A Little Light Reading
09-15-2008, 08:49 AM
#1
Nontypical Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Iowa (Heartland USA)
Posts: 3,249
A Little Light Reading
I wrote this story (all true) a while back and just added to my blog. Just thought I'd share it here too. Sorry for the length...
As a kid, I was average heighth, but very thin. When I was young, 8 or9 years old,Dad decided to send my older brother andme to a hunter safety course put on by the Izaak Walton League. We went and had a week of learning how to shoot (.22 cal rifles) and weapons safety. This was back in the mid 1960's, long before many states made it mandatory to have this course before one could get a hunting license. After the course was over, Dad took my brother and me out to shoot his 12 guage shotgun. He drove us out on a gravel road to a bridge and first had my brother get out of the car and shoot. I watched from the car as he aimed the shotgun over the rail of the bridge and fired. It knocked my older brother on his butt and he dropped the gun. Then he sent my brother back to the car and had me get out. Dad chuckled as I walked up and said "You saw what it did to your older brother, I think it's going to knock you off the other side of the bridge." I was afraid he was probably right after what I had just witnessed. I took the shotgun and he told me where to aim. As I lifted the gun to my shoulder,I ran through the list the IWL had taught us. I placed the butt of the gun firmly against my shoulder, took the safety off, and slowly squeezed the trigger expecting to go flying at any second. As the shotgun fired, it pushed me backwards, but I didn't fall over or drop the gun. I was somewhat proud of myself for accomplishing something that my brother had failed at. As we drove back home, Dad added a rule to what we had learned earlier.
RULE 1: Never shoot something you don't intend to eat.
A couple of years later, while visiting my grandparents, Grandpa asked me to take his .410 shotgun out and get him some rabbits. My older brother told him that he would take care of that, and Grandpa replied that he wanted me to do this for him. Grandpa handed me a box of shotgun shells and sent me off. It was the dead of winter and colder than all get out. I walked to an alley that ran along the edge of the town, which was at the back of Grandpa and Grandma's back yard. I then took the alley North and within 300 yards of their house had killed four rabbits. I carried them back to the house and told Grandpa that I had gotten him his rabbits. My Dad looked at me and asked if I had cleaned them too. I told him I didn't know how to clean them. He replied that Grandpa was too old to be out in this cold and he would show me how to do it. We put two nails up on the side of the garage and hung the first rabbit. He then handed me a knife and walked me step by step through the cleaning process. I'll never forget the smell when I peeled back that first hide. After the first one was done, Dad looked at me and told me to finish skinning and cleaning the other three. As he turned to walk in the house, he added another rule to hunting.
RULE 2: You kill it, you clean it.
The next time we went to visit Grandpa and Grandma, Grandpa gave me the .410 shotgun to have for my own. He told me just to take it up and put it in the trunk of our car and not tell anyone I had it until we got home. I did what I was told and when we got home, I told Mom and Dad about it. Dad didn't believe that Grandpa had given me his shotgun and proceeded to start beating me with his belt. Mom called Grandpa and he informed her that he in fact had given that shotgun to me because two other relatives had sat in front of him arguing about who was going to get it after he passed on. When Mom told Dad that it true Grandpa had given it to me, the beating continued with the reasoning changing from "You should never steal" to "This is what you get for having a gun before I said you could have one." This brought us to Dad's next rule.
RULE 3: Hunting is a priviledge, not a right. The Constitution gives us the right to bear arms, but it does not say anything about using those arms for hunting.
A couple more years passed and one day I was pheasant hunting with a friend. As we walked down the rows of corn, I stumbled across a oppossum coming right at me.It was snarling and had foamy drool pouring out of it's mouth. Asitadvanced towards me, I gave it a face full of lead at about 10'. I kept thinking of Dad's rule #1 and I decided it I got a beating over this one, it would be worth the beating not to eat oppossum, especially one that was rabid. On the way home, I decided that if he did not ask, I would not tell him anything. As I walked through the door, Dad looked at me and asked "Did you get anything?" I knew that my answer was going to end up introducing my rear to leather, but I told him what had happened. Rule 4 was given to me that day.
Rule 4: Rules 1 & 2 don't apply to rabid animals.
