The Easley's Go a Hunting
Mike Zlotnicki, The News & Observer
January 23, 2003

They were an unremarkable-looking trio out for an afternoon of quail hunting: a

Governor Easley and his son Michael are avid hunters. This past winter, they took time off to hunt quail in Wake County, NC.

father, his son and a family friend readying their gear from the back of two SUVs.

"You going to carry bullets today, Barney?" the father, uncasing a shotgun, quipped to his 17-year-old son. The young man laughed, and the dad grinned.

Nearby, the friend finished strapping an electronic collar and a locator bell to an anxious Brittany spaniel, and the hunt was on.

With guns shouldered and blaze orange caps glowing in the afternoon sun on a surprisingly warm January day, the trio headed out. They had the field almost to themselves, except for an armed security detail shadowing their every move.

For Mike Easley, though, an afternoon afield offered a respite from North Carolina's budget woes and media scrutiny and time for a little father-son bonding.

"I'm only able to get out four or five times a year now for ducks, doves or quail, but it's great to get out with Michael," Easley said, as relaxed and casual as his garb, a nondescript flannel shirt, denim-and-nylon brush pants and leather work boots. "There comes a time in boy's life where, if you want to spend some time with him, you've got to do what he wants to do."

On this day, they hunted, joined by Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby and following a frenetic little spaniel named Grace into a plantation of young pines. Easley, for a while simply a dad and friend on an outing, clearly enjoyed himself as he watched the rust-and-white dog work the brush.

Willoughby signaled that the dog was on point, having found a bird in the matted broom straw. The governor and his son approached the dog, and the bird launched from the ground. No shot was fired, though; the pines provided escape cover.

"Why didn't you cut these trees before we got here?" Easley, joking, asked Willoughby as the bird sailed off into a cutover. "If we don't do any better than this, we're going to have to go home and eat leftover tuna salad."

Hunting buddies since the late 1980s, when Easley was the district attorney for Columbus, Brunswick and Bladen counties and Willoughby was the DA in Wake County, the two traded such banter as they moved along.

Soon Grace found another bird, and the Easleys moved in. At the flush, Michael shot first, neatly cutting a bough out of a tree, with the governor following up, folding the bird cleanly. Grace made the retrieve to Willoughby, who put the bird into the game bag of Michael's weathered Redhead canvas hunting coat, which someone commented looked older than the owner.

"I got this at a thrift store for, like, five bucks," said the younger Easley, a Broughton High School senior.

"He's learned the value of a dollar since he got a construction job," added his father, who leaned over and picked briars out of Michael's Carhartt work pants.

Knowing the value of a dollar and loving the outdoors are attributes Michael shares with his father, who learned them early, too.

Growing up with six siblings on a farm off of N.C. 48 in Nash County, the elder Easley worked in the tobacco fields and tended the farm's 1,800 chickens each day with his two brothers, cooling, grading and packing eggs. Later, he worked a construction job.

"I made more money before lunch working construction than I did all day working tobacco. I thought I was in heaven," he said.

The farm also provided myriad outdoor opportunities and memories for reminiscing.

"The first outdoor memory I have is going bird 1/8quail 3/8 hunting with my dad and kicking up a rabbit," Easley said. "We'd go out with him before we were big enough to carry a gun.

"My first gun was a bolt-action Stevens .410. I got a single-shot 20-gauge when I was 9, and then a 20-gauge double when I was 12. I used to love squirrel hunting and the stews we'd make from them. We'd go frog gigging. I had my own pond, my own boat, my own horse. The farm was a great place to grow up, until tobacco season came in."

Easley shared some of his early lessons as he coached Michael on shooting. "If you give them a little more time, it'd give you a chance to let your shot spread some," he said. The governor's upbringing was evident, too, as he opined on the status of hunting. "Many urban people have just never been exposed to it. It's a special part of North Carolina," he said.

Pondering his most memorable trip afield, the governor ventured to a more-recent past, and the proud father spoke. "Growing up on a farm there are just so many," he said, "but it might be when Michael got his first duck a couple of years ago. He was so excited and pumped that he jumped in and got water in his waders. That was in Hyde County, and it was a drake wood duck."Michael nodded in agreement as his dad recounted the day. The duck was mounted and is displayed in the governor's mansion, perched on a piece of driftwood with a brass plaque.

Good memories came from the coast as well when Easley recalled fishing trips around their Southport home, where he and Michael take to a 16-foot McKee Craft in search of bluefish and Spanish mackerel. Soon the hunt wound down. The guns were cased, the dogs - Grace and old-timer Lucy, whose turn came later in the hunt - were kenneled and watered, and the hunters knelt in the grass to field dress the birds.

Asked if this was his favorite part of the hunt, Michael, wielding a pair of poultry hears, said in jest, "Oh, yeah."

Willoughby and the governor eviscerated the birds and sealed them in zippered plastic bags. After washing their hands with bottled water and wipes, the three hunters finished loading their gear, climbed in the SUVs and headed back to Raleigh. For Michael, school awaited the next day; for his father, clemency hearings and media interviews on the coming legislative session.

But for one January afternoon they were simply a father and son, enjoying a rare day afield with an old friend and his dogs.