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My Woodchuck Hunting Memories --
My most hilarious woodchuck propping-up prank!
Foreword:
As I mentioned in my first email to you (copied forward
below), I grew
up in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate/Central New York
State. For
those who have never been there, many mistakenly think New
York is all
city sidewalks, skyscrapers, and the like. However, New
York's Finger
Lakes Region has some of the most beautiful woods, lakes,
streams,
rolling green hills and valleys, rich soil, patchwork
farming
countryside, herds of white-tailed deer, fishing and
hunting, as well as
numerous scenic state parks, this side of heaven itself.
Just do a
search for "Finger Lakes, NY" on the Internet and you'll
see.
Anyway, that's where I grew up and hunted since I was a
youngster, old
enough to have a gun. By the way, with all due respect to
any of my
liberal friends, you'll be hard-pressed to find very many
liberals in
that area (rural NY), except maybe for some of a bygone era,
mostly just
us red-neck farmer types. Most of the libs are in the larger
cities,
which usually carries the New York State vote. Mention NY
Senator
Hillary Clinton to my buddies back there and you'd better
duck, cause
no-one knows anyone who voted for her, or her husband for
that matter.
And, if they did, they won't admit it.
The Setting:
Back to my story about my most hilarious woodchuck
propping-up prank.
It was a sunny and balmy spring afternoon, and I was out
prowling the
back roads near home in my 1963 Corvette Stingray
Split-window Coupe,
looking for chucks. I had my "beloved" .220 Swift on a
semi-bull
barreled pre-'64 Winchester model 70, tucked away (unloaded)
in a spot
alongside my driver's side bucket seat, the 26" stainless
steel barrel
extending forward into the foot well, alongside my left leg.
I turned
off the main road onto a dirt road that headed down a valley
alongside
Little Salmon Creek, Genoa Township, Southern Cayuga County.
To my left, was a hill with a pasture, spotted here and
there with locust trees.
Ah-ha! I always get excited when I see my next chuck. There
he was,
towards the top of the hill, sunning and grooming himself,
laying on the
mound of dirt alongside his hole... not a care in the world.
He was far
enough away so that my idling down the dirt road below did
not arouse
any suspicion.
The Shot:
I pulled over on the shoulder and stopped, cut the engine,
and pulled
out the Swift, as well as the small throw-pillow I always
kept for just
such occasions. I checked up and down the road again, then
laid the
small throw-pillow across the car door's window sill, before
raising the
rifle into place across the pillow, barrel protruding out
the window. I
noted that there was plenty of grassy hillside left behind
the chuck to
form a safe backstop. One last spot check in the rear-view
mirror for
any oncoming traffic... I chambered a shell... picked the
chuck up again
in the scope's cross-hairs... a few slow breaths, and
1-2-threee ...
/Wham! / Two-hundred and some yards and a couple of
nanoseconds later,
the chuck jerked violently backwards off of his perch, stone
dead, with
a gapping hole across his chest where his lungs and heart
used to be
moments before, left by the super-fast 48 grain Swift
factory load,
angrily exploding its way through awaiting woodchuck flesh.
I exited my Vette, crossed the road, traversed the ditch and
fence, and
scaled the steep hillside. There he lay, one more spent
chuck. I
surveyed the damage, and realized that this chuck had enough
body and
frame left to prop up for future target practice by the
unsuspecting--a
prank I always delighted in setting up. I walked across the
hillside a
few yards and chose a suitable forked branch from under one
of the
nearby locust trees. After snapping off excess lengths, I
was left with
the perfect woodchuck prop-up tool. The soil was moist and
soft, and
the long end of the stick sunk in nicely, leaving the
vertical V-crotch
about a foot off the ground. After hanging the chuck on the
device with
the crotch under his armpits, the thing seemed to come back
to life
again as it "stood" there, silently scanning down across the
valley with
now-sightless eyes. Getting back into my Vette, I took one
last glance
before continuing on. Yep, he'll do just fine, I assured
myself.
A couple of weeks later, I was in the local, small-town
grocery store.
As I stood in line, I recognized one of the local farmers
whom I knew,
in line just in front of me. He turned and we made small
talk as we
waited. "What are you doing these days?" he asked.
"Oh, not much," I said, "been doing a little woodchuck
hunting now and again."
"Interesting you mention that," he returned.
"Why so?" I asked, wondering what was coming next.
My farmer friend went on to relate a really weird (his
words) event that
occurred a few days before. The man explained that he was
fitting one
of his fields with a disk plow, getting ready to plant.
Roots had
gotten caught in one section of the plow, so he pulled the
tractor up
alongside the edge of the field, which was at the top of a
hill,
overlooking a valley, and proceeded in clearing out the
plow. He
continued, "I got all the roots and debris out and tossed
them over the
fence, into my pasture.
"As I did, I noticed a lone woodchuck a few yards down the
hill. He was
up on his haunches, looking at something down the valley.
Strangest
thing, that chuck never reacted, obviously unaware of my
presence. I
stepped back into the field and picked out a good-sized
rock, went back
to the fence, took aim, and heaved it at that chuck. Again,
I was
amazed. I missed him by only inches, but that thing never
moved a
muscle. I got a few more rocks, and finally struck him with
one... "
By this time, I realized that this farmer was describing the
very same
dead woodchuck that I had propped up a week or so earlier on
the grassy
hillside pasture. An amused smile began to form on my face,
but I was
able to hold back a laugh.
He continued, "After the rock hit the woodchuck, he just
fell over,
dead. As I crossed the fence, and got close enough to survey
the
situation, I saw why that chuck was so oblivious to my
presence... he
was already dead, for goodness sakes! Someone had shot that
thing and
propped him up on a stick."
The farmer began to chuckle at himself at that point in his
story, which
gave me opportunity to break my silence and laugh along with
him. "Have you every seen such a thing?" he asked me point
blank, staring into my eyes, which must have finally given
me away. After all, I did have somewhat of a reputation.
"Did you do that?" he queried, with a big smile breaking
across his face.
That was it. I finally grinned in that special tell-tale way
that
belied my guilt. I was somewhat ashamed of myself that he
was the one
that had fallen for my prank, and not some hunter. "Well,
I've been
known to do that sort of thing from time to time," I
half-confessed. My
farmer-friend was a good sport, and wasn't the least bit mad
that the
joke was on him. Like all farmers, he was thankful that
there was one
less woodchuck to reproduce, eat his crops, and dig
dangerous holes in
his pastures, holes that can easily break the legs of his
cattle if they
step into the hole in the wrong way... which usually means
the animal
must be put down.
A true account that occurred in 1965, as related by Ron
Myers
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