At age 12…40 years ago, it was my first deer season to be able to carry a gun and walk/hunt by myself. With a pocket full of candy bars, gum and Band Aids from my Grandma…the hunt was on.
Even though I was a pretty big kid, the right of passage gun for a first season hunter in our hunting party, was a break action single shot .410 shotgun with slugs.
In the middle of a deer drive, I jumped up on a large rock pile, to get a better view. My dad said I could shoot at a coyote or rabbit for practice, if it was in a safe direction. Well, low and behold…a rabbit pops up around about 20-30 yards out. I take one shot…miss. Second shot miss. But when I’m done loading the fresh .410 slug, and snap my wrist upward to close the break action, I slammed the end of the barrel up against a rock…and the rifle sight was broken off.
Sitting there, pondering the ass chewing I was going to get from my dad, for breaking the rifle sight off of the barrel on my first deer drive…I came up with a plan…I would use the gum in my mouth and put it on the end of the barrel and shape it into a triangle. Then I wrapped one of the Band Aids in my pocket around the chewed on piece of gum…and I was back in business, with a brand new front sight on the end of my barrel. By then, the rabbit was gone, as an unwilling target for my attempt to enter the “MacGyver Hall of Fame” with a chewed up piece of gum and a Band Aid, as a front sight. With one quick test shot on a dead tree, a smile was back on my face…
The next deer drive, as I’m walking up to a small thicket, a smaller 6 point buck jumps out about 40 yards out. With a clear shot all around, I put my lead on the small buck and pulled the trigger… Oh my god…I hit him!
My uncle hooks around and walks up to the buck, who is on the ground and barely alive…and he puts a 12 gauge slug, right into it’s head. There goes the tiny 6-point rack of the first buck I ever shot.
At the end of the deer drive everyone congratulates me on my first deer…and then I showed them the piece of chewed up gum, and band aid I have as a front sight…
…Then the laughing and back slapping went into overdrive…
I’ll never forget that day.
