One up on Dad

Gotta wonder if, 40 years down the road, will he remember yesterday?

His daddy and I certainly hope so. We’re gonna remember it for a long time.

Sitting here racking what passes for a brain, I vaguely remember the first critter I put paid to. A coral snake. I stomped it to death in Athens. Barefoot, I’m told. That was just the first in a long line of critters which have met their demise directly or indirectly by my hand. My initiation into the society of hunters was not a matter of putting meat on the table, but rather rescuing my slightly older cousin Shoan from the snake. Chivalry in a 4 year old.

Sunday afternoon, my 4 year old nephew Jake Baker entered the fraternity of hunters. He killed an 85 pound wild hog. Not too shabby for a a fellow half the size of the hog holding a gun nearly as long as he was tall.

The first shot was a bit far back. The hog jerked aside as he was shooting. Second shot right through the boiler plate. The hog turned, his back legs wobbled. He turned again, jumped and collapsed. Dead hog. His daddy put an insurance shot through the spine at the base of the head. Since this is for a historical record of sorts, I helped Jake shoot the hog while his Dad observed.

His Dad, btw, has never killed a hog. Jake has now done something his father has not. His Dad wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you are a dad worthy of the name, you understand. If you are not a dad, then you don’t understand.

The hog was caught by a friend whose donated a number of wild hogs to me over the years. When I got the call, I asked Jake if he wanted to shoot it. He did.

On the way to collect the hog, it morphed, in Jake’s mind into a duck.

“Will it fly?” he asked.

He worried about being able to kill it.

“Can I have three tries?” he asked.

At the woods, the he saw the hog.

“That’s a pig,” he said.

For those wondering, a pig is a domestic animal. Unless you are fortunate, all your pork products come from a pig. A hog is a wild animal, generates bred in the wild from domestic pigs which got loose or were turned loose. If you are fortunate, you have pork products which come from wild hogs.

On the way back to his grandmother's, it morphed again into a guinea pig.

We skinned and quartered the hog at my house, pulling the tenderloins which went to his grandmother’s house and were cooked with the rest of supper. Everyone got a bite.

That's the way it should be. Hunters provide for their family.