After 40 hrs of straight though driving, I made it back to UT at 4:00am Saturday morning. Just enough time to change clothes, throw some gear in my pack, grab my rifle and head to the trailhead for UT rifle elk opener. Hunting was a bust, as I spent most of the morning fading in and out of sleep. Had a few does walk in on me, but that was it.
I’m going to be crazy busy for the next couple of months, so I decided to take the day off from hunting to unload and unpack from the trip. Quite a lot of memories to sort though. The best is that I was able to recover the shotgun I learned to hunt with. This 20 gauge single shot made by Iver Johnson Arms and Cycle Works originally belonged to my grandfather and was handed down to my dad as his first gun and then handed down to me and my brothers, although I claimed it as my own when I was kid. Never killed a deer with it, but it removed a large number of squirrel and rabbits, and even a few grouse and raccoon, in my hands. I loved hunting with this gun, and if my memory is correct, I was pretty accurate with it. For a birthday in my teens, I somehow convinced my dad to buy me a Remington 1100. I remember him saying many times after that how much more accurate I was when I only had one shot! As fate would have it, the 1100 was not there.
The gun appears to be in decent shape. The break is a little stiff but hopefully nothing a little oil and some use won’t fix. I’m anxious to shoot it, but even more looking forward to my son shooting it and eventually handing it down to him.
I was also able to recover my dad’s .22 Ruger revolver - still in the original leather holster with cartridge belt. I used to love it when my dad would let me wear this in the woods. I felt like the cowboys that I watched (and wanted to be) on TV.
I was also able to recover a few other shotguns, but none that held the personal meaning of the two guns above. My dad also had a 30-30 Winchester lever action rifle that I was hoping to retrieve, but it was not there. We didn’t use that gun much since there wasn’t much you could legally hunt in OH with a high powered rifle, but that gun had the same “cowboy” effect on me, and I loved it when we’d take it out to shoot cans and milk jugs.
And now the finale - my dad’s whitetail mount. This is special to me for a number of reasons, which I may cover in a prologue post. Bottom line is that it’s special to me because it was special to my dad. This deer shaped a lot of his life and service, and that’s how I want to remember him. He was most happy when he was either hunting or doing the myriad of other things related to it. Having this on my wall now will allow me to remember him for his passions.
The above picture represents 3 generations of hunting. My dad’s whitetail at the center, muley’s on the left that my son and I took on his very first hunt ever last year, and another whitetail that was taken by my brother. I’m proud to have them all now adorning the wall of my home!
Overall it was a good trip and I’m glad I did it. It was filled with memories of the past, some happy some painful, and even new memories for the future since I was able to spend some quality time in the outdoors with my kids. 4,800 miles of driving over 10 days. Saw a lot of beautiful country, more MAGA signs than I could imagine, and even the results of some successful hunting. Passed this truck headed east somewhere in Nebraska. Not a bad haul...
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