Whether he is accidentally cooking his brain with hand warmers or yanking his lure away from a trophy fish just before it takes the bait, Bill Heavey can do no right. For almost a decade, he has chronicled his incompetence on the back page of Field & Stream, where his hilarious dispatches about life as a hapless outdoorsman who lives in suburbia have earned him legions of fans. But Heavey is more than a humorist. The stories in this book range from amusing tales of a modern dad struggling to navigate the finer points of parenting and married life to longer and more serious narratives that involve travel, adventure, and tragedy. No matter what he’s writing about, Heavey is a master of blending humor and pathos—and wide-ranging outdoor enthusiasms—into a poignant and potent stew.
If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?
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Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
From The Baltimore Sun, December 23, 2007
Shticks, stones, funny bones
Candus Thomson
Bill Heavey's humor columns make dandy bookmarks.
That's a compliment.
For a number of years, I have been carefully tearing the back page out of Field and Stream, underlining his best lines and archiving them in travel books, cookbooks and the latest best-seller that resides in my personal library on the toilet tank.
This is my way of acknowledging both his writing skill and the fact that my alma mater, Emerson College (sadly named for Charles Wesley, the carnival barker, not Ralph Waldo, the essayist), will never dedicate a Thomson wing in the campus library filled with my papers.
But magazine pages get old and frayed. And when the Charmin runs out, you'd better believe all bets are off.
Luckily, Field and Stream has seen fit to bundle some of Heavey's best work into a single volume, If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? (Atlantic Monthly Press, $23).
Heavey, a Northern Virginia resident who claims Maryland's woods and waters as his home turf, is just as funny in hardcover as he is stuffed in a book on the back of the American Standard.
If you're a regular reader, you know Heavey claims no extraordinary talents to make him the alpha outdoorsman. He writes: "I am physically unimpressive, have the woods sense of a parking meter and for years thought that a 'staging area' was where deer rehearsed theatrical performances."
It's a shtick that works. If you fish or hunt, you will embrace a lot of Heavey's takes on the outdoors and laugh at some of the stuff he does. For example:
* On finding his daughter Emma's SpongeBob Squarepants book in his hunting backpack while in a tree stand: "After not even seeing a deer all morning, and with nothing to lose, I pushed the button decorated with a giggling SpongeBob. Out came a sound like a doe bleat on helium. Intrigued, I hit it again. A doe emerged from the bushes 70 yards distant, where it stood alert and frozen for two minutes. I hit the button once more. Fifteen minutes later, I sent an arrow into that deer. I am unsure about SpongeBob's sexual orientation, but I will say this: The boy knows deer."
* On bass fishing TV shows: "Many television hosts like to kiss the bass they catch. I don't know who started this, but it has become epidemic. And it has to be hurting the catch-and-release survival rate. How strong do you think your will to live would be if the last thing you saw before being set free was an extreme close-up of [professional angler] Woo Daves' lips?"
* On spinning rod vs. fly rod: "My idea of fun is catching fish. Tons of them if possible. I love the tug and the way all three of us - the fish, the line, and I - become electrically connected for a few moments. I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've gone to bed thinking, 'That would have been a pretty good day if I hadn't caught so many fish.' But you can't tell a fly fisherman that. He'll give you some mumbo jumbo about 'loving the process,' spit white wine in your eye, and run you over with his Saab."
* On bow hunting in January: "The strange fact is that I like the late season, cold and all. I like it because the smart hunters - those smug guys diligent enough to scout the preseason and disciplined enough to avoid over-hunting prime stands - have tagged out. That leaves the woods to guys like me: the obsessed, the unhinged, the ones who don't know when to quit. There is a strange satisfaction in this kind of hunting. If you get a deer, the victory is that much sweeter. If not, it sure wasn't for lack of trying."
* On the agony of waiting at Fletcher's Boathouse in D.C. for the water to warm enough for fishing: "It would be easier all around if fish lived in the air. Air's a pushover. You throw it a little sunlight and it snuggles into your arms and coos, 'My place or yours?' Even soil heats up fairly fast. A single warm day like this one has no problem coaxing the daffodils and forsythia into promiscuous behavior they'll regret with tomorrow's cold snap. But water remembers what Mama told her. She requires the prolonged application of warmth before she comes around."
Heavey, 52, wasn't always in this line of work. Until age 40, he toiled for a construction trade association, "making the world safe for concrete."
A minor midlife crisis convinced him to shuck a regular paycheck and take the poverty vow of a full-time freelance outdoors writer. A newspaper travel story about smallmouth bass fishing was just the lure for Field and Stream, which brought him in from the cold.
"The outdoors is just a lens through which I filter everything, and a lot of the stuff, it's everyman kind of stuff about the difficulty of getting out to fish and hunt and be a good dad and husband," he explains while driving to a parent-teacher conference.
