Every Fall I stop and think back to memories of my youth and how things are changed. We all have hundreds of them. Three stuck out in my mind yesterday. The smell of Red Dot powder, smoke coming out of a freshly fired paper hull. The taste of eating a purple top turnip, freshly pulled from the field, dirt mostly wiped off, still cool from the early frost while trailing a young pointer. The sound of wings in the marsh about ten minutes before first light. It sounds like every duck in the World is trying too find a safe place to land before shooting time. What a sound.

Plastic shells just don't smell the same to me even when loaded with Red Dot. I have not seen a patch of turnips, planted after corn in 40 years. And sad to say while the ducks may still fly before first light my hearing is not what it use to be. I can still hear them but they don't sound like feathered jet engines making my heart race like their wings.

What are your three best memories?

My young brother took me duck hunting exactly 50 years ago. I was still wobbly from a serious illness. He rowed across the lake in front of my home to make a blind. As the sun came up, every needle of our spruce-branch blind held an amazing amalgam of light from the dew. I hadn't noticed it before. Doctors had said I would not hunt again. Now I was looking and feeling alive in the world around me. It was magical, exhilarating. I still see those diamonds of light. They taught me something to last the rest of my life.

I hear you brother, but for me it's the sound of a covey's flush, the taste of muscadines pulled from the vine, or picked up from the ground; and the smell of fresh bales of cotton waiting for shipment in the warehouse. The smell of cotton was the first sign that hunting season was coming. Now, not only have all the cotton fields been replaced by pine plantations, they have pulled up the railroad tracks and couldn't ship the cotton, if they had any.
Mike

As long as I can remember the bark of a fox & the howl of a dingo cutting through the chill night air has sent a chill of its own down my spine. That chill sends tingles out to every nerve ending & makes me feel so alive.

Speed on a motor cycle or a car, beyond the limit of what I am safely able to respond to. Again, it let me know how alive I really am by heightening my every sense & seasoning that with a healthy pinch of fear.

As a teenager & shooting my 25-06. The sharp cracking report of it rolling away & echoing back to me in waves was always an impressive sound to me. A sound that spoke of power.
Alas, I no longer have that 98 Mauser toped with an 8 power steel tube Weaver. It still brings back fond memories of hunts & times when I hear a 25-06 crack off now.

O.M

Nothing beats the smell of burning napalm early in the morning.

Many who were there would not find that funny nialmac.

Are you able to hunt now? I hope so!!

Do you mind if I ask what the illness was?

Terry

I'm an active hunter, thank you. Myocardial infarct diagnosis; years later not certain.

Going on my first dove shoot with Grandaddy, at age 8, in 1959. Had my .410 S x S and a stool. The sounds and the sight of those men taking doves at all angles overhead made a hunter out of me. I took my first dove that day, and never looked back.

Killing my first woodie in flooded timber with a buddy, at about age 13. No waders, no boat. standing on the bank. Watched him drift up against a property line webwire fence that spanned the flooded timber, and was half submerged in the middle where my duck was. I left my gun on the bank and proceeded to "walk" the fence out to get my duck, hoping to keep dry. When I got nearly to it my hunting buddy started shaking the fence posts as hard as he could, hoping I'd fall off into the cold water ............I did, followed by his uproarious laughter, and my threats to kill him when I got back to my gun. He just laughed all the harder. He went to prison 6 years later, and died very young.

Paddling back to the landing from Old River, across Herschman's Lake with my Grandaddy, after a day of fishing. It was early afternoon, and I was about 10, and tired out. As I paddled, in the front seat, and looked down into the lake a huge Alligator Gar slowly rose to just beneath the surface, matching the speed of the boat perfectly, and about two feet from it. He was enormous, the biggest I have ever seen in my life, close to 6 feet long. He stayed there for a few seconds until satisfied what we were, then drifted into the depths from which he came. It was like looking back into time and seeing a prehistoric creature drift into the present, then fade away into the past again.

So many wonderful memories of growing up in the country, on Grandaddy's farm, and in my Daddy's huge country store.

Thanks, for the memories Jon. SRH

Good

three things i learned not to do with my brand new stevens model 94c single shot 410, in the summer of '54, while roaming the swamps on the north shore of the altamaha river, north of jessup, ga...

- wounded a possum by shooting it with bird shot...fortunately a wild hog caught it and ate it, so it did not have to suffer to long due to my stupidity...

- while wading in knee deep water, tripped and jammed about four inches of the barrel of my stevens into the mud and decided to clean out the mud by shooting it out, which, peeled the barrel back like a banana...my dad cut it off with a hacksaw, squared it with a file and replaced the bead...good as new, except for no choke and a four inch shorter barrel...

- decided i now had a quail gun and so proceeded shoot into a covey at night on the ground...as i was using sixes, i managed to kill two...upon hearing this news, my dad took away my ammo, but still let me sleep with my 410, until he could teach me right from wrong...

later, traded the 410 for another gun ...wonder where that little stevens is now?

How have you missed this Keith.
The beginning of a boys career in firearms modification.
O.M

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Good one.


______________________
ed’s 410?
https://youtu.be/iir_xAbt-ak
(approx 1:09)

Not a thing as long as I can drive to McKean County PA and see it like it was in 1984 when I first started hunting up there.

Nothing has changed after decades, not a thing except maybe the trees got a little taller. I reset my clock each Thanksgiving when I go there to hunt.

Great catch Moses! I was wondering more along the lines of how the experiences related by King Brown and Ed Good turned them into anti-2nd Amendment trolls who support anti-gun politicians like Obama and Bloomberg. I guess if I had a heart attack at a young age after quitting my job with a wife and young children to support, I might be unjustifiably inclined to expect others to pay for my health care. But that still wouldn't make it anything except Socialist Wealth Redistribution and an involuntary confiscation of other people's earnings. Ain't it disgusting how the same people who want to take away our gun rights also want to take away a large percentage of our earnings too? Tax my earnings to buy the votes of others on the dole, and you have stolen hours from my life... little different than slave holders.

What could be more immoral and uncivil? Some memories we only wish we could forget.



Too bad the wild hog didn't catch and eat Ed... to save us all from his stupidity.