Tall tales and short stories .

[RBHarter]

Ben is building some great stories !
I know we all have some and some little thing or other brings up something you hadn't thought a thought about in forever , although sometimes it seems like it was just the other day 3? yr ago .

So how about ? A tall tale/short story thread ?

My oldest girl was my hunting buddy . It didn't matter how cold it got , wind , rain , snow , she did tend to nap some on those warm sunny mornings in the duck blind and I only know that because when she slumped just so she'd snort or snore or something and everytime she would start a little and wake me up when she kicked me .

She also had this knack for finding the only restricted drake in a swarm pushed off a pond or something or just in a mixed flight . Like me she wasn't much on clays hand thrown or otherwise , but she had the skills in the field .

One morning we had decided to call it a wash about 9:45 having just plain old picked a lousy place to set up on a point that always had some kind of action hitting it except that day . I'd run a classic big J 8 decoy out to the left over about 25 yd and 6 coots , 2 sleepers , a butt , in a bunch about 15 yd off to the left with 6-7 stragglers out to 50 yd or so . Nice set up we just couldn't get a bird within a half mile even the resident mudhens were a mile away on the other end of the reservoir ...... The truck was well covered , and well away . Unless there was coyote working or something I don't know was wrong . We talked of this and that , balls of string , spinning tops and sealing wax like Dad's are want to do as the prime days of time spent with they're little girls are coming to an end .
We packed up , she grabbed the sleepers , and the butt then picked up the J while I got the rest .

Walking back to the truck we were anything but quiet and had to go over a hump and up along a tree line . Something must have spooked a whole pond off because about the time we turned at the Russian olives we heard the ducks . I don't how many but through the trees the bigger slower birds were starting to break out and separate into layers . So we turned heels a beat it back about 25 or 30 yd up to a big sagebrush pile and just in time for the teal to break over the trees . We held for just a few seconds and the big flight was on us ,I was looking for pintail as I scanned through the shovlers but no long necks so I picked a trio and shot my 3 shots . She picked out a bird too , and when she shot it folded up but it's wing man was to fast and far . I picked the pair of drake mallards and we walked over to hers . I would have guessed 2-300 birds so probably more like 125-50 . Keep in mind that at that time it was only the second season that Pintail were legal again after a 15 year prohibition , red heads were 2 either sex , 1 canvas back , 1 hen mallard separately or in agregate . She killed 1 of 3 Cans in that whole bunch . I'd bet that's why she didn't get a second shot .

There was a little good natured ribbing on back to the truck .
We get one shoot all day and she shuts down the hunt until we can eat it .
It was a trend that followed the whole season of her shooting the oddballs or special rules birds .
A different lifetime , at a Padre's game .

 

[Rally]

About fifteen years ago, early December, my Dad and I were in NC Sd. hunting pheasant. Dry year that year and the grass available was short and thin, crops were out. Tough hunting with a gloomy sky and a NW wind you had to lean into to walk. I only had one dog at the time, a Golden retriever named Roscoe, who's stomach and eyes were pretty scratched up due to the dry conditions. I'd been posting Dad at field ends or likely escape routes, because he couldn't walk much, in fact, he had both knees replaced at the same time, the following February. We'd managed to get 5 birds, but his legs were done for the day with a couple hours of legal shooting time to go. So, we decided to drive the section lines hoping he could get a shot at a ditch rooster or find a small patch of Walk in land I could push to him.
We were headed West down a section line and on the South side of the road were two 1/2 sections of high bush clover, with a section road between them. Pheasant scratchings in the road and ditch. Just before we got to the section road going South through the High Bush Clover, there was a small bush with a single hen sitting in it. I told Dad to walk over there towards the hen because there might be a rooster close by. Dad half slides , half falls out of the van, loads his Red Label 20 ga., and leaves the van door open, as he walks toward the hen. He walks about 15 yards toward the hen, and the wind blows the door shut on the van! Pheasant start rising out of that clover about 60 yards away, headed West, in waves that lasted a full 3 minutes! My Dad's chin hit his chest, and not a single bird flew our direction, they just flew across the section road into the other 1/2 section of Clover! Yep, all leased ground by one of the pheasant lodges there. To this day, in 30 years of hunting there, I've never seen that many birds at one time in one spot. There had to of been 5000 birds in that field. My Dad talked about that flush until his death, and nope , we didn't get that last bird that day.

