Dec 30, 2022 5 min read

With any luck, by the time you’ve read a paragraph or two of this column, it will be too late to turn back.

Once you’ve realized that it is not George Block’s usual wit and wisdom being dispensed, you’ll continue reading a bit further out of some morbid curiosity. The style that once bubbled to the surface on Sunday mornings, like a mountain spring, alas, is no more. You’ll take notice that mine is not the easy style and kind intonation of Mr. Block. Hopefully, you’ll keep reading anyway and forgive me for impersonating an outdoor writer.

I am not George Block. I freely admit it. I’d make a lousy George, even if I tried. Should, by accident, I get it right from time to time, I’d only be impersonating the master. George was one of a kind, a hometown hero and a true gentleman. I read George’s outdoors column since I was a young buck in high school. I learned much from his columns in the Observer-Reporter over the years, and on more than one occasion, George rendered some much-needed assistance with my own writing craft. He knew the people of our area well and his subject matter even better. He was a guy who paid more attention to, in his words, “the little things,” which to my mind, weren’t so little.

George had a way of looking at life with a wondrous simplicity and was able to extract the essence from a scene or an encounter and put it down on paper to make us laugh or cry or celebrate or think or remember. We could take part in that special moment with George even though we had not lived it ourselves. He took us there. That is the mark of a writer. George was not afraid to laugh at himself, and laugh he did, on many occasions.

I see his reflection in the silly antics of my own time afield. I am not apologizing for not being George. Lord knows, there was only room for one George Block.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dave Bates and I am, for the undetermined future, your new outdoors columnist. I am the 56-year-old husband of Kelly and dad to Emma. I’m a school teacher by trade, nearing the end of a long but incredibly fulfilling career in education. It’s all I really ever wanted to do. I was a principal for a number of years, but I sobered up and went back to the classroom, where I belong. Administration wasn’t for me.

When I’m not being Emma’s dad, I am also a part-time police officer, a high school baseball coach and a firearms instructor. In my spare time (of which I have precious little) I operate my shooting school, Alpha Omega Shooting Solutions, from our farm near Khedive in Greene County.

I am a hunter and suffer from an addiction of ruffed grouse. I am currently involved in a relationship with several side by side shotguns from the previous century – don’t tell my wife; she knows but she’s afraid there will be others. I’ll cover more of this in later columns. I’m also a hunter safety instructor with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

I’d love to hear from you regarding what you’d like to read about in this column. My plan is to cover myriad topics of interest and to share with my readers the good times I have enjoyed these past 50-plus years as a sportsman. I am interested in exploring the rich culture that our local sportsmans clubs have fostered through the decades. If you have events that are newsworthy or gatherings that are just plain interesting, then I’d ask you for an invite. New products and gadgets are always interesting to outdoorsmen, especially if they make your time in the woods easier, more enjoyable or more productive.

Mostly, I am interested in people. I want to learn the stories of the folks who have passed on their love of the woods to you. Tell me about those who have propagated the gift of hunting, fishing, shooting, hiking, bird watching, field botany and morphology (study of leaves) and yes, I had to Google “morphology.” Camaraderie is at the heart of my writing. Tell me about your mentors and your special days and maybe a little of the sadness and disappointment that accompanied your time afield.

While I admit not being able to give you what George Block could, the one thing that I can give you is my passion for the outdoors. I can claim to hold in common with George a love of storytelling and willingness to share an affinity for the outdoors. With these, maybe we can get off on the right foot. I hope you’ll join me next weekend as well as the ones to follow. It’s my intent that you’ll look forward to reading my column the way I have looked forward to reading George’s for decades. Maybe you’ll even begin to turn to the outdoors section first.