My dad’s been gone about 10 years and as I try to raise my child the best I can, I still think about all the things dad taught me.
My earliest memories were out shooting rabbits. I was 2 years old when we got the ruger 10/22. I remember him telling me “It’s not like the other gun, you can just keep pulling the trigger.” And we walked up on this sandstone ledge and there was a rabbit down there giving itself a bath (tossing dirt on itself). So he said shoot it. I aimed really carefully (the gun seemed super heavy) and shot. The bullet landed right in front of its nose. He said shoot again. The rabbit spun around to run, I adjusted and my next shot landed in front of its nose. The rabbit spun again, bullet nose. 10 times my bullet landed inches from its nose. I ran out of bullets and it took off. I remember my dad laughing so hard.
He taught me how to shoot. How to process animals (birds, sheep, pigs, deer, elk, rabbits, fish, whatever). How to farm (I could drive a tractor by the time I was 10) and how to drive a stick on the road (age 12, old yellow truck with a horse trailer on back).
He wasn’t a sensitive man and didn’t like whining or crying. Don’t cry unless you’re bleeding and if you’re bleeding you’d better stop crying, remain calm, and bandage yourself up before you bleed out and die…
But he would also do stuff like this:
So here’s to dad and the little kid standing on the bench seat headed out to go fishing:
[video=youtube_share;NGUP8oc9Bgs]https://youtu.be/NGUP8oc9Bgs[/video]