A week or so after this happened, my younger brother woke me up one morning and handed me Dad's .22 caliber revolver. "Dad says you have to kill it." "What?", I replied. "Dad says you have to kill it!" "Hurry before it gets one of our dogs!" I jumped out of bed, grabbed the pistol from my little brother and ran upstairs to see what was going on. Dad told me there was a raccoon in the back yard messing with our Siberian Huskies. He instructed me to shoot it and kill it, but not to put any shots into it's head because we would have to have it checked for rabies. I went out on the deck and there was the biggest raccoon that I have ever seen! I started shooting at it and had to go back inside to reload. I went back on the deck and it was climbing the stairs up to the deck. I unloaded the gun at it another time just as it reached the 2nd to the top step. I ran back inside, reloaded and started for the front door to go around and approach it from the rear. Dad yelled "What is taking you so long? I have to take it when I go to work. If you don't hurry up, you'll have to carry it yourself to Iowa City to get it checked!" Well, I didn't want to carry the 'coon 10 miles, so I ran out and started around the the house. When I got to the side yard, there was the raccoon climbing over the gate to the backyard. I walked up to within 2 feet of it while it climbed and emptied the revolver into it's chest just as it reached the top of the gate. It dropped dead right at my feet. I went inside and got two garbage bags out and got the lifeless corpse into them. I dragged the bags out to Dad's truck and had trouble getting it into the bed. Dad came out and harassed me about being too weak to get a little raccoon into his truck and grabbed the bag from me. As he lifted the raccoon up, his eyes got a little wide and said that it was heavier than he had expected. As he left, he told me that I had shot 24 times and for every bullet that was missing from the body, I was going to get 10 whacks with the belt, which brings us to Dad's next rule.
RULE 5: Make every shot count.
When Dad got home from work that day, he came in and told us all that the raccoon was not rabid. I sat there wondering how many times I was going to get whipped. I finally could not take it anymore and asked how many bullets they removed from the raccoon. He looked and me and told me I was lucky that they had taken 24 bullets from the animal. I cannot explain the relief that poured over me when I heard that. That raccoon weighed in at 45 pounds at a time when I didn't weigh any more than 70 pounds!
My parents divorced shortly after that, and the days of beatings ended. The days of getting hunting rules from Dad also ended. After that, I continued to hunt and spentseveral falls guiding out of stater's on pheasant hunts in our area until I graduated from high school.
I entered the military 3 days after I graduated and due to duty assignments,gave up hunting for several years. In 1985, while stationed in Germany, I was invited on a boar hunt with crossbows with a couple of other GI's and several Germans. As we trekked through the forest, out of the blue all the German hunters started climbing trees. I looked at them and then the other GI's. We all shrugged our shoulders and startedclimbing trees ourselves. I no sooner got 10' off the ground andaHUGE boar came out of the trees and started sniffing and grunting.TheGermans started shooting at it and as they did so, this beast started ramming thetrees people where in. I got off two shots in between tree bashings and wondering if this tree wasgoing to hold up or drop me on the ground with the boar. After being hit 17 times, the boar dropped to the ground and died. We let the Germans climb down before we did. They field dressed the boar on the spot and then took a long pole and tied the feet of the boar to it. It took 8 of us to carry that monster out of the forest. This is when I came up with my own rules.
RULE 6: Never go out on a hunt with people who don't speak the same language.
RULE 7: Always have a plan before you start the hunt so you know what is going on.
After being back in the states a few years, I started pheasant hunting again. One year, my brother-in-law asked me to take him pheasant hunting. He had been through the hunter safety course, so I decided to take him on my son's firstw time out in the field. My son had not been through the hunter safety course yet, but could walk along with me and see what pheasant hunting was all about. We went to a spot I knew where I had always filled my tag within an hour. I told my in-law that I would yell "hen" if it was something we could not shoot. He said he understood and we started walking into the CRP grass. A hen jumped up and I yelled "HEN!". At which point my in-law emptied his 12 guage automatic in the general direction of the bird. I found out he is not a good shot. I looked at my son and told him to stay behind me. We walked another 10 feet and a rooster jumped up. I stood there looking at my in-law who just stood there, so I shot and dropped the bird. I asked him why he didn't shoot, and he replied that he was waiting to see if I yelled "hen". Long story short, I had my bag limit within an hour and my in-law hadn't hit a thing. We spent the rest of the day trying to get him a single bird. When we got back home, I told him that I would give him a bird if he didn't ask me to go hunting again until after he could shoot and knew what he was shooting at. He agreed and we never went hunting together again. Time for a rule.
