One of my favorite hunting stories to date is one that I wrote during this blog’s ‘infant’ stages. It is a tale of legend within the halls of Rip N’ Tear Hunt Club. I hope you don’t mind if I share it again with everyone because (thankfully) more visitors are checking my blog and I think they will all appreciate this story. Sorry, Dad!

My version may be a bit ’sketchy’ as I was only 13 (I think) at the time. What follows is the story of Dad’s Pumpkin Gun (pronounced Punkin).

It was a perfect morning for a Deer Hunt. Crunchy snow. No wind. Blue sky.

I was following dad to the first watch of the morning. His pumpkin gun glistened in the morning sun. This gun was a .35 Marlin lever action rifle. It was an awesome looking gun.

It had to be because, today, it was about to become the stuff of Legend.

Our assignment was to vector over to a favorite watch (of our gang) that was nestled between a ridge and a pond. This particular watch tended to produce many sightings every year.

Currently, this watch is now called the Junkyard watch and is owned by someone outside of our gang. At the time of this story, dad owned the property.

After finding a rocky knoll, we cleared away the frozen brush at our feet.

That’s when we began to wait.

At thirteen, I used to get pretty restless and I have to give dad credit for his patience ’showing me the ropes’. Thankfully, just as I began to fidget, I noticed 4 deer heads bouncing down the ridge onto a logging road in front of us. Excited, I whispered over to dad,

“Dad…(gulp) there are some deer on the road.”

He nodded to confirm that he saw them as well.

Dad slowly lifted his gun to his shoulder and waited for the best shot. It seemed like forever, but soon enough, the pumpkin gun’s barrel erupted with a shot. Four deer pulled a quick u-turn and bounded back up the ridge. More shots rang from Dad’s barrel.

Still…four deer continued to run up the ridge.

Eventually, dad emptied his magazine and I was on the hunt for more rounds in his back-pack. We thought for sure the deer would be gone by the time we got pumpkin gun re-loaded.

Then, a peculiar thing occurred.

The deer, that had scattered themselves, on top of the ridge had stopped moving. This allowed Dad to keep firing while I kept reloading. Twenty ‘some-odd’  (hunter talk for a guesstimate) shots later and frustrated, dad took a break (this number of shots is still debated among group members today).

At this point, we thought we could sneak closer to the bullet-proof deer. The deer had to be shell-shocked by now. In short order we reached the top of the ridge. When dad peaked his head over a bank, he saw the deer finally scatter, as well as, a few others we had not originally seen. He also saw why the deer were slow to run away. One of his bullets from the barrage hit ‘true’ and a doe was down.

You can imagine the comments the hunt club members shared with dad when they reached bunker hill. They all made references to some kind of World War 3 and I became known as ‘Ammo Boy’. The gun’s sights on dad’s Remington were also called into question.

Somehow, his own aiming ability was never called into question.

During a break in the hunt, a pumpkin (or punkin) was used to get an idea of its accuracy. Hence, the gun’s nickname. Surprisingly, he had a successful pumpkin test (and various other ‘official’ tests in the future).

Still, there was always some excuse when dad kept missing deer with it. This led dad to buy a new gun and to sell the pumpkin gun.

The new owner of the pumpkin gun told dad (shortly after buying the gun) that it was the best shooting gun he had ever owned.

Dad, still maintains, it was the gun that shot poorly.

At least, I know where I get MY buck fever from.