How Not to Brag About Hunting and Fishing

This column, “The Fine Art of Bragging,” appeared in the July 1982 issue of Outdoor Life

I hate braggarts. They’re loud, offensive and never seem to run out of wind and tales of grandeur. The problem is that when I’m the one who has ensnared a Junker bass or put down a trophy whitetail or pulled off some other noteworthy achievement, I like to, well, brag a little about it.

But how does one get all the satisfaction of bragging while maintaining a humble presence? I have scoured countless outdoor magazines for help. Do you think I can find a single paragraph addressing this perplexing question? It’s unthinkable that so much has been written about everything from gut­ ting deer to sinking doughballs for carp, while something as essential as bragging has been sorely neglected.

For years I have failed miserably at bragging. It seems I’m always on the receiving end, fighting back tears of boredom and envy while others boast in indaunted [sic] bliss. Not long ago I took matters into my own hands. Secretly, I began to study the most accomplished braggarts I knew. By emulating their methods, I figured I’d be bragging up a storm in no time.

My first innocent mentor was bass fisherman Bill Shambler. Bill moves in slow motion. He’ll dawdle away an hour of prime daybreak fishing deciding which of his three topwater plugs to cast. His inch­ meal pace would be an insurmountable obstacle for most braggarts, but Bill uses it to his advantage.

But if Bill moves slow at other times, he nearly stops breathing when he has a Junker bass in his live well. He never says a word about his catch; that would be too obvious. He knows that if he dallies long enough, some angler waiting to use the boat ramp will break down and ask him if he’s had any luck. Then, without fanfare, Bill will drawl the epic of how he outsmarted his lunker. He’II even hold the bass up for admiration if the onlooker asks him to, and he usually does. No one has any idea of what a sneaky braggart Bill is.

Inspired by Bill’s style, I soon found myself at his favorite ramp with a six-pound largemouth in my live well. Three men were readying a cruiser for launching. They couldn’t get it in until I got my boat out. I had them right where I wanted them! They didn’t look familiar, but, after all, one can’t be too particular about whom one brags to these days.

I started for my truck as if I had not fully recovered from a coma. I took IO minutes to fetch it, whereas it usually takes one. Another five minutes were wasted backing the trailer down the short ramp. As I hob­ bled back to winch the boat onto the trailer, I glanced at the trio. Ah, they were already walking my way. Any moment now, one of them would ask the long-awaited question, “Any luck today?” I pretended not to notice them.

At the sound of an elaborate beer belch, which I took as my cue, I turned around and faced the men. Funny that I hadn’t noticed before how big and heavily muscled they were, or how nasty they looked with deeply furrowed eyebrows and scowls where smiles should have been. One of them had a tattoo peeking through the bear hair on his exposed chest that would have been rated “X” by Hustler magazine.

“Shorty,” said a voice above the tattoo, referring to my somewhat less-than-lofty stature, “if you don’t get your boat off this ramp in 30 seconds, you won’t be fit for carp bait when we get through with you.”

I briefly considered bragging about my bass, but thought better of it. After all, you can’t go bragging to just anyone these days. Exactly 29.9 seconds later, I was speeding away from the ramp with my boat on its trailer. My loading time, no doubt, would have set a qualifying record for the Guin­ ness Book of World Records.

Although foiled on my first attempt, I still had a deep-rooted need to brag. I thought I’d found the answer to my problem after dissecting Chuck Kunning’s bragging technique. Chuck’s trick is to bring along a companion on his walleye outings that no one else will allow in his boat — Gary Verboso. Gary gabbles incessantly like an old hen from dawn till dusk. He hasn’t stopped talking long enough in 10 years to catch a fish.

Upon returning from a fishing trip with Chuck, Gary commences calling everyone he knows so he can continue his jabbering. As are many luckless anglers, Gary is afflicted with the “WE” syndrome. If, for example, Chuck catches eight plump walleyes while Gary boats two miniature perch, when Gary tells of the event, he will say, without batting an eye, that “WE” caught eight walleyes. (Capable anglers like myself, of course, are immune to the “WE” syndrome.)

Everyone that Gary calls knows of his fishing inability. They also know that Chuck is the only one who’ll take him fishing. So, immediately after they receive a call from Gary, whom the hung up, furious at Gary.

Boy! I thought to myself, it’s sure funny how quickly someone with the “WE·’ syn­ drome can recover enough to use “I” when they catch some fish of their own. I didn’t have much time to stew; the phone was ringing again.

“Hey, I hear Gary really outfished you today,” a sniggering voice said. The obsti­ nate ringing continued for hours. The next day I had to call the phone company from the neighbor’s house. I needed a repairman to put my phone back on the wall and reconnect the wire. I sent the bill to Gary, but he refused to pay it. Then he had the gall to ask me when we were going fishing again.

I had just about given up on being a successful braggart when I noticed a particular­ ly sublimated form of bragging taking place at our annual deer camp. Two of the older hunters in our party, Fred and Eddy, were doing more than their share of the story telling, even though they didn’t have the energy or the loud voices of their younger competitors. Fred and Eddy had been hunting whitetails together for years. Apparently they’d been telling tales together for years, too. What they were up to was a classic case of tag-team bragging.

