Tomorrow is a very special day for me. 10-24-1981, my father gave me my first gun and we embarked together on what has been the greatest adventure. The gun was a single shot Sears and Roebuck 20 gauge shotgun.
I remember being told to pack clothes for the weekend. He told me that he had a gift for me and wanted to share with me some things he enjoyed doing as a kid with his father. Early saturday morning(1am), we headed over to my uncle's house and with his son, the 4 of us traveled nearly 4 hours to a remote small town in the california desert(Niland).
This was the last weekend of dove season in california. Upon arriving there, my father went for the trunk of the car and opened a box and handed the shotgun. He told me that this is my first gun and taught me how to use it. he taught me where the safety was, where the trigger was, where i shouldnt point the barrel.
Because of the weekend being the last weekend of the season, my dad didnt expect to do a lot of shooting. To cover this massive field, he had my cousin and i sit at one corner of the field under a tree(really i think he was trying to keep us from causing any trouble). He handed me a box of 25 shells and said for us to just sit there and waited for the doves to land on the branches and shoot them.
So we sat there for a few hours and shot birds and had great time. My cousin and I ran out of shells so we walked back to the car where my dad and uncle was and asked for more shells. He laughed and asked how many birds we had. I told him 25 and basically screamed in horror!!! Apparently the limit was 10 per person and my cousin and i were 5 birds over limit. Technically 15 over since there was only 1 gun..lol
He asked how we got all those birds and we told him that we shot them everytime they landed on the tree. He said he heard the shots but thought we had missed everytime we shot...Needless to say..the whole hunting party had only 32 birds and my cousin and i shot 25 birds
This was 31 years ago and the memory of it is as strong today as when it happened. I lost my father last year to cancer. A month before he died, he was goose hunting near the California/Oregon border. This picture was found in the memory card of one of his spare camera, taken by my cousin whom hunted with me all those years ago. I cropped it and this will be how i will always remember him by. Thanks old man...I will pass it to Daniel as you passed it to me
I remember being told to pack clothes for the weekend. He told me that he had a gift for me and wanted to share with me some things he enjoyed doing as a kid with his father. Early saturday morning(1am), we headed over to my uncle's house and with his son, the 4 of us traveled nearly 4 hours to a remote small town in the california desert(Niland).
This was the last weekend of dove season in california. Upon arriving there, my father went for the trunk of the car and opened a box and handed the shotgun. He told me that this is my first gun and taught me how to use it. he taught me where the safety was, where the trigger was, where i shouldnt point the barrel.
Because of the weekend being the last weekend of the season, my dad didnt expect to do a lot of shooting. To cover this massive field, he had my cousin and i sit at one corner of the field under a tree(really i think he was trying to keep us from causing any trouble). He handed me a box of 25 shells and said for us to just sit there and waited for the doves to land on the branches and shoot them.
So we sat there for a few hours and shot birds and had great time. My cousin and I ran out of shells so we walked back to the car where my dad and uncle was and asked for more shells. He laughed and asked how many birds we had. I told him 25 and basically screamed in horror!!! Apparently the limit was 10 per person and my cousin and i were 5 birds over limit. Technically 15 over since there was only 1 gun..lol
He asked how we got all those birds and we told him that we shot them everytime they landed on the tree. He said he heard the shots but thought we had missed everytime we shot...Needless to say..the whole hunting party had only 32 birds and my cousin and i shot 25 birds
This was 31 years ago and the memory of it is as strong today as when it happened. I lost my father last year to cancer. A month before he died, he was goose hunting near the California/Oregon border. This picture was found in the memory card of one of his spare camera, taken by my cousin whom hunted with me all those years ago. I cropped it and this will be how i will always remember him by. Thanks old man...I will pass it to Daniel as you passed it to me
