Gun Fun

Rural East Texas, about 1950

Who knows where thoughts arise, especially in the fevered brains of thirteen-year-old males?  

As was our regular habit, Joe, David, and I were roaming dusty pastures around rural East Texas hometown in the shimmering heat of an August afternoon blasting away at jackrabbits with our .22 rifles, the bullets kicking up little puffs of dust around the fleeing bunnies.  We took a break in the shade of a big oak.  Joe sat across from me, leaning against the trunk. David lounged to one side. Joe sported a straw hat, so new that the shine hadn’t yet worn off the weave.

“Joe, that hat’s still shiny.  It needs some character,” I said, waving the muzzle of my rifle in his direction.  He grinned and leaned forward, chin out.  In a well-practiced single motion, I swung the rifle to my shoulder and put a bullet through the crown. It was still on his head. 

Even at a distance of 70 years, remembering this episode makes my skin crawl.  That we survived our childhood adventures with guns and laugh about it now is testimony to the marksmanship skills and casual comfort with guns that were hallmarks of our lives.

I was raised with guns. During World War II our gang roamed the neighborhood destroying imaginary Japs and Germans with BB guns. I needed armament to participate. I begged my dad to buy a BB gun for me.  His firm “No” put an end to my BB gun dreams, but one day he came home with a crude ersatz rifle fashioned by a family friend from a piece of sawmill scrap wood in the block next to our home. It was better than nothing, and soon I was in the thick of battle.

Later I got a BB gun, a Daisy Red Ryder, the name taken from a comic strip cowboy of the day.  I quickly learned what every boy knew about the pellets (BBs) during WWII: original brass BBs were scarce because brass was strictly rationed along with gasoline, sugar, coffee, and rubber, among other things. The smooth, shiny spheres were incomparably better than the dull, gray lead ones foisted onto us by the war effort.  To have brass BBs was every boy’s delight—they were heavier, flew straighter, and had more penetrating power. Such valuable ammunition was never to be wasted.  Brass BBs warranted care rarely seen in pre-teen boys of any era: dropping one in the grass warranted a blade-by-blade search; those embedded in tree bark or wood siding were reclaimed by prying them out with a blade of a pocketknife.   “Make every shot count” acquired real meaning, an ethic I still take with me into the woods.

Target practice was essential.  The most inviting surface was the broad, white siding of our garage.  We penciled bull’s eyes on the soft wood and spent many happy hours aiming ever so carefully and letting fly. Lead BBs bounced off, leaving a gray smudge, but brass BBs usually buried satisfyingly deep in the soft wood siding.  Those that didn’t lodge fell to the grass, which we dug through like miners digging for gold. 

It was in this state of mind that Mother took me to buy my first real BBs.  She’d heard from a friend that some were for sale, but not from the hardware store on the town square, which on rare occasions had some on hand.  I rode with her a few blocks to an impressively large red brick house in a nice neighborhood.  Along the way she cautioned me not to tell how we got them, “If someone asks just say you don’t know.  Just say, your mother got them for you.”  It has the virtue of being true without saying where we got them.  I waited in the car while she went inside.  Soon she returned and presented a stiff red cardboard cylinder about the size of a shotgun shell with neat black lettering and a smooth-fitting tubular cap.  I bounced it in my hand, enjoying its impressive heft, and carefully slid the cap away.  Sure enough, it brimmed with brassy treasure.

Skill improved with practice, and I was soon confident enough to go for live game.  The widow Stilley’s birdbath next door was inviting.  Potential targets fluttered happily in the water, distracted enough not to notice a crafty hunter lurking in the shrubs that separated our driveway from her yard.  Grim as it sounds to modern ears, my first success was a bird that fell dead in the water.  I was delighted.  Mrs. Stilley was not. 

Success spawned confidence. I decided to go for genuine game—doves.  Laying my Red Ryder across the handlebars of my bike, I pedaled to City Park where doves flitted and cooed in the live oaks, the thick foliage making it possible for a patient sniper to sneak close.  Bagging a dove proved unexpectedly difficult because beyond a few feet a BB quickly falls below the line of sight.  Experience taught that keeping aim at the target allowed a marksman to track the path of the pellet. Aiming high was the solution, but branches and leaves got in the way.  Hours of practice at the side of the garage didn’t help much. It was easy to know how high to aim for a horizontal shot, but upwardly angled shots were hard to estimate—pellet fall from the line of sight varied with the angle.  Inasmuch as gravity was the problem, curving the BB downward in its flight, the obvious thing to do was to shoot straight up.  But that meant sneaking directly under a dove; no mean task.  A few failed stalks taught me how much stealth was required and soon I was aiming straight up at a dark silhouette against the bright sky.  Then it occurred to me that the line of my gunsight was about half an inch above and parallel to the path of the projectile.  Making one last adjustment of aim, I pulled the trigger and the bird fell like a stone.  I was a very happy boy.

