From brother Ron "The Rebuttal"

Remember the phrase of Paul Harvey on radio new's "the rest of the story" This is story
as I recall the event of protecting the chicken's.

It was a very black dark night with just a sliver of moon shining enough light to see about ten feet. I was at the chicken coop with my trusty winchester pump 22 rifle. I took one more step and all of a sudden the snarling,fang's gleaming from the faint moonlight, savage growling and barking from every direction. I was surrounded and unable to retreat, something moved in front of me I fired a shot,movement from the left fire another shot, look behind me a flash of movement-fire spin back around-fire what was that to my right-fire-fire-fire. Then it is silent and they are gone. Cloud's passing in front of the moon total darkness all is quiet, I stumble back to the house knowing that in the morning the scene will show to everyone how I saved the chicken's.

I have thought of this event a few time's and as life goes by I still scratch my head wondering how those huge monster's that I left there disappeared before day light.

The Hunters

I am jolted awake by dogs barking, growling and yelping and it is coming from the chicken coop in the orchard just below the house. As I fumble around in the dark to find my pants and boots I already know what is going on. Just last week I saw a pack of wild dogs come down the canal road that passes above the house and when they saw me they took off. We have had trouble before with wild dogs. People that live in town sometimes drop off dogs they don’t want anymore and some of these dogs eventually gather in a pack and plunder the countryside trying to survive. They can get pretty mean and dangerous. They mostly raid chicken coups and look for small or weak animals to kill. Because they travel in a pack they are not afraid of our dog. Unfortunately this night our dog is not afraid of them and there is one serious fight going on in the orchard.

As I get to the top of the stairs to head outside, I can see Ronny with is 22 already ahead of me and he is headed to the orchard. By now everyone in the house is up and we run to the porch and peer into the dark . We can see the fire coming out of the barrel of Ronny’s rifle on each shot. Dogs are now going crazy in the dark, barking, yelping, growling and Ronny is firing away and yelling. It sounds like a scene out of a horror movie, and then it is all quiet. Ronny comes up out of the orchard with a horrible tale of how he had to shoot monstrous dogs that were about to attack him but he was able get precise shots off just in time to save himself. I listened to his story and was jealous with envy that I was not part of this heroic battle.
Russ and I get up early the next morning. We cannot wait to see the carnage in the orchard. We get dressed and run down to the battle field. We find one Pekingese dog, not weighing more than 5 Lbs. When we get back up to the house, Ronny just says “ well they looked bigger in the dark.”

Hunters...Part 2

Dam its cold! I am lying in a harvested wheat field just about a quarter mile from the Big Horn River. I have a burlap bag over me that is covered with straw and I am surrounded by goose decoys. There is about a two inch covering of cold white snow over the field. It all started with a phone call a few nights back. My brother Ron was on the other end with this “guaranteed not to fail” goose hunt plan. My brother is most likely the best hunter I have ever known. In all the hunting trips I have made in my life, the most successful have been with Ronny. So here we are on a cold, cold Saturday morning just before dawn. The plan is simple. Ronny has scouted out this field and noticed that the geese feed here every morning. Execution of the plan is what becomes difficult. This field is approximately 100 acres, so large that the geese can land on the other end and we won’t even see them. We set out our decoys, covered ourselves with loose straw and we are now waiting for the sun to come up. Just as the sun starts to peak over the Big Horn Mountains, Ronny starts blowing on his goose caller. I can hear geese honking as they follow the river but none are turning our way. I swear it is getting colder. My shotgun is lying by my side under the burlap cover, and I begin to worry that if a flock of geese was to fly over, my hands are too cold to pull the trigger. Now a flock of about fifty geese are heading our way but they are too high. The geese circle and come back over us but are still too high. They circle again and Ronny starts in on his goose caller and again they just pass over us. We are laying in the rows south to north and as the geese fly over us going south they pass over our heads and we lose sight of them. I can hear them honking and circling around behind us. Ronny is still calling them in. It sounds like they are getting closer. Just as Ronny tells me to get ready, because this time they will be close enough, a set of wings and goose legs fly right over my head not more than four feet above us. Ronny has called them in right on top of us. We jump out of our cover to take aim and the geese are so close we don’t know what to do. Their wings are almost touching the end of our gun barrels. We have to wait for them to fly away to get a shot. Finally I am able to fire twice and two geese fall. Ronny fires once and two geese fall. We have our daily limit with only three shots fired.

We gather our decoys and geese and head back to the pick-up. We have to pass Wilford’s house on the way back so we stop to show him our geese and tell him our hunting story. In our conversation with Will, I state that I still need to get some venison to take home with my geese. He says that a four point buck just went into the hay field next to his house. If I go to the other end of the field with a rifle, he and Ronny will walk through the field and push the deer out the other end. Just as Wilford describes it, the buck runs right in front of me and I fire one shot and the deer drops. I now have two geese and a deer to take home. I look at my watch and it is only 9 a.m. and my hunting day with Ron is already over. Ronny says “next week lets go elk hunting” and I can’t wait.