White Oak Mtn Ranger
Active member
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2007
- Messages
- 28
RETURN TO KIRKLAND CREEK
The last time I was on Kirkland Creek my hunting partner and I split up to do a little scouting for deer about a half an hour before he stumbled into a dense laurel thicket and came face to face with two well armed poachers carrying a dead bear on pole.
We were a long way from the nearest road about eight to ten miles above Bald River Falls in Tennessee’s Tellico Wildlife Management Area and it wasn’t bear season.
The year was 1979 and after my buddy started back tracking and yelling for me to cross to his side of the laurel thicket, the two guys trotted the bear up the old logging road to the safety of the North Carolina line. We had the best escape route to a passable road blocked and we sprinted down river, pistols in hand, nervously looking over our shoulders like a bear was chasing us.
That cancelled all plans for hunting Kirkland Creek and I’ve not returned until last week. I figured with a good pack of dogs and plenty of time for the bears and hogs to rebound from poachers now grown old, we stood a pretty good chance at getting what we were after.
Kirkland is a truly wild little creek that runs into the Bald River about seven miles above the falls after draining a long, narrow valley. It is completely choked with nothing less than miles of incredibly dense and impenetrable stands of laurel, rhododendron and hardwoods that make up the aftermath of logging operations from the turn of the century.
This deep, winding watershed valley has become so dense that the bears and hogs have apparently abandoned it. Even when the four packs of bear dogs that were unleashed came over the ridges bordering the creek, they and what ever it was they were supposedly chasing, steered clear of Kirkland the first weekend in December.
Local newspaper accounts say that several groups of outlaws commonly referred to as bushwhackers operated in these mountains during the War of Northern Aggression.
The Kirkland Bushwhackers are probably the most well known group and were considered by many to be the most vicious and bloodthirsty group to plunder and murder in these mountains. At times, deserters from both the Union and the Confederate ranks could be found fighting and randomly murdering unsympathetic locals.
Kirkland’s Bushwhackers were led by John Jackson “Bushwhacking” Kirkland, a former Second Lieutenant in Company B of the Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry, and a deserter from the Confederate Army.
The Kirkland Bushwhackers did not seem to draw the line at killing relatives, sometimes murdering their blood kin and kin by marriage.
Bas Shaw was the uncle of “Bushwhacking John” by marriage. The union army burned the family gristmill on Turkey Creek while Sherman was on a side trip chasing Longstreet from Knoxville.
Sherman detoured into Monroe County destroying an iron foundry at Tellico Plains and he sent a platoon up the mountains to lay waste to anything they could lay their hands on. Shaw’s mill was torched by Sherman’s soldiers before they went back to Chattanooga.
John swore an oath against the Union and then he and his boys commenced roaming the mountains between Robbinsville North Carolina and Madisonville Tennessee, set on revenge and anything that could be stolen from mountain homesteads where the men folk had gone off to war.
The Kirkland’s killed Captain Joe Gray of Company H, Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry at his home near Sweetwater, Tennessee. That night, as they were celebrating the murder in a wild drunken party, their women took turns dancing around the fire in Gray’s Calvary boots.
Sometime after that, they murdered two of Bas’s sons who had joined the Eleventh Tennessee Calvary, Union Army. They were Bushwhacking John’s first cousins.
After Bas Shaw’s sons were killed, he took his revenge in an October 3, 1864 raid on Robbinsville with Captain Tim Lyons and the Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry.
Lyons was a one eyed Irish immigrant who had deserted from the Union Army and commanded a rival mountain running gang of mostly Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws and young boys.
Jesse Kirkland, captured and paroled at Vicksburg, reported AWOL on January 1, 1864, was Bushwhacking John’s brother. Jesse Kirkland was killed during the Robbinsville raid.
Bushwhacking John survived the Civil War, and numerous skirmishes, ambushes and shoot outs. Although several murder indictments were handed down against him after the war, he was never tried, arrested, or even had papers served on him.
Most of the law of the day knew that to ride deep into the mountains where John lived to serve a warrant for his arrest would have been a long uphill trail to a grave.
John “Bushwhacking“ Kirkland moved from Graham County North Carolina to Polk County, Tennessee in 1872 and died in 1902 at age 75. This was about the time that the Babcock lumber company built the rail lines into the Tellico and Bald Rivers and felled the old growth poplars and hemlocks. When Babcock had completely devastated the mountain land the State of Tennessee bought it.
If I had known all of this going in I’d never set foot on Kirkland Creek, just like the bears and the hogs.
My guess is that old “Bushwhacking John” still prowls the mountain trails on full moon December nights shooting an occasional bear or two when he gets that old bloody feeling.
I’ll bet he dreams of his drunken mountain women taking turns dancing in the light of a big fire on Kirkland Creek in a pair of dead Captains boots.