RULE 8: Make sure another hunter knows what he/she is doing BEFORE you go hunting with them.
In the late 90's I started deer hunting with a muzzleloader. I put up a stand on my friends property and was out there one windy winter evening when some deer started by. I stood up to take the shot just as a gust of wind came by and almost fell out of the stand. My life flashed in front of my eyes and I knew it was too short to be a full length feature. As I get older, I get smarter a lot faster. Time for a rule.
RULE 9: NEVER get in a tree stand without a safety harness on!
A few years ago, my father passed on about the time my son started hunting. We have been on a couple of pheasant & deer hunts together and I cherish the memory of each one. I have tried to give him good advice about hunting and safety and passed on the rules I learned (without the leather). I know that none of us are guaranteed a tomorrow, so I spend as much time as I can with him and my daughter, who has no interest at all in hunting or fishing. I then came up with the last rule of hunting.
RULE 10: Take a loved one with you whenever hunting. It will be something you both will cherish, and you never know, it could be the last one you can spend together.
As a kid, I was average heighth, but very thin. When I was young, 8 or9 years old,Dad decided to send my older brother andme to a hunter safety course put on by the Izaak Walton League. We went and had a week of learning how to shoot (.22 cal rifles) and weapons safety. This was back in the mid 1960's, long before many states made it mandatory to have this course before one could get a hunting license. After the course was over, Dad took my brother and me out to shoot his 12 guage shotgun. He drove us out on a gravel road to a bridge and first had my brother get out of the car and shoot. I watched from the car as he aimed the shotgun over the rail of the bridge and fired. It knocked my older brother on his butt and he dropped the gun. Then he sent my brother back to the car and had me get out. Dad chuckled as I walked up and said "You saw what it did to your older brother, I think it's going to knock you off the other side of the bridge." I was afraid he was probably right after what I had just witnessed. I took the shotgun and he told me where to aim. As I lifted the gun to my shoulder,I ran through the list the IWL had taught us. I placed the butt of the gun firmly against my shoulder, took the safety off, and slowly squeezed the trigger expecting to go flying at any second. As the shotgun fired, it pushed me backwards, but I didn't fall over or drop the gun. I was somewhat proud of myself for accomplishing something that my brother had failed at. As we drove back home, Dad added a rule to what we had learned earlier.
RULE 1: Never shoot something you don't intend to eat.
A couple of years later, while visiting my grandparents, Grandpa asked me to take his .410 shotgun out and get him some rabbits. My older brother told him that he would take care of that, and Grandpa replied that he wanted me to do this for him. Grandpa handed me a box of shotgun shells and sent me off. It was the dead of winter and colder than all get out. I walked to an alley that ran along the edge of the town, which was at the back of Grandpa and Grandma's back yard. I then took the alley North and within 300 yards of their house had killed four rabbits. I carried them back to the house and told Grandpa that I had gotten him his rabbits. My Dad looked at me and asked if I had cleaned them too. I told him I didn't know how to clean them. He replied that Grandpa was too old to be out in this cold and he would show me how to do it. We put two nails up on the side of the garage and hung the first rabbit. He then handed me a knife and walked me step by step through the cleaning process. I'll never forget the smell when I peeled back that first hide. After the first one was done, Dad looked at me and told me to finish skinning and cleaning the other three. As he turned to walk in the house, he added another rule to hunting.
RULE 2: You kill it, you clean it.
The next time we went to visit Grandpa and Grandma, Grandpa gave me the .410 shotgun to have for my own. He told me just to take it up and put it in the trunk of our car and not tell anyone I had it until we got home. I did what I was told and when we got home, I told Mom and Dad about it. Dad didn't believe that Grandpa had given me his shotgun and proceeded to start beating me with his belt. Mom called Grandpa and he informed her that he in fact had given that shotgun to me because two other relatives had sat in front of him arguing about who was going to get it after he passed on. When Mom told Dad that it true Grandpa had given it to me, the beating continued with the reasoning changing from "You should never steal" to "This is what you get for having a gun before I said you could have one." This brought us to Dad's next rule.
RULE 3: Hunting is a priviledge, not a right. The Constitution gives us the right to bear arms, but it does not say anything about using those arms for hunting.
