Annual event continues to draw attention
Words and Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Legend and tradition meet each year in Ashville when Lyman Lovejoy hosts the Lovejoy Slingshot Hunt in honor of his father, Sim Lovejoy. Breakfast and lunch, cooked over an open pit is always a treat, and the Lovejoys supply flips and ½ inch ball bearings for ammunition.
Today, the flips are produced by Don Hulsey. Don has succeeded in carrying on Sim’s design tradition.
Sim’s ability with the flip was legendary. As young as seven, he was known for killing running rabbits as well as squirrels running through the branches of trees. His accuracy has not been matched by his progeny, and they will not try to tell you otherwise.
His generosity in crafting flips for children was legendary, too. And there is no shortage of children at the Lovejoys each year. They are as much a part of the hunt as flips and squirrels.
Participants, young and old, practice with their flips and take to the woods for the grand hunt after breakfast in wagons pulled by tractors. Trees are shaken, dogs bark, and comparisons are made to previous years. Another spot is always better, so the hunting party wanders through the woods with heads tilted back, searching feverishly for any sign of a squirrel.
An occasional ball is hurled toward a bundle of leaves stuck in the high branches of a tree, in hopes that the elusive prey will be rousted from the suspected nest. Squirrels, wily as they are, either pretend well to not be there, or are not there at all.
Once one is spotted, the chase is on. Shouts of “Get ahead of him!” ring through the woods as men, old men, bound through the brush like youngsters. A fuselage of steel balls fly through the air as the squirrel dances from limb to limb, searching for shelter. “Get around him!” “There he goes!” “Knock him down!” “He’s comin’ back this way!”
Most escape. It is not easy to hit a squirrel with a slingshot.
Once a squirrel is bagged, adolescent boys will give sincere testimony that it was their ball that brought it down. If there is a dispute, the compromise is, “Well, I hit him right when you did,” which is acceptable, and ends any conflict.
The little girl, whose shot barely left the flip, is encouraged by her father saying, “Well honey, you didn’t hit him, but you sure scared him.”
Sim Green Lovejoy died one day after his 92nd birthday, on Oct. 14, 2006. Buried in his overalls with a flip in the front pocket, his fishing pole by his side, Sim was wearing his favorite cap.
That is not a bad way to go, and the annual hunt is not a bad way to be remembered.
Editor’s Note: This year, the hunt captured the attention of Fred Hunter and will be aired on Fox 6’s Absolutely Alabama Feb. 20.
