[Cover Photo by Tarutoa on Unsplash]

When I first bought my boat, I thought it was just to get better access to fish.  I didn’t realize all the pleasant extras I’d get with it.  It provides something fun to do on the weekends.  It’s fun to just be on the water.  You can tow people, you can take them to swimming holes, good fishing, etc.  Then, there is the additional access to wildlife.  For some reason, many wild animals are less disturbed by you in a boat than they are when you go walking by.  As a result, you get to see a lot more wildlife up close when you are boating quietly near the shore.  Sometimes you get to see a deer swim across a small channel or bay.

• 

I’d just gotten the boat a few weeks earlier and had been out about two times with it.  I’d just barely gotten comfortable backing it down a ramp and loading and unloading it.  For anyone who hasn’t owned a boat, it’s not easy the first few times.  It’s not necessarily easy the first hundred depending on the skill and confidence of the person operating the trailer and the quality of the help they have with them at the time.  In fact, there’s usually a whole checklist of all the steps you need to take before you put a bass boat in the water and when you take it out.  I preferred to get it right in my head, but there are people who keep a paper list with them.

My wife and daughter had not gone out with me yet, but decided in mid-September in Kentucky that they’d like to take a turn with me on the boat.  It had been mild weather and there was no reason to believe it would be any different – until we got to the lake.  We headed south from Owensboro down to Rough River Lake.  On the way, a cold front came in stronger and sooner than expected.  It dropped from 85 the day before to about 63, cloudy and windy.  We had some light windbreakers, but we really hadn’t adapted to the cold just yet.  Summer had really just ended, but here we were at the lake ready to go and it was… cold.

We were hoping that as we’d come on a Sunday after church and after Labor Day weekend, that the crowds would be down.  The thought was that I could spend time getting Ali and Julie up to speed on holding a boat in the water while I parked a truck and trailer.  We were not so lucky.  A bass tournament had been going on and the docks were quite busy with very intensely competitive guys coming in and out with their boats quickly. They wanted to weigh their day’s catch to see if they were in the running for a prize.

Thankfully, I was able to get us into position and unload the boat (we’ll leave out the part where I temporarily forgot to put the plug in the boat before I started to unload it).  Then, I left Ali and Julie afloat in the boat, but holding onto the dock while I went to go park the trailer.  All they had to do was hold the boat to the dock for three minutes. 

When I got back, they were floating aimlessly about twenty feet out from the dock and looking at me confused. The dock hand looked at me and said something like, “I don’t know why they let go of the dock, they were fine waiting right here.”  I smiled at him and said, it’s okay, they have an oar.”  I shouted instructions and got them to row, yes row, a bass boat (not made for rowing) back to the dock.  I got on and off we went. 

As I mentioned earlier, it was unseasonably cold-much colder than we were used to.  I was fine because I was in my element.  We were on a lake and I was fishing.  That was good enough for me to tolerate a little cold just fine.  However, I didn’t want it to be a bad experience for them.  So, after fishing for a while, I started to get concerned as I watched them sitting in the boat, shivering and holding their arms folded across their chests. I prayed a little prayer, “Lord, please let them see some wildlife, cute bunnies, baby deer anything that will give them some joy.”

• 

A few moments later, as I was trolling along fairly close to the shore, I heard rustling up in the trees and leaves off the banks. We slowed to a crawl and looked up to the woods.  I fully expected to see deer of some size or variety when out popped a… question mark.  We were looking at an animal that I could not recognize and had never seen in Kentucky, North Carolina or Tennessee in all my wilderness adventures.

It was clearly an adolescent/teenager something like a raccoon, mixed with a skunk or a weasel or a monkey???  We all loved it.  It was beautiful and entertaining.  It was foraging along the banks for food and took its time.  We quietly followed it for nearly 30 yards as it continued to meander along the banks before it finally turned and vanished back into the woods.

“What the heck was that?!” we all asked of each other.  We speculated quite a bit, but decided we’d just have to research at the house. When I got home, I searched every small furry mammal possible on Google until I finally found out what it was: A BADGER.  I called the Kentucky wildlife people just to let them know.  They were excited and thanked me for the call.  “We haven’t seen one of those down this far south in years,” was the story I got from the person on the other end of the phone.  I was happy to see it, but really thankful as it served its purpose so well. The girls completely forgot about the cold.  They were entertained and it made the trip enjoyable.  I only had us stay for a little while longer.  When we left, we went back to the docks happy and had something to talk about on the way home.

[If you enjoyed this story – First, let me say THANK YOU – then, please hit one of the “share” buttons below to share this story on your social media and help me get the word out about my stories. Also, please signup for the free newsletter on the homepage or via the occasional popup invites.]

The next story in this series is: Tales from Kentucky #7: The Boatman Cometh

• 

Need some outdoors, wildlife or motocross inspired t-shirts or sweatshirts?

Feel free to browse and shop for outdoor themed shirts and mugs on my gifts page at Redbubble!