By Jeff Dennis
It’s hard to convey the meaning of our outdoor heritage to those who don’t have any experience in the outdoors. For those who choose the outdoor lifestyle, the rites of passage include a lot of firsts.
I started hunting as a youth and for me, my first dove unlocked the rest of the treasure chest I found in exploring our natural resources. My father borrowed the gun that I shot that day, a single-shot .20-gauge shotgun that would be light enough for a small hunter to handle. I can still recall that gun, that day and that accomplishment.
It was a few years later when my father gave me a shotgun of my own, the one we went on to make many more memories with together. Sometimes life intervenes and that once keepsake firearm is discarded for something else. Nothing can undo the cherished history already recorded with a gun, so what’s the harm in parting with it?
Nothing. Except for maybe the hankering and yearning to hold that gun and look at the nicks and scrapes that were earned in the field, that tell a fuller version of those old hunting stories.
Chuck’s Story:
It was a typical, cold December day in 1976, and Chuck Rutherford was selling lumber from his home in Augusta, Georgia. Business was usually slow during that time of year, and he was beginning to feel cabin fever coming on.
Sitting at his desk gazing at the guns he had collected over the years, it seemed each gun brought back a special memory from a different time in life. He became lost in the thrill of each acquisition, and began to remember back to the gun that had started it all.
It was Christmas morning, the year was 1957, and Chuck was twelve years old. His father gave him an 870 Remington pump shotgun, and he was so excited that they could hardly wait to take that first gun to the woods to try it out.
After his Dad gave him a lecture on gun safety, he demonstrated the working parts of the shotgun. Then his Dad took the butt plate off the stock of the gun and showed him where he had placed a slip of paper with his name and date on it.
Chuck’s grandfather was a country doctor in Wayne, West Virginia, and when his mother would go to visit her father, she would drop Chuck off in the woods on her way there so he could hunt until dusk. She would pick him up on the way back home, and it was on one of these hunting trips that Chuck used his Remington to take his first squirrel.
The years passed and as Chuck grew older, girls began to take precedence over his 870. He traded the shotgun to a West Virginia business for money towards a 1950 turtleback Chevrolet. Marriage and family blessings were a result of this wise trade.
Despite using different shotguns over time, he always remembered his first shotgun. Twenty years after parting with his 870-shotgun, Chuck began reliving these early memories. With cabin fever settling in, he decided to go to the local gun store in Augusta to check out their inventory and to recount some hunting tales.
Upon arriving at the store, he was checking out the inventory when one particular gun caught his eye. He asked to see the Remington 870 pump and threw it up to his shoulder. He began to examine the gun and noticed some modifications, the addition of a ventilated rib and a choke tube. Despite this, Chuck began thinking that this was indeed HIS old shotgun.
But how could this possibly be the same gun after all these years? Chuck knew that he traded his gun back in West Virginia, which was 500-miles away. He asked the store owner when he had received the used gun to sell, and he replied that it just came in that very morning when an old man traded it in for another gun.
Chuck began to tell his story about the note hidden under the butt plate, asking for a screwdriver. The store owner complied, unscrewing the butt plate and revealing a neatly folded slip of paper with ‘Charles Wallace Rutherford, Christmas 1957’ written on it.
The store owner knew that Chuck had to have the gun and he let him buy the gun for the exact amount he allowed the old man on the trade. Since his old shotgun containing a personal note from his father came back to him, Chuck left that store truly believing in miracles and loving the outdoors.
The author’s Lowcountry Outdoors blog is celebrating a tenth anniversary in 2019.
Photo By Jeff Dennis
A handwritten note from father to son, found in the stock of a gun