Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Rabbit hunting--Long style



At the Long Family Reunion last week, Bill Long got out his grandfather Tom's rifle. It was Tom Long's turkey rifle which cousin Steve thought was engraved with his name:
But, "Long Tom" was actually a trade name although my great-grandfather was Tom Long AKA Thomas Henry Long.
Bill (red shirt) and Dave (white shirt) shared a story on why the 42 inch barrel of this 16 gauge rifle is bent. Although Tom Long used this to hunt turkeys, Elmer Dodson (on right) who was Tom's son-in-law's brother borrowed the gun to hunt rabbits. The rabbit went in a log so Elmer put the barrel in the log and fired, bending the barrel.
So I told my cousin Michael about this shotgun. He said, " I just wonder if that's grandpa's old shotgun?? The one he took with us when he took me rabbit hunting when I was just a young boy... He shot the rabbit from about 6 feet away from us with his shotgun - and all I remember was something blowing up and rabbit fuzz flying everywhere - Grandpa [Roy Long] said to me - Guess we were a little too close to that one... A special time with Grandpa I will always remember... And a funny one at that."

I asked Aunt Mary about Roy's shotgun but she said they had left it in DeSoto somewhere. It was double barreled and was pre-World War I. He let anyone use it. His nephew Junior McKay used to borrow it often. But, Roy lost track of it and no one knows what happened to it.

2 comments:

Thomas Venney said...

Thanks

Thomas Venney said...

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