I shot a Cardinal

I grew up hunting and fishing with my brother and had a great time doing it except for once.  That was the time I was out shooting my 22 rifle and for fun I started shooting at a Cardinal at about 200 yards.  Now at that distance no one should be able to hit a bird that small.  But I did.

Side story:  I was never a great shot like my brother.  Larry was fast and one time I know he hit two quail with one shot.  And then there was Don Conner, the bus driver and Joe and Ida's dad, who would have ever known he was a world class shot and won tournaments all over the country.  Don was cranky at us sometimes and I am sure we deserved it.  Every day he drove the bus and chewed or smoked a cigar, yes on the bus.  I loved the days that there was not a law protecting me from every single little thing although I hate smoke.  He lived over the hill one mile west from our house.  That is one mile as the crow flies because there was no road to his house direct from our house.  For you who do not know what that means "as a crow flies"  means straight from one point to another.  Kind of like the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, hmmm, geometry at an early age.

Anyway, I loved to hunt squirrels and my mom could cook up a fried squirrel better than you can imagine and especially with squirrel gravy.  Yes, FRIED, in grease not this cheap stuff you get today.  Some day they are going to figure out peanut oil and canola oil will kill you just like lard.  Anyway, Larry and I would hunt squirrel or quail every chance we could get up and down Beaver Creek. We would walk for miles and for hours.

I remember one time we were on the other side of Soup's fishing hole (by Soup Wade;s old house) near the gambrel red barn and we could here the quail running through the grass.

gambrel red barn -- not the one on Beaver Creek

a Quail

Quail were normally so quiet that you never heard or saw them until they flushed out of the grass and then they would scare you to death with the flapping of their wings.  But this time we figured there had to be over 200 birds in one group/covey.  We had never seen anything like it before.  There was a maize field within 100 feet of the barn and I assume that is why they liked it there so much.

prairie chicken

In those days there were not a lot of deer and virtually no turkey but there were bobcats and an occasional badger.  I remember when there was a big uproar about shooting deer and that the government got involved in repopulating the deer and bringing in the turkey.  I have to tell you I am not fond of government spending especially when they don't know what they are doing.  They destroyed the natural quail country and prairie chicken  population by bringing in too many deer and turkey.  I take a simple approach to politics and life and that is the lesser the better.  If you pass a law for one group you hurt another.  More deer and turkey means less quail and prairie chickens, get it?

That reminds me of another famous philosopher, Cliff Olson my dad.  He told me that if the government would stay out of the way of free enterprise the bad farmers would go out of business and the good farmers would stay.  Now this is not a political blog but think about this.  If you pay one person to not produce wheat so the prices are higher then you have false pricing and the taxpayer picks up the tab.  Also you have just paid the farmer who does not want to do the hard work and take the risk to just take his land out of production.  Some folks think this is good because it protects farmers from losses which drive him out of business.  Dad said that if you were a good farmer you would fertilize and till the ground and rotate crops according to best practices and store up money for bad years and not rely on the government.  Such a novel idea?

Anyway, back to the Cardinal.  I got down pretty bad about shooting a bird I was not planning on eating and a bird that was not bad for the crops but one of God's creation.  From that day on I never wanted to shoot anything I was not going to eat or at least give away to someone who would eat it.

That sounds pretty good but I slipped one other time.  Eddy Harris and I took a box of 306 rifle shells and went hunting a duck.  We shot a hole through that duck at about 300 yards that you could drop a quarter through.  I don't remember what a box of shells cost then but today they are around $25 or $30 and we used a box full.  There are more stories on Eddy and me for later.

The moral to this story is:
   Don't destroy something without a better purpose in mind
   Use your head and think because the consequences are long lasting
   There is no free lunch even from the government, someone has to pay


Thanks for your time,
gary
http://thepioneerman.blogspot.com
gary@thepioneerman.com -- be sure and drop me a line with your thoughts and stories