Rural Kingdom

I've spent plenty of time in plenty of small towns through the years. I did a fourteen year stretch in my small southern Indiana town and have visited family members in their own little towns all over IN, OH, and KY. But there's a particular fashion trend here in West Tennessee (note it is West Tennessee, not Western) that I've never seen before: the predominance of hunting camouflage.

As a popular leisure activity, deer hunting rates second only to attending a Protestant church out here. And in order for deer hunters to recognize others who share their enthusiasm, they regularly wear hats, jackets, shirts, and overalls emblazoned with a real-looking sage brush and tree trunks. As it turns out, there is camouflage designed to suit all sorts of terrain--snowy mountain, grassland, bayou, etc.--but there is one particular kind that the locals seem to favor. It is an almost photo-realistic pattern that would blend perfectly with the late-fall mix of yellowed grass and gray limbs one would encounter in the West Tennessee woods. Hoodies and jackets and entire ensembles in this pattern can be purchased at Wal-Mart, but there are number of items sheathed in this stuff that left me scratching my head.

I found, for fourteen dollars, a pair of wool-lined house slippers in this hunting camo pattern. I'm not sure whether this item is popular or not. There were many on the shelf, but I don't mind saying I was sorely tempted to get a pair of my own. It's not that I want to hunt deer in the cozy comfort of my slippers (I can't imagine wanting to shoot an animal unless it attempted to maul or carjack me); I just thought the concept of camo bedroom slippers was so astonishing I wanted some. The slippers had rubber soles and were done up as a stylish (ahem) moccasin with leather laces. To their credit, they were super-comfortable. But, are hunters rising from their beds, camouflaging their feet, and journeying immediately outside to take down a ten-point buck? Are these used in duck blinds or campsites as a technique to keep a hunter's feet toasty between when he slips out of his sleeping bag and when he puts on the tall rubber boots I've seen that seem more appropriate to the woods and field? More observation is probably needed.

Also curious is the furniture upolstered in hunting camo. At Rural King (a kind of farm-burg Home Depot that also vends hunting gear and agricultural supplies), I discovered a La-Z-Boy swathed with the local pattern. This item, I would think, could not be used in the actual hunting of deer in any way. The purpose of such an item could only be to take a place of prominence in the hunter's home, reminding visitors or any who doubt his devotion to sport hunting that he NEVER ceases thinking about his next kill, even while reclining in front of new episodes of 24.

On the other hand, maybe I'm having a failure of imagination. Maybe hunters throw the camo La-Z-Boy in the back of the pickup, rumble through the woods to their favorite spot, and then haul it on their backs into the deep wilderness. There they would set it down and take turns sitting in it--in their own camouflaged jackets, gloves, hats, and slippers--barely distinguishable from the chair itself or the flora around them. They could enjoy the comforts of home while awaiting the arrival of the game the would ordinarily pursue.