T he other day I got out my trusty deer rifle so I could clean it up for opening day. There’s not much bluing left on the old girl because I’ve pulled it from the case and cleaned it up for opening day about twice a week since March. Deer season is kind of a big deal to me, and I am more than a little excited. I don’t know if it’s the expectations of another season or an overdose of Hoppe’s #9 fumes, but I started doing a little reflecting.
I remembered the day I got the very gun I was wiping down. It was October, and I was 12 when my dad brought it home wrapped in newspaper. He picked it up at a garage sale for $70. He handed me a parcel with a smile and said, “I got you a present today.”
It wasn’t birthday or Christmas season, and my dad was famous for making presents out of shovels, post-hole diggers, and log mauls, so I had a little apprehension as I dug into the paper. There, in the middle of the old, yellow Flint Journals was an actual, bona-fide rifle. It was a 6.5 mm Breda with an old Mauser action, and it had a beautiful striped walnut stock. The guy who sold it to my dad even threw in a couple of hundred rounds. It shot like a dream, and I was in gun heaven.
The reflective powers of gun oil fumes being what they are helped me remember the first time my dad took me out gun huntin’. He walked me to my ground blind and for the hundredth time told me to pick up my feet as I shuffled through the leaves. He got me all settled in and for the thousandth time he explained how important it was for me to be quiet and not to move. He pointed to the place where his blind was and told me he would pick me up on the way back out. I sat stone still and didn’t make a sound. For about six minutes. After that I fidgeted, moved around, got too cold, got too hot, and saw everything but a deer. Just before it got dark my dad whistled his way to my blind and gathered me up to go home for dinner. It was one of the greatest days of my life.
That was our little routine for a week every November until the year I got on a Greyhound Bus and left for the U.S. Army’s basic combat training. After basic training I enjoyed a four-year tour in Fairbanks, Alaska and all of the moose, bear, and bird hunting which the area had to offer. My dad had sparked a passion for hunting that grew to a blaze in the woods of the last frontier.
It was quite a few years before I was able to get out in the woods with my Dad for some Michigan whitetail hunting. Finally, I was able to come home on leave. Leaving behind an angry mother and fiancé, I used a week of precious Army vacation to go deer hunting with my dad. As we headed into the woods he carefully led me to my blind and told me to make sure I picked up my feet. Once I got settled in he explained how important it was for me to be quiet and not to move. He even told me he would pick me up on his way out of the woods. As he made his way to his blind I sat and pouted. I had been moose hunting in Alaska! I had been in the wilderness that was so far from civilization that getting lost held the very real peril of death! Heck, I was a soldier! I just couldn’t understand why my dad figured I had to be led to my blind and picked up on the way out. But some things are ingrained in our DNA, and I sat there obediently until the sun started to set and my dad whistled his way to my blind to take me home to dinner.
It wasn’t until my own son was born that I realized no matter how old I got and no matter how many places in the world I dropped my duffel bag, my dad would always see me as the young boy unwrapping an old Mauser rifle. It’s been a whole lot of years since my dad and I went out deer hunting together and now I understand that it wasn’t as much about dropping a 140-class buck as it was about that walk, that talk and that whistling as he came back out to pick me up.
Like I said, huffing this Hoppe’s gets me in a reflective mood. I should quit talking and get this rifle put back together because I have to get ready for opening day. My son, Justin, is home on leave from Afghanistan, and I’m positive that kid will get lost if I don’t get him into his stand.
Good luck and have a great season!
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