Shoot'n in the Osage or Duck hunting

Eddy Harris and myself a number of years ago

First off, I will have to tell you if you are a PETA (by the way isn't that a type of bread?) person you need to exit right now and probably just never read my blogs.  It will not hurt my feelings and I don't mean to hurt yours.

Eddy, my cousin and closest neighbor, spent a lot of time figur'n things out.  We basically could solve any problem if you just gave us a little time and all the resources available on a farm and ranch.  For example:  We did not like those giant ant hills of red ants so we decided we could burn them out.  So we reduced the amount of available diesel fuel for tractors and poured it down the ant hill/hole.  That was probably adequate to do the job but we thought fire would be an added feature.  Back in those days you had these Diamond matches that you could strike on about anything and get a fire.  You probably can still get them but I would bet the government has done something to regulate them so they are not as good as they use to be.  Sounds like this guy, me, is getting cynical about government help.  Is that what they call an oxymoron, GOVERNMENT HELP?  Anyway we took a box of matches and lit up the diesel and the ant hill.  It seemed to work pretty good and it created a lot of smoke.  That reminds me we also ran and got a sheet one time and tried to make smoke signals but that is probably another story.

OK, back to solving problems and Duck hunting.  I have told you before about how we solved that lack of ability to catch fish, use dynamite.  If you don't remember go look in the Archie's of my blog and you can read about it.  Also we solved some excessive cat problems.  I hope you have forgiven me for that story as well.  Anyway, one day Ed and I and I am not sure but I think Jon Tanny was in on this one, we got out the six shooter (that is a revolver or pistol) and the rifle (30 ought 6) 306 and plenty of shells and we went duck hunting.  Some might say we went shooting but for us we were about 14 years old and we went hunting.  We took off to Tanny Olsen's ranch where as I had always heard there were over 200 ponds.  I never counted them but there were a bunch.  We went sneaking up on pond damns to find ducks, turtles and if nothing else a can or rock to shoot at.  I would have to tell you we did not hit much of nothing with the pistol.  But the rifle was pretty cool.  We were on what we called the Strike AX land and we found a pretty good sized pond.  I would say it was over 100 yards wide.  There was one duck on the pond that day and we started taking turns shooting at that duck.  Of course we missed it a lot but it was kind enough to just swim back and forth as we shot at it.  It was kind of like at the fair where you would shoot at those tin ducks with a BB gun.  Finally the bullets stopped skipping off the water (very dangerous if someone would have been on the other side of the pond) because Eddy hit the duck.

We ran as fast as we could to recover our kill.  I held that duck up and there was a hole through it bigger than a silver dollar and I don't mean one of those Susan B. Anthony jobs.  We laughed our heads off.  Great times and great memories.

Well what do you learn in the Osage?

• with a little time and resource a couple of farm boys can solve any problem
• memories are powerful in that they lift your spirits when you think of the positive ones
• bad memories are like GOVERNMENT HELP, they are not worth remembering

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com