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Birth Of a Hunter

The earliest memories I can lock onto of hunting with Grandpa Lewis involve traipsing through wet leaves under big ole mossy oak trees in the early evening after a light fall rain. We were in Halcyondale. That's in Southwest Screven County, a few miles north of Oliver and just south of Grandma Mary's place on Louis Newton just off GA. 17. I may have been four, could have been five.

I had been at him to take me in the woods all day long. He finally gave in. I remember going on and on about how I was gonna kill a squirrel by knocking him out of the tree with a stick that I'd picked up at some point during the hunt.

About twenty-five minutes into our walking, we jumped some cat squirrels (those are the gray ones seen in most parks and yards) from a nest.
There were two squirrels. One hotfooted it to another tree somewhere. The other went up the tree a few feet then ducked around to the tree's far side.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was the designated "flusher" (aka human squirrel dog). When I walked around the tree to see where he'd gone, Grandpa invited him down to our level with his Browning 16gauge automatic.

It's a wonder we killed anything at all that day. I kept up a racket that should have run off every creature for miles. It's possible that I did because I don't remember us killing anything else.

So energetic and curious, I had to have been aggravating. Don't know how the old man put up with it sometimes. Still, it's the memories of his patience that help me to do the penance I now serve as administered by my five year old daughter. She has mastered the art of being an inquisitive, foot-to-foot and up-the-butt shadow.

Come on, Lord! Was I really that much of a handful?

However, I have since learned that children under the age of nine are the best squirrel dogs on the planet. They won't be still. Have to explore everything and love to feel like they're helping. If you get two or three kids together then it's even better; as they want to outdo each other in pointing out the squirrels first. And being first to grab them once they fall.

Now back to the hunt.
The squirrel he shot spun sideways off the limb then dropped like a furry, gray rock. It's bushy tail fluttered the entire way to the ground. When it hit, it bounced then flopped and twisted and twitched. Then went still.  Death convulsions I suppose. I poked it with my stick and it went to flopping again. Not quite dead after all. And I squealed while jumping back and dropping my stick. Some hunter, eh?

But you know what I remember most?
The loudness of Grandpa's shotgun. And the sharp smell of discharged gunpowder that burned my nose a little bit. (Now, that same smell brings up good memories of soft, stewed meat with gravy over rice, or grits, and an enjoyable childhood.)
You know what else?
I remember crying as soon as I saw that squirrel falling. No, it wasn't because of the noise.
Grandpa was supposed to let me knock that squirrel down with my stick, but he didn't. In my mind, I had just been robbed. And I didn't know where the other one had run off to. But I had already promised Grandma Mary that I would get her a squirrel. And now she might be mad at me.

Grandpa thought I had been scared by the noise, or hit by the smoking casing as it was ejected from the gun.
He laughed when I told him what was really going on. I saw nothing funny about him robbing me of my kill. He laughed some more then told me to hush crying and come on.
It wasn't dark yet. And I'm pretty sure there was more to it, but I can't remember anything else about that hunt or that day. But I know this where I got my woodsman's start.

Written by FATBOY300PLUS
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