(Actually, this may have been) My First Gun

It might have been this one, not the Stevens I wrote about a couple days ago. Dad might know.  Anyway, as I said previously, I was raised in Africa, and like me most of the kids at the boarding school I attended had bb guns.  Mine was a Crosman Pumpmaster 760.  In fact, most of the kids owned Crosmans.  I don’t remember any other brand.  One kid had a one-pump rifle that had a pretty long range, but the one pump meant you didn’t have any power variance.  Mine, which was supposed to be pumped up to 10 times (for max—recommended—power), had a variance which I used to my advantage.  Though you weren’t supposed to pump it less than 3 times, I did.  And of course, even though you weren’t supposed to pump it more than 10 times, I did.  And though you CERTAINLY weren’t supposed to shoot more than one bb at a time, I did—a lot.  It felt as if I was shooting buckshot.  Which, to some degree, I was.  These loads were for “serious” game, such as squirrels and large rodents, and for hawks and other large birds.  The standard (one bb) load was for everything else. 

Anyway, here’s a story.  I was hunting with a teacher from the school—he took each of the 5 (or so) middle school boys out on a special night-time spotlight hunt, (up super, super-early, actually, and back after the sun came up).  So we tromped around in the bush for a while, haunted the rice swamps, and trekked over hill and dale (are there hills and dales in Africa?  I guess so).  Anyway, we saw a couple sets of too-distant shining eyes, and probably heard a few unseen animals moving quietly through the elephant grass near us.  Other than that, nothing.  So off we went on the frustrated trudge back up the hill that would bring us out past the schoolhouse, and then home.  As we walked along, I noticed a white flash in a tree close by.  Bird?  Beast?  I couldn’t tell, but it was surely not a monkey, of all things.  A monkey would have been out of that tree and running pell-mell for cover as the sight of two guys walking past the tree.  It stood in open ground, and anything in its branches would have seen us coming.  So, in my innocent junior-high boy way, I squeezed off a shot with my Crosman, hoping to hit whatever (bird?) it was.  Big mistake.  

Out of the tree jumped a Red Patas monkey, and it made off at about 100 miles an hour, scampering for cover.  Sure enough, Greg didn’t have enough time to acquire it and take a shot before it reached the closest treeline.  Needless to say, he wasn’t happy with me.  My argument went along the lines of what I just told you—no self-respecting monkey would wait for us to get that close before it took off.  In that case, then, the white splotch I could see in the tree couldn’t be a monkey.  So it had to be some sort of bird.  My fellow hunter looked at me as if he didn’t believe me.

So there is the story of The One That Got Away, of The Boy With A BB Gun Who Should Have Said Something But Didn’t.  I’m sure the monkey was quite startled and probably irritated by the bb.  Thank goodness he didn’t decide to take it out on me.  More than 25 years later I have the image of that tree and that white splotch stuck in my head.  I can still feel the surprise at what came out of the tree--and I can remember the shame at having said nothing before I pulled the trigger.  But it is what it is, yeah? 

Today’s Lesson: always know what you're shooting at, and always use the right tool for the job.