A couple more years passed and one day I was pheasant hunting with a friend. As we walked down the rows of corn, I stumbled across a oppossum coming right at me.It was snarling and had foamy drool pouring out of it's mouth. Asitadvanced towards me, I gave it a face full of lead at about 10'. I kept thinking of Dad's rule #1 and I decided it I got a beating over this one, it would be worth the beating not to eat oppossum, especially one that was rabid. On the way home, I decided that if he did not ask, I would not tell him anything. As I walked through the door, Dad looked at me and asked "Did you get anything?" I knew that my answer was going to end up introducing my rear to leather, but I told him what had happened. Rule 4 was given to me that day.
Rule 4: Rules 1 & 2 don't apply to rabid animals.
A week or so after this happened, my younger brother woke me up one morning and handed me Dad's .22 caliber revolver. "Dad says you have to kill it." "What?", I replied. "Dad says you have to kill it!" "Hurry before it gets one of our dogs!" I jumped out of bed, grabbed the pistol from my little brother and ran upstairs to see what was going on. Dad told me there was a raccoon in the back yard messing with our Siberian Huskies. He instructed me to shoot it and kill it, but not to put any shots into it's head because we would have to have it checked for rabies. I went out on the deck and there was the biggest raccoon that I have ever seen! I started shooting at it and had to go back inside to reload. I went back on the deck and it was climbing the stairs up to the deck. I unloaded the gun at it another time just as it reached the 2nd to the top step. I ran back inside, reloaded and started for the front door to go around and approach it from the rear. Dad yelled "What is taking you so long? I have to take it when I go to work. If you don't hurry up, you'll have to carry it yourself to Iowa City to get it checked!" Well, I didn't want to carry the 'coon 10 miles, so I ran out and started around the the house. When I got to the side yard, there was the raccoon climbing over the gate to the backyard. I walked up to within 2 feet of it while it climbed and emptied the revolver into it's chest just as it reached the top of the gate. It dropped dead right at my feet. I went inside and got two garbage bags out and got the lifeless corpse into them. I dragged the bags out to Dad's truck and had trouble getting it into the bed. Dad came out and harassed me about being too weak to get a little raccoon into his truck and grabbed the bag from me. As he lifted the raccoon up, his eyes got a little wide and said that it was heavier than he had expected. As he left, he told me that I had shot 24 times and for every bullet that was missing from the body, I was going to get 10 whacks with the belt, which brings us to Dad's next rule.
RULE 5: Make every shot count.
When Dad got home from work that day, he came in and told us all that the raccoon was not rabid. I sat there wondering how many times I was going to get whipped. I finally could not take it anymore and asked how many bullets they removed from the raccoon. He looked and me and told me I was lucky that they had taken 24 bullets from the animal. I cannot explain the relief that poured over me when I heard that. That raccoon weighed in at 45 pounds at a time when I didn't weigh any more than 70 pounds!
My parents divorced shortly after that, and the days of beatings ended. The days of getting hunting rules from Dad also ended. After that, I continued to hunt and spentseveral falls guiding out of stater's on pheasant hunts in our area until I graduated from high school.
I entered the military 3 days after I graduated and due to duty assignments,gave up hunting for several years. In 1985, while stationed in Germany, I was invited on a boar hunt with crossbows with a couple of other GI's and several Germans. As we trekked through the forest, out of the blue all the German hunters started climbing trees. I looked at them and then the other GI's. We all shrugged our shoulders and startedclimbing trees ourselves. I no sooner got 10' off the ground andaHUGE boar came out of the trees and started sniffing and grunting.TheGermans started shooting at it and as they did so, this beast started ramming thetrees people where in. I got off two shots in between tree bashings and wondering if this tree wasgoing to hold up or drop me on the ground with the boar. After being hit 17 times, the boar dropped to the ground and died. We let the Germans climb down before we did. They field dressed the boar on the spot and then took a long pole and tied the feet of the boar to it. It took 8 of us to carry that monster out of the forest. This is when I came up with my own rules.
RULE 6: Never go out on a hunt with people who don't speak the same language.
RULE 7: Always have a plan before you start the hunt so you know what is going on.
After being back in the states a few years, I started pheasant hunting again. One year, my brother-in-law asked me to take him pheasant hunting. He had been through the hunter safety course, so I decided to take him on my son's firstw time out in the field. My son had not been through the hunter safety course yet, but could walk along with me and see what pheasant hunting was all about. We went to a spot I knew where I had always filled my tag within an hour. I told my in-law that I would yell "hen" if it was something we could not shoot. He said he understood and we started walking into the CRP grass. A hen jumped up and I yelled "HEN!". At which point my in-law emptied his 12 guage automatic in the general direction of the bird. I found out he is not a good shot. I looked at my son and told him to stay behind me. We walked another 10 feet and a rooster jumped up. I stood there looking at my in-law who just stood there, so I shot and dropped the bird. I asked him why he didn't shoot, and he replied that he was waiting to see if I yelled "hen". Long story short, I had my bag limit within an hour and my in-law hadn't hit a thing. We spent the rest of the day trying to get him a single bird. When we got back home, I told him that I would give him a bird if he didn't ask me to go hunting again until after he could shoot and knew what he was shooting at. He agreed and we never went hunting together again. Time for a rule.
RULE 8: Make sure another hunter knows what he/she is doing BEFORE you go hunting with them.
In the late 90's I started deer hunting with a muzzleloader. I put up a stand on my friends property and was out there one windy winter evening when some deer started by. I stood up to take the shot just as a gust of wind came by and almost fell out of the stand. My life flashed in front of my eyes and I knew it was too short to be a full length feature. As I get older, I get smarter a lot faster. Time for a rule.
RULE 9: NEVER get in a tree stand without a safety harness on!
A few years ago, my father passed on about the time my son started hunting. We have been on a couple of pheasant & deer hunts together and I cherish the memory of each one. I have tried to give him good advice about hunting and safety and passed on the rules I learned (without the leather). I know that none of us are guaranteed a tomorrow, so I spend as much time as I can with him and my daughter, who has no interest at all in hunting or fishing. I then came up with the last rule of hunting.
RULE 10: Take a loved one with you whenever hunting. It will be something you both will cherish, and you never know, it could be the last one you can spend together.
09-15-2008, 10:29 AM
#2
Fork Horn
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 220
RE: A Little Light Reading
Good advice & good reading... I esp. am fond of #10. I have always enjoyed hunting with my brother more than anyone else thus far. My dad gave up hunting before I was born & my grandpa died before I was old enough to have him teach me. My brother & I did however both learn to hunt with my dad's old 20ga, it's in my safe and most treasured firearm. My wife has expressed alot of interest in bow hunting with me, but has came up with reasons for her not to get a bow. After a very trying summer on her, yesterday I took her to the shop where I shoot & get most of my archery gear. She had looked at bows with me before but never "wanted one," even though I could see it in her eyes she did. After we looked at a couple, she was given a Hoyt Kobalt 40-50lb, she was able to draw it back and hold it. She smiled & I asked her if she liked it. She said yes and proceded to hand it back to Jeremiah. As he started to hang it back up, I told him to go ahead and keep it down. She looked at me with a puzzled smile. I returned the simle and told him that we'll be buying that one. I told my wife that this wasn't negotiable, lol. So Long story short, after a couple year wait (we've only been married a tick over two years) She will finally be able to go out in the woods with me bow hunting.... I'm very excited that she is excited about it, and that'll she be out there with me... I just hope she doesn't get a bigger buck than me! LOL
09-15-2008, 07:13 PM
#5
Nontypical Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Iowa (Heartland USA)
Posts: 3,249
RE: A Little Light Reading
I just wonder how many others were taught by the leather to arse to brain method? I know I was a little rebellious and there were a few times I deserved the whippings I got but many times they were uncalled for.
09-15-2008, 08:04 PM
#6
Typical Buck
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Georgia
Posts: 770
RE: A Little Light Reading
I just wonder how many others were taught by the leather to arse to brain method?
i'm nineteen now, but when i first started shooting guns at about age six we learned quick what you DON'T do with a firearm. my dad set down a set of rulesand if they were broken, he reinforced the lesson with a belt. all in all, i'm glad he did, because it made me the hunter i am today. safe and ethical.
09-16-2008, 12:45 PM
#9
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: TX Panhandle
Posts: 620
RE: A Little Light Reading
Very good AF, an enjoyable read. I started my boys with two rules:
1. Every gun is loaded untill YOU have checked it.
2. Never point a loaded gun at something you don't intend to shoot (see rule #1).
There are other rules, of course, but those are my golden gun safety rules. Violate them, and you will will meet the belt.
1. Every gun is loaded untill YOU have checked it.
2. Never point a loaded gun at something you don't intend to shoot (see rule #1).
There are other rules, of course, but those are my golden gun safety rules. Violate them, and you will will meet the belt.
