By Larry Weishuhn
“Tell me about the first time you went hunting!” The statement, question, no doubt brought a quizzical expression to my face.
“Sorry, I don’t really remember my first hunt. I can tell you what my dad and granddad told me years later.” Commented I, then began, “According to them I was about three months old. It was a squirrel hunt in the Cummins Creek bottoms. My dad, Lester, and maternal grandfather, A.J. Aschenbeck, took turns carrying me. That outing set the stage for my outdoor life. My introduction to fishing happened about the same time.” The questioner simply nodded as if he was not really buying what I was saying. “I do remember my first Daisy Redd Ryder BB-gun. It was a present from my parents and mother’s mom and dad for my third birthday. Surely wish I still had it. As I recall, by the time I was just past four I had, as they used to say, shot the barrel out of.”
“Just into my fourth year, having been born in late July, my dad started taking me deer hunting. Heavy on the hunting. Back then Texas’ whitetail deer season opened November 16th and closed December 31st. But in our immediate area of the Zimmerscheidt Community, just above the Colorado River about, then ninety miles west of Houston, we had very few deer. If someone happened to simply see a deer during the entire 6-weeks long deer hunting season you were considered extremely fortunate. If you shot one, you were a true hero! But the lack of deer did not keep us from hunting. Thankfully, in time with the control of screw-worms the local deer herd started increasing dramatically.”
“My dad, hunting on family and neighboring property carried a Model 94 Winchester .30-30. I carried my trusty Daisy Red Ryder, until I reached the ripe old age of five, at which time I was allowed to carry a single-shot .22 rimfire, back then legal. It was that same Remington single-shot I had at my side the following year, when as a 6-year old my dad would put me on a deer stand to hunt on my own, with the admonition of “Stay awake!” My dad knew I would never go to sleep while hunting. It was his way of saying to stay attentive to all things going on around me.”
“Living out in the country, by the time I was six, I was hunting squirrels and rabbits on my own. But I’m getting ahead of myself just a bit. I shot my first squirrel with a .22 rimfire when I was five. The old bull squirrel was in a mulberry tree on my grandfather’s place. As I had been taught by my dad and granddad, I got a good solid rest and when the front bead nestled in the notch of the back sight aligned on the squirrel’s head I pulled the trigger. It fell at my feet. Talk about proud! I insisted on carrying that squirrel the rest of the hunt, then insisted I be the one to clean it. I saved the squirrel’s tail and wore it proudly in my hat for quite a while. I felt I had done an admirable job of properly “cleaning” the squirrel. But suspect I handed my grandmother a hairy mess, when I proudly asked her to cook it for me.” I hesitated recalling eating that squirrel. “My grandmother was an excellent wild game cook, especially when it came to squirrels, but even she could not take all the toughness out of it!”
“As I recall I was eight years old before I saw my first deer while hunting, a big doe. I had seen a deer during the off-season, but very few.”
Again, I hesitated before continuing recalling those early years, “My dad loved hunting with hounds, primarily for ‘coon. We always had at least 6 or more hounds, mostly black & tans, blueticks, and a mixture of hounds that went back to his youth. Dad did not hunt with his hounds during during the whitetail season. But as soon as the deer season ended, he hunted several times a week, when he was not working in the oil field. I trailed along behind my dad and his hounds whenever I could. We too owned a pack of beagles which we used on cottontails and swamp rabbits. Even today I love the mountain music of hounds on a chase.”
During those early years I learned woodsmanship from my dad and granddad but also on my own. I learned gun safety and the importance of making the first shot count. I learned how to really look for and see game, as well as how to track and hunt. Whenever I was not hunting, or fishing, I either wanted to be read to learn all I could about those topics. Before I could read my mother, who never has really like to read, read hunting tales to me from the pages of Outdoor Life and Sports Afield. Those tales of hunting deer, other North American species, as well as about hunting in Europe and Africa did much to cause me to want to become a wildlife biologist, writer and hunter of the species I had read about in my early youth. Whenever not working which was not often for we were in the cattle, hog and chicken business which meant work usually started at least an hour before first light and finished up an hour after dark, I hunted or dreamed of hunting.”
“Those were special days in so may ways. I too, remember sitting in the dark on the front porch with my granddad and his cohorts listening to tales of their outdoor adventures when they were young, and telling stories they had heard from their parents and grandparent going back to a time when black bear were common along the banks and canebrakes of the Colorado River and their tributaries. Listening to their stories as they sipped homemade wine and homebrew whiskey while fireflies lit up the night made me wish I had lived in another era in the time of my ancestors.”
“Thinking back, I wish I had had the forethought to write down some of their adventures, unfortunately I did not. Not having done so, I suspect has something to do with my becoming among other things an outdoor writer, in hopes that some of the adventures I have had can be preserved for those who follow. My ancestors experienced hunts and times I have not, nor ever will. No doubt I have done hunts my children, grandchildren and those long into the future will not be able to experience.”
“Have I told you about the time……”
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