Barry Forbes lives on Route 116, five miles east of Middlebury and eight miles south of Bristol, Vermont. He says if you’re trying to find the place, just slow down and his hounds will let you know where he is. Barry lives in a double wide trailer directly behind the house where he spent his entire childhood, and he’s never been away from this place for longer than thirteen months, when he was in Vietnam. Across the road from his house is a mountain where he’s been fishing and hunting and trapping since he was seven years old.
March is muskrat season in Vermont and Barry took me out and showed me a few muskrat lodges. But the truth is, muskrat season was just an excuse to be around him for awhile, and talk with him about his lifelong passion for hunting.
Music for this show by Peter Cressy of Plainfield, Vermont.
Thank you Mark Davis.
Thank you to The Vermont Folklife Center for introducing me to Barry years ago….
Thank goodness that there are still folks like Barry Forbes in Vermont. What a great notion that some people are born to work with their hands and that they add real value to to the universe !
When I came to Vermont in the late ’50’s he would have been “Standard Issue” which I suppose is why America called Vermont “The Last Stronghold of the Yankees”.
I don’t remember any folks then who thought that money was a measure of a person’s value; Vermonters, rural or in Burlington seemed independent, self reliant, plain spoken and as nearly free of guile as any group I had previously dealt with.
1959 is a long time ago and I am older. Perhaps I remember inperfectly or am using too small, a long ago sample size to justify being so nostalgic and wistful about the Vermont Mr. Forbes summons to mind.
In any event, thanks to Erica for giving us a peek of a Vermont and a rugged Vermonter that is rapidly disappearing.
The podcast helps me to understand Bernie Sanders’ position on gun rights.
Another great great show. You so smartly encourage him to wax eloquent in such a profound, genius way. excellent excellent show.
Erica, Great piece. A wonderful slice of life in Vermont. I always look forward to listening when the email pops up announcing a new episode. Keep up the wonderful work.
OK, I have to say it: you should have played Muskrat Love! I was borne and spent many years in the old Vermont and have watched it become homogenized into an everywhere place, lawn service, tree surgeons and other kids came along and won our school pries, built condos on the back forty and can’t drive in the snow. Back then if you saw cows on the road you stopped, rounded them up and got them back in their pasture and fixed the fence and let the farmer know. It was and still is true that almost anywhere else you can make more money, which I’ve tried, but kept coming back. I feel like a fish out of water the farther I get from esp. central Vermont.
I like what he says about money, hand labor, and honest dirt. He’s totally comfortable with who he is and what he does. That’s rare enough these days.
Having grown up not far from where he lives I’ve known a number of people like him. Not necessarily hunters, but people who did what they did because they wanted to and not because somebody else decided that it was important or prestigious.
Great interview, Erica.
I know Barry. He shot a porcupine that was chewing up my garage in Middlebury. He had to come over several times (in the middle of the night) before he got it, but he did. Great man!
I would have liked to hear Barry Forbes talk about how trapping has changed over time. There’s less wild land, the numbers of bobcats, foxes and otter are decreasing, as has the demand and price paid for their fur. (How much does he get for a muskrat fur? I wish you had asked.)
About 10-15 years ago, Mr. Forbes trapped out the thriving red fox family from the pasture back of our house and we haven’t seen a fox in this small valley since. There were foxes, red or grey, or coyotes denning there for as long as I can remember before that.
I know that’s just one thing and doesn’t prove anything, but it makes me wonder about the whole deal. Animals are up against a lot already and more all the time – cars, habitat loss and degradation, cutting up travel corridors, meadows made into lawns…Do trappers take all this change into account?
Probably they could teach us a whole lot about it, but I worry about the animals anyway.
Thanks.
Barry is amazing. He graciously helped us out of a jam a few years back. I enjoyed hearing his story, well done.
Barry is spot on with everything he says. It was like me thinking out loud. I went to school with Barry and watched him and his brother, Brian, play basketball. They were a couple years ahead of me in school.. Great interview. I really enjoyed it.