Rifle, where are you going with that boy?

                                                                                                     

this is a 303 British rifie

       

The story starts out when I was just a young boy of 12. I always looked at the mountains, as I like to hunt deer. The deer lived in the mountains. And you had to get to the mountains to go hunting. My brother had a friend named Bud. He loved to hunt deer to. Or was it that he loved hunting deer and we came along a lot of times. Bud came along and picked me up and I would go hunting with him.

Now we had an old rifle in our family. It was a 303 British, a gun that was used in World War l and ll. It was a very big gun. It had a wood stock that ran from the bottom of the rifle to the barrel. It was a good four feet long. And I was lucky that I was 5 feet tall. And weighed about 85 pounds.The gun weighed 20-30 pounds. And it was the only rifle I was allowed to use.

Bud loved to hunt in Franklin County. There was a road that ran up Mapleton. Then the road went to Willow Flats. The road cut off and went up Franklin Basin. At the top of Franklin Basin there was a mountain that they called the Knob. Bud always loved hunting the Knob. Now the Knob had a backside. And the backside had no road. So If you shot a deer, it was a big job to get the deer back over to the front of the Knob. Sometimes it took two or three days to get the dead deer over to the other side of the Knob. Even though the Knob had a front side, we always started there in the dark of the morning, and we always ended up on the back side to hunt deer. It always seemed that  the big ones were on the back side of the Knob. Now the big ones could be a doe, a two point buck or a four point. It did not matter, we always found it and shot it on the back side of the Knob.

I’m sure Bud also took me along because he enjoyed having a companion, and someone who could carry his rifle out while he was dragging the deer out. This was in October, so there wasn’t danger of the meat spoiling before we could get it to the truck. We would drag it so far and then go home for the night. Then the next day we’d go back for the deer. Instead of cutting it up there on the site, we always thought we had to drag the entire animal to the truck and not waste a bit of it. We were hunting more for the meat than for a trophy. We always wanted to bring something home, no matter what the size, and not come home empty-handed.

We went up and down hills, up draws and down gulleys, and past huge dead trees. There was a lot of history in those old dead trees. You could tell that some had been in fires. We walked past rock slides and always tried to walk around them. There was always something to see, as well as deer. From the back side we could spot the deer easier and there was less timber to hide them. We walked past beautiful scenery on the back side. We could see Preston and Franklin from there.

I don’t ever remember hauling the gun being a problem for me, even though it was so long and so heavy. One day we ran into a man we knew who said, “Now, where is that rifle going with that kid?” I was glad I had a gun so I could go hunting, so I never thought of it as being so big. But it must have been a funny sight. A few years ago I reminded him about his remark and he said, “Yes, I remember that very well.” He was an insurance man and knew everybody and liked to talk to everybody, and that way he could sell a lot of insurance, too.
  
Wikipedia says the rifle weighed just over 10 pounds, but to me it felt like 20 or 30.The rifle was 44 inches long and I was about 60 inches tall, so it must have been a sight to see me lugging that 303 British over the hills.

So now, whenever I think of hunting one of the first thoughts in my mind is, “Rifle, where are you going with that boy?” 

MY FIRST TIME DRIVING

           

It was a rainy day in October in 1967. It had been raining for about three days and all the back roads were very slick. Bud showed up and asked me if I would like to go hunting with him. I was about the age of 12. He was about 25. I was very short for my age. But I love to hunt for deer. We hunted a lot together over the years. So when Bud showed up and asked me to go hunting I was very excited. He had an old truck. I think they called it a pile made by Dodge. It was only a 2 Wheel drive truck. It was an army green color and had very large front fenders. The front of it looked like a face with a chrome grill for a mouth.

It was a 2 Wheel drive truck. So it could get stuck very easily. We were going up Sugar Creek canyon in Franklin County, Idaho. The road was always very slick. I wondered “What is he thinking?” but he was going to try to get up that hill.

We did not get up the road very far before we slid off the road. We slid into a very deep gully. It had to be at least 3 feet deep. The back half slid into the golly. The front of the truck was still out on the road. So it was going to be very hard to get the truck unstuck. He had a jack in the back of the truck. It was back in the time when you had bumper jacks that hooked to the bumper of your vehicle. The bumpers were very strong in those days. Those days were back in the late 60s. And the vehicles we drove then go back to the 50s.

Bud got the jack out of the back of the truck. I jacked the truck up and Bud pushed on the side of the truck up towards the road. We would get the truck up about three or 4 inches and the truck would slide off the jack towards the road as Bud pushed on the side of the truck. Bud is a very big man. He is about 6 foot four and weighs about 230. So when he pushes on something, something is going to move. We worked at this for a long time until the truck was back on the road. But it still wanted to slide back into the gully. Bud came up with the idea that I would drive the truck while he pushed it from behind.

Now I’m not a very big boy or person. I think that I was under 5 feet or smaller. So when I got in the truck to drive, my eyes were looking in the middle of the steering wheel. When I looked out the window, I was at such an angle that I could only see the sky and not even the front of the truck. When I stepped on the clutch, I had to grab the bottom of the steering wheel to push down on it, and I was on my tippy toes when I did it.

Bud turned the steering wheel and the wheels in the way that he wanted the truck to go. He got everything set up and it was time for me to use my driving skills. That had to be funny because I had no driving skills. But we were going to give it a try. We had no choice. So Bud got set. And told me when to let the clutch out.

He yelled, “Go!” I let the clutch out and gave it the gas. The truck swing out of the gully and I stopped the truck before we could get into more trouble.

I had to be a sight. The top of my was head even with the bottom of the window. My hands were on the bottom of the steering wheel. My tippy toes were on the gas and the clutch. I can see it all right now. It had to be a funny sight.

There were worse spots further up on the way up the hill and we knew we’d never make it.

Bud got into the truck and he drove away and we went hunting somewhere else that day.