doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Funny hunting memories.

Nice looking goat, Mike.

Said to be true and I hope it is.....

There is a tradition that when she's in residence at Sandringham, HRH invites a number of young military officers to one of the shoots. Typically these tend to be guys who have done something outstanding in the year such as graduating top banana from Sandhurst.

One such, not a very experienced shot, hadn't managed to connect with the high fast pheasants all day, but just as the horn went to end the last drive a bird flitted over the top of the trees in front. Given that he was about to be posted to Afghanistan and this was his last chance, he ignored protocol and shot it dead.

A black Labrador whizzed past him from behind to make the retrieve and turning round he saw a very small elderly lady in headscarf and wellies. Oh bugger!

"Young man, it is the rule at Sandringham that when Mr Stubbs blows the horn all shooting stops." Then looking at the returning dog, "And nor do we shoot shoot owls!"

I'm not sure how his career went after that.

Eug

Well, I suppose the statute of limitations has expired...

Years ago, we had so much snow that we could not stay in the deer woods for the week as we usually did and had to commute back and forth every day from my buddy's parent's house. Nearing home one evening, a yearling doe came out of the ditch, crouched low like she was trying to get under the headlights. I saw her in time to say, "Wa..." and we hit her. The first time the driver saw the deer was when it was skidding down the road like a hockey puck.

Not a one of us in the car had an anterless deer tag but we knew that my buddy's Dad did. He says, "Let's throw it in the trunk." I opined it was not a good idea. He insisted. I argued.

Well, steam from the radiator was leaking out under the hood and I told him, "Well, we better do something pretty quick or we're gonna have more trouble."

So, the doe goes in the trunk, the lads get back in the car and off we go. We come pulling into the parent's yard and pile out of the car. My buddy's Dad is out getting firewood and sees the damage. Buddy runs up and says, "Dad! We hit a deer up the road!" Dad says, "Well, where is it?" "In the trunk."

We all move to the rear of the car where we find a slightly open trunk and no deer.

Dad turns to the driver and very calmly asks, "You boys been drinkin'?"

Well, we allowed that we did have an 'end of the day nip' but it wasn't really an issue in this case. So, we pile into Dad's International Scout and retrace our steps to see at which point the deer got off. We were within 30 yards of the original accident site when we spotted the hind legs sticking over the snowbank on the side of the road and recovered a very dead doe.

We decided we weren't very good at it and ended our poaching career on the spot.

A late friend wrote the story of a well-known local, Mr. Cay, who was a fine dove shot and gentleman. Locals on the Georgia side of the Savannah River bought Carolina licenses from Mrs. Edna Crosby, an elderly woman who had a country store in the low country. On a barn burner of a shoot, the feds, including legendary Federal Warden Frazier, swarmed down on the shoot and told Mr. Cay to stop shooting. �Why? I�m legal.� �Mr. Cay�, replied Frazier, �it appears that Mrs. Crosby over in Levy sold you a bow-and-arrow license by mistake. But I have heard a lot about your shooting, and I figured if this fellow was going to pull out a bow and arrow and start shooting these high-flying doves, me and the boys here sure didn�t want to miss it� Gil

Back about 15 years, I took a college buddy turkey hunting in Northeast Missouri. He was known by a number of us to not be a very good hunter, but he had been begging to get a turkey... We were up early and in the woods sneaking toward a known roosting area. Of course we wanted to get set up before sunrise, so I cringed when he said he wasn't feeling well. I think the exact quote was, "Man, I gotta take a s#%t."

So I tell him to hurry it up. He does and off we go again. We get set up, me the caller and him about 10 yards in front of me. The birds were active, with a number of gobblers sounding off. One took a particular interest in my calling and was headed our way. The setup was perfect, but the bird peeled off and headed away just out of gun range. I couldn't figure out what had happened.

My buddy evidently couldn't either, as he turned around the tree he was against and looked back at me. He had no mesh facemask on and it was no doubt the bird had seen him.

I asked him where the heck his facemask was. He whispered back sheepishly, "Well, I didn't have any toilet paper."

Needless to say, I never shook his hand again.

Years ago a duck hunting buddy drove from Augusta, GA, to Lake Miccosukee, Florida for the start of duck season, a six hour drive each way, towing a boat load of decoys and boat blind. They drove all night and headed for the local breakfast diner for a quick breakfast as it was hours before legal shooting and they weren't far from the lake. �Honey, y�all want coffee?� said the waitress. Neil was happy that no one was there and it appeared to him that they beat everyone to breakfast as the diner was duck hunting central. �Where�s everyone? I thought this place would be full of duck hunters.� Neil told the waitress. �Sugar, duck season is next Saturday, not today.�

Most of my funny hunting memories concern dogs. One that comes to mind:

I was hunting pheasants along a creek with fairly wide strips of cover on both banks. Donner, my shorthair, was investigating something off to my left when a rooster flushed over on my right.

