Squirrel boy - part 2

by Tom Gaylord

Squirrel boy part 1



I hid my gun out in the garage behind a box next to the wall, and I kept some of the shot in a bag in my paper sack. On weekday evenings in the summer, I would take it to the vacant lots near our house and shoot at squirrels in the trees. It was hard to hit them, but I managed it a time or two, when I got close enough. They always dropped in their tracks with a good head shot.

One of my friends had a shooting range in his back yard and a lot of kids brought their guns over to have a try at it. His old man had hung big spoons and paint can lids in the tree branches and we could shoot at them as long as we liked because there was nobody living behind their property.

I remember one time a lot of us guys were shooting over there and the kid’s dad who built the range came out to see what we were doing. He wanted to try all our guns, so of course we let him. When he came to mine everyone warned him how powerful it was. Someone even blabbed that it was as powerful as a .22 on five pumps, so he said he believed he’d like to see that. We couldn’t very well shoot a .22 on his property, because they were just as much in town as my folks were, so he said we could go over to the city dump on Saturday. There it was okay to shoot .22s, and of course my gun as well.

So, we all loaded up in his truck on Saturday and went over to test the gun. When we got there, he lined up six tin cans at 25 feet and shot clean through all of them with his .22 Remington. Then it was my turn. I lined up another six cans of about the same size and shot into the front one. The lead BB didn’t even completely go through the front of that can, to say nothing of the ones behind. Boy, did I ever feel like a jerk! I guess I said something, but there was nothing I could say after bragging on my gun like that and then being shown up. I had believed the guy in the store, or at least I wanted to believe him so much that I kept repeating what I knew to be a lie. I guess that’s what a real sales job can do.

After the big question had been answered, we hung around the dump for a while and shot rats. I got six and my friend and his dad shot about 20 with their Remington. I think they felt sorry for me, except the father said he was impressed that my gun would kill a rat. I told him about all the squirrels I had killed in the vacant lot by my house, but my story lacked conviction, now that I had been proved a liar.

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