Richard Jernigan -> RE: Old Western guns (Jan. 7 2016 4:18:57)
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Hunting and fishing were, and still are integral parts of Texan rural culture. My father and all of my uncles were country boys, and competitive sportsmen. My father hunted only birds. He was a fairly good wing shot. He was the best sport fisherman I ever met. His younger brother was the best wing shot of the group, one of the very best in Texas, northern Mexico, and Cuba before the revolution. I hunted deer three times with my uncles and cousins, but quit at the age of 19, having seen more people than deer in a day of hunting. I was not as enthusiastic a fisherman as my father and brother. I was probably over 30 years old before I learned to take a book, a good cigar and a flask of coffee when I went with them. If the fish were biting, I would fish, if not I would read, smoke or drink coffee. They could have great fun fishing from dawn to dusk, without ever catching a single one. We fished the Texas bays and the Gulf of Mexico, inland lakes in Texas and Oklahoma, trout streams and lakes in Alaska, and the Patuxent River, Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic while we lived in Washington, DC. My father had also fished a number of other waters while stationed overseas. Bird shooting in particular was a competitive sport among my extended family. We hunted quail and doves in south Texas. For each species there is a limited hunting season and a legal limit on an individual's daily take. The competition was to see who could get his limit first, with the least number of shots fired. My father's younger brother was the usual winner, by a fair margin. Their brother-in-law, Beaufort Hale McC. was the usual runner-up, sometimes winner. When I began to hunt birds with the men at age 12, after getting his limit Uncle Mac would stand behind me and coach. It takes bright sunlight and copper plated shot to be able to see the actual pellets, but the wadding that is discharged with each shot can be an accurate indicator of errors in leading the bird and allowance for the falling of the shot with range. My favorite recollection of Uncle Mac is seeing him smiling after taking two birds from a covey of quail that had been flushed by the dogs on command, his double-barreled 12-gauge broken open over his left forearm, casually dredging in the pocket of his vest for two more shells, and reloading to take a third bird at long range--a virtuoso feat of marksmanship which he carried off as though it were perfectly routine. During the Great Depression Uncle Mac supplied much of the fish and fowl for his family's dinner table, with that shotgun and his fishing rod. Quail are especially good eating. My grandfather and the ranch foreman taught me to fire a rifle. I was given a BB gun at age ten. In bright sunlight you can see the copper plated pellet as it flies away. They likened hitting the target to reaching out with a long slightly arched twig to touch it. At age twelve I received a single shot .22 caliber rifle for Christmas, and used it under adult supervision, with the understanding that any violation of the rules of safety and good judgment would result in the immediate surrender of the weapon. While at university I hunted squirrels with my friend Lovell Adair P., in the several hundred acres of oak and juniper woods his widowed mother owned, then in the outskirts of Austin. His mother made a fabulous squirrel stew. She was a dead shot with a pistol. Having spent the night at their house I awoke to a fusillade of gunfire. His mother called to us, "You boys get out of bed and come pick up these rabbits." She had shot four, standing in the front door with her Colt Woodsman .22 pistol. We had rabbit pie for supper. At that time there was an outdoor pistol range open to the public in Zilker Park. One day Lovell and I were there shooting larger bore pistols, when the Police pistol champion appeared and challenged us. We weren't doing that well when Lovell's mother showed up. She knew we would be at the pistol range when she got off work as the head of the state's purchasing agency. Seeing that we were losing, she went back to the car, got her Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver from the glove compartment, and showed the Police champion how it was done. At times Lovell's cousin Jacob P. would go squirrel hunting with us. Jakie was the great-great-grandson of the first hardware and firearms merchant in Austin, a business established at about the same time the city was in 1839, and which lasted well into the mid-20th century. The first time Jakie came with us, Lovell and I walked a little behind. Picking up a 2- or 3-inch pebble, Lovell muttered to me, "Watch this." He tossed the pebble into the air, at the same time calling out, "Hey, Jakie!" Jakie turned and shot the pebble out of the air with a .22 caliber bullet. His weapon was a Stevens .22/.410, a single shot rifle barrel over a small bore shotgun barrel. The bluing was almost completely gone, and it had no sights whatsoever. I said to Jakie, "You must have practiced a fair amount with that thing." He replied, "Well, from the time I was ten years old I shot a box of .22 shells every day except Sunday, until I got to where I could pretty well hit what I wanted to." I said, "That's some practice, but only 50 rounds a day?" "A big box," Jakie responded. A "big box" of .22 ammo holds ten small boxes, 500 rounds. About the only wildlife I am exposed to here in edge of the city are the birds, and the deer which are still out foraging on my neighbors' lawns if I go out early enough on my morning walk. Once or twice a month I can hear the coyotes howling in the woods a few blocks away. It has been at least forty years since I fired at a living thing. RNJ
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