Instead of trying to grab center stage by way of sheer, rude bluntness, the unmistakable mark of the braggart, one of the grizzled old gents would quietly lift the curtain for the other.

“Fred,” Eddy would say, getting every­ one’s attention on Fred, “tell the boys y regard as a bore and a braggart, they call Chuck, whom they regard as an upstanding and humble human being, to get the real scoop. Chuck is then in an enviable position. His phone rings for hours with calls from anglers demanding to know of his day on the water. He not only appears not to be bragging, he doesn’t even have to bother dialing.

Once I discovered Chuck’s underhanded bragging method, I wasted no time. I called Gary and invited him out for a day of wall­ eye fishing. He was so overjoyed that I’d finally asked him to go fishing, that he carried on about it for hours while I tried to find a school of walleyes. It was then that I made a mental note to ask Chuck where he bought his earplugs.

When the boat drifted over an underwater island, a secret walleye hotspot of mine, I tensed up. I just knew a walleye would take my worm rig any second. Instead, Gary suddenly stopped talking. Startled by the silence, I looked over to see Gary’s mouth agape and his rod deeply bowed. His walleye weighed nine pounds when we got it in the boat. I made repeated drifts over the island, and to my dismal astonishment, Gary brought in six more nice walleyes. All I had to show for my efforts were a couple of skinny perch.

By the time I dropped Gary off at his driveway, my ears were nearly fractured from his hysterical babbling. He leaped out of my truck and ran straight for his tele­ phone. I had no more than walked in my door when the phone rang. It was Joe Janus, my usual fishing partner.

“I hear you and Gary went out after walleyes today,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said casually, trying not to flaunt too openly. “We got seven. The big­gest was nine pounds.”

“I know,” said Joe. “Gary just called me. He said he caught every one of them.” Joe didn’t even try to muffle his laughter.

hung up, furious at Gary.

Boy! I thought to myself, it’s sure funny how quickly someone with the “WE” syn­drome can recover enough to use “I” when they catch some fish of their own. I didn’t have much time to stew; the phone was ringing again.

“Hey, I hear Gary really outfished you today,” a sniggering voice said. The obsti­nate ringing continued for hours. The next day I had to call the phone company from the neighbor’s house. I needed a repairman to put my phone back on the wall and recon­nect the wire. I sent the bill to Gary, but he refused to pay it. Then he had the gall to ask me when we were going fishing again.

I had just about given up on being a suc­cessful braggart when I noticed a particular­ly sublimated form of bragging taking place at our annual deer camp. Two of the older hunters in our party, Fred and Eddy, were doing more than their share of the story tell­ing, even though they didn’t have the energy or the loud voices of their younger competitors. Fred and Eddy had been hunting whitetails together for years. Apparent­ly they’d been telling tales together for years, too. What they were up to was a clas­sic case of tag-team bragging.

Instead of trying to grab center stage by way of sheer, rude bluntness, the unmistak­able mark of the braggart, one of the grizzled old gents would quietly lift the curtain for the other.

“Fred,” Eddy would say, getting every­ one’s attention on Fred, “tell the boys about that 15-point buck you dropped in the apple orchard.” Whereupon Fred began the moth-eaten tale.

” … and when I stretched the tape across the spread, it measured 24 inches.” Fred was winding up his story, but before giving up the floor, he tagged his teammate.”

“Eddy, what about the big one you got in the heavy snow back in ’58?” By tagging back and forth in this fashion, these old boys could keep it up for hours. They were so smooth, no one noticed their devious and deliberate strategy for bragging.

As Eddy weaved his tale, I laid a strategy of my own.

” … and if it hadn’t been for those snowshoes,” Eddy was nearing the end, and I was ready, “we never would have gotten that buck out.”

Before Eddy could tag Fred, I cut in: “What about that dandy spike you got three years ago on our Canada trip,” I said to Joe Janus. Joe glared at me. He wasn’t at all proud of that little spike, but it was during that hunt that I’d nailed a 10-point buck. I figured he’d slough off his story and then ask me to tell about my buck. It didn’t take Joe long to tag me back.

“Well it wasn’t much of a buck,” he concluded. “But Hicks sure got some excitement on that trip.” I perked up appreciably and cleared my throat to speak-at last my chance had come. But Joe continued talking.

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“Yup, Hicks went out one night to find the outhouse and got lost in the dark. Isn’t that right, Hicks?”

“Ah, well, ah …”

“We didn’t find out he was missing until early next morning. The Mounties found him about a mile from the cabin. They said it was a miracle he didn’t get frostbite running around in his long johns all night like that.”

Well, as you can see, there’s more than meets the ear when it comes to being a first­class braggart. I’ve quit trying, and I suggest that you don’t get involved with it. By the way, did I tell you about the big brown I caught from Tinker’s Creek the other day?