Six Dollar Dave
Member
Growing up in southeast Arkansas in the 50s and 60s proved to be an education in hunting and fishing for most boys, a rite of passage. Television was new and rare and channel selection was limited. No Outdoor Channel, no cable or Direct TV.
My best friend was Mike, a city boy, whose passion was fishing. (We were too young to have a passion for girls, that would come later and is for another story). I was a country boy, so when we would get together most of our time was spent fishing, no matter the time of year.
One particular February, during one of our sleepovers at my house, we got a surprise snow fall. Probably no more than about 4 inches, but a blizzard to us. After due consideration, we decided to postpone the fishing and try our hand at rabbit tracking. Awesome big game for two ten-year-olds.
We loaded up our Daisy BB guns. Mine was named "Old Meat-on-the-Table;" Mike's was called "Old Painless." An unwritten rule deemed that all hunting guns had to be named, and proper etiquette required that the name had to be prefixed with "Old." We filled our pockets with extra BBs, told my grandmother goodbye and off we went. We planned to hunt all day and sleep in a lean-to if we didn't make it back by night fall. We weren't short on confidence, but possibly were a little overly enthusiastic. My grandmother had told us to be back in an hour!
We crossed the gravel road that ran in front of our house, jumped the ditch, crawled under a barbed wire fence, and were immediately rewarded with "sign." I told Mike that this was going to be easier that we thought. Nothing to it. We began by crouching low and quietly--well, as quiet as two ten-year-olds can walk in fresh snow--fell in beside the tracks.
My ten-year-old mind saw rabbits as nefarious beasts, known to circle behind hunters, so I cautioned Mike to be alert. The last thing we wanted was for this rabbit to get behind us. If it was a "swamper," he could be pretty good size. No telling what he would do if he detected us and felt threatened.
We followed the tracks for about fifteen minutes with no sign of our quarry. We stopped to take our bearings and as we leaned on our trusty Daisys, Mike asked me if we were going in the right direction. We took a closer look at the tracks. Hmm...Could be. I had never seen rabbit tracks before, so it was pretty hard for me to tell in what direction the rabbit was traveling. After a brief parley, we decided to back track and see what we could find.
The return trip was quicker, since we no longer cared about noise. We arrived at our jumping-off point once more and proceeded to start our track in a new direction. In no time at all we were rewarded with what we determined to be fresh tracks that indicated a larger animal. We followed on, staying low and quiet. No mountain man had ever stalked prey with the stealth that we employed. Only the likes of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone knew the feelings first hand the we were enjoying. Who knows, if the snow continued, wild game could be our only source of food and the very means of our survival. We might have to supply our families until the spring thaw. This could be our finest hour. Our chance to prove our manhood! We could easily become heroes and find ourselves the talk of every family gathering. These were my thoughts as we plodded on.
Every time the tracks turned, we turned, when the tracks crossed themselves, we did the same. We zig-zagged through the woods for about half an hour, knowing full well a tasty treat was going to be our reward, not to mention big time bragging rights at school.
The events that were rapidly drawing to a conclusion are as fresh in my memory today as the were 50 years ago.
We followed the tracks into a wooded hollow filled with fallen trees and several old logs. As we neared one giant laydown, I noticed that the tracks did not continue past the log. I froze. Mike did the same. With some confusing hand signals, we communicated with each other like a Detroit Swat team. I am not sure if either of us had a clue what the other was about to do, but we proceeded anyway.
My plan was to jump high over the log and come down gracefully on the other side and have the rabbit dead in my sights before he knew what had hit him. Mike would cover the backside of the log and put the varmint down if it tried to escape in his direction. We had a deadly crossfire set up that not even a grizzly could escape. I silently counted to three with hand signals. At three, I looked at Mike, and he nodded and silently mouthed " Go!" I jumped! As I cleared the log, I saw, for the first time, what I had often heard about but had never seen before, the raised tail of a startled pole cat. I yelled, pitched, Old-Meat-On-The Table up in the air, and began to flap my arms in a vain attempt to gain altitude. Mike was frozen solid; he hadn't seen the skunk as yet and had no idea what I was yelling about. He quickly moved up to the log to "cover" me and was greeted with a dose of perfume from the startled animal. The skunk immediately turned and hosed me as well.
As Mike and I sat coughing and sputtering in the snow, the skunk calmly waddled away. Probably wasn't his first "rabbit hunt" and he had no doubt seen all of this before. After about 30 minutes or so of washing ourselves with snow, we retrieved our guns and headed home, our collective tails tucked between our legs and smelling to high heaven.
I think my grandmother must have smelled us long before she saw us, for she met us at the porch and told us we weren't coming into her house smelling like that. To add to our mortification, we were forced to strip our clothes off in the snow before she allowed us in. Several baths later, we still weren't fit company for man nor beast, and we spent most of the day bundled up in blankets on the front porch, watching my grandmother burn our clothes. Even the dogs wouldn't come near us.
