Dogs baying throughout the night in the dark East Texas woods meant that some poor critter was running for its life. When a small red fox zigged and zagged through the thicket at top speed, its heart pounding, its small chest about to explode, the onslaught seemed a tad unbalanced, a bit unfair. At least, Samuel thought so. Sam consoled himself with the fact that the fox’s cleverness and agility would serve it well.

Though its prospects were bleak, it at least had a slim chance of outsmarting Papa Jim’s pack of hunting dogs. Raccoons were rarely as lucky, but this night’s hunt was for neither foxes nor raccoons. It was for wolves.

Papa Jim trained his dogs well. He kept pelts of different critters. He’d let the dogs see or smell a pelt, and sent them bolting off on a hunt for that specific type of animal. They were truly remarkable, and the boys often wondered which he loved more, his dogs or his children.

Sam wasn’t really one of Papa Jim’s boys. Papa Jim’s boy, Ray, was Sam’s best friend above all others. Sam felt like he was tenuously part of the Jones family, and he treasured that honor highly.

Yet, hunting wolves with dog packs always secretly bothered Samuel. So, Sam tried to reason it away. It was more fair, certainly more just, Sam figured, since wolves were larger and more dangerous. They killed chickens and small livestock of all kinds. They were a pest that had to be thinned out. He learned all of that from people he loved and loved to be around. So, he tried hard to understand it and believe it.

Still, the wolf didn’t stand a chance. Outnumbered like the fox, the wolf lacked the fox’s ability to evade and outsmart Papa Jim’s dog pack. The wolf would eventually succumb to exhaustion, be cornered and held at bay by a snarling circle of hounds.

The hunters knew. The dogs’ anthem changed from the long baying of the running chase to the guttural growling and woofs that announced a capture. The predators and prey would remain in this intense standoff, possibly for an hour or two until the hunting party finally decided it was time to go see what the dogs had “tree’d.”

Sam could never let on that varmint executions pricked his heart just a little. That would surely bring down a shit storm of mocking upon him. He just knew he’d be called a wussy by the hunting party, and that only by those who would still even speak to him. He could be banned from ever going on any future all night hunts.

The late evening prior and earlier hours of the morning were spent in two ways. The elders had their traditions, and the boys had theirs. The older men would sit around a camp fire drinking beer, chewing tobacco, spitting, telling stories, and listening to the hollow bays of the distant hounds at work. The boys would head out on long adventures throughout the country side, but not in the direction of the hunt. No, sir. The boys would get in a ton of trouble for heading towards the hunt, because they might get themselves shot in the brush, or disrupt the chase. It wasn’t clear which was worse.

The killing normally occurred late into the hunt, around 3 or 4 in the morning, when the boys were out on their trek. This spared Sam from having to witness most of the actual executions. The older men would finally go find the dogs and dispatch whatever creature the hounds had cornered.

The hunting party leaders often tried to have their all night wolf hunts during a full moon. Once your eyes adjusted to it, you could see just about as well at midnight as at you could at high noon. Things seemed to glow more by moonlight, as if the light came from the things themselves, the soil, the grass, the brush, and the trees. Everything shimmered, yet remained visibly detailed.

Sam and Ray headed down the tire-rutted dirt road, away from the hunt and from the convocation of elders in the hunting party. Each boy had his shotgun draped over his right arm, barrels pointed down to the ground, bouncing slightly as they walked.

Sam and Ray walked for about a mile and a half, talking about anything and nothing. They did not need to have an intelligent conversation. All that mattered to Sam was getting be there with his best friend, Ray, going on one of their entirely improvised, grand, middle-of-the-night adventures.

The boys came upon a pasture with a large barn and several randomly spaced, motionless cows. This was raw material for a good time. Cows that did not move could be easily tipped over or simply mounted and ridden for short distances. Barns were a sure source of nocturnal rats that deserved to meet their end. The former did no lasting harm to the cow. The latter would be doing a favor for the rancher.

The only prerequisite was that it had to be far from any farm house. Even though the boys meant no harm, they didn’t want to have to persuade any owners at 2 in the morning of their semi-good intentions. Of course, it never occurred to the boys that breaking into a barn in East Texas in the early 1960′s could have gotten them shot. Fortunately, there were no armed young lovers spending the night in the barn to be awoken by two shadowy figures holding shotguns. The boys did, however, hit the sought-after jackpot of rats.

The boys had enough sense to not get too excited and start blasting away at the fastest ones. They didn’t want to blow a hole in the wall of the man’s barn. Whoever owned this barn would almost certainly know Ray’s dad, and any residual evidence of such mischief would come back to roost on their heads later as the grown ups put 2 and 2 together. No, the boys had plenty of brazen, arrogant old rats that were in no particular hurry. The boys blew two or three of those rats away quickly and easily without doing any appreciable damage to the barn proper. At worst, there might be a mysterious tale tell dip in the dirt, dug by the payload of bird shot.

