Memories of Mother: Hunting

Hunting is a man’s sport, right? Anyone who thinks that way never met my mother. She was raised with eight brothers and sisters, by a father who’d been a sharpshooter in WWI and a mother who was very enterprising and pioneering. Every one of her siblings learned how to cook and they all were taught to fish, hunt, clean game properly and to deal with the outdoors. The fact is that Mom was an expert when it came to hunting deer, especially. Her rifle of choice was a .300 Savage. My father was a deer hunter as well, and he prided himself on being an expert hunter. Throughout our younger years, my two sisters, my brother and I went out hunting on a yearly basis. Dad was loath to admit that Mom could out shoot and out hunt him. In fact, he not only denied that it was true, he went so far as to make fun of her rifle, saying that it wasn’t good for shooting anything more than a jackrabbit at less than 50 feet. A lot of their hunting was in the open country of eastern Oregon, so she had ample opportunities to prove to everyone that it wasn’t true, though she never did try to prove anything to anyone. She didn’t need to, because everyone could see for themselves. Only my father still denied her prowess with that .300. There were a number of times when he’d make a shot of about 300 yards, using his Continue Reading →