Deer hunting

It's supposed to be a rite of passage for every boy to go out deer hunting. It's also supposed to be a rite of passage for a father to have a frank talk about sex with his son, but that didn't happen, so I don't know why it was so important for me to go out and slaughter a deer. (However, I should note that we did eat the meat.)

The first thing we had to do was take a gun safety class. The only thing I learned was that gun powder burns, it does not explode. This was made apparent with an actual demonstration where the teacher brought in a shallow box filled with gun powder. He set it on fire and all it did was burn for a few seconds.

Next up was target practice. My dad would take me out someplace remote and taught me how to aim at soda cans using a .22 caliber rifle. After I got pretty good with that, he bought out the actual gun I would be hunting with. It was considerably larger than the .22. I used the scope to take my aim and pulled the trigger.

The next thing I remember, I was flat on my back on the ground, still holding on to the rifle. I do not know if the blast kicked me back so fast that there was literally no time between standing and lying down, or if it was so hard that I was temporarily knocked unconscious for a couple of seconds.

Now, that I knew what to expect, I made certain not to get caught off guard like that again.

For the actual hunt, Dad and I loaded up the camper and a family friend went with us. (This was the same man who gave my brother and me the radio/Bible Stories combo for Christmas.)

We went out hunting the next morning. Several hours later, we found a deer that we could shoot. I held up the gun and had the deer's head in the crosshairs and pulled the trigger... and the trigger didn't move. I had pulled on the trigger cage. The deer was still in place so I held up the gun again. I guess Dad really wanted to go home with a deer because this time, he put his finger on the trigger and pulled it. The deer got shot. We watched it struggle for about 20 minutes before it finally died.

Then I watch Dad gut it and let the insides spill out. It's interesting how he didn't ask me to help with that. We then carried the deer back and put it on the front of the truck with the camper.

We got home and Mom asked how it went. I told her that we shot the deer, but it was Dad who pulled the trigger. But I guess she went around telling everybody I shot the deer, including Grandma Bend. Grandma Bend had her local paper run a little two-line story about me shooting a deer. That was just too embarassing because it didn't happen that way.

Looking back, I really wish I hadn't been forced to take part in killing a deer. I was lucky that Dad never tried to take me hunting again.

Now you see why I couldn't talk about this with a girl.