Annie Oakley I'm Not

I was bored and sad that nobody had commented on my last blog (I changed the title to protect...something) so I was reading some of my past blogs and realized that I hadn't written about the other shooting. Once again we return to those thrilling days of yesteryear...

It was the Fall of1965 (probably) my Dad was working as a diesel-shovel mechanic on a project building a railroad to an iron mine in the outback of Western Australia. He had been gone for a couple of months and I missed him dearly but he was making about three-times as much money per month than he ever had made before so that sort of made up for him not being at home.

The other benefit was me having free use of the vehicles and guns while he was gone. Deer season came around so my two very best friends (Brad Kirwan and Chad Eberhard) and I planned a hunting trip to the Eastern part of Idaho by Palisades. I'm not sure why we went that far away since there were plenty of deer much closer but what would be the adventure in that.

One Friday afternoon after school we piled our supplies, guns and selves into my Dad's pickup and camper, hooked our jeep to the back and off we went to the beautiful area by Palisades Dam in search of poor defenseless Bambi. It was probably in November because I remember it being colder than nails in the woods where we camped that night. There may have even been snow on the ground. It was COLD.

The next morning we awoke before dawn to get ready for the big hunt. Brad was in the camper cooking us some breakfast while Chad and I were getting our guns loaded. We had both of the pickup doors open with Chad on the driver's side and me on the passenger side. It was just getting light enough for us to almost see what we were doing.

I had my Dad's J C Higgins .270 deer rifle pointing down into the seat of the pickup while I loaded bullets into its magazine. After putting the last bullet in and closing the bolt, I realized that I had cocked the weapon. My puny brain said, "You don't want to leave this thing cocked." So the easiest way to uncock it would be to...yes Virginia, pull the trigger!

Unfortunately not one single cell of the rest of that puny brain remembered that upon closing the bolt I had jacked a round into the firing chamber. Now, keep in mind that Chad was standing at the other open door of the truck, less than three feet from the business end of said rifle.

BOOM!!! And a flash brighter than the sun!

Chad lets out a blood-curdling scream and grabs his belly.

I walked around to the back of the camper where I meet Brad barreling out of the back door. He said later that he had never seen me quite that white.

"I know where we can hide the body." He says. "We passed a waterfall on the way in here. We can throw Chad's body over the falls and they'll never find it." "We can say he got lost while we were hunting."

We both started walking to Chad's side of the truck, fully expecting to find his lifeless, bloody remains lying on the forest floor. But no, much to our surprise, he was still breathing. Well, panting really, and holding his belly. When he removed his hands from his abdomen lo, and behold, there was no blood, no gaping hole, no nothing!

At this point I think he said something about me scaring the crap out of him or something like that. We were so happy that he wasn't dead and we wouldn't have to drag his lifeless body back to the waterfall that we momentarily forgot about what damage I must have done to the truck whose gas tank was only inches from where my rifle went off.

We thoroughly searched the seat and cab of the pickup but never did find where the bullet went. There were powder burns and a mighty fine hole in the seat but that was all.

I didn't tell my Mom when we got back and nothing was said about it at all. Until one day the following summer when my Dad was back from Australia and Brad happened to be with us as we were getting into the pickup. My Dad pointed to the blackened hole torn into the seat and asked if I knew anything about how that could have gotten there. Since I knew he wouldn't kill me with Brad as a witness, I told him the whole story of the "Miracle at Palisades." He traded the pickup in for a new one the next week...