Garden & Gun

Country Captain?

Like warm hospitality and backhanded compliments, a love for outdoor leisure has always seemed to me to make a person more “Southern.” If you drop a line in the creek or off the back of a Boston Whaler, you get Southern street cred. A lifelong, casual relationship with golf or tennis tells me you are textbook Southern country club. Hunting makes you legit, too. And hunting with a bird dog you’ve trained? That means you’re the quintessence of the Southern sportsman (by my measures at least). While I fully believe that planned activities outdoors, especially in the woods or on the water, help define Southern culture, I didn’t come to this conclusion duringidentity, my relationship with leisure was shaped by the trappings of my family—a country bunch who in this respect were anything butcountry. When they did half-heartedly dabble over the decades, the Howard way, their attempts inevitably crashed to earth.

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