Wayne in BC
New member
This is not one of them but it is close
I must go back nearly 50 years here. I was about 13 years of age and hunting in any form was my first love.
Living on my uncles ranch in east central Alberta was as close to heaven as i expected to get in my young mind at that time. Several hundred head of cattle, a pretty good herd of horses from draft type which we still used to working cow horses, which we needed, and a couple kids ponies. You know, the usual dopey little Shetland/whatever crosses.
Although we had many cattle, hogs, chickens, turkeys etc, we still lived close to financial disaster as did many ranchers and farmers as you all know, and we ate more wild game than anything else. First choice being venison as we had 100's of Mule Deer and some Whitetail on the 7200 acres of mostly sand blowouts, scrub brush and grazing land. Cheap land that had reverted to gov't ownership after most of the farmers and ranchers had gone bust during the "dirty 30's" and my uncle bought it up and leased a bunch more. In some places it took 160 acres just to graze 20 head of cows.
Nuff of that, you get the picture and likely figured out that i am justifying my youthful bloodlust
It fell to me to keep us supplied with wild game, Prairie chickens, Deer, Antelope, and Jack rabbits (dogfood) was all that was edible on that vast prairie but it was enough for me! When chores were done, or i could sneak off unseen, i was gone like a Coyote and everything was meat in my sight.
Like most other country boys, i was usually hoarding .22 shells as they were expensive (27 cents a box for long rifle!, or "extra longs" as my uncle called them)....and doled out a few at a time as we were told to make em count! Yep, the old "one shot one kill" ethic.
Now the real problem with that was, how would one get to be a good shot without practice? Fortunately for me i had burned up a ton of ammo in the army camp (Dominion marksman program) for the kids, but tried to use that line to get more shells anyway
I learned a great truth about those pesky girl critters in those glorious days! Simply put, those girls did not care a whit about my fascination with and burning desire for more ammunition. They instead preferred candy or chocolate and their dolls and i figured that was good, more ammo for me! Now we would only get to town maybe once a month and it was a big deal. The girls would have a bit of money from extra chores, maybe some change totalling less than a dollar. I would have maybe 3 dollars, hard earned by riding my horse 3 miles to a willow patch, cutting fence posts with a crosscut saw and dragging them back in a bundle behind the horse, maybe 6 at a time and all for a nickel apiece!
Well 2 or 3 bucks would buy a bunch of ammo and i would be mighty happy. The girls would buy candy but i would not because it was fairly easy to steal their candy and they sure never thought of stealing my ammo! Boy they were dumb!
Mind you i did special favors for them if i suspected they were fixing to bake up some goodies........
One day in the early fall, after i had badgered my uncle for a while to let me hunt deer, ( i had killed one already with the .22, a perfect eyeball shot) he said he reckoned as how we could use the meat but i was to be sure of my aim and not wound any poor Deer, head shots only and the .22 was plenty good. I was a happy boy and set out that afternoon to bring in the meat, after being cautioned about not letting "old so and so" see me, he being the local jerk who lived on the nearest place to us, 3 miles away, as he would squeal on anybody who he thought was hunting before the season, even some really poor folk in the community who would have starved otherwise, the jerk!..........
That prairie is flat country and you can see for miles, and he had binoculars so we learned to keep to areas which had a some low rises, maybe 30-40 higher than the countryside and thats where i headed.
continued......
I must go back nearly 50 years here. I was about 13 years of age and hunting in any form was my first love.
Living on my uncles ranch in east central Alberta was as close to heaven as i expected to get in my young mind at that time. Several hundred head of cattle, a pretty good herd of horses from draft type which we still used to working cow horses, which we needed, and a couple kids ponies. You know, the usual dopey little Shetland/whatever crosses.
Although we had many cattle, hogs, chickens, turkeys etc, we still lived close to financial disaster as did many ranchers and farmers as you all know, and we ate more wild game than anything else. First choice being venison as we had 100's of Mule Deer and some Whitetail on the 7200 acres of mostly sand blowouts, scrub brush and grazing land. Cheap land that had reverted to gov't ownership after most of the farmers and ranchers had gone bust during the "dirty 30's" and my uncle bought it up and leased a bunch more. In some places it took 160 acres just to graze 20 head of cows.
Nuff of that, you get the picture and likely figured out that i am justifying my youthful bloodlust
It fell to me to keep us supplied with wild game, Prairie chickens, Deer, Antelope, and Jack rabbits (dogfood) was all that was edible on that vast prairie but it was enough for me! When chores were done, or i could sneak off unseen, i was gone like a Coyote and everything was meat in my sight.
Like most other country boys, i was usually hoarding .22 shells as they were expensive (27 cents a box for long rifle!, or "extra longs" as my uncle called them)....and doled out a few at a time as we were told to make em count! Yep, the old "one shot one kill" ethic.
Now the real problem with that was, how would one get to be a good shot without practice? Fortunately for me i had burned up a ton of ammo in the army camp (Dominion marksman program) for the kids, but tried to use that line to get more shells anyway
I learned a great truth about those pesky girl critters in those glorious days! Simply put, those girls did not care a whit about my fascination with and burning desire for more ammunition. They instead preferred candy or chocolate and their dolls and i figured that was good, more ammo for me! Now we would only get to town maybe once a month and it was a big deal. The girls would have a bit of money from extra chores, maybe some change totalling less than a dollar. I would have maybe 3 dollars, hard earned by riding my horse 3 miles to a willow patch, cutting fence posts with a crosscut saw and dragging them back in a bundle behind the horse, maybe 6 at a time and all for a nickel apiece!
Well 2 or 3 bucks would buy a bunch of ammo and i would be mighty happy. The girls would buy candy but i would not because it was fairly easy to steal their candy and they sure never thought of stealing my ammo! Boy they were dumb!
Mind you i did special favors for them if i suspected they were fixing to bake up some goodies........One day in the early fall, after i had badgered my uncle for a while to let me hunt deer, ( i had killed one already with the .22, a perfect eyeball shot) he said he reckoned as how we could use the meat but i was to be sure of my aim and not wound any poor Deer, head shots only and the .22 was plenty good. I was a happy boy and set out that afternoon to bring in the meat, after being cautioned about not letting "old so and so" see me, he being the local jerk who lived on the nearest place to us, 3 miles away, as he would squeal on anybody who he thought was hunting before the season, even some really poor folk in the community who would have starved otherwise, the jerk!..........
That prairie is flat country and you can see for miles, and he had binoculars so we learned to keep to areas which had a some low rises, maybe 30-40 higher than the countryside and thats where i headed.
continued......
