Sun January 22, 2006

Hulsey's passion will be missed

"I never met a person more passionate about the outdoors than Dr. George Hulsey.

Going hunting or fishing with Dr. Hulsey was like attending an outdoors classroom."

Dr. George Hulsey of Norman holds a

3-pound smallmouth caught from Pennington

Creek in southern Oklahoma. Photo by Ed Godfrey

Dr. Hulsey, a Norman physician, died last Sunday at age 67. In 1978, he was named America's "Conservationist of The Year" by Outdoor Life magazine.

He formerly served as president of the Oklahoma Wildlife Federation and was past chairman of the National Wildlife Federation.

In addition to his duties of healing the sick, Dr. Hulsey penned an outdoors column for The Norman Transcript. The following was one of his favorites.

It's about how he often wondered as a boy if there were fishing and hunting in heaven. Now he knows.

Ed Godfrey: 475-3159, egodfrey@oklahoman.com

By George Hulsey, M.D.
Transcript Outdoor Editor
I get mad, from time to time, at all those citified, pseudo-civilized types. You know the ones... they don't fish, hunt, or backpack. Their idea of discomfort is having the air conditioning going out at the bingo parlor.

The heaviest load they have lugged is their bowling ball. Since they don't get out into nature, they figure the problems we outdoorsmen face are simple, even trivial.

Now, let's make one thing clear to our detractors. Even though it's true that we agonize over whether to fish with a purple or a chartreuse plastic worm, and debate whether to gun doves with No. 7 or 8 shot, we are capable of higher thought, at least some of the time.

We even find ourselves facing great spiritual dilemmas some of the time. For example: Is there fishing and hunting in heaven?

This is a question that has deeply troubled me since I was 9 years old. Neither preachers, priests, nor rabbis have offered a good answer, or at least one that I liked.

Here is how it all started. Once, many years ago, I went to spend the summer with my grandparents in the Texas Panhandle. Though farmers, they lived in the hot little windswept town of Floydada, located at the southern

edge of the Great Plains.

It was a whole new world for a soft city kid. I arrived just in time for wheat harvest. We worked daylight to dark. There were dirt and wheat chaff down my shirt collar, but there were also dust devils, tumbleweeds and prairie dog towns to investigate. It was wonderful!

My job: Gopher. "Kid, go for water ... go for the grease gun ... go for our lunch." After we finished cutting the wheat, Granddad took me to a small dugout pond which was fed cool, clear water by a windmill.

Well stocked with channel catfish and fattened on a sunken sack of milo, the fish were eager for a change in menu. The manure-fed earthworms I dug in the corral provided the desired variety. In half an hour we had a string of two-pound fish and headed home.

The next day, Granddad stuck his .22 rifle in the truck. "What's that for?" I asked. "You'll see," he replied.

After work he loaded the magazine and drove to a nearby spread that had moved their cattle off that week. For two hours we drove the ranch roads, shooting jackrabbits by the car headlights (a practice now illegal, and rightly so).

I was doing just fine that summer until my grandmother decided that I was getting a little too wild and free. It was not the new experiences that bothered her as much as it was the new, exciting words that were "enriching" my vocabulary. "Harvest crew talk" was what she called it. Church was her answer.

Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night we went, and there was no fooling around in the balcony, either. We sat down right in the front, third row by the aisle.

The preacher had been primed for me. He preached hellfire and brimstone in a most convincing fashion. I was pretty scared. Mad, too.

One of the first friends I made was his son and from him I learned two or three of the best dirty words I knew. Hell sounded pretty bad, but heaven did not seem all that great, either. Somehow, angels and harps just didn't sound very interesting.

Grandmother was feeling better after about three weeks. My vocabulary was less colorful and I was a whiz at Bible study. I loved my grandmother, but she was a stern German woman. Only once do I remember her smiling. Come to think of it, that may have been just a gas pain.

While Granddad made sure I got my hunting and fishing done, my grandmother decided to intensify my spiritual training. Even weddings and funerals were Command Performances. The weddings were not too great, but I liked the funerals.

Don't get the idea that I was a ghoul. It is simply that I did not know the folks who had passed on, and I was very appreciative of the pecan pie, chocolate cake and lemon meringue pie. I became a fat kid, which is little wonder, because many country women are good cooks.

It was at one of these dinners when I posed my question about heaven. The preacher came by the dessert table I had staked out. He was pretty fat, too. He patted me on the head with one hand, and with the other he slid two pieces of pecan pie onto his plate. We ate pie and talked.

Just as my grandmother walked up, the question popped into my head and right out of my mouth. "Brother James," I inquired, "do they have fishing and hunting in heaven?"

He stopped chewing. He stopped smiling. I looked at my grandmother, and from the look on her face I felt certain that I would be able to answer any questions I might have about the hereafter, personally and soon.

The preacher, without a word, motioned for us to follow him. Once in his study, we prayed silently on my question. Once I peeked out of the corner of my eye. The preacher's head was bowed and his eyes were closed but he was smiling. I figured the answer was coming down.

As I peeked out of the other eye I saw her hand move. Then I felt the sharp pain. My grandmother was a pincher. After a few minutes with both eyes shut tight, the preacher said "Amen," told my grandmother I was a good boy, and returned to the dessert table. That preacher never did answer my question.

Grandmother was cooled down by then, and I managed to stay out of trouble for nearly a week. That was when I started reading a library book about Indians. There were lots of stories about hunting, fishing, fighting and riding horses.

It was on a Saturday that I asked if I could go to the Indian church on Sunday morning. When she regained her voice she asked me why. "Well," I announced, "if I am going to spend all this time in church, I want to go where they have something other than harp music and angels in the afterlife." A happy hunting ground was fine by me.

My grandmother survived my visit. As for me, for the ensuing decades, I've found peace and contentment -- pieces of heaven -- in a duck marsh, wooded bottoms, mountain meadows and windswept prairies.

As for the great question, if you have it on good authority about the fishing and hunting in the hereafter, call collect.

Reprinted courtesy of The Norman Transcript