Below is an article that I started the other day. I haven't had any luck coming up with a title (maybe y'all can help me out).
By Jim Toney
For as long as I can remember, I have had a love for the outdoors. My earliest memories are those of hunting and fishing in northern California with my dad. Even though my folks divorced before I could pack a BB gun, my dad saw to it that I was raised in the field.
Although our time together was mostly limited to weekends, my dad mad good use of that time when teaching me the ways of the outdoors. I looked forward to every outing as if it were Christmas morning.
I can remember the brisk mornings of steelhead fishing in the Sacramento River or the evenings spent guarding pond levies against the seemingly endless air assault of the mourning doves. I treasure the memories of the all night catfishing trips at Black Butte Lake. I can still remember the smell of the Mullen on the hot summer nights as we drove the back roads in search of rattlesnakes.
Something that I didn’t realize back then was that with each outing there was a new lesson to be learned, a memory to be made. Lessons and memories that I would one day look back on and appreciate.
My dad was my hunter’s safety instructor. Not the one that could pass or fail me on a test, but the one really mattered. If I didn’t meet with his approval, I lost my gun privileges. If he caught me being unsafe, I got “thumped”. And I did too, on more occasions than I care to admit.
Not only did he teach me to be safe, he taught me how to shoot. At an old shooting range just off Jelly Ferry road, we shot countless rounds of twenty two ammo into targets nailed to a big old oak tree. You can’t shoot there anymore and that oak finally fell over but that turn out still has a special spot in my memory.
Did I mention how I learned to drive? My driving lessons took place on just about every back road in Tehama County. The first time I was ordered into the driver’s seat, I could barely reach the pedals. With just the right amount of padding under and behind me, I could reach the pedals and see over the dash. By the time I was ten I could take us just about anywhere that we wanted to go.
I got my first shotgun the year that I turned ten, a single shot 410. I’ll never forget the first hunt with that gun.
We went up to the black oak thicket just below East Low Gap for gray squirrel and mountain quail. It was late fall and pretty cool up there in the high country. My dad was shooting his old tube fed semi-auto .22 and I was tot’n my newly acquired scatter gun. I walked right beside my dad as we stalked through the black oaks in search of squirrels. I shot my first gray squirrel that day and it only took me a half a box of shells.
Nowadays my dad doesn't do much but sit in a bar. It breaks my heart to see a man sitting in a bar when all his kid wants to do is go hunting with his dad.
I'd give an arm if I could go out and jump ponds for ducks with my dad just one more time.
I don't take my kids out on every hunt but I do take them out often. AW