Aug 5, 2017 5 min read

Anyone entering the grounds of the Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Sportsmen Club can’t help but notice a large walnut tree that grows near a bridge. The club grounds are home to quite a few of these friendly giants.

Like many things in life, more often than not, these trees are things that are unappreciated and taken for granted. Often as I enter the club, which I have been doing since 1960, I speak a few words to this tree. I know I am not normal but I think this tree speaks back. At least a few leaves bid me welcome with a wave.

I have a special appreciation for the walnut tree. What makes for a more gorgeous rifle stock than a finely figured piece of walnut?

The rifle market is dominated by those utilitarian, cold, unfeeling rifles with stocks made of some synthetic. While practical, I have never met a firearm owner who bragged or was proud of the plastic stock on his deer rifle. I must admit that the synthetic stock is not prone to warp with a change in humidity and its use has surely saved a few walnut trees, but it is still ugly.

While the walnut makes a great stock for our rifle, it does have another use. When I was young, we gathered walnuts that we would use in Christmas cookies. Everyone likes to receive something for nothing and the walnuts littered the country roads and ground under the trees. Burlap bags – do they still exist? – were filled and the prize was carried home.

As older folks know, nothing turned the hands brown as quickly as walnuts and who ever heard of wearing rubber gloves back then? It was the removing of the hull from the nut that made young and old hands look stained each fall. The nuts themselves were then put in the sun to dry. This is where the problem was created.

It seems someone else wanted our walnuts and wasn’t willing to go out and find his own. Each fall, we devised a way to keep the squirrels from stealing our hard-earned walnuts. Most years we lost. If the nuts were placed in a hard-to-reach spot, say upended from a tree limb, the darned acrobats would hang by their rear legs. The best method was to cover them with wire screen, which protected them and still allowed the sun to do its work. I have always referred to this type of thing as nature’s bounty. Sadly, it goes unappreciated and under utilized today.

While it is the black walnut we use for baking, there is another walnut called the white walnut or butternut. These nut bearers are becoming rare in Washington County and I haven’t seen one for some time. The Native Americans found an unusual use for the hull covering this nut. They would smash it into a pulp and dump them into streams and lakes. The compound took the oxygen out of the water quickly, causing the fish to come up to the surface where they scooped them out. But the butternut has a delicious meat under that sticky hull.

Many persons wouldn’t know a butternut tree if it bit them, for they are hardly a stately tree nor one with desirable wood. With this in mind, I can’t help but wonder how many of these unusual trees are being destroyed by bulldozers as land is being developed for housing and pipelines.

Nature does offer us a lot, if we only look. There are the raspberries in early summer then the blackberries. While the raspberry is smaller and less common, it has a unique flavor and is the one most people prefer to eat.

The blackberry is more common and fills the bucket when things are right. Then they are great in pies, jams and wine. Like most things in life, while free when monetary conditions are considered, there is a price to pay. The creator covered berry stems with sharp jaggers and picking usually results in scratches on hands and arms. But in most instances, such wounds are minor and the berries in the morning cereal make the endeavor worthwhile.

Nature offers so many other treats for those who search. Ramps can be found in many woodlots and are good in scrambled eggs. Also, wild mushrooms, though when picking them, you better know what you are doing. Even experts can make a mistake and get themselves quite sick. Last week, I enjoyed smoked wild goose and few things are better than a squirrel pot pie.

But you don’t have to hunt to enjoy what nature offers.

A year ago, a friend of mine borrowed my Remington 513S and won a major event at a local egg shoot. This year, Kodee Pierce of Somerset Township used my Anshutz 54 and won the same event.

The shoot consists of putting a bullet from a .22 rim fire through a quarter-inch hole at 50 yards and breaking the egg hanging on the other side. That is not easy. Anyone else want to borrow a .22 next year so my guns can be famous without me? I think I’ll start charging, but congratulations go to the 18-year-old Pierce.

George Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter