Going Hunting

Back in the day when I was growing up going hunting was a favorite pastime for the men in my family.  Rifles and shotguns have been in my family for generations, so I was accustom to the men going hunting. When my uncles,cousins and brothers gathered at the farm it wasn't a big deal.  However, I do recall my grandmother giving the men strong warning about being careless with those guns before they set out. Now remember, some of these guys had been in World War II and the Korean War. I guess a mother never quits worrying about her kids. 

It was a different world then.  My brothers had pocket knives, hunting knives, rifles, shotguns, and BB guns. I'm sure someone taught them about safety, how to handle and clean their guns.  

The guys set out with their hunting license displayed on the middle of the back of their coats, rifles in hand, plenty of ammunition, hunting knives, and the trusted rabbit dog with them. Sometimes some of the others brought their dogs along. So, it was off to the grassy, brushy areas, fence rows, fields and thickets. It wasn't long until the beagle picked up a scent and we could hear him off in the distance trailing a rabbit.

 Rabbit hunting is an adventure in the woods, although I never thought of it that way. It wasn't until I started writing this article that I even wondered about how fast a rabbit can run. I've found several different answers to that question.  Twenty-five miles per hour seems pretty fast to me but then I guess they do have to out run those dogs.

My brother reported to me that he still has his 12 gauge, Mossberg shotgun as well as his Stevens .22 single shot rifle. He said he bought his .22 rifle from our local Firestone Store where he was able to make payments on it.

All my questions finally jogged his brain, so I was quite surprised when he proceeded to tell me a funny story. It seems that one of his teenage friends, named Paul, invited him to go coon hunting. His friend picked him up in a 1949 black Ford coupe.  They ended up driving down an old road that ran alongside the railroad tracks where open fields were. Sometimes the farmers planted corn in these fields. For some reason my brother's friend decided to turn the car around but he didn't want to drive on down the road where there was plenty of space to turn around. He backed the car over the railroad tracks where it got stuck, consequently there they sat not knowing what to do or how to budge the car off the tracks. I could picture them trying to push it over the tracks before they decided to go get help. Desperate to get the car moved off the tracks they ran to get help but when they arrived back to the car a train was fast approaching. My brother said they just got back in time to see the train hit the car, knocking it off the tracks, and totally destroying it. 

Then, there are always those stories of the dogs not coming back because they were off on the trail, running for miles, and getting lost in the big woods. All the stories I've been told had happy endings where the dogs came home or someone found them.

I never went hunting but I did target practice at the neighbor's place. I never did tell my mother or my grandmother about that. The words of my grandmother, "You better act like a lady."