Posts by Duncan Dobie
We’ve Lost Okefenokee Joe
In April 2022, I had a booth selling books at the Blue Ridge Trout Festival in Blue Ridge. The popular one-day event had been put off for a couple of years because of Covid, and I was excited to see it return. Lo and behold, while I was setting up my booth, a man in…
Read MoreGary Hall’s No. 1 Cohutta WMA Buck
No one expected nearly three inches of snow on the ground on the morning of Nov. 29, 1976, but in the Cohuttas, anything goes. Gary Hall, of Ringgold, along with his two companions, Jim Alsobrook and Daniel Atwood, were spaced out across a steep wooded ridge that had been clearcut on two sides. The three…
Read MoreCohutta Dream Hunt For A 150-Class Buck
Packing into the Cohutta Wilderness to hunt deer is not for the faint of heart. Even today, with all the high-tech gadgets we hunters like to tote into the woods, backpacking into a vast, rugged wilderness area to hunt remote mountain bucks is a serious challenge. Forty years ago it was much more than a…
Read MoreChronicles Of A Turkey Guide Part 3
Dawn came slowly on Sunday morning. The forecast called for early morning showers moving through the area and clear skies by 9 a.m. The air was thick, and Julian could smell the coming rain. It was cloudy, overcast and misting rain when they left the lodge around 5 a.m. Julian took Anderson Burke to a…
Read MoreThree Feet From Heaven: Chronicles Of A Turkey Guide Part 2
Julian’s truck rolled to a stop on the side of the gravel road. He turned off the ignition and quietly opened the door. “Let’s see if we can stir something up,” he said with a grin to the man sitting next to him. He slipped out of the truck and carefully shut the door without…
Read MoreThree Feet From Heaven: Chronicles Of A Turkey Guide
The gray-haired man wearing a brown fedora hat with a turkey breast feather in the hatband flipped a purple plastic worm across the small pond. It landed with a light plop about 2 feet shy of a log and some grassy weeds near the far bank. “So Mr. Julian Duffey, you wanna be a turkey…
Read MoreDoris Forrester
Shortly after Whit Forrester of Cordele married his beautiful young bride Doris in 1948, he approached her and said, “I want us to be able to do something in our spare time that we can share together so we’re never apart.” That suited Doris just fine. The two lovebirds were inseparable, and they wanted to…
Read MoreOutdoor Blast Reflections With Duncan Dobie
For three glorious days in August all the world was good again. For many of us, the past year-and-a-half has been a huge void—a blip on the map—a time like no other in American history. Continuous cancelations (including the 2020 Outdoor Blast), school closings, working from home, limited travel and in many cases, living like…
Read MoreThe Jim Bland Story
Jim Bland, of Jesup, was born in 1929 just as the effects of the Great Depression were beginning to be felt by many Americans. His outdoor life was greatly influenced by his father, James R. Bland, and his grandfather, Daniel Tate Bland, who was born in 1850. Today at 92, “Pops,” as he is known…
Read MoreA Tale Of Two Brothers: The Conclusion
Eli Mason often told his nephews, “Ya’ just don’t know how good something is until you don’t have it any more. Turkey season is like Christmas in April.” This stark reality hit the boys with both barrels two days after the Rendezvous. They never got a chance to apologize to Uncle Eli for fighting at…
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