
Shotguns, I would knock the pheas- ant out of the sky After they would miss with their expensive I shot up an average of 500 rounds a month.īy age eleven I was so good with the little rifle that I would tag along with dad and his WWII buddies, pheasant He put his foot down at eating ground squirrels, blackbirds, and starlings on the deal. Whoa! WeĪte a lot of pigeons, rabbits, squirrels, an occasional quail and often pheasants that I had popped with the Sportmaster. Further, he made a deal he said he always regretted: In exchange for cleaning all the game that I shot, he shot, and his fiends shot, he would buy all of the ammo I wanted to shoot as long as I shot at least two edible critters per box of 50 shells. That was my first rabbit, and my first chance toīut only as a single shot. 22 and some shells, and he would let me shoot it. I spotted a cottontail sitting between the blades of a disk. I remember on a very cold and snowy day in 1950, my uncle Cato, my dad and I were working cattle in our small farm feedlot. By age seven, I had moved up to the powerful Daisy pump BB gun and was regularly bringing home pigeons and an occasional quail for the pot. When I was five, I got a Daisy BB gun, single shot, for my birthday and wore it out in a year and a half. Mom said I was born with a gun in my hand, and the first thing I remember doing was hunting a honey bee and catching it. Dad moved us to a farm west of Vinton when I was seven, with mom yelling all the way. Dad and I never agreed on much from the time I was a little kid. 22 rifle were all the guns a man ever needed. He occasionally declared that a 12 gauge shotgun and a. I don’t think it was new, because it had the original peep sight replaced with an open site.ĭad came back from WWII as a Truman Democrat. Army in September 1941 (just three months before Pearl Harbor),Ī Remington Model 341-P Sportmaster. He spent a lot of time doing his civic duties, including being a Scout Master for Boy Scouts, helping to organize a church, and eventually running for county attorney and winning as a Republican. But business was not great for a new lawyer in 1937. He set up his law practice in Vinton, Iowa, the county seat, and proceeded to try to make a living as The Great Depression wound down. My dad, Don Boddicker, graduated from the University of Iowa Law School in 1937.
