First Duck Hunt

If I were ever on a deserted island, I would want to be with John Hill. He was the real MacGyver. This man could fix anything, and he could make useful things out of a pile of junk. We know the expression “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Well, when thinking of Mr. Hill I would say, “Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder.” And, Mr. Hill would say, “You look at some of my stuff and call it a pile of junk, but I look at it and think of all the things that I can make with that stuff.”

Someone had thrown away a shotgun that was in a house fire, and Mr. Hill picked it up and took it home. It was an old JC Higgins bolt action 16-gauge shotgun. He refinished all the metal pieces and replaced the wood stock on the gun. I bought that old shotgun from Mr. Hill and still have it today.

The first time I used that 16-guage was on a duck hunt with Mr. Hill. I had never hunted ducks, so I was excited. The Yazoo River was backed up into the farmland because the Mississippi River was at flood stage. We boarded Mr. Hill’s flat-bottomed wooden boat, which he had made himself, of course, and headed to a flooded soybean field. Mr. Hill told me that he would run at high speed into the feeding ducks, and I would shoot ducks as they took flight. It was fun, and I wished that I had an automatic shotgun instead of the bolt action. I could have killed a lot more ducks.

Abruptly, Mr. Hill killed the motor, and he told me to be quiet. After listening intently, he opened the throttle and hurried towards the flooded woods. We were at full speed and running over small trees as if we were either chasing someone or someone was chasing us. I was frightened that we were going to crash into one of those trees.

Again, Mr. Hill suddenly stopped the motor, and we sat idly in the shallow water deep into the woods. Finally, I had an opportunity to talk to him, and I asked, “What’s going on?” He then told me that he thought the game warden was after us. I asked him why and what we had done wrong. It was then that I learned that it was illegal to flush ducks and shoot them from a moving boat. Plus, I found out later that I was supposed to have a duck stamp to legally hunt ducks. I could not believe that I had been breaking the law.

From that point on whenever I went hunting or fishing with Mr. Hill, I made sure that I had all the proper licenses and stamps and that we followed all the regulations.