Back in the mid to late 1960’s my love for outdoors, hunting, fishing, and camping, was slowly awaking, helped no doubt by my two uncles, Kenny and Ronnie. Stints in the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts helped too. As did growing up with a five-acre woods in the backyard and a couple of farm ponds close by I’d sneak into. At Grandpa and Grandma’s farm in Adams County there were endless woods and fields to hunt rabbit, squirrel, and later deer and grouse, plus a couple of ponds here and there.
But in reality it was the gifts I received at Christmas from my parents and others that shaped me into what I am today. My parents were not wealthy and they must have sacrificed to buy three growing boys all that they desired. Yes, we all got the usual BB guns and warm clothes and socks for Christmas, but the gifts with meaning were the special ones, when parents got it perfect and it became a means by which to mold a young man.
There was a fishing show on TV back in the 60’s called “The Flying Fisherman” with Gadabout Gaddis who flew his plane to remote locations to fish. He mostly fly fished and caught trout, salmon, and bass on his adventures. That show got me hooked on fly fishing and someday I swore I’d be a pilot just like Gadabout and fly my plane to remote fishing spots. I don’t remember the year but for Christmas in a small box was one of the most cherished gifts I ever received and still have it today. It was a model 1494 Pflueger Medalist fly reel, and an 8-1/2 foot matching fiberglass Pflueger flyrod. In those days all fishing tackle was made in the U.S., France or Sweden. This rod and reel was made in Akron, Ohio. I wore the rod out a long time ago but the reel has held together well after catching maybe a thousand smallmouth bass from the East Fork of the Little Miami before there ever was a lake there.
One year for Christmas by parents gave me a Springfield model 67, 20 gauge pump shotgun with a modified choke. I liked the gun until I started hunting deer and soon found out I couldn’t hit a pile of dirt with a deer slug with that gun. After I missed a big drop tine buck back in the late 60’s, it had to go, and it was the only gun I ever traded off that I didn’t regret.
For Christmas one year I received a new Winchester model 290 semi-auto 22 cal. from my parents. It had a very nice walnut stock and later my Uncle Ronnie gave me a Weaver 4x scope to put on it. I squirrel hunted with that gun in the company of an old blue tic hound my uncle had named Joe. He was great squirrel dog and good hunting companion. Sometime during life I foolishly traded that rifle for a made in Japan Browning lever action BL-22, which I later traded for something else.
It was probably the Christmas of 1969, or maybe it was 1970, when my parents got for me a brand new beautiful Fred Bear Grizzly recurve in 45-pound pull and a dozen Bear cedar arrows. In those days Bear bows were made in Grayling Michigan. I still have the bow and a handful of those arrows, and I killed by first deer with it in 1972 at Fox Hill just north of West Union. I’ve been a bow hunter ever since that Christmas morning.
I also was the recipient of books for Christmas which I read cover to cover many times over. A couple of books I still have are “The Archer’s Bible” by Fred Bear published in 1968, and a signed copy of “The Deer Hunters Bible” by George Laycock. Inside the cover was written “To a real nice kid –Jerry, Carol Jean & Ronda, Christmas 1970”
Some of those people are gone now and I am reminded of them from these gifts that shaped my life and of Christmases past.
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