After the loud explosions of their shotguns, the boys decided they’d best move on, and leave the cow riding (or tipping) to another night. Though no farmer’s sleep was disturbed, it added to the fun to skedaddle as though the whole Russian Army was in hot pursuit of them. Sam and Ray never wanted to really hurt anyone or their property, but running from such shenanigans made them feel as though they had been more mischievous than they had been. Just pretending to be bad always gave them an adrenaline rush, but left them with few regrets.

This post was submitted by Mike Strong.

In my youth (around 1970), I spent a lot of time on my Granddad’s farm near Pottsboro, Tx. One of my earliest memories of the farm was before the house had been built.  My Granddad, Uncle JW, and myself were sleeping under the stars that night. I was probably about 10 or 11.

For dinner this evening my Uncle JW had grilled up some hamburgers. We had all the fixins too, lettuce, tomatoes and onions etc., from the garden not a hundred feet from where we were eating and would sleep that night. Pretty tasty after a days work on the farm.

I remember Uncle JW using the pocket knife from his pocket to slice the tomato and onion. After slicing up the veggies he simply wiped the blade off on his pant leg, folded it and stuck it back in his pocket.

That day we had been working with the cattle a bit. There were a few young bulls that needed to be cut. My Granddad instructed me to “grab that little bull”. And so I did. I grabbed him, picked him up and threw him on his back. I was a pretty big kid for my age.

My Granddad and I held down the calf while Uncle JW went to work. He reached into his pocket for his pocket knife and proceeded to rid that bull of his testicles … with the same knife that he later cut up those tomatoes and onions.

I’ve kept a pocket knife in my pocket ever since.

This story is 100% true.

Onion clip art courtesy of  clip-art-pictures.com.

This post was submitted by Mike Makuch.

No question, about it.  Robin, having grown up on a farm, and learning all the skills that came with it, was nothing short of an expert marksman.  This wasn’t just with firearms.  Robin could hit a can off a fence from all the way across the field throwin’ a rock free handed.

Mike and Rob were off on one of their regular squirrel hunts, each with their safeties on, and their shotguns slanting to the ground as they’d been taught.  Normally, they’d head out the back pasture behind Robin’s farm.  Today, however, they chose to meander up the dirt road that ran in front of Rob’s house.

Hunting squirrel until each boy had two or three bouncing off each leg, hanging from their belts was the standard goal, but the boys always loved unexpected distractions.  It was no more than 50 yards up the road when the boys ran into a pair of young skunks.

Skunks were not welcome that close to the house.  So the boys figured it was their duty to dispatch them, or at least scare them well enough that they’d know not to come around there again.   The problem with dispatching them was that Rob’s folks frowned on the boys discharging their firearms near their house or, worse, close to one of the neighbors’ houses.  So, scarin’ the pests was the only alternative remaining.

How similar they looked to the very squirrels that the boys prized so much.  Yet, borrowin’ an analogy from W. H. Auden, the difference was like that between lighting and a lighting bug.   Sound similar, but one packs a much bigger punch.

Robin, being the country veteran that he was, knew to hang back a ways.  Mike, being the “city boy” with less sense, pushed forward more aggressively to nobly rid Robin’s family of these pests.

“Yaw! Yaw! Git! Git! Git outta hear! ” Mike shouted at the two skunks that trotted ahead of him.  They sped up a little, but didn’t seem too concerned.

Mike noticed that when he shouted, their tails stood almost straight up as though at attention, but they kept moving.  “Yaw! Yaw! Git outta hear!”  Mike drew nearer and nearer to the one on the left, as Rob fell further behind.

Mike thought he was doing a pretty good job, but then the lead skunk, on the left, closest to Mike, turned and stopped.  Rob seeing that his friend was about to get into a “conversation”  he’d later regret, finally decided it was time to act.  He would just toss a rock at them to spook them away.

Like a bullet cutting through the wind, Mike hear the whiz of Robin’s rock as it zipped past him.  Rob had a problem NOT hitting whatever he was aiming at.

Rob’s rock hit the little guy right between the eyes.  The skunk almost did a flip, fell right over on its back, and in its last living moment gave Mike a gift that kept on giving.  Spray, spray, spray, spray, were its final pulses of revenge.

Then, the poor skunk lay lifeless, at Mike’s feet  …  and Mike was … no longer a welcome hunting partner that day.

Not so uncommon, but entirely true Story from about 1969.

This post was submitted by Mike Strong.