Gary Greene's Memories from an Old Hunter..... #52
My last memory ended with me stating that I remember the hunting shots I missed more thoroughly than I do the ones that I made. I truly believe it all goes back to an experience I had in high school.
It wasn’t hunting, it was a different scenario as Franklin and Greendale High Schools were playing for the basketball championship in the old Parkland Conference. We were down by one point with six seconds left on the clock. I dribbled the length of the court and put up a thirty foot shot against an extended zone defense. The packed Greendale gymnasium was dead silent as everyone’s eyes were on the ball as it made its way to the rim and as it hit the back of the rim and caromed away as the clock ran out.
I have often said I could have successfully run for mayor of Greendale since I played for Franklin that evening in February, 1969. In this 67 year memory bank, I vividly see that entire six seconds as if occurred after breakfast this morning. Athletics were very important in this young man’s life as it paid for most of my college, but I had many recurring dreams replaying that shot.
With that memory played out for you, I believe those feelings carried over to my other love; hunting and the great outdoors.
At the age of twelve, my dad gave me a 12 gauge, Remington 1100 shotgun. My complete safety and shooting training existed of one night of sitting on an old stone wall near Hunter’s Nest Hunt Club on Big Muskego Lake. We sat on that stone wall for a half hour before sunset and I shot at Redwing Blackbirds as they returned to the marsh. Now, I was ready for the hunt. In reality, I was not even close to being prepared.
During my first opening day of pheasant hunting season (1963), I flushed a beautiful rooster that I can still see flying away off the tip of my barrel. I had never practiced taking off the safety and being left handed with my gun having a right handed safety, I repeatedly kept putting the safety on rather than taking it off. I never got a shot off at that bird as he safely flew away. I don’t think my dad gave my gun safety situation a second thought because the topic was never brought up. When my somewhat upset father asked me why I didn’t shoot, I explained that I thought it was a hen. I choose that answer rather than the truth. I felt it saved me a little dignity.
In 1980, my hunting partner Lynn Cutsforth and I were hunting the Grinnell, Iowa area for the first time with Robin, a farmer and the landowner. We were pushing a knee high switchgrass field that offered the hunter great visibility and easy walking. We were just getting to know the farmer and we felt he saw us as the big time, big city hunters from Wisconsin. I was a young 29 years old and felt the most shots I could put up at a pheasant was my best plan of attack. At this time, I had mastered the left/right safety technique that had troubled me for years.
Then again, three feet in front of me, I singularly flushed a big, fat, wild Iowa rooster. It was a straight away shot as I shot quickly and often, and all five of my shots missed the really large target. The farmer was a strict Baptist so I was very limited to what I could say to show my disgust. He had a long blade of grass in his mouth as he looked at me then kicked the ground a little bit. Just loud enough for me to hear, he mumbled: “That there bird sure knows he’s been shot at!”
Over the years as I grew more experienced and maybe just a little wiser and maybe figured out how to hunt the pheasant, my success has greatly improved. As I have previously mentioned, my son Nate fell in love with waterfowl hunting. Now that my time is split between the pheasant and the duck, my waterfowl shooting mishaps have greatly increased. There are far too many missed shots to be listed in this memory, or possibly even a book or maybe even a trilogy, but it has been great fun and it has created for me those unforgettable memories of missing all those shots.