Reminisce with me …

 I didn’t grow up in a hunting family, but I remember that I loved playing outdoors like a lot of kids of my generation.  We would play outside all day in the summer – only rule was to be home when the street lights came on.  I don’t think there were adults around either or even checking on us regularly.  That kind of freedom is rarely known today – for lots of reasons. 

Even though I didn’t have parents that hunted, I remember vividly the first time I got to shoot a gun.  I must have been about 8 or 9 and we were visiting my relatives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the summer.  My uncle had a dairy farm in some of the prettiest hills I’ve ever seen.  He had a friend – his name was Pat – who offered one day to take me and my cousins “plinking.”  Now I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded interesting. 

 Pat set up a bunch of cans on a fence and had us stand behind an imaginary line several feet away.  We took turns using his old .22 to shoot the cans off the fence.  I loved it and being competitive, I tried hard to out-shoot my country cousins. 

To this day, my favorite gun is a .22.  I won one once at a PF banquet – it was the first gun awarded that night.  I think most in the audience breathed a sigh of relief at not winning that small gun when all the nicer shotguns were still up for grabs, but I shouted with glee and could not have been prouder to take home the .22.  My plinking today is at targets at the range rather than cans on a fence, but I still love it! 

 Write and tell us about one of your favorite memories.  Who took you out?  What did you do?  Why was it so special?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 and is filed under Pheasants Forever. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.