Outdoors with Larry Dablemont: An inspiration

Both of my sisters married Arkansas country boys, and I ended up with two of the finest brothers-in-law that I could have asked for. I don’t know if I could have done a better job of picking husbands for the two of them. One of the two became a highway patrolman. Billy Chadwick grew up at Witt Springs, Arkansas, in the high mountains just to the north of the Buffalo River headwaters, some of the Ozarks prettiest country. 

Just a couple of years or so younger than me, he finished college and began his work for the Missouri Highway Patrol in the Springfield area. I lived in north Arkansas at the time. We fished and hunted together in both states. Back in the early days, we hunted wild turkeys when there were twice as many as there are today.

Billy Chadwick (Photo submitted by Larry Dablemont)

He was always someone quick to laugh, to enjoy the humor of situations involving hunting and fishing. I played a lot of jokes on him back then. We were hunting in Texas County probably 40 years ago, and he killed a nice gobbler that had practically run from one ridge to another. It was the most anxious gobbler I can remember. But apparently it was just stunned. We were walking back to the pickup with that gobbler across his shoulder and his yellow tag around its leg when it came alive, and started spurring him. Billy dropped the gobbler and it took off running as if it wasn’t even hurt. Thankfully, he still had a shell in his gun, and he shot it as it was running hard at 35 yards. I can still see that yellow tag flashing on that leg, and often wondered what some hunter might have thought if he called up that gobbler on some other day and found someone’s tag on its leg.

Of course I took the opportunity to really act angry, throwing my hat down and kicking a nearby stump. Billy was puzzled by why was I so upset? “If you would have let him go,” I said, “I could have called him back again!”

Once when he was a young trooper, I saw him along the side of Highway 65 south of Ozark, Missouri, with a violator sitting in his car. I pulled in behind him and walked up to his window, and he told me in a serious tone to just get in the back seat and wait for a minute. I climbed in and proceeded to tell him I had been speeding that morning and wanted to turn myself in. Still attentive to writing a warning ticket for that young man in the front seat, Billy never cracked a smile; he just told me he would take care of me when he finished. That kid in the front seat gave me a sideways glance that assured me he thought I was crazy.

These many years later, I am sure he is still telling that story.

My dad recalls the time when Billy was a young patrolman and he came home to hunt ducks on the Big Piney. He and Dad floated the river behind a blind on the old johnboat, jump-shooting ducks. A lone mallard came flying up the river at perfect range, and Billy shot twice and missed. As the mallard passed by, Dad picked up his shotgun and fired twice, also failing to pull a feather. Dad recalls how Billy solemnly reloaded his shotgun, declaring in a very serious tone, “If that duck would have had a gun, he would have got both of us!”

Billy was an inspiration to me because of his ability to always stay calm and collected, and to think rationally in situations where I always was prone to lose my cool and let emotions and a quick temper cause me to do the wrong thing more often than not. While I was trying to teach him how to hunt and fish better, I think I might have been the one who learned the most.

If you like to read about the outdoors, check out my 11 books and more than 100 magazines at www.larrydablemont.com