My First Shotgun 
Is There a Sportsman Who Does Not Remember His First Fowling Piece? 
OW many hunters, professional 
H:: amateur, remember the first 
gun they owned? Hands up, please. 
One, two, three, ten, twelve—just about 
unanimous, as I thought it would be. 
At a very early age I began to crave 
a gun, as most boys do, and, naturally, 
made my wants known to Dad. He, 
caring nothing for hunting or fishing, 
and being a little afraid of a gun, as 
well, refused my plea at first, but 
finally agreed that I might have a shot- 
gun when I reached the age of fourteen, 
provided I earned it for myself. 
I was not at all daunted by this con- 
dition, for, although boys did not then 
earn men’s wages, as they do now, 
neither did guns cost as much. I 
weeded gardens, cleaned yards, beat 
carpets, and did other kinds of work, 
sometimes receiving as much as five 
cents an hour, or fifty cents a day. 
For a long time I had a steady job 
driving a neighbor’s cow to pasture 
every morning and bringing her home 
at night for fifty cents a month. How- 
ever, as I had to drive our own cow to 
the same pasture, this was easy money. 
Of course, I spent some of my earn- 
ings as I went along, but when my 
fourteenth bithday anniversary arrived 
I had accumulated five dollars in real 
money, and knew just where I could 
go and get a gun for that amount. 
It was many, many ‘years ago that 
I came into possession of my first gun, 
but I will never, never forget that old 
Zulu, nor the pride and joy I felt as 
I carried it home. The Zulu was made 
by re-boring the old Springfield army 
rifle, of the vintage of ’61, I think. It 
took a 12-gauge cartridge, and was the 
most ungainly, ugly weapon that 
modern or semi-modern ages ever 
produced. 
N enormous breech block opened to 
one side and a backward pull on the 
block operated the ejector. The car- 
tridge slid down a declivity into the 
chamber, after which the breech was 
closed. The hammer was an enormous, 
unwieldly affair. I could never cock 
the gun with my thumb, but had to set 
the palm of my hand on the hammer 
and push it back. At the same time I 
was obliged to hold a finger on the 
trigger, or the click-click of the spring 
would frighten all the game within a 
hundred yards. I do not remember any 
of the dimensions of this old blunder- 
bus, but when I stood its square musket 
By W. L. RIDEOUT 
stock on the ground its muzzle stood 
considerably above my head. 
With the gun I obtained a reloading 
outfit and two brass shells. Squeezing 
a few stray nickels out of my bank I 
bought ten cents worth of shot, ten 
cents worth of powder and a box of 
primers, loaded the two shells and made 
a beel-line for the lake. 
In “them good ole days” game of all 
kinds was much more plentiful than it 
is to-day, and I was reasonably sure of 
finding a duck at almost any point on 
the lake shore. Sure enough, cutting 
through a vacant block in the outskirts 
of town, I spied a bunch of ten or 
twelve teal feeding inside the tules. 
Down I went on my hands and knees, 
slowly and noiselessly I crept toward a 
clump of willows, my heart thumping, 
my hands shaking, my knees wobbling 
around beneath me. Resting the gun 
across a fence board, I succeeded, after 
several attempts, in drawing a bead 
somewhere about the middle of the flock 
and pulled the trigger. 
HIS was my first shot with a gun of 
any kind, but I had gone through the 
motions hundreds of times. Whether 
or not I closed my eyes I do not remem- 
ber, but my aim was good, for after the 
smoke cleared away I waded into the 
lake and picked up four. nice birds 
which I carried home in high glee. 
But how that gun did kick! I was 
thin and bony and light in weight, and 
it nearly jarred my teeth loose. For a 
year or more, or until I traded it off, 
my shoulder and upper arm, and some- 
times my lower jaw, were black and 
blue. 
Daybreak, the next morning, found 
me in the hills back of town shaking 
with buck ague as I stalked a big, gaunt 
jack rabbit. I had to shoot him twice 
and, as this exhausted my ammunition 
supply, there was nothing to do but go 
home. I saw several other rabbits on 
my return, and nearly wept with vexa- 
tion because I had no more cartridges. 
So, before I went out again I made a 
game bag to sling over my shoulder in 
which I carried the reloading tools and 
a supply of ammunition. After firing 
two shots I would sit down, reload my 
two shells and go on. Later, I swapped 
some of my boyish possessions for ten 
more shells and then had enough to last 
a whole day. 
Father flatly refused to buy ammuni- 
tion for me, which was hardly fair as 
I always brought my game home and he 
usually ate his portion. Being habitu- 
ally short of spending money, I grew 
stingy in my shooting, never firing at a 
bird on the wing or an animal on the 
run. Not until I “grew up” and had 
opportunity to practice on clay pigeons 
did I learn to shoot bird flying; at that, 
I never became proficient and never 
will. 
B UT if I did not learn to match my 
quickness against that of the birds 
and beasts I hunted, I did at least match 
my cunning against theirs. I learned 
their habits, where they hid, where and 
when they fed; I learned to still hunt 
like an Indian, and to sit behind a 
stump for hours waiting for a covey of 
quail or a cotton tail to come out of the 
brush. I seldom failed to bring home 
good bags, and acquired quite a reputa- 
tion as a successful hunter. 
But I had to part with the old Zulu, 
and it came about in this wise: 
I read in a school book a statement 
to the effect that a tallow candle could 
be fired through an inch board. I did 
not believe it and set out to disprove 
the statement by actual demonstration. 
I could not insert a candle in the 
breech, on account of the incline that 
led to the chamber, and this was 
probably fortunate for me, as the gun 
was choke bored; so I scraped one down 
to 12-gauge and rammed it down the 
muzzle, put a whole shell full of 
powder in behind it and set out to try 
the charge on a fence board. 
To give the candle a fair chance I 
took my stand only about twenty feet 
frem the fence. The ground rose gently 
from me to the fence but fell away 
quite rapidly behind me, a fact which 
I did not notice at the time, but which 
was called to my attention a moment 
later. 
Y younger brother accompanied me, 
stationing himself a little to one 
side and watching intently to see the 
candle go by. He did not see the candle, 
but he did see me go by, head over 
heels and heels over head, twenty feet 
down the hill. And that Zulu, well 
named for a savage race of people, fol- 
lowed right after me, kicking me every 
time I rolled over. It kicked me in the 
side and on the jaw, made my nose 
bleed and nearly broke my jaw, while 
the trigger guard almost tore a couple 
of my fingers off my hand. 
(Continued on page 748) 
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