Within a few years I owned a shotgun, a youth model single-shot .410 gauge with a plastic stock.  I still have it.  When the big moment came for my first shot with a genuine deadly weapon, Dad gave yet another stern lecture about safety before driving us to a remote spot where a dusty road branched from the pavement.  He perched a can atop a big end post of a nearby gate and once again reiterated the fundamental rules of safety: every gun is to be treated as if loaded, never aim a gun at something you do not intend to shoot, and always keep the muzzle pointed straight down or straight up. Fire away, he said. I carefully nestled the butt of the stock into the hollow of my shoulder and took aim. The front sight weaved unsteadily and bobbed with every beat of my pounding heart. I imagined the can blasted to infinity.  I squeezed the trigger with a lurch.  Nothing.  Dad laughed out loud. Cock the hammer, he said. And don’t jump at it. Relax. I aimed and squeezed again.  The world disappeared with a roar.  I opened my eyes to see the can sitting insolently atop the post.  He laughed again. It helps to keep your eyes open.  With my next blast, the can toppled languidly from the post.  It was not the triumph I imagined—the can shredded into shards of twisted metal.  Dad suggested I try something else and pointed at a clump of weeds a few feet away.  I aimed again.  The bouquet of weeds disappeared in a dusty blast.  I inspected the damage: torn stems and shredded leaves. Much better.

Next on my agenda was to go quail hunting with my dad and our postman, a friend who kept bird dogs.  For those who might not know the sport, quail hunting demands considerable skill and it can be dangerous.  Dogs sniff out the birds and freeze, noses pointing at stone-still birds invisible in the dense grass. With dogs frozen in point, hunters walk to the area in front of the dog’s pointing nose to flush the birds, which take flight with a collective roar that never fails to startle.  There is no predicting which direction they will fly. The task is to shoot the birds out of the air. The opportunity lasts two or three seconds before the birds are out of range, so the trick is to instantly shoulder the gun, calculate speed, distance and shooting angle and shoot in front of the bird.  It requires practice.

And practice I did, spending hours in the backyard, not with a shotgun of course, but with my trusty BB gun.  I threw cans into the air, shouldered the Red Ryder, and plinked away.   Other boys would sometime help by throwing cans in an unpredictable direction.  One day my dad showed up with our postman friend and asked to see what I could do.  Dad threw the cans and I hit most of them.  A quail hunt was planned. I was invited.

On the big day, Dad gave particular instructions: my little .410 shotgun was to be kept unloaded and carried on my shoulder; I was to follow close behind to see how things were done because quail hunting can be dangerous––birds explode from the grass in any direction and shooters must be aware of other hunters.  Carelessness, especially by novices, can get someone hurt or killed.  I hung back a few steps and watched as the dogs pointed a few coveys and Dad and the postman killed a few birds on the covey rise and a few singles as the dogs pointed them where they alit. After the next covey, the first single would be mine. We flushed a covey and watched the survivors settle near a wild plum thicket about a hundred yards away. Dad said when the dogs find one of those singles it’ll be your shot. 

Soon one of the dogs locked in on a bird in exceptionally dense grass.  I plopped a shell into the chamber and snapped it closed with what I presumed was manly authority. I positioned it waist-high for ready shouldering and waded into the thicket. As I neared the dog Dad reminded me to cock the hammer.  Click. Seldom have I been so excited.  I struggled with the thick grass . . . and stepped on a quail, getting a warning no quail hunter ever gets.  With Zen-like instinct, I shouldered the gun in a fraction of a second before the bird burst from the grass. I dropped it in an instant. It fell five yards away. Not since have I seen a quail killed at such close range, especially with a .410.  I remember the astonished look on Dad’s face. Our postman howled with laughter. “Well, I’ll be fucked!” he said.  It was the first time I heard an adult use that vulgarity.   

Not all shooting was afield—much of it was in backyards or, on one occasion, a bedroom.  We were tired of shooting at the garage wall and tin cans and decided to go for live targets—tulips Mother planted in neat rows behind our house.  David, my next-door neighbor, concluded it would be fun to see if we could hit the stem, which proved to be easy—and fun to watch them fold over with an accurate shot.  Then he suggested it would be neat to see if we could shoot down the line and topple more than one with a single shot.  This proved much more difficult.  The result was a botanical disaster.  Mother was not pleased.

Better mischief waited after we graduated from BB guns to .22 rifles.  Parental rules limited us to “shorts,” the least powerful rounds, so named because the brass powder casing is a short tube that holds less powder. We lusted for more powerful “longs” or exotically powerful “long rifles,” which emitted an especially manly crack and whine.  But shorts were enough for rabbits and birds.  Gun safety was paramount and our dads lectured us regularly.  Two rules were emphasized: handle every gun as if it’s loaded; and never—ever—point a gun at something you don’t actually intend to shoot.  Not long after getting his .22, David aimed the rifle at his image in a bedroom mirror—and blasted it into shards with an “empty” rifle.  

Later, after recovering his privileges, we sat, rifles in hand, on his back stoop hoping an unwary crow would alight in the treeline edging his backyard. Our hopes were dashed when his mother appeared with a basket of freshly washed sheets to hang on the clothesline.  After she disappeared we were left staring at the sheets—pure, white, flat, and as inviting as our BB-pocked garage wall next door. 

“I wonder,” David said, “if a .22 will go through a sheet?” 

“Certainly,” I said, remembering bloody wounds in rabbits, “it’s a rifle bullet, that’s nothing but a sheet.  It can’t be tougher than rabbit hide,” I added, recalling the surprisingly tough hide of a rabbit I killed, skinned, and roasted in a wilderness survival experiment after I’d read about the disaster of the Donner Party that became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846-47.

So, we unleashed a hail of shots and rushed to inspect the results.  We discovered little gray smudges.  It’s true: at 15 yards a .22 short bullet will not penetrate the double thickness of a wet bed sheet.