Gary Greene’s Memories from an Old Hunter …#27
Some hunting trips are planned in great depth and some are off the cuff. Our worst hunting trip of our lives was a deeply researched and well planned 2014, spring, South Dakota, Snow Goose hunt. So one never knows how a hunt will turn out…it is called hunting!
The year was 1965, when my dad enjoyed hanging around with his cronies at the Hales Corner’s Standard Oil gas station. This gas station was the 1960’s version of the old country store where the retired men would sit around the pot belly stove and exchange their knowledge, yarns and lies.
I have written that as a young hunter, my passion was squirrel hunting, primarily because there were lots of targets and they were easily assessable.
One morning, my dad came home with the news that we were going to the Baraboo hills, because that’s the best squirrel hunting in the state. This previously unknown fact came from the gas station experts. I was mildly enthusiastic about spending all that time with my father. At the time I was fourteen and that two hour drive to Baraboo projected to be like today’s trek to South Dakota. Luckily, my mom intervened and suggested that she would come along and that I could bring my hunting buddy Mike Swan. The Swan family was the only Baptists in our neighborhood and mom and pop Swan weren’t too happy about the idea of one of their four sons spending all that time under the guidance of a man like my father. So Mike wasn’t allowed on our trip.
That left my ball-playing best friend and non-hunter John Kucinski as my substitute trip companion. Previously, I have written that as children, John made me throw back into a river, a carp that I shot with my bow. He wouldn’t stop crying until I did.
As my wife Chris sleeps next to me, I am writing this memory from a bed and breakfast lodge in Freeport, Maine, home of L.L. Bean. We are on our way to Maine’s Acadia National Park. The previous night, we spent with John and his wife Irene and several of their adult children at their new home on the point of Plum Island, Massachusetts. Their home features ocean views from three sides. In jest, I had to complain that from my bedroom window, I could only see three states: Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire. Their home and location was the nicest on the island. As we were looking out their second floor windows at the Atlantic Ocean, John and I were sharing our thoughts on what we have long referred to as our Baraboo “Squirrel Country USA” trip.
Side note: I really didn’t expect anything noteworthy when we visited the L.L. Bean’s store, but I was surprised and impressed. The Bean “Campus” had four separate stores similar in size to Cabela’s in our state, and all merchandise purchased there had free shipping home. Chris and I are not shoppers, but she absolutely loved those stores and we went back a second day to expand her purchases.
It was early fall in 1965 Baraboo, most of the oaks were still green and in full foliage, which gave all squirrels optimal protection. We knocked on farm house doors and we normally were granted permission to hunt their back timbers. Both days, the temperatures were in the 80’s and there was little or no breeze. We hunted long and hiked many miles up and down those Baraboo hills. My parents just walked along, as I was the only one carrying a firearm, my old Winchester .22 rifle. I believe I bagged the only two squirrels that I had shots at.
To make him feel as if he were participating in the hunt, John was given my wrist rocket sling shot and a bag of cat’s eye marbles from the old Hales Corners’ Drew’s Department Store. John recalled that he shot at and just missed a squirrel sitting on a Baraboo boulder. He said he was lucky he missed as he probably would have cried anyway.
The highlight of the trip was when John and I shared a bed in the same motel room with my parents. The scenario played out to be: ...…With the lights out, it became one of those times when you are not allowed to laugh or make a noise. So it becomes impossible not to occasionally burst out in laughter, because you are about to explode if you don’t. There wasn’t anything particularly funny, but John and I went deep into the night erupting with laughter. My dad wanted to sleep and became rapidly angrier with us and we both remember on several occasions, my mom saved us from my dad as he threatened us with bodily harm.
After a long, second day of poor hunting, with John and I totally exhausted from walking and no sleep, my dad drove us home. All the way back to Franklin, we never made a sound as we slept in the back seat of my dad’s new Dodge Monaco. Somehow, my dad never suggested a return trip to “Squirrel Country USA.”