After the incident when I was ten when I killed the red winged blackbird using the bb gun, we have to flash forward to a time in my mid-teens when I was hunting with Dad for doves just after the season opened in late October. I said earlier that I only hunted doves once and quit because I didn’t like the taste of them. Which is true. But thinking about this incident more carefully I now see that the incident itself might have been the main reason I no longer hunted doves. It could have been an unconscious effort on my part to avoid doing something that would bring the incident to memory.
Doves like to feed in newly harvested corn fields. But if you approach them they will fly before you are close enough to get off a good shot. We were walking along a hedge row beside a partially harvested corn field and scared up a dozen or so doves feeding in the open field. As we approached they startled and flew for cover into the rows of corn that had not yet been harvested.
We decided to walk back to the edge of the field and walk the rows, so we spread out about 5 rows from each other and walked hoping to get closer to the doves before they flew, using the cover of the corn stalks. I was closest to the cleared harvested part of the field. Dad always gave me the best location for getting a good shot off. We were just approaching the end of the field and since doves will run along the ground similar to quail before they have to fly we figured we would scare them up soon as they were running out of cover.
Then there was this huge commotion and a large gray object was taking off not 25 feet in front of me and it was coming right at me, almost directly overhead now. I didn’t think. I just aimed and shot.
At that distance the object exploded in a rain of feathers from the small pellet bird shot shells we used. The object fell directly in front of me, at my feet, as feathers and down continued to slowly drift down over me like some bizarre snow fall. I looked down more closely and saw that it was a crane which must have been feeding on the dropped corn missed during harvest.
Dad ran over to see what I had shot, looked at its head which was about all that was still identifiable given the close up shot. “Sand Hill Crane,” he said. He mentioned something about there not being enough left to eat and just walked away heading for the car. There would be no more doves nearby after all that commotion. While I knew that Sand Hill Crane is considered a hunting species in most states, including Kansas, I always thought they were too elegant and beautiful to kill. And I had just killed one.
Tears were welling in my eyes and I looked down one last time at the bird and softly said, “Sorry,” and walked back to the car. Dad suggested we try again over by a recently harvested milo field, but I asked if we could just go home. Dad knew me better than I did. He lit a cigarette, never said a word, and we drove on home.
The third, fourth and fifth events took place about 15 or 16 years later and they occurred within a couple of months of each other. I know that I said there were four events but I remembered one more. Maybe there were even more than that and in the fog of the decades between now and then are not yet revealing themselves to me.
Regardless, It was as if God was trying to say something to me, had been trying to get my attention since I was ten years old and I wasn’t listening so he just tripled up the pain and shortened the interval, planting some good licks with a spiritual two by four right up the side of my head.
I was still working in the Executive Office of the President and each year I got a promotion. We finally had the money to buy a better place, way out in the country where my then wife insisted we live. It was a 50 mile drive one way to my job and eventually that would take a toll on me and on my marriage, but that is another story.
The place we got was a relatively new ranch house situated on the side of a hill surrounded by 9 acres of woods. It was a beautiful area, not far from Camp David, outside of Frederick, Maryland. The only entrance to the property was down a mostly graveled drive that was almost a half mile long. Half way down the drive in the hollow was our only close neighbor, a nice country couple living in a mobile home. His property adjoined mine and added another 30 acres of mostly woodland and scrub brush fields for hunting.
I am ashamed to say that I don’t remember his name because he was a good friend for a couple of years until my marriage was shot and I moved out.
One day right before squirrel season started he called and asked me to come down and check his new .22 squirrel hunting rifle. It was a big deal to him because they had little money and he had spoken about how he was saving $5.00 a month to buy the gun.
I went down and we were taking turns shooting the rifle, shooting at fence posts and what not. I told him it seemed to shoot very true and he disagreed saying he though it shot just a bit to the left of where aimed. We were about 40 yards away from a bare apple tree that some sparrows were bouncing around in. So I said, “See that tree with the sparrows. You aim at one and see if you can hit it.” He identified one sparrow and shot. Missed.
He handed to gun to me and I said, “OK. Now do you see that sparrow on that top branch to the left of those apples hanging on that branch?” “Yep.” “Then watch.” I took aim, fired, and the bird exploded. Instead of being happy at the good shot I felt like I had been shot in the stomach. Gut shot. I handed the gun back, mumbled something about having to go home and walked up the lane feeling half sick.
