{"id":541,"date":"2009-09-11T01:26:57","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T06:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=541"},"modified":"2009-09-23T03:04:23","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T08:04:23","slug":"the-day-i-took-two-doves-that-all-the-others-had-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=541","title":{"rendered":"The day I took two doves that all the others had missed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just about the only pleasant activity I got to engage in with my Dad growing up was <a id=\"nzco\" title=\"hunting\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hunting\">hunting<\/a>.\u00a0 One should keep in mind that this was the <a id=\"m72r\" title=\"1950s\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1950s\">1950s<\/a> and <a id=\"zy19\" title=\"60s\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1960s\">60s<\/a>, and people had not developed some of the <a id=\"zm9.\" title=\"attitudes\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anti-hunting\">attitudes<\/a> about hunting they have today.\u00a0 The game was there for the taking in those days, too.\u00a0 In this simpler time, hunting was an activity imbued with tradition, and it provided a good way for the men of the house to &#8220;get out from underfoot&#8221; and have some fun together.\u00a0 We ate everything we killed, too, and those feasts were culinary high points to be treasured.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Browning Superposed--nice little shotgun\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/superposed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"99\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My Dad always was in a good mood on these occasions&#8211;something that could not be said on a general basis.\u00a0 We usually went with a gang of guys from his work.\u00a0 Sometimes we&#8217;d get up really early and drive to south Georgia in November to hunt <a id=\"zekf\" title=\"quail\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bobwhite_Quail\">quail<\/a>.\u00a0 Other times we&#8217;d just head out to some rural area around Atlanta for some September afternoon <a id=\"kf-x\" title=\"dove\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mourning_dove\">dove<\/a> hunting.<\/p>\n<p>I was typically the only boy along.\u00a0 I was left to infer that this might be because my Dad wanted to spend time with me.\u00a0 I also inferred that I was little enough trouble to have along.\u00a0 Of course, even at an early age I also inferred that he didn&#8217;t want to spend time with <em>only <\/em>me, but OK, I could deal with that.\u00a0 In an odd way, his reticence worked to my advantage.\u00a0 While I never got to hear him say he liked spending time with me, I never had to hear him say he wasn&#8217;t interested in spending time with me alone.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->See, I had a conflicted relationship with my Dad&#8211;nothing too unusual about that, but I wonder sometimes whether it went too far in that direction for anyone&#8217;s good.\u00a0 He was very old-school, an only child of a domineering mother who actually dressed him as a girl for the first few years of his life.\u00a0 He went on to become a tank commander in World War II, so apparently his mother wasn&#8217;t able to feminize him completely.\u00a0 Still, his austere <a id=\"mxdz\" title=\"Scots-Irish\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scotch-Irish_American\">Scotch-Irish<\/a> upbringing and his military background left him pretty emotionally bereft.\u00a0 He was OK with anger, but he regarded most of the rest of the emotions with more than a little suspicion.\u00a0 Those mushy emotions will weaken a guy, you know, and we can&#8217;t be having that.\u00a0 Also, anything that might take him out of a dominant role with me was out, obviously.<\/p>\n<p>He had a real talent for bonhomie with his friends, though, which came out on these occasions.\u00a0 I was able to sort of absorb some of the overflow of that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/bonhomie\">bonhomie<\/a>, and that was enough for me, largely because I knew nothing more would be forthcoming.\u00a0 I think another reason I got to tag along was that I was a pretty good shot, too.\u00a0 I had tried shooting <a id=\"wbdd\" title=\"skeet\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Skeet_shooting\">skeet<\/a> in the first grade, and I got seven out of 25, and this with a 12 gauge, pump-action shotgun knocking me around.\u00a0 I had a BB gun from an early age and could take bumblebees out of the air with fair regularity.\u00a0 By the time I was middle school age, I could shoot about as well as anyone, but of course, a southern boy must defer and not try to make a big deal out of himself.<\/p>\n<p>In keeping with this deferential mode, we usually took up something less than the prime locations at the dove fields.\u00a0 There was plenty for everybody, usually, and my Dad, being a &#8220;college boy&#8221; from <a id=\"qdhg\" title=\"Pennsylvania\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pennsylvania\">Pennsylvania<\/a> and <a id=\"fsyl\" title=\"Ohio\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ohio\">Ohio<\/a>, was always something of an outsider at these events.\u00a0 And why not?\u00a0 Most of the rest of the people at the field were relatives or childhood friends.\u00a0 One simply defers.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"They are little bullets when airborne\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/mourning-dove.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"185\" align=\"right\" \/>But that explains why we were where we were on the particular day I have in mind.\u00a0 It was far from a prime location.\u00a0 The field was long and fairly narrow&#8211;narrow enough that the shotgun pellets from the other side rained down on us with regularity.\u00a0 Most of the doves were coming into the field from the other end that day, too.\u00a0 They had quite a time making it to us down this long narrow field without getting shot.\u00a0 Most of the ones that did were really moving and good at dodging the shots coming at them.<\/p>\n<p>For anyone who thinks a dove can&#8217;t dodge a shot, maybe you have to see it to believe it.\u00a0 They look right at you, and about the time you take aim on them, they cant their wings a bit and slip sideways just enough to make you miss.\u00a0 And if you don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re fast, again, get under a flock in your car and prove it to yourself.\u00a0 Barely flapping along, they can make 50 miles an hour; get them in a hurry, and it&#8217;s more like 70.<\/p>\n<p>So, the &#8220;double&#8221; I took that day was pretty special to me.\u00a0 The light was beginning to fail, and the birds passed by behind us instead of out over the field.\u00a0 They had been shot at several times, and they were at top speed.\u00a0 Passing left to right, the trailing bird several feet lower than the leader, maybe 20 feet separated them.\u00a0 I swung my 20 gauge <a id=\"x6:7\" title=\"Browning Superposed\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Browning_Superposed\">Browning Superposed<\/a> on the trailing bird, and when I fired, the recoil bumped the shotgun up just enough to swing on the leader.\u00a0 I dropped them both in about a second, and as the sound of the shot faded, I heard our hunting partner, a much admired coworker of my father&#8217;s, howling out a prolonged, congratulatory <a id=\"br_o\" title=\"Rebel yell\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rebel_yell\">Rebel yell<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>These are the kinds of elements that make a moment elegant, evocative, and memorable, to me, anyway.\u00a0 The coherent timing of the events; the attractive arrangement of the particular sights and sounds; the economical execution of a simple act; appreciation shown by a respected person; and in this particular case, the approval of a person who, while &#8220;close,&#8221; might as well have been little more than a significant  stranger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just about the only pleasant activity I got to engage in with my Dad growing up was hunting.\u00a0 One should keep in mind that this was the 1950s and 60s, and people had not developed some of the attitudes about hunting they have today.\u00a0 The game was there for the taking in those days, too.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-life-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}