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When I was just out of High School...1965...my buddy, Dave, wanted to go deer hunting but didn't have a rifle. I borrowed a "smelly" Enfield from another friend for Dave, and we took out for a place I knew along the Walker River.

We were there just at sunrise and spotted a little fork mule deer just below a big brushy area on a small plateau...about 60 yards away.

Dave opened up and emptied the entire magazine...reloaded and emptied it again.

Somewhere through all this he had managed to gut shoot that magnificent stag, all 75 pounds of him...dripping wet.

Well, two magazines gone = one box of ammo out the tube, and Dave looked at me. I told him "Keep your fu..ing hands off my rifle. I only brought one box, too!"

Dave was a burley, if not too bright, guy who often took rather direct approaches to whatever endeavor was at hand. He dropped the Enfield and went into the thicket after the gut shot "Bambi".

I sat down on the nearest soft rock and listened to the battle royal that ensued...dust flying and limbs crackling for what seemed an eternity. In all actuality it was all of a minute or so.

Then I heard a blood curdling "Godamsunofbch!..whamp...thud..."...then silence...

I waited long enough to eat my candy bar, all properly melted in my warming pocket, then ventured into the thicket...

There was a small clearing dead center in the thicket where I found Dave flat on his back, out cold, two hoof prints on his shirt just below the right rib cage, arms straight out at his sides as if he was trying to be a cross...deer hair in each hand.

The poor little buck was standing at the edge of the brush, rumpled all to hell and panting. I promptly dispatched the poor fella with a neck shot at the base of the head so as to not ruin any more meat than Dave already had.

This shot woke Dave, and I told him he had gotten his first deer...heaping praise on him...full of barbs, however.

When deer season came around the next year, Dave asked to borrow the same rifle he had been so successful with the year before. We headed back up the Walker to the scene of the previous crime.

This year I was ready for Dave...I handed him the same "smelly" Enfield, TWO boxes of ammo...then fixed a BAYONET to the rifle!

Dave to this day has never seen any humor in the gesture...

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