An honorable sport
Usually in October and all through November in northern Maine we would see all kinds of people coming and going and almost to a person, they were wearing hunter orange?
I was reading my paper this morning and saw the articles about the Youth Deer Day. When I was growing up, my dad didn’t hunt because he was of the mindset that the hunted animals didn’t have a chance and that they, the animals, should have guns too. As I got older, I became interested in hunting, not so much for the chase and kill as for another chance to get out in the woods and commune with the wild, so to speak.
When I worked in Easton, my friend Asa and I worked, traveled and did things outside work together. One morning in mid-November we decided we would go hunting after we got off work. I carried a .44 magnum handgun and Asa carried his prized 30-30 Winchester rifle.
It had started to lightly snow that morning as we headed to Harvey Siding in Monticello. We left the pickup and headed up a tote road into the woods. We had walked for about 45 minutes when I heard a “thwppp” not once but twice and close behind it the bang of a weapon.
We both yelled for the other party to hold their fire. Now, picture this. We were walking, not really hunting, and we were talking and laughing about some of the hare-brained things we had done, and when I say laughing we were literally guffawing with humor. When we yelled to cease fire, the person on the other side of where ever said, “Is someone over there?” Asa, being Asa, yelled “Naw we’re just a couple moose out for a stroll!” Then to make matters even funnier he yelled “So that being said we moose have guns too and if ya fire again we will answer in kind!”
We never did learn who the other party was but he didn’t shoot at us again. We hiked back to the truck and had lunch at the Smiths’ Truck Stop. That was the last time either one of us went hunting.
Folks, hunting is an honorable sport. It can be as safe a sport as we, the humans, want to make it. It is that one mistake, blunder or over anxious to get a deer happening that can make this season a tragedy. Please, please be sure of your target before you take your shot. If you wear glasses, let me say, it is not unmanly to use a scope on your rifle so you can be sure of the intended target.
Enjoy the season so that afterward you can sit in front of the fire chewing on a nice piece of jerked venison and remember when
Guy Woodworth of P.I. is a 1973 graduate of PIHS and a four-year Navy veteran. He and his wife Theresa have two grown sons and five grandchildren. He may be contacted at lightning117_1999@yahoo.com.
