Our granddaughter’s husband Marty is an avid outdoors man. His job keeps him indoors most of the time. He enjoys taking his small children fishing and hunting on occasion. Some time ago, he carried six-year-old Caleb fishing with him. During the outing, the boat bumped a stump.

“What the hell was that?” Caleb asked his dad.

Marty never would give me a straight answer when I asked him who taught Caleb that word.

Last week he took Caleb and 5-year-old Abigail to a dove field for some shooting. In giving the children instructions, he insisted they keep their eyes open, watching out for snakes and other critters.

After a few minutes passed, Abigail asked her dad, “Daddy, can we blink our eyes?”

The children, not realizing what was really going to happen, went into hysterics when the first bird was killed. Then after they got back home and Dad was cooking the birds – well, you can probably guess how that went over with the kids.

I don’t think Marty will take them bird hunting again any time soon.

There is a moral to this story. Unless you have instructed the children what will be taking place, don’t take them on any shoots.

Having been raised on a small country farm, wild game was a regular entree on our dining table. I was taught early on not to kill any game unless it was for food.

I can recall one of the worst spankings I ever got was for killing a bluebird with my air rifle. No amount of begging kept my father from giving me a good paddling.

My father owned a single-shot Winchester 22 rifle. He used it for killing rats around the barn. One cold, windy afternoon I was permitted for the first time to carry the rifle with me. Windy weather is the worst time to hunt squirrels because everything needs to be perfectly still.

The winter sun was falling fast, and I took a little more of a chance than usual, killing the first squirrel I saw. I knew that before I would be able to find the little fellow on the ground, it would be too dark to see another one.

A scratching noise a few feet away enabled me to locate the squirrel. Picking the little fellow up, I realized he was only wounded. I had been taught by my father never to let anything wild suffer. Doing what I knew I should, I hit the squirrel in the head with my rifle barrel so he would be out of his suffering.

Due to my impaired vision, I no longer hunt. But I treasure the memories of past hunting trips.

Lest we forget ...

T&D Columnist Rinehart Chewning is a longtime resident of Holly Hill.

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