LeAnn “Lulu” Swindle grew up near two of the best bass fishing lakes in Alabama, but she didn’t truly embrace an outdoors lifestyle until she married a guy whose biggest thrill comes from catching trophy bass.
Or hunting deer. Or ducks. Or doves.
It’s hard to keep up with Gerald Swindle, whose outdoors exploits — including 25 years fishing with B.A.S.S. and two Angler of the Year titles — are well documented.
These days, however, Lulu stays step for step with the G-Man, whether it’s in a treestand or on a bass boat. And though she admits her husband of 15-plus years taught her most everything she knows about the outdoors, she quite literally has the heads on the wall to prove her prowess.
The garage of the Swindles’ home near Alabama’s Lake Guntersville is lined with more than three dozen deer mounts, nearly a dozen of which fell at Lulu’s hands during the past dozen years. She’s blasted greenheads on prime Arkansas duck leases and caught a largemouth bass on a private pond near Jasper, Ala., a few years ago that topped 12 pounds.
In other words, Lulu Swindle has got game when it comes to the outdoors game.
But those sorts of skills don’t often come easy, and Lulu has the scars to prove that too.
She shot her first deer — a 6-point cull buck— on a property Gerald once leased near the small South Alabama community of Hurtsboro. The old buck took a long time to show and during the lull, Lulu unintentionally allowed the rifle’s rest to slip up her arm. When she finally squeezed the trigger, the gun’s scope was too close to her face, and it smacked her in the forehead on the recoil.
“Scope rash,” as they call it.
Her ego was bruised more than anything, but the real injury occurred later while the Swindles and a friend were loading the deer onto their side-by-side utility vehicle. Lulu’s thumb somehow got lodged in the vehicle’s tailgate, which resulted in badly broken bone and a Christmas Eve visit to the emergency room.
A couple years later, Lulu was driving the same side-by-side through the woods on a farm the Swindles own and hunt near Jasper. One of the tires bumped a tree and torqued the steering wheel so severely that it shattered her right index finger.
“I remember saying to myself ‘Try not to panic,’” she said. “Gerald was taking down a treestand nearby. I called his name, and he said he knew it was serious because my voice was quivering. He came running out of the woods with the stand on his back, and he gets me in the buggy to get out of there. I had my Weimaraner with me in the cart and the dog was scared. Gerald picked him up and when he did, they hit heads so hard it took hair out of Gerald’s eyebrow.
“We were a hot mess that day,” she said, laughing now at the harrowing hunt. “You have to be tough to hunt with Gerald.”
All the excitement was a new experience for Lulu, who grew up in the small town of Baileyton in Cullman County, Ala., sandwiched between the big bass factories of Lake Guntersville and Smith Lake. The only fishing she enjoyed at the time, however, was the occasional outing with her father for bream and crappies. Lulu, the oldest of three girls, was much more interested in cheerleading as a youngster, and that was her passion all the way through high school.
Things changed when she met Gerald, who had hunted and fished since he was a boy.
“I started going with him not so much because I wanted to hunt, but because I wanted to spend time with him,” Lulu said. “Back in the days before we started hanging double (deer) stands, I’d sit at the base of the tree he was hunting in. I can remember one time, he dangled a rope down to let me know a deer was coming.
“Finally, I thought I’d try to actually hunt. He got me a rifle about four years after we were married, and it grew from there. After doing that for a few years, I thought I’d try bow hunting, and he bought me a used bow. We weren’t gonna’ spend a lot of money because we didn’t know if I’d like it. Turned out that I loved it, and I only had that bow for a year before I upgraded.
“I like shooting a rifle, but bow hunting is by far my favorite,” she said. “It’s hard. If you kill a deer bow hunting, you’ve really done something.”
As for fishing, Lulu enjoys catching big bass, but her decided preference still is for bream and crappies.
“I love a cork,” Lulu said. “I love crickets and worms. I’ve wanted a pontoon boat since we’ve been married. I still don’t have one, but if I did, I want it to have a Talon or maybe two on it. I want it to have a graph and I want a trolling motor on it, because I want to be able to take my dad, my father in law, my grandkids, out fishing.”
Lulu said one of her more memorable fishing trips came after a tournament Gerald fished on Sam Rayburn Reservoir several years ago.
“He found a couple of big crappie beds while he was in the tournament,” she said. “He sat in the back and I sat up front, and we just caught fish all day long. It was ridiculous. It was awesome.”
Though she busted her hand up badly on a couple previous hunts, Lulu said spending her free time in the outdoors is an overwhelmingly peaceful experience. It’s something she looks forward to every day, not only during peak fishing times or hunting season.
“We have a fire pit in our front yard, and I’d much rather be outside by that than doing anything inside,” she said. “I love hiking and we’ve taken several trips up to Mt. Leconte (in the Smoky Mountains), or we’ll hike here at the state park at Guntersville. We love to tent camp. We have a fifth wheel for tournaments, but that’s glamping to us. We’d much rather be in the tent.
“Our whole family just loves to be outside. Our daughter, our son in law, the two grandbabies. It tickles me. There’s something about it that just boosts the mood.”