He didn't grow up hunting, but says he learned first to deer hunt and then graduated to bow hunting "to give me something to lie about the other six months of the year."
Now the challenge is to balance doing and writing.
"Sometimes, you have to carve out those 10 minutes for a 3,000-word feature and just bear down," he says, laughing. "It's brutal."
Does Heavey envision a day when he runs out of ways to poke fun at himself?
"The short answer is no," he says, driving and laughing. "There's not too much competition on the doofus front."
So, Bill, why should people buy your book?
"Because I desperately need the money," says Heavey, still laughing. "I've got all my eggs in one basket."
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Shticks, stones, funny bones
Candus Thomson
Bill Heavey's humor columns make dandy bookmarks.
That's a compliment.
For a number of years, I have been carefully tearing the back page out of Field and Stream, underlining his best lines and archiving them in travel books, cookbooks and the latest best-seller that resides in my personal library on the toilet tank.
This is my way of acknowledging both his writing skill and the fact that my alma mater, Emerson College (sadly named for Charles Wesley, the carnival barker, not Ralph Waldo, the essayist), will never dedicate a Thomson wing in the campus library filled with my papers.
But magazine pages get old and frayed. And when the Charmin runs out, you'd better believe all bets are off.
Luckily, Field and Stream has seen fit to bundle some of Heavey's best work into a single volume, If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? (Atlantic Monthly Press, $23).
Heavey, a Northern Virginia resident who claims Maryland's woods and waters as his home turf, is just as funny in hardcover as he is stuffed in a book on the back of the American Standard.
If you're a regular reader, you know Heavey claims no extraordinary talents to make him the alpha outdoorsman. He writes: "I am physically unimpressive, have the woods sense of a parking meter and for years thought that a 'staging area' was where deer rehearsed theatrical performances."
It's a shtick that works. If you fish or hunt, you will embrace a lot of Heavey's takes on the outdoors and laugh at some of the stuff he does. For example:
* On finding his daughter Emma's SpongeBob Squarepants book in his hunting backpack while in a tree stand: "After not even seeing a deer all morning, and with nothing to lose, I pushed the button decorated with a giggling SpongeBob. Out came a sound like a doe bleat on helium. Intrigued, I hit it again. A doe emerged from the bushes 70 yards distant, where it stood alert and frozen for two minutes. I hit the button once more. Fifteen minutes later, I sent an arrow into that deer. I am unsure about SpongeBob's sexual orientation, but I will say this: The boy knows deer."
* On bass fishing TV shows: "Many television hosts like to kiss the bass they catch. I don't know who started this, but it has become epidemic. And it has to be hurting the catch-and-release survival rate. How strong do you think your will to live would be if the last thing you saw before being set free was an extreme close-up of [professional angler] Woo Daves' lips?"
* On spinning rod vs. fly rod: "My idea of fun is catching fish. Tons of them if possible. I love the tug and the way all three of us - the fish, the line, and I - become electrically connected for a few moments. I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've gone to bed thinking, 'That would have been a pretty good day if I hadn't caught so many fish.' But you can't tell a fly fisherman that. He'll give you some mumbo jumbo about 'loving the process,' spit white wine in your eye, and run you over with his Saab."
* On bow hunting in January: "The strange fact is that I like the late season, cold and all. I like it because the smart hunters - those smug guys diligent enough to scout the preseason and disciplined enough to avoid over-hunting prime stands - have tagged out. That leaves the woods to guys like me: the obsessed, the unhinged, the ones who don't know when to quit. There is a strange satisfaction in this kind of hunting. If you get a deer, the victory is that much sweeter. If not, it sure wasn't for lack of trying."
* On the agony of waiting at Fletcher's Boathouse in D.C. for the water to warm enough for fishing: "It would be easier all around if fish lived in the air. Air's a pushover. You throw it a little sunlight and it snuggles into your arms and coos, 'My place or yours?' Even soil heats up fairly fast. A single warm day like this one has no problem coaxing the daffodils and forsythia into promiscuous behavior they'll regret with tomorrow's cold snap. But water remembers what Mama told her. She requires the prolonged application of warmth before she comes around."
Heavey, 52, wasn't always in this line of work. Until age 40, he toiled for a construction trade association, "making the world safe for concrete."
A minor midlife crisis convinced him to shuck a regular paycheck and take the poverty vow of a full-time freelance outdoors writer. A newspaper travel story about smallmouth bass fishing was just the lure for Field and Stream, which brought him in from the cold.
"The outdoors is just a lens through which I filter everything, and a lot of the stuff, it's everyman kind of stuff about the difficulty of getting out to fish and hunt and be a good dad and husband," he explains while driving to a parent-teacher conference.
He didn't grow up hunting, but says he learned first to deer hunt and then graduated to bow hunting "to give me something to lie about the other six months of the year."
Now the challenge is to balance doing and writing.
