Straight shooter – part 5

Straight shooter - part 1
Straight shooter - part 2
Straight shooter - part 3
Straight shooter - part 4

by Tom Gaylord

"Do you think a rabbit is as hard to kill as a rat?"

Mom allowed as how it probably was even harder to kill a rabbit than a rat—even a big one.

Dad got up from the table and went up to the attic, where we heard him bumping around for a few minutes. Neither me nor my mother knew what he was up to. When he returned, he had a box of old pictures. In it he found an old-time picture of a boy holding a BB gun and standing next to a large dead rabbit.

"That's a picture of me when I was eight years old. My mother bought me a Sentinel BB gun to help keep rabbits out of her vegetable garden one summer. She thought I would just sting them with it, but I soon learned my gun well enough to kill them dead with one shot to the head. She was so proud of me that she had this picture taken with my first kill. If it hadn't been in the summertime, I think we would have eaten that rabbit and all the others I shot, as well.

I was stunned! My dad had been the same kind of boy all my friends were and I never knew it. He had a gun that he learned as well as they all knew theirs and he used to take big rabbits with it. I knew he was a good shot from our time at the quarry, but I had no clue he was that good.

My mom must have been impressed, too, because she said yes to my getting a gun right away. In fact, she went along with me and dad when we went into town to buy it. We looked at lots of BB guns in several different stores and the one we settled on was a Daisy model 25 pump. According to the man at the store, Daisy had just made it easier to cock, and it already had a reputation as one of the hardest-shooting BB guns ever made.

I told him I wanted to shoot lead shot in it, and he turned to my dad and said, "Your boy here knows a lot about BB guns. This gun is made to shoot lead shot only, which is why it is so accurate and powerful. I think this is the gun you want."
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