photos of my parents and grandparents holding up some massive pike, and in those days, that meant that we would be eating very well. My folks weren't shy about giving their children fresh-caught fish to eat, and deboning became part of the deal. If you haven't eaten some fresh northern pike fillets, that's on you.

3. Stand Up to Snakes

Growing up on a ranch in the Sandhills of Nebraska meant dealing with many issues that most of us don't come across in our lifetimes. As the oldest of eight children, my mom learned how to take care of her siblings, and sometimes that meant being a snake predator. As a kid she learned right away not to kill a kingsnake or a rat snake, since their pest control was beneficial to the farm. But bullsnakes are well known egg eaters, and her family kept chickens. If a prairie rattlesnake (or worse, a timber rattlesnake) showed up, she and her family knew they needed to be taken care of.

4. Learning Cooking and Canning on the Range

When she was growing up, the range was where the cooking and canning happened. And when I say "range," I mean that's what they called the old cast iron stove that used wood or corn cobs for heat. The family did it all on that thing, and it had to be lit every day. Green beans, tomatoes, corn, jams, and jellies were all canned on the range, because it was the only way. Imagine spending an entire day gathering wild fruits, picking garden vegetables, washing them all, and then lighting a fire in a big pot-bellied stove so you could preserve it all in cans and mason jars. This is how they "put up" the homegrown goods for the season, while rotating in the jars from the previous year. That kind of food preservation is getting lost these days, and it's a shame.

5. Land a Wily Smallmouth Bass That Would Normally Get Away

Nobody in our family could target and catch smallmouth bass like my mother. In fact, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that in another life, she would have found herself on the pro tour. She had a knack for finding them (we never owned so much as a depth finder until the early 1980s), and somehow knew what they'd like to feed on. And hooking them was perhaps her best skill in the smallmouth category. Her tools of choice were a closed-face spinning reel, 10-pound test mono, and a medium action fiberglass rod in the 6' 6" range. She always said live minnows were her number one choice for bait, but she wasn't afraid to tie on a white beetle spin or a crankbait and make my dad use the landing net (a lot).

6. Excel at Outdoor Skills and Knowhow

Mom grew up understanding the need to hunt, gather, and know the outdoors like the back of her hand because in those days it meant survival. She knew how to use flint and tinder to make a fire with ease, and she was well versed in other bushcraft. She was the first to dish me up a plate of dandelion greens (sautéed with a little bacon) and to fry up a big puffball mushroom, serving it all next to the wild pheasant that dad brought home. She loved to go out in the yard with us and gather night crawlers, catch grasshoppers, and live frogs (which she always said made the best bass bait).

Since there were six of us, Mom never really had the chance to do much hunting after having kids. She was happy to pass on her knowledge and experience to anyone who would listen, but she had no time for people who thought hunting was unsavory. She was very proud of growing up as a frontier outdoorswoman, and it was her strength and joy her entire life. I'm very proud to have gotten to share so much of that with her, and maybe even carry a bit of it on.

Please check out my book "The Hunter's Way" from HarperCollins. Be sure to follow my web page, or on Facebook and YouTube.

READ MORE: THE MYSTERY I FOUND INSIDE MY GRANDMA'S OLD TACKLE BOX