Palouse Outdoors: Sporting Life Vernacular

When I was a boy living in a linear neighborhood between beef cattle and silage corn fields, my best friend Sarah and I often hid among the branches of a sweeping eastern hemlock. The stately evergreen reached toward the sky with its conical shape, its low branches sprawling over the ground. Sarah and I would sit on the branches, laugh at each other's jokes, and invent silly childhood games, like creating our own language.

Describing my and Sarah's unique language as nonsensical is an adult perspective, but kids see it differently. To them, their unique language has purpose and meaning. It's deliberately developed and perfectly functional, like having a passport to a secret world. Sounds like fun, right? Well, it was, and probably still could be if we adults would give ourselves permission to loosen up and hold onto a little playfulness in our "professional" years.

This childhood memory came to me at work while I was struggling to find a specific adjective that had eluded me during a meeting. My head tilted to the left, eyes rolled upward to the right, my mind sorting through vocabulary like I was rummaging for a particular locknut in the workshop's "miscellaneous hardware" bin. Then, unexpectedly, a jumble of words that collided mid-thought spilled from my mouth, as if the awaited word had the right-of-way while a similar word failed to yield before turning left. 

My doctor says I'm too young to have "senior moments," yet I find myself increasingly navigating similar mindlessness. I support the health benefits of a perfectly mixed Old Fashioned cocktail, but making the perfect one depends on remembering where I hid the good bitters. (That's never a problem at grouse camp, by the way.)

Cognitive function theories aside, I had an epiphany during my eye-rolling word search – these moments of "conflabulation" (you know, when your brain invents a hybrid word because it can't pick one, like mixing "conflate" and "confabulation") happen often in field sports. The result is an unintentionally developed language unique to the sporting life.

Here are a few gems from over the years that come to mind. Even if you've never heard them, I bet you can relate to or picture a situation where they fit perfectly.

Aimprovise (aim + improvise) – The moment the range finder craps out, or the scope turret cap pops off while lining up that +/- 400-yard lead lob at the biggest buck anyone has seen all season. Perhaps a more fitting example is swinging the shotgun on a ruffed grouse in heavy cover and firing when it sounds like you have the proper lead.

Navigamble (navigate + gamble) – Taking the route that "feels right" when you're 11 miles deep in the wilderness at night, and your GPS unit fails.

Reelapse (reel + relapse) – When you vow to control your bait-caster backlash, only to immediately free-spool another bird's nest.

Snaggravate (snag + aggravate) – When your former fishing buddy breaks off your entire salmon fishing rig, dodger and all, on the same boulder for the fifth time.

Speculure (speculate + lure) – The years-long argument between lifetime salmon fishing buddies about which lure is better. They'll die on that hill before admitting that neither lure ever caught a damn thing.

Strategemize (strategize + mobilize) – A mobilization strategy developed ad hoc at the sight of fleeing game. The strategy often involves dropping gear in yard-sale fashion while sprinting to the nearest shooting vantage.

Stumblunder (stumble + blunder) – A loud, crunchy misstep that sends game thundering into the next county. Watching a massive 6x6 whitetail flee the Tucannon drainage following poor foot placement and busting a partridge covey may be the last memory to escape me.

Trackulate (track + calculate) – The "guestimation" of big game animal trajectory based on a few debatably "recent" hoof prints and gut feelings, which may be influenced by questionable camp food and excess libations.

Trophify (trophy + amplify) – To dramatically exaggerate the size of your catch (which no angler has ever done).

Discombobulate – Okay, this is a legitimate word. It's out of order alphabetically because it deserves honorable mention. The word looks and sounds made-up, like a cocktail-induced tongue-tie as a hunter trips over the campfire when turning in for the night. It's a prime candidate for the "Sporting Life Vernacular," often coming to mind amid buzz-bomb valley quail covey rises or when "accidentally" shooting the smallest in a bachelor group of bucks as they play hide and seek in the timber.