Jim Taylor
Things We Don't Talk About
Thursday, February 13, 2020, 08:46

I love hearing stories about hunting and the stalk and the shots that were made. What we rarely hear ... or tell .. are the times that things didn't quite work out the way we hoped and planned. Like ... checking my cows one day I was driving along the edge of this hill. Down below me 70 or 80 yards was a big pond. In the middle of the pond was a rock and sitting on that rock was a huge snapping turtle. I love shooting those things and stopped .. jumped out the truck with my .32-20 Marlin 1894. The pond was on the right side of the truck and I was on the left side. I leaned over the bed of the truck, resting my elbows on the bed, and lined up the sights on the snapper, shooting across the bed of the truck. At the shot there was this strange metallic sound but no water splashed up and the snapper did not move. I looked and there, on the right side of the truck bed across from me, was a new bullet hole! I had not taken into account the distance from the top of the front sight to the bore. While I could see the turtle through the sights, the bore was lined up with the bed of my truck. It wore that reminder the rest of its days.