The last time I was on Kirkland Creek my hunting partner and I split up to do a little scouting for deer about a half an hour before he stumbled into a dense laurel thicket and came face to face with two well armed poachers carrying a dead bear on pole.
We were a long way from the nearest road about eight to ten miles above Bald River Falls in Tennessee’s Tellico Wildlife Management Area and it wasn’t bear season.
The year was 1979 and after my buddy started back tracking and yelling for me to cross to his side of the laurel thicket, the two guys trotted the bear up the old logging road to the safety of the North Carolina line. We had the best escape route to a passable road blocked and we sprinted down river, pistols in hand, nervously looking over our shoulders like a bear was chasing us.
That cancelled all plans for hunting Kirkland Creek and I’ve not returned until last week. I figured with a good pack of dogs and plenty of time for the bears and hogs to rebound from poachers now grown old, we stood a pretty good chance at getting what we were after.
Kirkland is a truly wild little creek that runs into the Bald River about seven miles above the falls after draining a long, narrow valley. It is completely choked with nothing less than miles of incredibly dense and impenetrable stands of laurel, rhododendron and hardwoods that make up the aftermath of logging operations from the turn of the century.
This deep, winding watershed valley has become so dense that the bears and hogs have apparently abandoned it. Even when the four packs of bear dogs that were unleashed came over the ridges bordering the creek, they and what ever it was they were supposedly chasing, steered clear of Kirkland the first weekend in December.
Local newspaper accounts say that several groups of outlaws commonly referred to as bushwhackers operated in these mountains during the War of Northern Aggression.
The Kirkland Bushwhackers are probably the most well known group and were considered by many to be the most vicious and bloodthirsty group to plunder and murder in these mountains. At times, deserters from both the Union and the Confederate ranks could be found fighting and randomly murdering unsympathetic locals.
Kirkland’s Bushwhackers were led by John Jackson “Bushwhacking” Kirkland, a former Second Lieutenant in Company B of the Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry, and a deserter from the Confederate Army.
The Kirkland Bushwhackers did not seem to draw the line at killing relatives, sometimes murdering their blood kin and kin by marriage.
Bas Shaw was the uncle of “Bushwhacking John” by marriage. The union army burned the family gristmill on Turkey Creek while Sherman was on a side trip chasing Longstreet from Knoxville.
Sherman detoured into Monroe County destroying an iron foundry at Tellico Plains and he sent a platoon up the mountains to lay waste to anything they could lay their hands on. Shaw’s mill was torched by Sherman’s soldiers before they went back to Chattanooga.
John swore an oath against the Union and then he and his boys commenced roaming the mountains between Robbinsville North Carolina and Madisonville Tennessee, set on revenge and anything that could be stolen from mountain homesteads where the men folk had gone off to war.
The Kirkland’s killed Captain Joe Gray of Company H, Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry at his home near Sweetwater, Tennessee. That night, as they were celebrating the murder in a wild drunken party, their women took turns dancing around the fire in Gray’s Calvary boots.
Sometime after that, they murdered two of Bas’s sons who had joined the Eleventh Tennessee Calvary, Union Army. They were Bushwhacking John’s first cousins.
After Bas Shaw’s sons were killed, he took his revenge in an October 3, 1864 raid on Robbinsville with Captain Tim Lyons and the Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry.
Lyons was a one eyed Irish immigrant who had deserted from the Union Army and commanded a rival mountain running gang of mostly Confederate deserters, bushwhackers, outlaws and young boys.
Jesse Kirkland, captured and paroled at Vicksburg, reported AWOL on January 1, 1864, was Bushwhacking John’s brother. Jesse Kirkland was killed during the Robbinsville raid.
Bushwhacking John survived the Civil War, and numerous skirmishes, ambushes and shoot outs. Although several murder indictments were handed down against him after the war, he was never tried, arrested, or even had papers served on him.
Most of the law of the day knew that to ride deep into the mountains where John lived to serve a warrant for his arrest would have been a long uphill trail to a grave.
John “Bushwhacking“ Kirkland moved from Graham County North Carolina to Polk County, Tennessee in 1872 and died in 1902 at age 75. This was about the time that the Babcock lumber company built the rail lines into the Tellico and Bald Rivers and felled the old growth poplars and hemlocks. When Babcock had completely devastated the mountain land the State of Tennessee bought it.
If I had known all of this going in I’d never set foot on Kirkland Creek, just like the bears and the hogs.
My guess is that old “Bushwhacking John” still prowls the mountain trails on full moon December nights shooting an occasional bear or two when he gets that old bloody feeling.
I’ll bet he dreams of his drunken mountain women taking turns dancing in the light of a big fire on Kirkland Creek in a pair of dead Captains boots.
