Mike Cox

When I was first becoming aware of the magic of Christmas, guns were acceptable Christmas gifts. TV and movie cowboys were our heroes, and they carried them and used them. Today, guns and hunting in general, are pretty much politically incorrect.

The first Christmas I remember was 1956. My brother and I were unable to sleep for much of the night. Finally, we drifted off only to wake up well before daylight.

We were forbidden from inspecting what Santa brought without waking our parents first. The initial glimpse was breathtaking. Dim shapes under the tree, glittering in blue, green, and red light, all of it reflecting off the fake icicles covering the tree. Initially, everything was perfectly still, then pandemonium claimed the early morning.

There was a cap pistol with holster and a cowboy hat waiting for me to discover it. Clothes and fruit were available along with toy cars and such. But a gun was what I wanted and what I got. Then, and many times later on.

Not only did my brother Rick and I kill all the bad guys in our neighborhood, we were allowed to strap our guns on and follow our father and uncle into the woods to hunt quail later in the year. I learned gun safety from those trips and also a lot about life in general.

After a few Christmases, we graduated to BB guns. Our mother, like everyone else’s, was afraid we would put someone’s eye out. But we survived. When I was 16, I began to go hunting with friends of mine. We were all sons of hunters and knew the laws and the responsibility associated with carrying a loaded gun into the woods.

We didn’t blast anything that moved or get frustrated at a lack of success and start killing people’s pets. Anti–hunting advocates depict all hunters as out of control killers, only interested in dead bodies. I never knew anyone like that.

For my Christmas present in 1966, my father gave me a Remington shotgun just like his. It was the best Christmas present I ever received, and to this day, I don‘t know how he found the money to buy it. I still have it, although it hasn’t been fired in 30 years. It sits, dusty and probably rusty, in the back of a closet, neglected, but not forgotten. I can’t imagine anything that could make me get rid of it.

Years after I stopped hunting with my friends, Dad and I would go together. We called it hunting, but it was really just walking through the woods with guns on our shoulders, talking. Some of my favorite days involved those times we spent wandering the old fields, discussing whatever came up.

Two years ago, my father told me he sure would like to shoot at a few quail. I checked the internet and found a place in south Alabama where we could go and watch the dogs hunt, hear a covey of quail flush, and maybe get a shot or two. I began to put my plan together. I would surprise him at Christmas, and we would go hunting in February.

It was one of the many things we didn’t have quite enough time to do. I don’t feel regret. He lived to be 81 and did more than most people do in a lifetime. He was having some stamina problems even before he was diagnosed with liver cancer so he might not have been able to follow a bird dog around an open field. But I sure wish I could have seen the look on his face when he opened the brochure.

There are many people today who oppose hunting and guns. The caricature of the bloodthirsty macho savage blasting everything indiscriminately has been gaining momentum in the last few decades. I’m sorry, but I never shared a campfire with that guy.

My hunting partner was a gentle soul who respected the woods and felt privileged every time he was there. He taught me to be a man and to respect nature. Hunting with my father will always be a Christmas memory for me, and I’m a better person because if it.