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Show I&r; ALL DUNN Nri by Roy Dunn HOWD YFOLKS Jacqueline Kennedy is no more. Long live Mrs. What's-her-name. Ugh! Speakin' of pictures in the paper, just the other day I saw a picture of a guy holdin' up a bunch of game birds he had shot. I reckon they was ducks. If they wasn't, they was mighty big quail. The printing under the picture was kinda blurred and I don't even know what the hunter's name is. This set me to thinkin' about when we first came to Utah, and the first, (and only) time I ever went pheasant hunting. It was the darn'dst thing ever happened to me. Yasee, it was like this But first you got to understand under-stand that where I came from, we just went hunting when the mood fell upon us which was usually caused by hunger pains. But for whatever reasons, we just went hunting. We went hunting and it didnt make any difference whether it was December De-cember or July. Only thing was, we sorta let the rabbits go by for they had warts in hot weather. wea-ther. But the squirrels were all right but you werent very bright to hunt them for they were gathering nuts and storing stor-ing them for us to steal the next winter. Besides their little lit-tle squirrels might starve if you shot their mama. But there were times when you got mighty migh-ty hungry for meat. Anyway we just went hunting hunt-ing and we didnt need no such thing as a license. Fact is, never heard of one down there. They made me and Audrey get one before they'd marry us, but that was a different kind of license. I've learned since then that knew ho would appreciate that. So I turned my steps downward down-ward and toward the highway and through what I thought was a small zoo. I was soon to find out that this was the Springville Fish Hafchery. I was standing with my pheasants in one hand and the shotgun in the other, looking through a wire netting at some birds and a deer inside a closure. Suddenly I was aware of a man standing nearby and he was looking at me as if I had two heads. "Hey you." he said, "Where you from?" "Provo," I answered. "Where you from before you come to Provo ? " "Do I have to be from somewhere some-where besides Provo?" Boy! this guy sure is nosey, I thought. Maybe this is a private pri-vate zoo. "1 11 say you have to be from somewhere," he mimicked. "You've got about four hundred hund-red dollars worth of pheasants there and they'll take that gun away from you and throw you so far back in jail that they'll have to blow beans to you with a pea shooter. He looked me up and down as if he couldn't beUeve what he saw, then went on, "I work for the Fish and Game and I guess I should do mv duty and ignorance is no excuse before the law, but how was I to know then? I remember I came home from work one day and said to Audrey, "Hey, this is a pig-heaven pig-heaven around here. The pheasants phea-sants are flying around like bees out there around that Ironton Plant and I'm gonna borrow a gun and go out there and get us some. I know a guy who'll lend me his shotgun." I don't remember her objecting ob-jecting for I reckon she was hungry for meat too, although she never did care for wild game. So I got the gun and took off. I never thought to tell the man what I was going to do with his gun, besides he never asked me. He was the silent type. I pulled off the road just south of a ramshakle building called Jack's Place, which was a beer joint, then climbed the rise to the east and followed the foothills south. I took my time, knocking a pheasant down once in a while. Boy! that 'ole cannon would sure echo back up into Rock Canyon and bounce back again. After a while I held my trophies tro-phies up at eye level to inspect in-spect them and decided that four hens were enough. After all there were only two of us to eat them and besides I wanted want-ed to give the man one or two for the use of his gun. I just sation with me, asking me where I worked and he felt that he had met me somewhere before. Comparing notes, I found that he had been on the police force for about fifteen years and before that, he worked work-ed as a laborer for the Fish and Game. Yes, you guessed it! It was the same man who questioned me at the Fish Hatchery some twenty years before. He told his companion the whole sordid sor-did story and everybody had a good laugh. But Monty didn't believe a word of it. He took the attitude that nobody could be that stupid, but the cop swore it was true. See what I mean? Like I said before, these people around here sure have been tolerant with me. That's why I like 'em so much! SKE 'YA LATER. arrest you." He was almost choking on the words. "But you're ,iust plain dumb. So before be-fore I forget by Scout Oath, you get them birds out of sight and get-the-hell-outa-here!" He was shouting by now. I tell you. that feller sure was excited. ex-cited. At least twenty years after this safari, I stopped at Monty's Mon-ty's Cafe in Spring-ville about two o'clock in the morning. Only two customers were at the counter when I seated myself my-self and both of these were State Police Officers. I noticed that one of them was always looking at me in the back-bar mirror when he thought I didn't know it. I got kinda worried and began to wonder what I had done recently recent-ly that I shouldn't have. He finally started a conver- |