 

[fiver]

here's a short one.
I was hunting the shoreline of the great salt lake on opening morning years back.
I had the boy with me in my pop up blind with just a few decoys and a few silhouette decoys out.
the limit was 4 birds back then.
so were sitting there when a pair of male teal come in and I shoot them both.
walk out and get them and get sit back down when another pair come in and I take the male and let the female go on her way.
thinking I had a perfect time to maybe do a little conservation education I ask the boy 'so do you know what we call that bird I let fly away?'
his answer.... yeah I know what it was.
a lucky duck

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

RB Times like that last forever.
I hope she is still your hunting buddy!

 

[RBHarter]

We went on a hog hunt a couple of years ago with her Marine I approved . We got 6 hogs and a baby , I'm not too impressed with his shooting skills . He missed Christmas by a day . She's in San Antonio now and trying to work out a farmer cull hunt .

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

Time Back in about 66 Where Jump shooting ducks - State land - puddles
I came out of the cattails surrounding a pond and entered some tagalder brush. Looked down to my right a skunk at 3 ft. i shot it. I looked straight ahead. Skunk #2 3ft away, i shot him. I looked to my right skunk #3 again i shot him. I never looked for #4 because my shotgun was empty. But i never ran so fast in waders as i did that day. An i never emptied my gun that fast.
I never did get sprayed. But the area stunk for quite a while.

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

I git one!
One day Grouse hunting on state with my Lab. We got two good birds and was walking out. This dog is a duck hunter that will flush Phesants and retrieve anything shot but loves water. There was a 2/3acre wet spot with tall cat tails swamp grass and a pond in middle... IN HE GOES. DARNNIT! Well that mud dog is riding in the bed today!! All of a sudden he is barking and snarling LOUD AND AGGRESSIVE!! I said OOH S$&T that aint hood he NEVER BARKS when hunting!! I was thinking Bear... something bad I went running in thru grass

As I got to the spot he had a 10-12' cricle of grass stomped down flat and a VERY LARGE AND PISSED OFF RACCOON!! Dont ya know that Coon charged me!!! It took BOTH BARRELS TO THE FACE IF 7.5 and KEPT COMING!!!

I hit it with the barrels and reloaded with #4 and finished it. Musta been 20#!

CW

 

[Brad]

Not hunting but definitely shooting related.

Wife and I had just begun dating. Future Father in law had introduced me to muzzleloaders and had sold my parents a 58 Zouave musket to give me for Christmas. I shot it well enough. So Paul decides to “teach me a lesson”. One shot, offhand, at 50 yards. High score wins.
Sooo, he had no idea that a past lesson in shooting the Zouave would come back to haunt him. See, he had shown me that 2 patched balls over a single powder charge in this gun grouped on point of aim and the balls hit 1-1.5” apart at 50 yards.
He shot, I shot, we walked down range. Imagine the look on his face when he saw 2 holes on my target.
Yes, 2 nines always beat one.

Same load took my first deer.

 

[RBHarter]

On Remlins .
Honestly I had forgotten about this one until I was in some weird place on some mental road trip that I could have done nicely without .

There was a gunsmith in Lone Pine Ca that always seemed like he was about 137 years old . He had grown up with Pope among others and had no fondness for Waters 7-30 and only a few of Ackley's improvements made any sense at all . My dad spent a lot of time with him off and on and appearently Pappy Steele thought well of him . Dad had dropped a 95' Chilean Mauser that I think he had intended to get redone in a 257 Roberts , several months went by and he called telling Dad to come by he just didn't have enough time to get it done . Which is was all of 5-6 then and time has a different construct then than now .

When Dad picked up the only D&T'd rifle the explanation was simple and Pappy's time was close to done . He had a little Remington pump 22 he had put together for his daughter to shoot competition with . It was a M12 , the parent of the 572 in my search , and he had fitted it with a straight profile "bull" barrel if you will from a Marlin . He didn't fill the dove tails existing and the extractor took some fitting also . He apologized to Dad for being out of time and gifted that rifle .
Time passed and the years that make up the "dread of October" , Pappy was the first to go and Oct/Nov was for 12 yr a period of mourning for us . Thankfully we have convinced our circle to ruin Easter , Labor Day , and summer vacations and spread it around some since then .

