Minute Of Salmon

In the between times...

Before I left to join the Army, but after my mom decided that a pubescent boy was beyond her skill set...

I lived with my father.

He was even less prepared for my transition from boy to man than my mom.

I did not do this gracefully.

Happily, there was the husband of one of my step-mother's sisters.

Bob was insane.

Real insane.  PTSD from Vietnam insane.

This did not keep him from holding a good job.

This did not keep him from being a likeable chap.

It did not make him do anything that kept him from owning a gun.

It did keep him from bonding with most of the people closest to him.

But not me.

Bob loved hunting.

If it flies, it dies.  If it crawls it falls.

Name it and he was up to shooting it.

Most importantly, he didn't mind being around me and my endless gaming related questions about weapons and tactics.

Idiotic questions, I might add.

What fell out of this was my dad pawning me off on Bob whenever he could.

That lead to me tagging along on several hunting trips.

One of which was in Alaska.

I don't even remember what we were going to be hunting, I just remember that the salmon were running and there were a lot of bears around the stream.

"They won't bother you if you don't bother them!" seems hollow advice today, but that's what the guide told us.

Being concerned that my rifle had lost zero in the trip from Minneapolis to Bumfuck, AK; I set up a can about 100 yards from where we'd piled our gear.  This meant firing across the stream.

I aimed and fired, but as I fired; something flashed through the scope.

I looked up and saw a salmon spiraling away.

I had shot a salmon.

A bear took it!

Bob had seen me do it, and was very impressed!

Subsequent shots proved that my rifle had kept zero.

I never fired again that trip.

Bob got his trophy he'd come for; and I don't even remember what ungulate it was.

I remember shooting a salmon.