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Field Ethos
Guest
By Kyle Wright
My taxidermist is cooler than your taxidermist. If that sounds like an odd flex, well, I guess it probably is. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
I call him my taxidermist, but the truth is he’s more a friend of the family than he is some professional I keep on retainer. Lord knows, I don’t give him near as much work as I’d like to. Nobody is better than Bill Newman, though. The man is an artist, through and through, a veritable da Vinci in the world of taxidermy.
Let me put it to you like this: if the good folks at Bass Pro Shops decided to build a chapel one day to worship the fish that we catch and the deer that we hunt, Newman is the taxidermist they’d tab to do the ceiling. He’s just that good. He’s the guy whose work is featured front and center on taxidermy association publications, the guy whose time and talent are raffled off annually at their conventions. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Look him up and see for yourself. There are more ribbons and trophies in the man’s workshop than there are glass eyes and lumps of modeling clay.
In addition to being a world class taxidermist, Bill is also just a really good guy. Salt of the earth type, you know? He’s fair and he’s funny and his enthusiasm for life is infectious. But again, you don’t have to take my word for it. I can prove it to you.
Look closely, now. What do you see? A great buck in the bed of a classic pickup, right? Alright, so pretend for a minute that you’re a deer hunter fresh off a morning sit where you didn’t see so much as a fawn. You’re not worried about it because it’s early yet and there’s plenty of season left, but you are worried about keeping up your strength while waiting for the deer to show up. You finished the last of your backpack snacks 15 minutes into your morning sit and as we all know, that is unacceptable. You’ve just pulled into the local Walmart to replenish your supply of Little Debbies when you spot Bill’s truck in the parking lot. What do you do? You hop out of your pickup, and you make a beeline for Bill’s to get a better look at that buck, of course!
Got you, didn’t he? Yeah, he got me, too. Told you he was good, didn’t I? Now, let me ask you, what would possess a guy to do something like this? Why would a guy spend his time and his energy on a project that offered him nothing in the way of personal gain? I mean, the only payoff here for Bill are the smiles that he puts on the faces of those who lean in to take a look in the bed of his pickup. And most of the time, because he’s not around when people are looking, he doesn’t even get to enjoy that. He just does things like this because he believes that it will make other people smile. It does.
Like I said, my taxidermist is cooler than your taxidermist.
The post My Taxidermist Is Cooler Than Yours appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
My taxidermist is cooler than your taxidermist. If that sounds like an odd flex, well, I guess it probably is. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
I call him my taxidermist, but the truth is he’s more a friend of the family than he is some professional I keep on retainer. Lord knows, I don’t give him near as much work as I’d like to. Nobody is better than Bill Newman, though. The man is an artist, through and through, a veritable da Vinci in the world of taxidermy.
Let me put it to you like this: if the good folks at Bass Pro Shops decided to build a chapel one day to worship the fish that we catch and the deer that we hunt, Newman is the taxidermist they’d tab to do the ceiling. He’s just that good. He’s the guy whose work is featured front and center on taxidermy association publications, the guy whose time and talent are raffled off annually at their conventions. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Look him up and see for yourself. There are more ribbons and trophies in the man’s workshop than there are glass eyes and lumps of modeling clay.
In addition to being a world class taxidermist, Bill is also just a really good guy. Salt of the earth type, you know? He’s fair and he’s funny and his enthusiasm for life is infectious. But again, you don’t have to take my word for it. I can prove it to you.
The Truck Shot
Look closely, now. What do you see? A great buck in the bed of a classic pickup, right? Alright, so pretend for a minute that you’re a deer hunter fresh off a morning sit where you didn’t see so much as a fawn. You’re not worried about it because it’s early yet and there’s plenty of season left, but you are worried about keeping up your strength while waiting for the deer to show up. You finished the last of your backpack snacks 15 minutes into your morning sit and as we all know, that is unacceptable. You’ve just pulled into the local Walmart to replenish your supply of Little Debbies when you spot Bill’s truck in the parking lot. What do you do? You hop out of your pickup, and you make a beeline for Bill’s to get a better look at that buck, of course!
Inside the Bed
Got you, didn’t he? Yeah, he got me, too. Told you he was good, didn’t I? Now, let me ask you, what would possess a guy to do something like this? Why would a guy spend his time and his energy on a project that offered him nothing in the way of personal gain? I mean, the only payoff here for Bill are the smiles that he puts on the faces of those who lean in to take a look in the bed of his pickup. And most of the time, because he’s not around when people are looking, he doesn’t even get to enjoy that. He just does things like this because he believes that it will make other people smile. It does.
Like I said, my taxidermist is cooler than your taxidermist.
The post My Taxidermist Is Cooler Than Yours appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
