Feb 7, 2011

What kinds of things did you like to do? What were your favorite childhood games to play?

I have mentioned already the games that we played so I will not address that part of the question. Don and I however probably had one thing that we did the most. We both owned .22 rifles. My rifle was a single shot and he a semi-automatic. I have also told how rabbits and wood chucks were a menace to the farm so he and I would often go for a rabbit hunt after school or after work during the summer. We lived out on the end of the road below blue bench so the rabbits were as close as the hill above the house where we had to watch closely where we did the shooting. However when we would go up on the bench and over to the big draw (Hammond 's Hollow I think it was called) we could see a lot of rabbits and shoot pretty much at them in any direction except toward the valley. The rabbits would run across the small draws and hills of the big draw allowing us some challenges as they could crest the hill and go down into the next draw really fast. They would also cross over the draw and go up the other side which made them much easier to follow and shoot.
I look back at it now and wonder how I ever really enjoyed it but at the time it was fun, plus I suppose we did help control them since there was a lack of natural predators besides us. I learned to be a fairly accurate shot and would often use only one bullet while Don would go through several. With his semi automatic he would just pull the trigger and hope to get one by following the trial of where his bullets were kicking up the dirt. He did aim but just not before he started to pull the trigger. I had to aim since I had one shot and then would have to reload. It was good exercise for us to since we got to where we could run up and down those hills fairly rapidly. That may have been why I did as well as I did in cross country and 880 yard dash in the track and field events.
I also got to be pretty good at shooting but regretted it once when I was trying to scare off a dog that had come around the farm and I aimed below it as it ran up the hill. I didn't guess it would hit a rock and bounce up under the dog and end up killing it. I always felt bad about that even though my intent was not to kill only scare. It tend to help understand why shooting toward rocky areas was always very dangerous and so I avoided it after that.