Deeds Unwise Can't Be Undone
Memories Of Time Afield Not All PLeasant
Last updated Thursday, July 20, 2006 10:15 PM CDT in Outdoors
By Kenn Young
Special The Morning News
There have been three times in my life when I've been ashamed of my actions.
No, I don't mean the times when I should have done something different, didn't, and consoled myself with the knowledge that it didn't hurt anyone or I didn't get caught.
Rather, I mean the times when I did something that left me feeling lower than a snake's belly and deserving it.
The first time came when I was 10 years old. My grandfather was a quail hunter of some note. For most of his life, he lived and breathed the sport.
He was also an outstanding wing shot. I can count on one hand the times I saw him miss even when we were hunting fence-row quail.
I on the other hand was far less proficient. But I suppose like most boys, I fervently wanted my grandfather to respect me and to take pride in me too. So to my kid way of thinking, that translated to being good at what he enjoyed the most.
One day I was easing along the edge of a field when a covey broke from the tall sedge grass some distance ahead, not flying, but rather running along the dusty ground.
I don't know that I even thought before I did it, but I raised my old Stevens double-barrel and touched off a shot, and when I got to the spot four plump quail lay there.
My grandfather was sitting in the breezeway of our barn when I got back, and I proudly laid the four quail on the ground in front of him.
He looked at me kind of funny, but complimented me on "some outstanding shooting." I went off to clean my supper about as happy as any youngster could be.
That night, lying alone in my bed, the truth of the situation hit home. I had shot quail on the ground, a form of cheating that I had been brought up to believe that no real bird hunter would even consider.
To make matters worse, I had lied to my grandfather in the bargain.
It was 12 years later that grandfather lay in a hospital bed.
The doctors had already told us he wouldn't be going home.
One night I was sitting with him while the rest of the family went to eat dinner, just the two of us there in that too-still room.
He had been drifting in and out of consciousness that day, not recognizing even my dad. I thought he was sleeping. For some reason, I told him about how I had shot those four quail on the ground.
He didn't speak. He hadn't for days, but his eyes opened and he looked up at me standing there and then he smiled. The next morning he was gone.
I was 36 when the second thing happened.
That was during the period of my life when deer hunting was an obsession and I was bowhunting up in Missouri.
I was always careful, especially when using archery gear, and measured the distances to various points around my tree stand. I liked to think that I was ethical. The idea of taking a shot that was too long hadn't even entered my mind in quite a few years. That might happen to rookies, but I vowed it would never happen to me.
But that morning the biggest buck I have ever seen came up behind me. When I first saw him he was standing head-up, staring at me from about 50 yards away.
There was a doe with him, and every second or two he would sneak a look at her, just to make sure she hadn't slipped off.
He was way too far off for a shot with the equipment we had available back in those days, maybe even today, but the sight of that tremendous head gear played a trick on me and the next thing I knew an arrow was on its way. I saw it hit just as he whirled. The buck ran down a small stream and I even thought I saw the arrow sticking out, maybe a little too far back.
About the time I got to the ground it hit me. I had taken a shot that shouldn't have been taken, and all because of greed.
It shook me, because I honestly believed that I was above such things and I had been wrong.
I waited a couple of hours, knowing he wasn't hit well, then took up the trail. A drop of blood here, another there, a place where the leaves had been torn up, then a place where he had gone to his knees.
It went that way until dark and I had to stop.
The next morning I found where he had laid up for a while, and where several coyotes had apparently found him too.
There was blood and hair and the ground torn where he tried to fight them off. I started finding more blood after that, and more torn ground. I was pretty sure that the coyotes were still with him, worrying him as he tried to escape.
It was mid-morning when I came to the bank of the Eleven Points River. It had been a wet year, and the stream was running fast and deep.
I found a smear of blood on a rock, tracks leading to the water and nothing more.
I quit bowhunting for several years after that. Even now my actions on that day long ago sicken me.
The third time? On July 20, 1986 I went to see my dad in the hospital. He had cancer and it was in the advanced stage.
Because of the chemo he only knew me about half the time. Since he had been my lifetime best friend, visiting him was about the hardest thing I've done before or since.
For some reason as I was leaving that day I had the urge to go back and tell him that I loved him. Now that wasn't something that either of us would ever have really thought about, we just weren't made that way. Not that we didn't love one another, it's just that it was something more understood than discussed.
But the doctors had told me earlier that day that he was doing well.
In the end I pushed the urge aside and got in the truck and drove home.
My father died at 2:42 a.m. the next morning.
That one will stay with me until the day I go to join him.
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