I dropped the bird on the far side of the creek. Donner didn't mark the fall. Although an excellent natural retriever, he wasn't force fetched and there was no way I could send him across the creek--which was too deep for me to wade and too wide to jump--since he hadn't seen it. But the bird fell near a big old oak. There were only a few trees along the stream, and I figured it wouldn't be any problem finding the bird when we hunted the other side.

Half an hour later, having circled around and started up the other side, we approach the tree. Donner gets birdy, locks on point right down by the water. I give Donner the "fetch" command, but it turns out the bird isn't quite dead. In fact, still able to fly . . . more or less. It takes off skimming the water. Fearing it will escape, I shoot it and it splashes down just next to the far bank.

Donner jumps in, swims across, scoops up the bird, and scrambles up the far bank. "Good boy, fetch!" I tell him. He stands there looking at me. If I could have read his canine brain, I think it was telling him "I can fetch, and I can swim . . . but I can't do both at once!" So we're at an impasse.

I did the only thing that seemed sensible to me: Started walking back toward the gravel road and the bridge on my side of the creek, Donner keeping pace with me on his side. He completed the retrieve in the middle of the bridge.

While still in High School, a younger friend kept bugging my best friend and I to take him duck hunting. He'd only hunted big game to that point and wanted to see what hunting waterfowl was all about. We finally agreed and hatched a plan "to mess with him."

With the boat and decoys loaded early morning, we headed toward one of the local lakes, early enough to get across the lake and set up by shooting light. On the drive to the lake we were giving him tips on what to do...a good time to "hatch the plan."

We told him that at night the ducks come off the lake and roost in the brush and trees surrounding the lake shore and that the person busting the brush often times has some great initial shooting as the birds are busted out of the brush.

We reached our destination, set out the decoys, with his help of course and told him to sneak back into the brush and on our signal start running through the brush to spook the birds out.

Upon our signal he did as was told, with my buddy and I laughing our a$#%s off in the blind. After about 5 minutes or so, he walked out of the brush and told us there didn't seem to be any ducks in the brush. Of course he saw us laughing and knew he'd been pranked. After calling us a few choice names, he climbed into the blind with us and I don't think we shot a bird that day. It also was his last time duck hunting, as far as I know.

Good ones!

I have a strange quirk that has happened to me several times in my life. I am of the habit of getting my "bathroom business" done first thing every morning. Well, getting up very early to hunt ducks sometimes interrupts the flow of things, shall we say. More than once I have been all trussed up in chest waders, standing in the water in the pre-dawn, only to have the "urge" hit me hard. If I try to ignore it, or restrain it, I eventually get faint.

Eight of us had put the boats in at the landing at Bayou Meto, AR, at 4:30 a.m., motored aways down the canal, drug the boats another several hundred yards to our hole, and had just begun killing ducks. Then, that old familiar feeling hit me. I knew I had to "go" somewhere, but where? There was no land that wasn't under two feet of water within 1/4 mile. I suppressed it, that faint feeling started, and I headed for the boat, thinking I would just have to soil the boat and incur the wrath of several of my buddies. Before I got to the boat I passed out, my Beretta 390 went down into the mud, submerged. The icy water woke me back up quickly, and I continued to the boat. Getting there I found a few old rags, and was about to climb in to do the dirty deed when I spied a huge root wad, we call 'em "harrikins", of a blown down oak. I climbed up on it, happy as could be, and called out to my buds to not look that way unless they wanted to be deeply offended. I looked like a rooster perched up there for a few minutes. Afterwards, I poured the mud and water out of my gun. The action had frozen shut and I had quite a time getting it open. Barrel was clear, so I reloaded it, waded back over to the hole and killed a limit of ducks. That 390 never missed a lick, ejecting and feeding perfectly, great testimony to that design.

I hope my buddies have been able to put that picture of me perched up on top of that root wad out of their minds, 'cause some of them just couldn't resist looking and laughing.

SRH

The daily devotional plays a big role to most turkey hunters who are like bird dogs when they get out of the truck in the dark after driving to the woods while drinking coffee. A buddy told on himself about one pre-dawn urge fulfillment on one trip. He was wearing camo overalls at the time. After doing his business which required the dropping of shoulder straps, after completion, as he walked in the woods, a familiar odor followed him. He couldn't escape it. He then noticed what was on his right shoulder strap.

Looking from my office window I can see the Savannah River Bridge to SC. Back in the 1970�s, it played a part in a prank played on me. Lloyd and Tommy told me about a small pond adjacent to the bridge that was supposedly full of teal. At dusk, I drove to it to see if any birds were moving. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Lloyd thought it was funny as hell when I called to tell him I didn�t see a duck. There hadn't been a duck in that pond, ever. He stopped laughing when I told him that when I drove out, my headlights illuminated dozens of eyes along the road shoulder. I thought they were rabbits until I pulled alongside them and saw woodcock probing for worms on the road shoulder. The next day we took his lab who we directed into the cat brier hell and brambles along the road shoulder, flushing �doodles left and right. It was one of the best days we�ve ever had on woodcock. On the next trip, more of the same. We got a sour look from a rail road employee as the dirt road was adjacent to tracks. The next trip out, the land was posted by the rail road.

Gil