Times Have Changed...

 I learned to duck hunt following my dad up and down old backwater sloughs like the one in the photo toting a single shot Winchester model 370 20 gauge shotgun that brand new cost $50. My techniques have not changed much since those days. Once someone suggested I accompany his group on a trip with the tease, "we all killed 270 ducks last trip." I told him right quick that I was not picking 270 fricking ducks. 

We won't start figuring productivity on manhours or anything like that but if I bring home two ducks and breast them out and also take off the legs Cathy will chicken fry them in hot grease and make gravy and we will eat that and feel all fat and sexy. If I just bring home one duck I'll roast it with vegetables in one of those clay pot cookers and we will eat it with a bottle of dealcoholized wine and feel all skinny and sexy because after all it is  lean meat and the fake wine means that we wake up in the morning without our tongues wearing little hairy purple jackets. 

Once I was in a sporting goods store. The counter with the fishing reels shared space with the firearms. As I looked at the reels just down the counter a middle age man with his wife looking on asked to see a gun similar to the one that is popular with school shooters. I think my dad, who landed on Omaha Beach in WW2 and who I learned everything about guns from would have recognized it as a military style weapon. 

As the counter clerk handed over the gun for examination the gentleman took it and turned and aimed out through the store. The clerk responded immediately with a firm, "Sir, sir if you aim not out through the store, behind the counter only." 

Obviously the gentleman had never done his time on a slough with a WW 2 vet and a single shot shotgun. What he knew about guns he probably saw on the internet somewhere and like all that stuff you learned on the internet it's wrong. 

All that duck hunting with my dad is committed to memory. That's good enough. Tines have changed and if I could give up an old shotgun right now to ease someone else that is in pain and suffering because of ineffective gun laws and dummies like that guy in the sporting good store I would.     .