West Texas Hunter

I spent a lot of time, as a 12 year old boy does, thinking about hunting and fishing. Maybe all boys don’t but I did as did all of my friends. Reading any outdoor magazine I could get my hands on. I would read every article, letters to the editors and then start on every advertisement in the last 6 or 8 pages of the publication.

I had graduated the previous Christmas from being the owner of a pellet gun (a gun for boys) to being able to carry a .22 (a much more mature and serious hunting gun). The possibilities now included not just plinking cans but planning serious outings for rabbit and squirrel and varmints. I talked to Dad about varmint hunting and got him to read an article where the coyotes and fox were lured in by calling with a rabbit call. How to get one?

In the back of Field N Stream or Sports Afield I found an simple 2 or 3 inch add for a sure-fire varmint call guaranteed to drive coyotes wild and they would practically run right up to you.

I was sold. I got an envelope and stamp from Mom, carefully cut out the ad complete with shipping label and mailed in the 3 one dollar bills the instructions called for. Then waited.

A couple of weeks of checking the mail every day I received the purchase and have it to this day…65 years later. My Weems Wildlife Call. I could tell countless stories of hunts with my Dad and by myself where I was a successful hunter and even more where I wasn’t. But much of my interaction with the outdoors began with this call in my pocket.

A night in 62 I went alone out on a piece of Lee Moore’s land (Roby) I had permission to hunt. I got into a spot I had selected in the daylight and waited a good 15 minutes before I started to blow the call. This night as soon as I started the call I heard this wild commotion getting closer and closer to me. It got so loud I switched on my flashlight. About 30 feet away was a Herford bull that appeared to be as startled as I was. That may have been the shortest hunting trip I ever had.

Another night Dad and I were using a light clipped to the battery of his 55 Ford station wagon. We were on the spooky side of Lake Stamford just sitting in the car on the road and calling. We were getting eyes but couldn’t get them to come in. We were going to move a little further down the road and try there. We just left the light hooked up and as we moved Dad got a little too fast and the air lifted the hood and it folded back on the windshield. That may have been the most expensive trip we ever had.

Notice the lack of a zip code, the zone number and a state abbreviation of TEX. Simpler times.

PS – This Christmas of “24” as my gift to my remaining son-in-law Fritz Richards. I am giving this little piece of my boyhood along with it’s story. Hopefully, sitting on a shelf or his desk he will occasionally look at it and remember being a boy in west Texas.