My best friend was Mike, a city boy, whose passion was fishing. (We were too young to have a passion for girls, that would come later and is for another story). I was a country boy, so when we would get together most of our time was spent fishing, no matter the time of year.
One particular February, during one of our sleepovers at my house, we got a surprise snow fall. Probably no more than about 4 inches, but a blizzard to us. After due consideration, we decided to postpone the fishing and try our hand at rabbit tracking. Awesome big game for two ten-year-olds.
We loaded up our Daisy BB guns. Mine was named "Old Meat-on-the-Table;" Mike's was called "Old Painless." An unwritten rule deemed that all hunting guns had to be named, and proper etiquette required that the name had to be prefixed with "Old." We filled our pockets with extra BBs, told my grandmother goodbye and off we went. We planned to hunt all day and sleep in a lean-to if we didn't make it back by night fall. We weren't short on confidence, but possibly were a little overly enthusiastic. My grandmother had told us to be back in an hour!
We crossed the gravel road that ran in front of our house, jumped the ditch, crawled under a barbed wire fence, and were immediately rewarded with "sign." I told Mike that this was going to be easier that we thought. Nothing to it. We began by crouching low and quietly--well, as quiet as two ten-year-olds can walk in fresh snow--fell in beside the tracks.
My ten-year-old mind saw rabbits as nefarious beasts, known to circle behind hunters, so I cautioned Mike to be alert. The last thing we wanted was for this rabbit to get behind us. If it was a "swamper," he could be pretty good size. No telling what he would do if he detected us and felt threatened.
We followed the tracks for about fifteen minutes with no sign of our quarry. We stopped to take our bearings and as we leaned on our trusty Daisys, Mike asked me if we were going in the right direction. We took a closer look at the tracks. Hmm...Could be. I had never seen rabbit tracks before, so it was pretty hard for me to tell in what direction the rabbit was traveling. After a brief parley, we decided to back track and see what we could find.
The return trip was quicker, since we no longer cared about noise. We arrived at our jumping-off point once more and proceeded to start our track in a new direction. In no time at all we were rewarded with what we determined to be fresh tracks that indicated a larger animal. We followed on, staying low and quiet. No mountain man had ever stalked prey with the stealth that we employed. Only the likes of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone knew the feelings first hand the we were enjoying. Who knows, if the snow continued, wild game could be our only source of food and the very means of our survival. We might have to supply our families until the spring thaw. This could be our finest hour. Our chance to prove our manhood! We could easily become heroes and find ourselves the talk of every family gathering. These were my thoughts as we plodded on.
Every time the tracks turned, we turned, when the tracks crossed themselves, we did the same. We zig-zagged through the woods for about half an hour, knowing full well a tasty treat was going to be our reward, not to mention big time bragging rights at school.
The events that were rapidly drawing to a conclusion are as fresh in my memory today as the were 50 years ago.
We followed the tracks into a wooded hollow filled with fallen trees and several old logs. As we neared one giant laydown, I noticed that the tracks did not continue past the log. I froze. Mike did the same. With some confusing hand signals, we communicated with each other like a Detroit Swat team. I am not sure if either of us had a clue what the other was about to do, but we proceeded anyway.
My plan was to jump high over the log and come down gracefully on the other side and have the rabbit dead in my sights before he knew what had hit him. Mike would cover the backside of the log and put the varmint down if it tried to escape in his direction. We had a deadly crossfire set up that not even a grizzly could escape. I silently counted to three with hand signals. At three, I looked at Mike, and he nodded and silently mouthed " Go!" I jumped! As I cleared the log, I saw, for the first time, what I had often heard about but had never seen before, the raised tail of a startled pole cat. I yelled, pitched, Old-Meat-On-The Table up in the air, and began to flap my arms in a vain attempt to gain altitude. Mike was frozen solid; he hadn't seen the skunk as yet and had no idea what I was yelling about. He quickly moved up to the log to "cover" me and was greeted with a dose of perfume from the startled animal. The skunk immediately turned and hosed me as well.
As Mike and I sat coughing and sputtering in the snow, the skunk calmly waddled away. Probably wasn't his first "rabbit hunt" and he had no doubt seen all of this before. After about 30 minutes or so of washing ourselves with snow, we retrieved our guns and headed home, our collective tails tucked between our legs and smelling to high heaven.
I think my grandmother must have smelled us long before she saw us, for she met us at the porch and told us we weren't coming into her house smelling like that. To add to our mortification, we were forced to strip our clothes off in the snow before she allowed us in. Several baths later, we still weren't fit company for man nor beast, and we spent most of the day bundled up in blankets on the front porch, watching my grandmother burn our clothes. Even the dogs wouldn't come near us.
