This is the Day
The .22 “Cricket Rifle” was a wonderful, safe first firearm to learn the basics of firearm operation and saftey. I highly recommend it for your little guy or gal.
Up until now, my most favorite hunting memories have always included my Dad. He was the one who first introduced me to the wilderness and the bounty in which she contains. He showed me how to love her, how to nurture her and how to harvest from her. He taught me that the fields, woods and waterways that make up this world are gifts that to be treasured, cherish and utilized. God took so much time to make Missouri beautiful, it’d be a smack in His face not to sit and enjoy it every now and again. The very first hunt I remember was a deer hunt in Pike County, Missouri. I remember sitting on a bucket in front of my dad up on a platform tree stand, using his legs as arm rests, and wrapped up in a felt, camo blanket for warmth. It felt like days sitting there waiting for a trophy deer to walk out in front of me and the Remington 7600, pump 30-.06 rifle that intimidated me so much. The beginning of my relationship with that rifle was a tumultuous one. I hated shooting that rifle because as the other guys around me joked, “she kicked like a mule!” The fellas at deer camp promised me that with as many layers of clothes on, I wouldn’t feel the punch nearly as hard as I did the previous day when shooting at a paper plate nailed to a tree 75 yards away. But sitting there that morning, in my bundled up layers of oversized, miss-matched layers of borrowed camo clothing, all I could think about was, “is it going to hurt when I pull that trigger?” All this talk about shooting deer in the days leading up to my first hunt had me so excited and nervous. But my mind was a whirlwind of anticipation and confusion. Even after taking the Missouri Hunter’s Safety Class and after hours examining all the pictures in library books and on that cool new internet site, Google, I’m really not sure I had a clear picture in my head what a deer was actually going to look like coming out into the field before us. In the hour or so before the sunlight began to ooze out from the horizon, all there was was darkness. The void was all around me but failed to frighten me because my father was there and nothing could touch me with him around. There is not much to tell after that. I spent many more mornings and evenings hunting with my father and the other guys at deer camp. It took several years until I shot my first deer on a weekend evening right at final light. My first quarry was to be a 10 point buck. And who was with me, coaching me as I blew out a final breathe before beginning to slowly apply pressure on the trigger? My father.
After that hunt, I spent most of my hunts by myself, but on certain occasions, my father and I find ourselves reunited and once again, paired up in a tree stand or ground blind. After several solo-seasons and several anterless harvests, my dad was with me yet again when I shot another bone-white, 10 point buck as he chased a doe in a early evening hunt across a freshly harvested field of cut corn. It was another great moment we shared together, just the two of us.
But these memories are slowly moving backward in their importance to me in my mental file-cabinet of cherished hunting memories. What could be so special that it would eclipse such incredible memories of me hunting with my father? You see, just as I had always planned and hoped, I grew up to be just like my Dad and I became a father too. I am blessed with two sons and one daughter. And this year my oldest, known as “Little Robbie” is going to be going with me to the Narrow Gate Farm for his first deer hunt during the Missouri youth rifle season. I have been waiting for this day since the day my wife first told me we were expecting. Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to this day even before that. In someways, I feel like I am betraying my father to allow these moments with my son to surpass my memories with him in the tree stand. However, this is the natural way of things. As days go by, old memories begin to collect dust and move to the side to make room for the new moments of tomorrow. Old trees wither and fall, making room for their saplings, dropped many years before to stretch and grow, lifting the canopy even taller than before and establishing their place in the sky.
As I anticipate opening morning with Robbie this weekend, I it occurs to me that it really won’t be just him and I in that blind. Everything I have taught my son about shot placement, routine was first taught to me by father. And nothing my father taught me was original knowledge. Everything Robbie and I will experience this weekend will be because fathers and sons spent time in the woods together for generations before us. We are just link in a long chain of men who are blessed to sit in the woods as father and son, enjoying the wilderness and all she has to offer. As my hand will be on Robbie’s shoulder to calm his nerves as he lines his scope on his first deer, I will always feel my father’s hand on mine: a proud weight of lessons and memories that to this day still give me the confidence I need to squeeze the trigger. A boost of confidence I need at every shot, even if I’m not nearly as intimidated by that Remington 7600 as I used to be when I was younger!
My son is excited to hunt this weekend, but he’s just as nervous as I was on my first hunt. But I don’t know why? At least my son’s father loves him enough to put him behind a .243 instead of a 30-.06! A sweet fact of this weekend is this: as far as things stand now and by the grace of God at this particular point in the chain of time, if my son harvests his first deer, my father will be just a truck-ride away from giving us a moment all three of us will share together as we look at whatever the woods are willing to offer up in front of my son and his youth model rifle this youth season. And whether or not a shot rings out on this opening morning at the Narrow Gate Farm, I know I am doing my part this weekend in paying back the generations of the past. I’ll be forging the next link in the chain as I pass down the same passions and knowledge my father handed over to me.
This is the day I have been looking forward to for years. This is the day my father looked forward to for many years and then as quickly as it came, it passed by many years ago. This is the day I hope my son yearns to see as he grows into a man, marries a good woman and finds out one day he is about to bare the name “father.” This is the day.