A couple of days later. I think it was on a Sunday morning because I had quit going to church at the time, being pissed off at the new priest of the Episcopal Church we went to. He was a conservative somewhere to the right of Bill O’Riley and I could not abide his sermons.
While everybody else was at church I took my .22 and headed to a spot in the woods where I knew there were several squirrel nests, sat down on a large stone, took out a pouch of Red Man tobacco and stuffed some into my cheek. I smoked about 3 packs of Chesterfields a day back then, but if you were stupid enough to light a cigarette while squirrel hunting you deserved the nothing you got.
After about half an hour the squirrels started to move, convinced that any danger was gone. I was watching one squirrel fairly high in a walnut tree that was in plain sight and did not seem to be as jittery as the others. When he stopped altogether, just sitting on the branch looking around, I took aim and fired. He started making these high pitched screeches and running toward the trunk of the tree. He got into to crotch where the branch came out from the trunk and could go no further. He was still screeching but not quite as loudly, but it was the only sound in the woods except for my own heartbeat which tattooed rapidly in my chest.
I had never in my life heard a squirrel make that kind of noise before and it was simply awful. At this point I knew the squirrel was dying and in enormous pain. I could barely see him so I moved around to where I could get a reasonably clear but not totally clear shot. I just prayed that I could hit him again. I aimed and missed three times. I was hyperventilating and shaking a bit. I steadied my front hand on the rifle against a small sapling took aim and shot one more time. The woods was quiet. I walked home and never told a soul.
The final event occurred about a month and a half later after the first snowfall of the season that stuck. There were about 4 inches of snow on the ground which made it easy enough to walk in and showed rabbit tracks easily. I took the light shot gun, the 20 gauge, and headed up to a hedge row that separated my neighbor's property from an adjoining farmer’s alfalfa field. There was good cover in the hedge row with lots of blackberry brambles. On the side of the row where I was walking was a neglected field that sloped down towards my neighbor's trailer.
I started walking the line and saw lots of tracks going mostly out toward the alfalfa field and back. If a rabbit broke that way chances are I could not get a shot, but I did not have permission to hunt there so I stayed on the side of my neighbor’s field. Whenever I would hear some scurrying in the brambles I would shake the bush. The first two rabbits I rousted headed for the alfalfa field. No shot possible.
I walked another couple of hundred yards and there would soon be no cover left as the hedge row ended at the property line. Almost at the end of the row a big rabbit bolted out about twenty yards in front of me and headed for the field and some scrub brush about 40 yards away. I knew he was dinner. I took aim, lead him just a bit and fired.
The rabbit was wounded but not dead. He was hobbling toward the scrub patch and screaming like I had never heard any animal scream. Compared to the rabbit the squirrel was hardly making a noise. The screaming rattled me and I did not take the second shot that I normally would have taken.
The rabbit headed to the small scrub brush patch and ducked into it for cover. All the while it was screaming and screaming. I kept looking for the rabbit but it was hard to see into the briars with the snow, a cloudy day emitting little light, and because I was on edge and couldn’t really concentrate. I though that you could hear that screaming from miles away.
Finally, after several nerve shattering minutes I saw what I thought was the rabbit dug down in the center of the bushes. To get a shot I actually had to get down on my knees and take aim. I shot, and finally there was silence.
I placed the shotgun across my knees, leaned back on my heels in the snow, looked at the blood trail that was grossly red against the white snow, bowed my head and hugged my knees and started crying. A thirty something man was crying his heart out. Softly at first and then in hard uncontrolled sobs. I felt that I couldn’t breath, that my lungs were being squeezed in some giant vice. Tears ran down my face.
After a long while I was too exhausted to cry anymore. I got up, walked home and went to the front closet. I got the 12 gauge and the .22 rifle, and, along with the 20 gauge, walked down the drive to my friend’s trailer. He let me in and I followed him into the small kitchen. He asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I shook my head “no,” and laid the guns on the table.
“They’re yours. I quit.” He said nothing. Asked no questions. Just looked at me and then turned and poured himself a cup of coffee while I just stood there. He took a sip, turned back, looked at me, and nodded.
I turned and walked out into the snow. More snow was starting to fall. It would cover the blood trail of the rabbit, but could not cover the blood trail in my soul.
Monte
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