During the fall of 1989, I was a junior at Wake Forest. I was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. I had a girlfriend and drove a pickup truck. For all accounts, I should have been perfectly content, but I wasn't. There was something missing.

Wake was then and still is now a sensational place to become an educated man (or woman). From the stately Georgian architecture that kept everything in order to the heavily wooded grounds of the Reynolda property, the campus is picture-perfect. The problem was after 21¼2 years, I just didn't know if I really fit it. I mean, here I was the only kid in the entire school driving a truck. Most of the student body was in BMWs or other sports cars. While I don't put much stock in the notion that the car you drive makes the person, I really didn't have too much in common with many of those students.

I was an English major who took all the journalism and biology classes I could just to keep my semesters interesting. After all, one can only take so much of Mr. Chaucer's strange old English or the Parliament of Foules. I did enjoy Foundation of Education. A friend was right when he told me that was where all the coeds were.

From my freshman year, I had lugged a good supply of fishing rods and spent many an afternoon after classes exploring what lay down this road and that lane, looking for ponds and lakes to fish. This was mostly a solo effort. It felt good to get back in touch with myself, and I wanted to keep that private for the most part. I did wish there were others that felt similarly, though.

So one night, when a fraternity brother confessed he enjoyed the hunting tradition back in his home state of Alabama, I was quietly optimistic I had found a fellow devotee. Even if Aaron drove a beat up 325i and came from blue-blood stock, he liked to hunt, had a gun and some enthusiasm. That was good enough to go on faith alone. It was also the start of my understanding that despite outward appearances and stock, one should gauge a man by his activity in spare time, not his business.

Our first hunt would be in a 10-acre hardwood stand some 20 minutes from school. It was the first place we stopped to ask permission. An elderly woman came to the door, nodded at our request and pointed out the property lines.

Wake is located in north-central North Carolina, so the surrounding Piedmont landscape was similar to that of Franklin and Patrick counties here in Virginia. We weren't too far from the town of Mount Airy, best known as the model for the Andy Griffith show.

We also hunted with a fellow named Fred, whom Aaron had invited. Fred was a Sigma Chi, a fraternity with an excellent reputation. In other words, they could hold their alcohol, had plenty of moneyed alumni, weren't snobby and didn't womanize. Just like today, you have to choose your hunting companions thusly.

While Aaron looked and still sounded like a 13-year-old without more than a dozen identifiable whiskers, Fred was a strapping yet quiet fellow with a deep voice and, as I would find out on this and other adventures, a great, dry wit.

He brought a utilitarian Remington 870 to the hunt. Aaron, if I recall, had a fancy Browning.

On that sunny, breezy day we each brought down a gray squirrel from the swaying oaks. Truly serious squirrel hunters probably would not have even hunted on such a day, much less in the early afternoon, but we were joyous for the chance.

One shot in particular I remember well, because we did the maypole dance chasing a bushytail around a white oak. I finally spied the squirrel flattened against the trunk some 40 feet up and peeled him off the bark with my 20-gauge Daly.

Fred had the animal just about land on his head, catching it in his hands and quipped afterward, "I felt like I should have spiked it."

Back at Wake, with the skinned squirrels on ice and sitting on my truck tailgate, we talked of other hunts we'd go on in the coming weeks. As we said goodbye and headed to our different dorms, I realized that in just three hours I had connected on a more fulfilling level with my fellow students than I had during most of the previous two years.

Hunting will do that. Fishing can, too. I went on to invite Aaron and Fred up to our family home on Lake Anna, where we caught fall largemouths and afterward sat around the bonfire talking about what we'd like to do after graduating.

Aaron went on to become a lawyer like his father. He was also our student legislature president. Fred, as I found out, was president of his fraternity. I don't know what he is doing now. I'm not sure it really matters.

If we ever got back out in the woods or on the water, I still think we'd be the same three men looking for honest and real companionship as we made our way along the path of life.

Until next time, remember to cherish, protect and conserve the outdoors, while sharing it with others.

C.C McCotter is a Virginia outdoor writer. Write him at mcfish@ns.gemlink.com