Arsenal in the Hall

Some of you may remember living during the Great Depression but I was surrounded by the Tahoe National Forest in C'ville during that time. Venison, deer meat, was part of the diet of the natives, in or out of season for some of them. I never really liked it for it didn't taste right the few times we were able to put it on the table. For the longest time Pop had a borrowed .22 caliber rifle around the house with some 12 or 15 cartridges on a shelf under the mirror in the kitchen. Pop claimed he was the only one that could get a deer in that neck-o-the-woods with a .22. I don't every remember that he ever provided the table with venison for which I was grateful.

I never had any desire to go deer hunting even with my .22 caliber Wards Winchester, bolt action, tubular magazine, which holds a lot of Long rifle slugs. Leland and I went rabbit hunting with our .22s but after a week of this and seeing only one rabbit we gave up! Leland always had access to an arsenal in the hall by the stairs in his house for all the people who went deer hunting.

The Butzes always went out with 2 adult and 2 kids licenses for deer hunting and hoped to get 6 deer to preserve for the remainder of the year's meat supply. They had access to an arsenal too. I remember little Freddy shooting a deer and hitting it in the horn which knocked the deer out! Fred put his tag on it and the deer recovered and disappeared over the hill with Fred's tag on it! A barrage of shots indicated to Fred that someone saw 'his' deer. Fred arrived on the scene to see another hunter lean over to tag the deer. "That's my deer!" Fred screamed. "See my tag on it?" The hunter let the 13-year-old keep it.