Hunter and Haley Prince, in honor of Hunter getting engaged and Haley having her first baby boy last fall.

Bonne Annee — as my friends in the bayou would say. This is such an unusual holiday, in my opinion. I know I may get some heat and hate over that statement, but I mean all we are celebrating is the planet successfully completing a trip around the sun. Not you personally, not a nation, no one did anything — the planet just did what it’s been doing for nearly 15 billion years… Seems like it should be no big deal by now.

My rant for today will be simple. Deer season for most of my life ended on Jan. 1. That was awesome because then we had two months to have fun with all the deer hunters gone. Small game hunting was still such a vibrant part of the hunting world for us back then. Squirrels, rabbits, coons, quail. Man, we had fun! During the height of it all we would rabbit hunt two or three days a week from Jan. 2 till Feb. 28 or 29 (during a leap year). Rabbits were never plentiful during my lifetime down here, but we always managed to find a few and have some really good races most days.

We lived by only a couple of rules:

1. We never shot a rabbit that wasn’t being run (no jump shooting) and we never shot a squirrel that wasn’t treed by a dog when we were squirrel hunting over dogs.

2. You had a defined and specific job. Keep to it! Mine was always cooking and finding a spot to hunt.

3. If you had the privilege of finding a covey of wild quail, we never shot the covey dry. You took what you could off the rise and then left them alone. Quail have enough issues, like poor predator management by the DNR and lack of agriculture practices that sustain small game and game in particular past deer. Don’t shoot them out. Let them go and grow. In fact, in the last few years when I have seen wild coveys I just watch. I never lift a gun.

4. People are important. Be protective of your group and build it carefully. A group that is fun to be around and loves to hunt, cook, and fellowship is priceless.

This time of year always puts me in mind of hunting with friends that are no longer with us. Virgil Brown, for instance, taught me to love hounds and the rush of a coon falling from a tree. I told y’all last week about him and his wife. I met Virgil when I was about 13 or so. He was in his early 40s by then and worked as a safety consultant for Norfolk Southern Railroad and was from Virginia. He would tell me stories of running coons and bears in the mountains and of working the railroad and coal miner strikes of the ‘70s and ‘80s. The shootings and bombings. The unions and corporations battling it out.

Virgil’s wife, Dianne, would during the winter always pack us a Stanley thermos (and I ain’t talking about the girly water jug) of coffee, and my mom would usually send along a snack or two of leftovers from some holiday party. Virgil had a bunch of Treeing Walker Hounds, and we would listen to them trail through swamps and hard wood ridges while drinking coffee and him telling stories. Coons were shot out of trees to waiting hounds with a little single shot Chipmunk 22 rifle with a Tasco scope. Every once in a while, I would get a chance and the stars and moon would align perfectly for me to take one with a Ruger Single Six I always carried with me. There’s no way to count the numbers of coons we treed and there is no way to measure the impact he had on my life on these nights. I miss him daily.

As we enter a new year, all I can say is tight lines and following seas y’all!

—Outdoors columnist James Pressley can be reached at jswift@daltoncitizen.com .