An old hunter finds his tricks right where he left them By Yours Truly

As a young lad I'll never forget the day my dad broke down and got me a daisy BB gun. I was 9 and perhaps the proudest little guy you had ever laid eyes on. I spent the whole ride home from K-mart reading the instructions and getting ready for my first test shots. Seconds took hours and moments were days as I played the shootout in my head.
Up until this point my weapons were limited to home made bows, sling shots and spears. I probably had more power in them then the dinky BB gun was holding, but this was cold blue steel. It would take direction at my command and strike true if I so desired. My dad taped a target to the shed and got out of the way. I raised the gun, aimed and winced as I anticipated the recoil of such a devastating weapon. As I pulled the trigger, the BB struck true and instead of a high force impact the BB came right back at me and hit me in the leg with the energy of a June beetle. I didn't care, I had a gun. Also, I was hooked.
I spent a lot of time shooting BBs through one gun or another. In fact the shed took on a rust color from all the BBs embedded in it. I graduated from Daisy's to Crosman's and started to get some real power. Squirrels were Big Game then and a gun was judged on whether or not it could take a squirrel. I took my first squirrel at my grandfather's house in Jersey. I spotted the little grey atop a black pine and fired. The BB from my trusty 760 struck true and the nutcracker leaped into the dense side of the tree. Now I was alone and most of you know how hard it is to get a squirrel to stay on one side of the tree long enough to shoot him clean. Well, I was alone and had to improvise. For my 12 years of age I was surprisingly well read on the subject of small game hunting techniques. I remembered that if you had two people the other guy would go to the other side of the tree and the squirrel would get shot as it tried to move again.
I didn't have another guy with me but there were a lot of rotten logs laying around. I decided to throw a heavy one that would create a nice thump on the other side of the trunk. I heaved and readied my Crosman as the log was in midair. It hit with a thump and the squirrel came right round to my side of the tree. "Smack!", The second BB hit him right between the shoulders and he flinched and went right round to the other side again. As you can imagine I played this routine out another 40 times from tree to tree. Finally, with my neck aching from peering skyward he made his fatal move. The squirrel moved out onto the light branches and was silhouetted against the sky. He was going to run for it. "Smack!", another BB struck home. Three shots later and he fell. He gave up his grip on the tree tops with all the majesty of King Kong and he fell in slow motion. It had been over an hour since I first shot him and when he hit the ground, it was over. He was dead.

My Grandfather helped me skin the squirrel so that I would be able to stretch and keep the pelt as a trophy. As we removed it's hide it was apparent why it took so long to take this squirrel. The BB's were lodged just under the skin. They had not penetrated the flesh and there were at least 30 of them. My grandfather was kind when he said. "You didn't shoot this squirrel, you beat him to death." Truthfully, he was right. And although my gun did not have the right power, I had done a good job. My shots were all true, I had pursued the injured animal and I used what I learned from books to keep me on him. Despite everything I was proud. My tactics had worked. The 760 became a target rifle after that and I moved on to the 766 then a Sheridan and then shotguns and so on. And many a squirrel I took.

For about ten years though, I focused on other things besides shooting and hunting and kind of let it drift into fond memories and hopeful reunions. But, Inevitably, I recently found myself alone in the woods. There was a squirrel on the other side of the tree. In my left hand I held my RWS 52. In my right, the weapon of choice was an old rotted log about to be tossed to the other side of a tree.

Happy hunting