Dogs in the Daffs

[Chris Pope]

While hunting quail sometimes luck is finding a patch of daffodills in the middle of nowhere.

[mobirdhunter]

Cool! An old homestead?

[Chris Pope]

Definately. There is evidence of at least one structure and what appears to be an old collapsed well. The property is on a bluff off the banks of Long Cane Creek which flows into Little River and then the Savannah on the South Carolina side. All of it is now Clark's Hill Lake. It's a beautiful spot.

[mobirdhunter]

I hope there’s a covey in the neighborhood, named and cared for by you. We’ll never tell.

[Chris Pope]

No quail yesterday but we have encountered quail not far from there. When it's hot we can get the pups in the lake to cool off. Pretty country.

[Researcher]

In the early spring of 1968, I was working for the DNR in southwest Washington laying out timber sales in the second-growth forests there. Found the location of the logging camp from the original logging of the area with daffodils outlining where each of the buildings had been.

[ArtS]

Originally Posted by Garry L Gordon

Cool! An old homestead?

In Eastern Kentucky where I was born and raised, every small country road had places with grown over turnouts with patches of daffodils growing along both sides and little else too show for it's history. Those farm wives seemed to like a little color in their lives.

[Dean Romig]

Deep in the woods in my section of Vermont's NEK I sometimes found old cellar holes and barn foundations, sometimes with daffodils and lilacs around the foundations. Often within the fieldstone foundations were huge spruce trees growing as if there had never been any settlers there at all. One that comes specifically to mind is the "old Hall place" (known locally only to the oldest natives of the area, like my mentor Hubert Simons, former fire chief of the St Johnsbury Fire Dept). Man, the stories he would tell... Hubert is long gone now as are the other old hunters in the camp where I got my start in about '56. The telling of those stories by Hubert, Uncle Jack, Scudder Parker and my Dad still ring in my ears... There were certainly others there before us.

Unfortunately most of those old stone cellar holes and foundations have been ground into the earth by the heavily chained and cleated tires of logging skidders.

The "Old Ford Cover" is one such place. Once there were the skeletal remains of three old Fords but fifteen of twenty years ago a logger with absolutely no respect for local history drove his skidder with a vengeance it seems, back and forth over the old Fords and now some of the younger hunters I know refer to the cover as "the tin pile" and that's a damn sad commentary.

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[Mike of the Mountain]

We won't be seeing daffodils above our barn woods until April!

[Chris Pope]

Love to hear about these old places. I'm sure most of us have encountered old homesteads as we were hunting along. I always have to stop, even if I've been there many times before. I like to picture what the structures may have looked like. I wonder what crops kept the occupants alive. Think about the worry on their minds as winter approached wondering if there would be enough food or wood to cook and keep warm. Think about a child that took ill and the parents wondering if they would survive the night and who was going to ride into the nearest town to try and summon the doctor if there even was one. And then, for whatever reason the homestead melts into the ground. Sometimes These places speak to you. One of the hundreds of reasons I like to hunt.