The best birthday I ever had was the summer I turned 8. Our family was living in a big, white house in New Prague, Minn., where my father was the depot agent at the old M&STL (Minneapolis and St. Louis) railroad. After supper that evening we all went into the living room where mom had a cake with eight candles stuck in the frosting and a few wrapped presents on the table with the cake.
After the cake was cut and everyone finally had a piece in front of them, (something which takes more darn time than it should when you have an anxious birthday boy chomping at the bit), I was given the go ahead to open presents. I opened the gift from mom and dad first. It was clothes. Not what an 8-year-old likes to see, but I smiled and thanked my parents for the gift. Then I unwrapped the present my twin brothers had wrapped for me. It was a soft-cover book on how to trap everything from muskrat to mink and fox to coyote. I was a budding trapper and the information in that book, made me a better trapper. I still have the book.
Then I picked up the gift from Pa. About the size of a pound of butter, but heavier, I knew what was in the package before I ever tore the paper open. A whole brick of .22 Shorts. Remington's. Five hundred rounds. That's a lot of ammo for a kid shooting a single-shot, bolt-action rifle. Pa could see what I was thinking. He walked up to me, draped one of his long arms around my skinny shoulders and said, "Buck, I think it's time you buy that lever-action Marlin you have been wanting up at Arnie's hardware store."
"I can't yet Pa," I said. "I'm still ten dollars short of what Arnie is asking."
"I know that son, so I will lend you the money you are short. Just remember, this is a loan, not a gift," he said.
That's the way Pa was when it came to his three sons buying guns and later their first cars. He would help if he could, but it was a business agreement and Pa expected to be paid back and paid on time.
Young Clancy Buys Marlin .22 If memory serves, I think Arnie down at the hardware store had a $40 price tag on that sleek Marlin lever. My entire fortune at the time was $28. So Pa had a little discussion with Arnie, who promptly knocked the price down to $35. Pa kicked in his $7 and I walked out of that hardware store feeling mighty lucky to have the rifle, but even luckier to have a father who would go to bat for me!
Squirrel season opened in mid-September, which meant that I had just less than three months to familiarize myself with the rifle. Since we lived in town, I could not shoot the rifle every day, but I had the rifle in my hands every day and when Pa and I had a chance to go out to the gravel pit and plink cans, the lever-action already felt like an old friend in my hands. When it came time to do some shooting we did not have sleds or sandbags on shooting benches on which to rest our rifles. We just tacked a paper target on an old fallen tree trunk, leaned up against a stout healthy trunk, got comfortable with the position, cocked the hammer and more often than not, hit the target.
Some guns just seem to fit an individual better than others and that's the way it was with me and that fine Marlin. From the first time I ever had it in my hands, the gun just felt like it had been in my hands since birth.
It's different today, but back when I was a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s, squirrel hunting was what us guys (and a few girls) did on fall weekends. Every kid I knew hunted squirrels, and those who did not were looked at a little suspiciously by the rest of us. Monday morning, before classes started, we would all get together and swap stories about squirrel hunting over the weekend. There were even a couple of teachers who got in on the Monday morning "who-got-what" sessions.
As we had the past two seasons, my Pa and I sat side-by-side when we hunted squirrels. That was alright with me. I learned a lot about how to slip into the woods as quiet as morning fog, sit down against the rough hide of a big oak and just sit and listen to a new world greet the fresh day. That half hour before and after sunrise, is still my favorite hour of the day. And although you do not need to get to the woods in the dark, in order to shoot a few squirrels, you will see more squirrels if you do. Evenings are OK, too, but early morning is far-and-away my favorite time for squirrels.
My father was a good teacher. Not once did he ever give me the idea that squirrel hunting is easy, or is just good "practice" for when you hunt bigger game. No, Pa and I hunted squirrels because we genuinely enjoyed hunting them. It was not until much later in life that I would learn that many hunters do not even consider the lowly squirrel to be worthy of their time and effort. Too bad for them.
Kids Should Start Out Hunting Squirrels But what really gets to me is when 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children start right out hunting deer. Can a boy (or girl) of that age be anywhere near skilled enough to hunt whitetail deer one-on-one? Putting a youngster who has not spent much time (perhaps no time at all) hunting small game such as squirrels, right into the deer stand is not fair to the youngster. I wonder, even if the young hunter is successful in shooting a deer, has he really learned anything?
Squirrel hunting trained me to rely upon my ears and my eyes. It was in the squirrel woods that I learned how to walk through dry leaves without sounding like a Black Angus bull. More importantly, squirrels showed me how to sit still -- real still. Sitting still is something learned over time. By the time a young hunter heads out to fill his deer tag, he should already be a pro at the art of sitting still.
If you use your ears, I mean really use them, you will hear sounds, which you have never heard before. Squirrels are busy critters and as they go about their day-to-day business, they make a lot of different sounds. The gnawing of long, yellow teeth on acorn, hickory or walnut has a sound all its own. So is the little mew of a young-of-the-year squirrel checking to see if its mother is within hearing. Then there is the chittering we have all heard. But do you know the difference between a squirrel chattering to let all of the other squirrels in the woods know that he has found a big oak just dripping with big, sweet, ripened acorns, or a squirrel which is scolding someone or something?
And there is no doubt in my mind what-so-ever, that a young squirrel hunter who learns to look for squirrel pieces instead of the whole squirrel, will see far more deer, than the deer hunter who did not cut-his-teeth on squirrels or other small game.
So if you have a child, grandchild, nephew or niece who you would like to introduce to hunting, put a .22 rifle in their hands and go get some squirrels!
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Gary Clancy writes a column for sportsmansguide.com. Gary has hunted whitetail deer in 20 different states and provinces. He has harvested many record-book animals, and presented hunting seminars from Tennessee to Wisconsin. Gary also has authored or co-authored six hunting books, four on whitetail hunting.