The Bird Hunting Story.

My first youngest brother always seemed to have something either happening to him or going on around him. When he was perhaps 10 or 11 he wanted to go dove hunting with a family friend. They had gone out to a field by our house. It was a large rolling field with a stand of woods on one side and surrounded by bobwire. Oscar our friend, was one of the college basketball players from the local college, and looked more to be a pro football player. I’d say he was probably six feet eight inches tall and weighed around two hundred and sixty pounds. He took my brother out to the field and had told my brother to stay in this one spot and not to move. So some time passes and my younger brother became tired of sitting in one spot and thought he would move to a better spot. My younger brother knew better than this, and it is a cardinal rule when hunting in a group not to move away from your designated area. Well as you would expect Oscar shot at some doves, and he ended up hitting my brother. My brother stands up in the tall grass and starts yelling, “Oscar you’ve killed me”. Oscar seeing what happened drops his shotgun and runs to my brother. He picks him up and starts running back to the house. Fdad said he saw Oscar running through the field with my brother in his arms, and that he cleared a four-foot tall bobwire fence and never slowed down. The entire time my brother is yelling “Oscar you killed me and Oscar is yelling, ”I killed him”. They get into the house and both of them are yelling the “You killed me/I killed him” thing until my father finally got them quieted down some. They were all frightened at first until they got all the blood cleaned off my brothers face. Fdad saw my brother wasn’t seriously hurt, but he had some bird shot in his face. He takes my brother to the doctor and Oscar is at the house crying his eyes out saying over and over, I’ve killed him. The doctor gets some of the pellets out, but some he couldn’t. Fmom was saying Oscar never did stop crying until my brother came back from the doctor, and he finally saw he was all right. Now my brother could have been seriously hurt, but he wasn’t, and it has since become a family joke of Oscar carrying my brother in his arms across the field, and my brother yelling you killed me and Oscar yelling I killed him.

Isn’t it funny how we can take something that could have been a horrible accident, and when everything turns out OK, we make a joke of it. I guess that’s part of human nature. All of that pent up horror and fright has to go somewhere, so when things turn out good, laughing and making a joke of it is the only release. Anyway, I’m glad my brother was OK, and 35 years later we can still laugh and make a joke of it.