I’m not what you’d call a big hunter. I don’t have moral objections to hunters or to hunting; I just grew up in the city with a father that didn’t hunt. To my knowledge we had one real gun in the house — a .22 rifle.

I had a series of cap pistols and then graduated to Daisy BB guns and finally had an air rifle. I’m not sure what the practical difference is between a BB gun and an air rifle; they both hurt when you get shot by them. I never took a BB in close range, but even from a pine straw fort at 100 feet, nothing stung quite like a BB.

My parents always said that a BB gun was just as dangerous as a .22. I can’t say … I’ve never been shot with a .22. They also probably didn’t know that we were shooting at one another. I’m sure we told them we were shooting at targets. It wasn’t exactly a lie; it is just that our targets were moving human beings. It sends chills down my spine to think what would have happened if one of us had taken a BB to the eye.

In that sense, it’s probably a good thing that the .22 stayed in the back of my father’s closet. It wasn’t locked up, nor did it have a trigger lock on it. I don’t know if it was loaded or not, for no one or nothing could have made me lay a hand on something my daddy had forbidden me to fool with. If I had even touched it, “TOUCHED THE .22” would have etched on my forehead, and the minute he walked through the door he would have known.

Other fathers would calmly have sat down and explained the dangers of playing with (or touching) guns. My daddy didn’t work that way. He would have made me go out in the yard and cut a keen little hickory switch. My punishment certainly wasn’t anything close to a real whipping. Just watching him cut the switch was usually enough to make me repent. At any rate, I knew better than to mess with the .22, then or now.

My understanding is that we acquired this fearsome weapon from my grandfather. Unlike me, Da grew up in the country in Terrell County. I don’t know that he was any great hunter, but he did know that when, during World War II, German U-Boats were spotted in Mobile Bay, he could not just sit back and be taken over like most of Europe. He had fought the Germans in World War I and had “whipped” them on their own turf. I guess he just thought it was his duty to defend his homeland even if it did involve protecting the shores of Alabama. Thus, he purchased a .22 “repeater” rifle, and I suppose it could be said that successfully thwarted any invasion of lower Alabama.

After the war, and his successful defense of our nation, somehow or another Daddy wound up with the object at hand. Only once in my life did we go hunting with the .22 and that trip pretty much finished me off. We killed a squirrel and, believing that you “eat what you kill,” Daddy field dressed the squirrel, saved the pelt and took the carcass home for Momma to cook. I think at some point in the day we each threw up … Momma, Daddy and me. I’m sorry, but between the carnage in the woods and the roasted rat I gagged down, I wanted no part of it, then or now.

In fact, I believe the experience pretty much ruined me for the taste of wild game. I have eaten dove and I’ve eaten quail and they all remind me of pigeons. I have even attended a wild game dinner where I ate bison and elk and moose. I can eat a chicken or a pig or a cow with the best of them, but wild game all reminds me of that poor squirrel that gave his life and took away my appetite.

Unfortunately, I have probably passed along my frailties to my daughter. Several years ago when she was still dating “Defendant,” she asked me my opinion of hunting. I told her a little of the sad tale above and allowed that she would probably really not want to shoot a deer and that if she did, she would probably not want to eat it.

Not to worry! On the morning of the big hunt she showed up with a Walkman and enough perfume to clear 100 acres of deer away. I think it was her first and last experience with hunting. I hope so.

I also hope I’m finished hunting, but I suspect I’m not. I won’t be shooting any more animals, but I have to confess to flattening a few squirrels. It’s not the squirrels that worry me. It is the deer. For last Thursday night I bagged deer number 2. The weapons in my deer slaying arsenal have been a Sedan de Ville and most recently, my venerable old Fleetwood. I haven’t had another accident since I was 16 and I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. I consider myself a good driver, but I am at a loss as to what to do to prevent the carnage. Maybe some of those deer whistles on the front bumper would help.

On second thought, I think I’ll just take a page from my daughter, daily douse the car in perfume and roll down the windows and play loud rap music. It’ll drive me crazy, but it sure beats having Bambi in the front seat with you.

Boyce E. “Stick” Miller III lives and works in Americus.