Our World Without Shotguns

by Gene Hill

As a man unfortunate enough to have to plod shamefully through life without a nice side-by-side 28-gauge, or even a decent boxlock 12 (28-inch barrels, straight grip, bored improved-cylinder and modified), I have long periods of time when I feel a little sorry for myself. It was one of these low periods when I was wishing I had a little more money or a little more common sense (asking for both would be too much) that I began wondering what our world would be like if there weren't any shotguns.

I doubt if we'd have any Labradors, goldens, Brittanies, springers, setters, pointers, shorthairs, or beagles if there were no shotguns.

We wouldn't have field trials, duck clubs, or all those nifty-looking pins for our hats. We wouldn't collect shooting sticks, shell bags, tweed hats, leather boots, duck calls, or flasks if there weren't shotguns.

Without shotguns, there wouldn't be any skeet (I wouldn't miss high 5, though), trap, quail walks, wipe-your-eye, high tower, or pasture afternoons with a hand trap.

We'd never know the joy of fried rabbit, honey-glazed mallard, fricasseed squirrel with dumplings, roast goose, fried quail, broiled dove, or pheasant with sauerkraut and sausage if it weren't for the shotgun.

There wouldn't be any Hennessey duck marshes, Reneson grouse covers, Maass canvasbacks, or Ripley woodcock if they didn't have shotguns.

Would we have L. L. Bean, Orvis, Gokey, Dunn's, or Woolrich? I doubt it. We wouldn't have the neighborhood sports shop to hang around in and gab, much less Wild Wings, Crossroads of Sport, Collectors Covey, Sportsman's Edge, and the others who have the carvings and sculpture and the art that all came about just because of the shotgun.

There wouldn't be any thick coffee cups with wood ducks or puppies on them. No camouflage neckties, red flannel shirts, shooting vests, or heavy parkas. Easton, Maryland; Grand Junction, Tennessee; Vandalia, Ohio; or Stuttgart, Arkansas, would each be just another small American town.

None of these names would mean anything to you either: Nash Buckingham, Burton Spiller, Corey Ford, Havilah Babcock, Ed Zern, Robert Ruark, Archibald Rutledge, Eugene Connett, Dave Newell, or John Alden Knight. And Samson, Reiger, McManus, Trueblood, Barrett, and Brister would likely be names on a factory timecard.

Whose pulse would quicken at the morning call of bob-white, bob-white, or the evening song of geese or the chatter of mallards. The pheasant, chukar, wild turkey, and a host of others would just be pictures in dusty books.

There wouldn't be any reason to get up and have a diner breakfast with your buddies at 4 a.m. Or learn to make sandwiches two inches thick, or carry an extra candy bar. We wouldn't dream about sink boxes, Barnegat Bay scullers, or layout blinds. Or find any delight in a November northeast wind. I know I'd miss the arguments about 3-inch magnums, 2s versus 4s, and the virtues of copper over lead. I wouldn't own six pairs of long johns, wouldn't care about not being able to find my handwarmers or whatever happened to my sheepskin mittens. I'd probably have a car in my garage instead of piles of decoys and an olive-drab boat. And I wouldn't have a hole in my rug, a chewed-up chair, and three ruined pairs of shoes either, because I wouldn't have Maggie.

I'd never have spent any time looking for abandoned farm orchards, alder swamps, or spring-run pastures. There wouldn't be any old collars and dog bells in the barn, and I'd have no reason to turn my head and blow my nose if someone started to talk about Little Ben, Daisy, Belle, Rocky, or Tip. My suits wouldn't be all covered with dog hair, my car seats wouldn't be muddy and torn, and there wouldn't be a special stone or tree here and there in my lawn. I'd never have had the sun in my eyes, my pants hung up on barbed wire, or the safety on. Sixes, 7 1/2's, and 8s might only mean hat sizes.

Who would have thought of building a hollow-cedar Canada, making a root-head swan, or a sleeping black duck? Why bother with carving a dainty, slender wooden yellowlegs or turnstone? How much poorer we would have been without the likes of the Wards, Elmer Crowell, Shang Wheeler, or Ira Jester. What would be magic about the Susquehanna Flats or Merrymeeting Bay or Tule Lake?

Fred Kimble, Doc Carver, Adam Bogardus, Annie Oakley, or Rudy Etchen might have taken up golf.

A hundred thousand Englishmen and Scots would be playing cricket, or worse, tennis, on the twelfth of August.

Opening day wouldn't have any special meaning except for worm fishermen and baseball fans. Oliver Winchester would be famous for sewing machines, Remington for the typewriter, and the brothers Parker for coffee grinders. I might have a car less than seven years old if it weren't for Lefever, Baker, Smith, Greener, Hussey, etc., and just possibly a savings account.

I wouldn't have a dozen coats that are fit only for duck blinds or briars, and only a couple for weddings and funerals. I wouldn't have eight pairs of boots and only two pairs of good shoes--one brown, one black. Ninety-five percent of my neckties wouldn't have birds or dogs (or chili) on them. And most of my vests, hats, and raingear wouldn't be camouflage.

No shotguns, no poetry. No shotguns, no exuberant competition. No shotguns, no silent days alone, or with a dog, to merely walk and think. Take the shotguns from my life and take the books that go with them. Take the paintings and the etchings and bronzed pointing setters and Labs with a proudly carried duck. Take my decoys and my marsh boat and my string of calls. Take my old photographs of friends at gun clubs and duck camps and at the simple farms. Take my faded coats and briared boots and old soft hats. Take my whistles and dog bells and red and yellow field trial ribbons from their frames.

What friends I have, what days I treasure most, what places I think about and smile...these are because shotguns are. Without them I would have been empty. They have made my life full.

Nothing that I have is worth a lot, and yet nothing that I have is so priceless. The treasures are not the guns themselves, but what lies behind the doors they open.

As I write this I'm thinking about tomorrow. Toward late afternoon I'll take a gun and a dog and walk an hour, not caring all that much about the chances for a pheasant or an evening duck, but satisfied to have the heft of half a dozen shells, and to watch the puppy lark around a little. Behind the yellow lights of home are the voices from the pictures and books that never ask, "Did you get anything?" but always ask, "Did you have a good time?" And as I put the shotgun back in its corner I can always answer, "Yes."


Copyright 1989 Gene Hill. All Rights Reserved. This article appeared originally in Shotgunner's Notebook: The Advice and Reflections of a Wingshooter. The book is available from Countrysport Press.

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