Moving along about 20 yr ago my Dad made a lifetime loan of that little 22 to my oldest son who shot it often and passed to my oldest daughter to shoot a bunch and so on . Probably 5,000 rounds between the 4 of them . The youngest girl really made it shine though she shot it better than any of us . It's cased away at the moment and not really much to look at . It was said to have won a couple of state level matches and gone to a couple of national matches but I can't confirm that now .

Just a little a little tale of a Remlin before it was a mainstream thing .

 

[Hawk]

A fishing story.
One Sunday my brother and I were trolling for stripers and hybrids on a local lake when a big 22' inboard/outboard fancy ski rig zoomed by.
We were in a 14.5' fiberglass fishing boat with a 25 HP Evinrude on the back.
The ski boat was occupied with two young 20 year old studleys and two bikini model beauty queens.
The kids decided it would be fun to drive circles around us while skiing and create monster waves from all directions that would ruin our fishing. They were laughing and having a great time.
We just continued on and would not give them the satisfaction of getting angry.
They finally got bored with us and went on to find someone else to harass.
We continued fishing and when we decided to go in, guess what we cruised by?
The ski boat, broken down and the two young studleys using skis as oars trying to paddle their way back to the boat ramp. The two bikini models were not having a good time and no one was laughing.
They seemed to be out of strength with only about 4 miles to go.
My brother and I looked at each other and smiled as the two young guys tried to flag us down.
Being good guys, we took pity on them and towed them back to the boat ramp.
They sure were embarrassed at the ramp as we had to help them load their boat on their trailer.
Apparently, they had never loaded a boat without just driving it on.
I bet their model girl friends never went out with them again!

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

Hawk you are one of the good one's. I would have passed them by after telling them what they did to us.

 

[RBHarter]

Had some trollers do that once when we were fishing the bank on big water . I hooked up a big fish but the bugger spit the hook out , along with 2 Rapala spoons . Heck of a deal when you're trolling into the beach so far and long a guy can cast 100' behind the boat over 2 of 3 lines . Pretty funny , who would have expected a guy to be fishing a 25# rig for 3-5# trout on a 6'6" spinning rod . Good day in the end , they didn't troll over our lines anymore and we fished out in about an hour .

 

[Rick H]

Hawk you are one of the good one's. I would have passed them by after telling them what they did to us.

I would have smiled and ran circles around them before making the run back to the launch.

 

[462]

My wife and I were fishing a Lake Shasta cove, in our 14' 3" Westcoaster, when the 15 hp Evinrude wouldn't start. I waved the red flag at a number of passing boats, they saw us but continued on their ways. Eventually, two guys stopped and gave us an hour's tow back to the marina. I persisted in offering them money till they accepted some for gas.
Since that incident, we've towed two stranded boaters back to the dock.

 

[Hawk]

I always try to help people.
I stopped to help a woman once with a flat tire. It was obvious she was terrified I was going to hurt her.
I asked where her tire iron was and she opened the trunk and backed away.
I got the tire iron out and handed it to her.
I told her if she thought she was in danger, she could use it to defend herself and went and got my tools to start changing her tire.
She relaxed immediately and I got her on her way.

 

[Tom]

Before Washington pretty much made sturgeon fishing catch and release, I used to fish for them in the Columbia. The slot limit was usually around 40 to 60 inches. I hooked into one near Bonneville dam that towed us all the way to the mouth of the river and down to coos bay Oregon before taking us back up to Bonneville.
Don't know how much it weighed, but I took a picture of it and the picture weighed 3.5 lbs.

 

[popper]

Bank fishing in a cove on Ray Hubbard, skiiers decided to buzz us. Was using a sandy slab that hooked a skiier and he had to get the boat to stop and remove it from the ski. They left the cove. I always helped boaters in distress, having been towed in several times myself. Broke a shear pin during a storm on Texoma (dang stumps on the Ok side), guy towed me in and then found his kid had pulled a drain plug in the Chris Craft cruiser. Only been to Hubbard 4 times, Once to ski, another bout broke my arm, took MIL fishing and found she didn't know how to drive - reverse, not forward! Lost a van in the water. Went with a guy in a 'skeeter' flat bottom 70hp and he ran it full speed - around all the stumps and exposed old bridges - that he could see. Took FIL from Denison dam almost to Gainsville and back, almost got to the dock before running out of gas.

