By Rick Houser – 

ountry and there are acres of land surrounding you, it all just seems to be part of your DNA. At least I think that might have been the case for me. Our two farms and the vacant farms near us allowed me the opportunity to walk over a lot of land and around a lot of trees that I feel many of today’s youth never get to see.
I recall that one of the first things I ever wanted was a gun. My Dad had a double-barrel shotgun and my brother had a .22 caliber rifle and on their gun rack was a place for one more gun to fit and it only made sense that the space was mine. With this being said, I campaigned strongly to Dad to let me buy a gun. I got help in the campaign as Ben sided with me and talked to Dad about it in my favor.
In the fall of my 12th year Dad said that I could have my own gun, but I was going to have to pay for it with my own money and I would have to let him teach me about the safety of handling a gun. To this I said “Deal”! Since this was near Christmas time and in those days the advent of shopping centers had yet to arrive in this area, we would take one Saturday and the family would load up and we would visit downtown Cincinnati and do our annual Christmas shopping. I know Mom spent a lot of time in department stores and I think that was Shillito’s, Pogue’s and McAlpin’s. Since these stores were all around Fountain Square, there were many independent stores to look into also. All that in one place was great for Mom I guess but for a boy wanting a gun over at Brendamour’s, I thought we would never get there.
Finally we got there and with Dad and Ben on each side of me, we entered a store with the most awesome display of guns I had ever seen. I was told to take my time in selecting and I had already eliminated most by looking at them in the mail order catalogs. I spotted what I wanted and pointed to it and asked if I could see it. It was a Remington over and under, a .22 caliber barrel on the top and a 410 shotgun barrel on the bottom. It was kind of a compromise between Ben’s rifle and Dad’s shotgun. After seeing it was in my price range and Dad asking several questions of the salesman, he looked to me and said, “You better follow the salesman to the counter and pay for your gun.” For a moment I thought my hearing had tricked me, but I could see Dad wasn’t kidding at all.
I bought the gun and couldn’t wait to get back home so I could try it out. I never knew just how long the drive was from Fountain Square to Fruit Ridge until the very long ride home. Even though it was almost dark. Dad let me get an empty oil can and throw it up on the bank across the creek from our house. There I took a shot with the rifle and then the shotgun. I hit that can, but only grazed it. I got to shoot enough to allow me to sleep that night but in the morning I gathered up some more empty SoHo oil cans which in those days were all metal and spread them over the hillside and spent most of the morning and almost every shell I had bought shooting at those cans. Once I somehow got a bullet to hit inside the “O” and was sure I was becoming a marksman. In reality I think I was more of a lucky shot.
Now after shooting cans I needed to go hunting. Once I got the permission and was instructed which fields not to go in. I was off looking for rabbits or quail. It wasn’t too long before I kicked up a rabbit and I learned that a moving target is much harder to hit than an sitting oil can. I missed and later in the day I kicked up another one and he too was too fast. I enjoyed just walking the pastures, the gullies, and around the thickets. It seemed more like a nature walk than being on a hunt ,but hey if anyone saw me and that shiny new gun they would be certain I was an experienced hunter. By the way, I never did see a quail that day or just about any other day.
I would go hunting a lot that first couple of years and I always came home with the same amount of kill- zero. Nobody at our house was going to get tired of eating rabbit but that gun sure looked good. The next fall when it became squirrel season I asked Ben if he wanted to go with me and kind of to my surprise he agreed. On a clear and comfortable October morning, Ben and I went off to hunt squirrels. We walked through our walnut grove and a hickory grove and didn’t see a one. We could see the pieces of hickory nut shells on the ground under the trees but that was all.
Ben said he had a spot that had always been a good one. We walked back a road named Cann Road which was a township road so far before it became abandoned. We continued to walk for at least another mile or so and we followed the ruts that were left from the old road. As we walked the woods grew thicker and the trees for the most part were larger. We finally walked up a bank into a grove of very large hickory trees loaded with nuts. We could see that the squirrels had been cutting on the nuts a lot so we decided to find a spot that where we could hide ourselves but still see up into those trees. It was nearing late morning and the day was warming up nicely for October, but still no squirrels. I think in the back of our minds we were thinking that we were not going to be taking home any squirrels so we began to talk. Ben began telling me some very good hunting stories and I would ask him about his high school friends etc. It is just a given fact that talking and hunting do not go together, but that morning it did.
If you haven’t figured it out by now. I never did become the great outdoorsman that I had thought I would be. I never did bring back game to dress out and to this day I’m not sure if that was not on purpose, but I did get to walk all of the land around our farm and many others. I learned that there was so much neat stuff to explore and found that the need of that gun got me out there to discover the wonderful world I was living in and to this day I don’t regret those walks. One thing I know for certain and that was if an oil can were to jump and run or try to attack me it never would have ha