When I Stopped Killing, Part Two

First published on JANUARY 17, 2009 4:23PM

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

When I Stopped Killing

First published on JANUARY 17, 2009 2:33AM

Click "Submit Abuse" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

Cancel

---

This is going to take two chapters to tell this right, so please hang in there with me.

I was an avid hunter until I was in my early 30s. I had my own .22/.410 “over and under” single shot rifle/shotgun when I was twelve years old. In my mid teens I graduated to a 20 gauge shotgun and a semi-automatic .22 rifle. Later, as an adult, I added a 12 gauge shotgun.

I was a small game and bird hunter. I never hunted deer because there were few of them where I lived. I did hunt rabbit, squirrel and the occasional ground hog if it was messing with my vegetable garden. And when the possums or raccoons got into the trash more than once there might be a dead one in a day or two.

Growing up in Kansas I often hunted pheasant, which were abundant, and quail which while not abundant, were plentiful enough. Turtle Dove was an abundant game bird in those days, but I never cared for the taste of it so I only hunted dove once. And there were occasional Prairie Chicken (grouse) to be had. During migratory bird season I hunted duck and geese.

Mostly we ate what I killed. And what we didn’t eat I tried to give to someone who would. But it would be a lie, that many hunters still tell, to say that I hunted because I had to in order to eat.

There are some in these hills that believe they are actually doing that because they say so with real conviction while buying their case of Bud, packages of chips, and jerky and $40 worth of lottery tickets at the drive through. I think that sort of queers their case, but the idea that the $75 a pay period they blow on lotto and booze could buy a lot of meat never occurs to them. In any case, it was never true with me.

Yet in spite of really enjoying hunting for the most part, there were four very specific, vivid events that were indelibly branded in my heart through the years where my hunting was being undermined by something that I could not recognize applied to me for over 20 years. I knew that these incidents were not just casual events for me, but I did not know why. I just knew that they deeply disturbed me and that it was impossible to completely forget them, as hard as I might try.

They would pop into my head at inconvenient times and give me a very uneasy feeling, a queasy sick feeling that did not quickly go away. But I could not see the obvious place they would eventually lead me. When I recall them today they still give me that feeling. Eventually the obvious caught up to me and I felt really stupid that I had not seen and acted on it much sooner. That, of course, guarantees one hell of a guilt trip when you figure it out.

The first event was when I was around 10 years old and had made some money at 40 cents an hour cleaning out the chicken coops and barns of a neighboring farmer. It was hot, filthy, sweaty work but it was the first job I ever had that wasn’t Dad just telling me to do. And I had a dream of buying a Daisy B-B gun, one that held 100 bbs and had the lever cocking action just like the gun on the Rifleman TV series. So with that goal in mind I would have done any kind of work for 40 cents an hour.

I would walk the section line the mile to get to the farm, work six hours and walk the mile back. $2.40 a day was a lot of money to a kid who never had an allowance. We couldn’t have afforded that. The work was done after about a week and a half and I had plenty of money to buy the gun.

We lived on a tenant farm outside of Pauline, Kansas, about 15 miles south of Topeka. At that point it was my Stepdad, my Mom, me and one baby brother. The next Saturday we went into town, a tiny place, but it had a grocery store where I would later work for a while when I started high school. And it had a hardware and farm supply store, in the window of which I had decided was my bb gun.

I walked into the store with Dad and told the man behind the counter what I wanted. The man started to go to the window and Dad stopped him. “No. We don’t want that one that is all dried out sitting in the sun.” I had no idea what exactly was going on but I thought that was the only bb gun in the place, and I surely didn’t want to wait for another one to come in.

Dad knew better and the man went into the back room and came back with a brand new gun in a cardboard box that had never been opened. Dad opened the box, removed the gun and checked its action, handed it to me and told me not to touch the trigger. I was thrilled beyond comprehension. We bought three or four tubes of bbs and the gun and headed out. I didn’t so much walk out as float out.

Over the next week Dad would set aside time for me to learn how to work the lever action; how to load the bbs, and, what he emphasized the most: shooting and gun handling safety. He would set up tin cans on the fence in the back and I would try to knock the cans off. At first I couldn’t hit anything but I got the knack of it pretty quickly. As we moved back from the target further and further I learned how to shoot above the target to offset the trajectory of the bb as it lost speed and fell.

Dad set only a few rules. Never break the rules of handling or safety. Never shoot at any living thing. Only shoot at targets, and never shoot in a direction where I could hurt something behind where I was shooting at. Then he pretty much turned me loose.

Everything went well for a couple of weeks. I was learning and getting good with the gun. We had a small pond down about a hundred yards from the back barn and I was responsible for a flock of White Pekin ducks that I would let out in the morning and they would parade single file straight to the pond. In the evening I would call them and they would reverse the parade. I guess ducks are programmed to do that because they are otherwise pretty stupid.

One afternoon I went down to bring the ducks back and feed them and I took the bb gun with me. It was getting late in the summer and the cat tails in the pond were starting to change to brown from green and when a bb hit the brown head it would puff out seeds. I thought it was neat and liked to do that.

Red winged blackbirds loved to sit at the top of cat tails and sway in the breeze. One lit on a cat tail clear across the pond from me and I decided to see if the gun could shoot that far. So I eyed the blackbird and lifted the bb gun a long way above the bird and shot. The odds of hitting it were infinitesimal. It literally took a bit of time for the bb to get there and I assumed I had missed it. Then the some feathers puffed off of the bird’s head and it dropped like a rock!

I was at first in total shock. I had no idea I could actually hit the bird at that distance. I was mortified. I just sat down on the bank of the pond and bawled my eyes out. Dad came in from the field about that time and saw that the ducks were not in the pen and had not been fed. He came down to the pond and saw me sitting there crying. I had no idea what he would do but I knew what I would do if I were him and it wasn’t pretty. So I cried all the harder, for the bird that I had killed and for what was going to happen for me.

He stood there for an while and then sat down next to me and took out a cigarette and lit it. "What’s wrong?” Between sobs and sharp intakes of breath I managed to tell him. I had no idea if he would kill me or what. If he did I figured I deserved it. But he just put his strong working man’s arm around my shoulders and didn’t say anything. He held me that way for a while, got up and told me to come on up with the ducks and feed them. I did. And managed to get my emotions sort of under control. He was sitting on the porch waiting for Mom to call us in for supper.

He called me over and had me sit next to him in the glider. He asked me what I thought he ought to do about this. Lips quivering I told him that he should take the gun away from me and restrict me to my bed room. He didn’t say anything for the longest time. Finally he said “I don’t think so. I think that you know what you did was wrong and you are already punishing yourself enough. Now go and see if you can help your mother set the table.” That was the last he ever said about it.

To be continued………….