 

[Missionary]

I was probably 16 Went out hunting one fine snowy morning in SW Michigan with a hunting pard for fox. We were out about 30 minutes when a huge fox squirrel began barking at us from a sassafras tree. I always carried a Kodak Instamatic camera in an Army pouch. So I handed Fred my rifle and up the sassafras I went for a close up. Mr. squirrel kept his distance climbing faster than me but he soon ran out of branches. So I stopped about 5 feet from him to get out the Kodak. I was looking at the pouch undoing the snaps when Fred yelled, "Look out Mike he's coming for ya". I looked back up and sure enough he was now maybe 3 feet above my face showing those big front chompers and hissy/snarling with each step. So I did my fastest right handed lever advance on the Kodak while letting go with the left and kicking away with my feet. Happily my exit was toward a snow pile which aided much with my back landing looking up at Mr. Fox Squirrel.

 

[RBHarter]

I've talked about the hunts above the tree line before but a lot of folks don't buy it .

My first rave worthy deer . The picture was taken about 1/4 mile from where the shot was taken .

There's a boulder pile , which was actually just 3 boulders frost heaved , and the last cover to the light patch beyond it . Though it doesn't look it , it's 350 yd between the boulders and that patch . The arch over the saddle was 250+ and the wind was shearing in the top of the saddle . We had gone about 60 yd off the left side and edged the rim to get to the rocks . I don't know if you've ever been on flagstoned granite but it has this remarkable hollow sound when it reaches the exposure age that this has . A mouse does ok and as long as a squirrel doesn't tip the rocks they do all right but a jack or snowshoe rabbit may as well be a freight train . Those packs I was wearing , the skinny one on the left , didn't help any . By boots from the last 3 days were soaked through and I was freezing in them .
Dad and I got up into the rocks and he hands me his rifle , a 700 BDL heavy profile 25-06' , it's .890 at the muzzle , , and I get a rest . The boulders were about as smooth and of the same texture as as wet broomed sidewalk so I fussed with getting the sling between me and the 20 grit boulder and took forever at 8,600' to get my breathing down enough to even keep the deer in the center half of the scope . Dad coached me in , " lay the horizontal down with his shoulder hump just at the top and the vertical right at the front of of his shoulder , breath squeeze ,......." . 5 maybe 10 minutes for him and 3 breaths and a reset later the shot broke . It's funny in a way because I was back in the scope in time to see his head hit the ground . Being a lefty I reached over the scope to run the bolt but had to back out of the hold to get it cycled . Aside for the rest of the herd breaking and running compass points there wasn't another movement . As it turned out there was a wind shear but not the canyon rise and tumble but wind both ways , left and right in the saddle and it was a little more down hill than anticipated . The ridge peak 100 yd +- behind the camera is usgs surveyed at 9,106 ft . In any case , instead of the impact being in the vitals behind the shoulder it got part of the spine just forward of the shoulder with the 2 veins and one artery in the neck .

Tommy was a would be older brother I was never close to really . I lost track of completely about 10 yr ago . He's there in the middle and family friend , part time guide , and strong man Bob Kettle striking the Atlas pose . It was another mile and a half back to the truck from there . It was a good with my Dad . I was so young then , of course it was 40 yr ago and I guess most of us were at least a little younger then .

I don't recall much else of the day but the 5 minutes to back up and getting into the boulders leading to the shot and the 10 minutes after are Technicolor vivid and sharp .

4×4 105# in the freezer about 175# as seen .
72' 700 BDL , basically an M40 in blue/walnut , white line ebony tips , I guess the last of the pinned target shoe triggers , period Tasco 4-12×50 forward parallax range finder . Nosler Partition 115 gr . Book notes , I just found these in the 1967 Hornady book , say 55.7 H4831 FC LRP (205?) in Win 25-06' brass for 3100 MV . It's coming home with me soon .

 

[Mike W1]

Often thought of that night in '55 when I'd have been 13. We'd been out with the resort owner fishing and I usually got to drive the boat which would do 22mph wide open. Other guy was pacing us off to the side. Dark night out in the middle of the lake when for reasons unknown yet I decided to turn the spotlight on even though I knew you couldn't see anything out there. As soon as it was on I rolled hard to the right and narrowly missed some idiots that didn't even have a cigarette lit much less an anchor light. We'd have hit them broadside and it still tees me off thinking how close that was.