"Sometimes, you have to carve out those 10 minutes for a 3,000-word feature and just bear down," he says, laughing. "It's brutal."
Does Heavey envision a day when he runs out of ways to poke fun at himself?
"The short answer is no," he says, driving and laughing. "There's not too much competition on the doofus front."
So, Bill, why should people buy your book?
"Because I desperately need the money," says Heavey, still laughing. "I've got all my eggs in one basket."
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From the Back Cover
Praise for If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?:
"To the list of great Field & Stream essayists--Robert Ruark, Gene Hill, Cory Ford, and Ed Zern--add the name Bill Heavey. His writing is funny, poignant, acerbic and, best of all, always alert to the absurdities of life. This is a book that will be read and re-read for years and probably for generations." --Patrick F. McManus, New York Times best-selling author of The Bear in the Attic and A Fine and Pleasant Misery
"The Nugent family American Dream quality of life campfire is all about the great outdoors and laughter. Bill Heavey is our guide and outfitter for the best of both worlds. His new book delivers wonderful, clever, balls-to-the-wall hysteria celebrating all things fun and frustrating beyond the pavement. When I die, I want Heavey to gut me, stuff me, and deliver my eulogy for one good last laugh. Unfortunately, I will outlive him, laughing all the way. Bill is my favorite writer. That oughtta ruin his already teetering career once and for all." --Ted Nugent
"Oh, Bill Heavey, you've gone and done it now! Just when I thought all the outdoor writers who could bring the feel of the woods to the printed page had all gone to their reward--guys like Ruark, Hemingway, and Babcock--you come along and prove me wrong. Heavey has an incredible talent for taking the stuff of everyday life--the frustrations and snippets of conversation and days when you don't catch a fish or see a deer--and throwing it all back at us with a slant that somehow brings us hope, reassures us we're not alone, and actually makes us grin. He does all of this because he was born to do it. I think God put him here to show us that what seems like just another day is actually a miracle, a once-in-a-lifetime event that we ought to be grateful for even as it slips through our hands." --Will Primos, founder and president of Primos Hunting Calls
"Funny . . . heart-rending . . . sarcastic . . . thrilling . . . and entertaining." --Gary Garth, Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal
Field & Stream readers on Bill Heavey:
"Regular readers know Bill Heavey is one of the best humor writers working today. But with "Dog Years" it is clear he is one of our best writers, period. What a joy it is to see how he uses the language." --Doug Truax, South Boardman, MI
"A sense of humor is one of the most important traits in a good hunter. Yes, it's important to know how to construct a wigwam from toothpicks, but it's more important to laugh. Bill Heavey seems to understand this better than most. His `Path to Enlightenment' was one of the funniest and truest stories I have ever read. Thank you, from a young father who is waiting for the day his daughter is old enough to explore the woods." --Jay Ellsworth, Hilton, NY
"As a mother of three who lives in the 'burbs, I need all the comedy I can get. I fight my boys and husband to be the first to get the magazine so I can flip to the last page. Know that you are promoting good mental health in millions." --Mary Alice Keffer, Beaverton, OR
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The late blooming outdoorsman,
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This review is from: If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?: Misadventures in Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilds of Suburbia (Hardcover)
Three cheers for Heavey's new book "If you didn't bring Jerky, What did I just eat?" I have read his stories in Field and stream for years and love to flip to the back of the magazine to see what he's been up to. This book is a collection of his stories and it makes the book hard to put down. The way he relates to the average Joe in his trials and errors is what makes this book an instant classic that I will never part with. I think this book will appeal to more than just the Field and Stream faithful and is worth taking the chance on if you love the outdoors.
Definetly worth a look.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Leathally funny, yet authentic and sincere,
By
This review is from: If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?: Misadventures in Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilds of Suburbia (Hardcover)
I am currently editing a book of fishing stories that will be published in late 2008, I've read about 20 books on fishing in the last six months as part of my editing job. Bill Heavey's book has many things going for it. The writing is economical, clear and deftly funny, and each story is its own adventure. For example: one explores the absurdities of ice fishing, another details the Cuban version of the Bass Masters national tournament, and another the authors frustrations of getting skunked on a fishing trip in Mongolia. The stories in this book tend to be short (2-3 pages). You can usually finish one before your spouse catches on that you are reading and available to be interrupted.
While I am not a fan of hunting stories, I really enjoyed the ones he presents in this book, he has a way of tying hunting and fishing back to his wife and daughter, back to important, ironic, tragic, and personal moments in life. These are the kind of stories that you read and find yourself repeating to your friends. They stuck with me and I enjoy carrying them through my days.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Don't read this in bed...,
By
This review is from: If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat: Misadventures in Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilds of Suburbia (Paperback)
Don't read this in bed unless you want to get kicked out for keeping your wife awake due to constantly laughing outloud uncontrollablly! I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, and highly recommend it for anyone who has ever been hunting or fishing.
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