I had an interesting exchange with my forty-ish daughter on the way back from a very good lunch at the Cheesecake Factory yesterday. Sheila mentioned that her fiance' Robert might like to go squirrel hunting with me sometime. Robert is a Wyoming boy and has probably seen his share of how meat is actually produced but then again, things like squirrel hunting are very much an individual preference.
Noticing Robert's discomfort at the idea, I tried to get him off the hook by saying as much, basically that dressing up in camo, sitting dead still in the woods for hours, and then shooting, skinning, gutting and cooking a small, furry, woodland creature might not be everybody's idea of fun. My daughter shot back, "Well, you've never done anything like that in your life either." She then mentioned a couple of our woodsier relatives as folks who would but laughed at the notion that her suit wearing, technology addicted father even could.
In a flash, it occurred to me that she had no earthly idea what life was like growing up on a farm in the 1950's. Fried chicken for dinner was not a matter of pulling something out of the freezer. When the decision was made, dinner was walking around someplace in the yard, pecking at rocks, worms and insects. The decision was followed by an order, "Billy, go kill a chicken." Soon after, the carcass would be plucked, cleaned and finally seared to remove pin feathers before it was cut up and put in the pan.
Fish for dinner did not mean pulling out the frozen fish sticks either. You caught the fish, cleaned the fish and cooked the fish. Same for squirrel. You shot the squirrel, cleaned the squirrel, cooked the squirrel. Same for rabbit. These were not deep, dark pieces of woodsman's lore. They were household tasks if you wanted meat for dinner. I was probably ten or twelve the first time I ate store bought chicken at home. The only fish we ever had was caught by someone in the family.
When I was growing up, little boys fished in the summer. Period. It was what you did. Some did a lot more than others and some took a lot more joy from it than others but everybody did. In the fall and winter you hunted squirrels and rabbits. You ate what you killed. It was a major sin and a sign of a lack of character to take life needlessly. So, if you killed it or caught it, unless is was pest or nuisance species, SOMEBODY was going to eat it.
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| Obviously not me, pic from the net. |
Some of the best days of my childhood were spent roaming the fields and woods with my trusty .22 single shot. That gun is sitting in the corner of my office right now, wearing a vintage Weaver scope probably worth twice as much as the gun. It is still a tack driver and has the smoothest trigger of any weapon I have ever fired. It is probably the most accurate weapon I own and it is certainly the simplest. That gun cost my father nearly a week's wages. He bought on lay away at Buster Brown's Jot Em Down Store on Factory Row in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. It has provided hundreds of hours of fun, a degree of protection and even occasional meat for the table now for over sixty years.
I love the outdoors but have never been much of a hunter or fisherman. Simple reason, it is much easier to buy food than kill it. Twice in my life, I worked for companies that manufactured fishing equipment and so I had to be technically competent with the equipment. But now, in my latter years, these things I did as a kid when there was nothing else to do are becoming more and more attractive to me. I will go squirrel hunting again soon and in the process scout the place for my turkey blind. I am going to try to take one of the big birds this year. For five years, I worked on a commercial turkey farm where hurting one the senseless creatures was a firing offense even though that evil, terminally stupid but very tasty beast was beating you to death with its powerful wings and crapping all over you in process. I have cherished the thought of killing one for my entire life. This may be the year. Watch out TOM, I'm coming for you!
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