Ready for the Big Hunt

James L. Davis

Hunting season has arrived once again, which would normally mean that at some point or another one of my children will begin to moan about the inherent injustice of having a father who does not hunt.

Usually the biggest whiner is my son, Casey, who cannot understand why I do not wish to march out into the wilderness and kill something. I have tried to explain to him that it is not that I am against killing something, I am just against killing something I won’t eat and the things that you can hunt and kill I will not eat.

Of course his response to this quite rational explanation is to remind me that I have threatened to kill him on numerous occasions.

“If you kill me are you going to eat me?” He would ask. For this reason I have ordered a 55 gallon drum of barbecue sauce, just to keep him off guard.

This hunting season I shouldn’t hear any whining from my son about not hunting because I plan on taking him hunting this fall. I have found a way to reconcile my son’s thirst for bloodletting with my resolve not to kill anything I won’t eat.

While everyone else is busy tromping through the wilderness in search of deer or elk or antelope or any of the other woodland creatures that are at this very moment wondering what they have done to make so many people want to kill them, my son and I will be hunting cattle.

“Cattle?” My son asked while sitting at the dinner table. “What do you mean cattle?”

“I mean cattle. Cows. Moo. Beef, the main ingredient in fine hamburgers everywhere.”
“You can’t hunt cattle Dad.”

“Certainly you can hunt cattle. I’ve seen huge herds all over the place.”

My son shook his head, which he is prone to do when having a conversation with me. “That’s cattle rustling Dad.”

“No, cattle rustling is when you steal a cow. We’re going to shoot a cow.”

“That’s not hunting.”

“What would be missing?” I asked. Being inexperienced in hunting, I thought maybe he knew something that I did not.

“You have to be out in the mountains, tracking the animal, hunting it down, taking aim with your prey in your sights.”

He had obviously been reading something I hadn’t. “Yeah, well, we’ll do all that, just with a cow, or would you prefer a steer? Maybe I’d better get us a steer.”

“Do you know how much trouble you’d get into if you killed somebody’s cow?”

“It’ll be our cow. We’re about out of beef in the freezer, so instead of sending a steer to slaughter we’ll take it out and hunt it down.”

“In the back yard?”

“No, not in the back yard.” He obviously wasn’t thinking clearly, what kind of hunt could you have in your back yard? “We’ll take it down to your grandpa’s property and set it free. We’ll give it a good head start while we slip on our camo gear, and then we’ll hunt the beast down.”
“What, while its chewing its cud in the middle of the field?”

I shook my head. So little imagination in one so young was downright depressing. “It won’t be chewing its cud in the middle of the field. We’ll make it stampede.”

“A stampede of one cow?”

“One steer. Sure. Why not? More than one could get pretty dangerous.”

“How are we going to make this steer stampede?”

“I’ll shoot at it first.”

“What if you hit it?” Casey asked. I could see he was starting to think this idea over a little bit. And all this time he thought I was crazy.

“It’s not possible for me to hit it. I can’t hit the broad side of a cow or anything else,” I said and in this I was not lying. In military training I was given three clips and an M-16 and told to shoot my target as many times as possible. I missed it every time with 90 rounds. My drill instructor was speechless for perhaps the first time in his military career. In eight years of military service I had the distinction of never actually qualifying with my M-16. This is perhaps a good reason why they put me in a job that required a pencil instead of a weapon

“So we’re going to hunt down and kill a cow in Grandpa’s field while wearing camouflage?”

“Sounds great, doesn’t it? You can have your first kill and I’ll take photos of you with the ferocious steer.”

My son thought for a moment and then smiled and nodded his head. “Can we have the head mounted?”

Suddenly I wished I had just said we weren’t going to go hunting.

Heroes Among Us

Cardell Sackett

As a young boy I spent many mornings with my grandfather in the kitchen having breakfast. As a side note, my grandmother never got up early. She “really” needed her beauty sleep.

No animals were allowed in her home, so naturally Grandpa and I never told her that my dog Barney was a part of the morning breakfast routine or that he had his own piece of side pork on one of her favorite homemade China plates that somehow always placed by Grandpa at her setting for Thanksgiving dinners. That secret went to the grave with them both.

One of the books that we would often read was Webster’s Dictionary (My children hated it when they asked me what a word meant and I told them to go ask Mr. Webster). Recently I opened the dictionary and looked up the word Hero. The definition stated “One who wins admiration by deeds of courage.”

In 1949 in the small town of San Marino, Calif., a little girl named Kathy Fiscus had fallen into a deep abandoned well. Seventy-six hours later at a cost of more than a half a million dollars, she was brought up from the well. Unfortunately, though at first she had spoken to the rescuers, the world realized that Kathy had died. A year later at a public meeting the four men most involved in that valiant attempt to rescue her were honored as “heroes.” They were reluctant to be given such notice or title. They felt like regular men doing what needed to be done at the time.

Under the circumstances I think most of us would feel the same way. But let’s recall again what a hero is: “One who wins admiration by deeds of courage.” With our mine disaster I have noticed two counties with hundreds of heroes. Perhaps you were one working on the recovery attempt, the medical helper, one of the hundreds of volunteers. Perhaps you were a neighbor to a family effected by this. Maybe you provided a meal, attended or coordinated an event, donated change in a jar, painted a car window, put up a sign, or maybe you just said a prayer or several prayers, even though it may have been the first time you prayed in years. Maybe you opened your heart to hope and faith.

Whatever the connection or circumstance, I feel you are a hero. Obviously, we won’t have medal ceremonies or accolades heaped upon us, but I am one who is proud to be among so many heroes. Even those special nine men may say “I was just doing what needed to be done, I’m no hero.” But that fits the very definition of “One who wins admiration by deeds of courage.”
This is a good time for us all to thank the heroes in our communities. There is so many to express our thanks and admiration to. So to all of you who live here, have come here to help, or around the world who have prayed with us, thank you for being a hero.

Consider this. (Cardell Sackett is a realtor with Bridge Realty.)