Born in '48 and was raised in Northeastern Massachusetts. We had a few small acres in a semi-rural farming community and as a boy of eight or nine I would watch pheasant hunters march down our corn rows in the early mornings from our upstairs hall window. I was hooked at that point but didn't know it. There were no stocked pheasants in our area in those days and I regarded them as gamebirds from my earliest memories.

I was never allowed to have a BB gun. Dad said "A BB gun doesn't earn the respect of a true firearm and there are more accidents with a BB gun. You will not have a substitute of a firearm to learn a substitute for gun safety." I was given a .22 Remington bolt action with a weaver scope for Christmas when I was eleven. On my twelfth birthday I was given a Stevens 20 ga. single shot and practiced with it until I received a 12 ga. Parker Trojan on permanent loan when I was thirteen. That Trojan hurt me bad but I stuck with it.

In those days it was not unusual to flush flocks of pheasants numbering as many as twenty birds but they're gone now to urban sprawl and all that comes with it. But back then I hunted Pheasants, rabbits, puddle ducks, woodcock and the occasional ruffed grouse right out of my back door. I was so lucky to have had a childhood like this.

These days I hunt Vermont almost exclusively for grouse, woodcock, deer and turkey. I got back into Parker guns about ten years ago after selling my Red Label 20 ga. so that I could buy my first Parker since '63. I'm having more shooting and hunting fun now than ever before and it has everything to do with the friedns I've made on the internet forums both here and on the PGCA forum.

We are all very fortunate to have grown up at the time we did, especially us "old-timers" who can remember such good ol' days with wild birds in plentiful numbers.

Dean

Last edited by DAM16SXS; 06/17/08 11:27 PM.