Hunting in Hitchcock
Hitchcock Memory #103
When
I was about six years old, I got a BB gun for Christmas. Dad taught
me how to use it, how to be safe with it, I couldn't point it at
anybody, regardless, 'because if you do, they ARE going to shoot you.
That's the way it works, so don't be pointing it at anyone.' Don't
shoot any songbirds are it's you ass. Well I knew what that meant. So
I learned one bird from another so I didn't get caught shooting any
song birds. Daddy accomplished two lesson with that one. One; I
always knew what was in my sights before I pulled the trigger. and
Two; I know one bird from another.
Mommy
had a rule too, she would cook anything we brought home, as long as
it was cleaned and dressed. “I deal with meat, I don't deal with
dead animals.” I remember once we went frogging and gigged a few.
Mommy was frying them up, and they kept jumping out of the frying
pan, we pick 'em up and put 'em back in. Mommy screaming and dancing
around the kitchen, but she did it, she fried them up and we ate
them. It was a hoot.
My
bother had gotten a 20 gauge shotgun. JC Higgins I believe. We also
had a single shot 22. Ithaca I believe it was.
There
was an old man (old to me, I'm a little kid), who picked up the
garbage. I think his name was Krenick. Most likely not spelling it
right. He had a recycling operation going on seems to me, the end of
Hacker. But Hacker in those days was just two ruts like Delaney. From
Second Street it was just a mud rut road disappearing into the woods,
but if you followed it, it led to Krenick's dump where he feed the
garbage to his pigs, he took the metal to the scrap yard and he
burned the rest. I go out Hacker today, I haven't got a clue where
it was.
Now
on Friday or Saturday night, Dad, me and my brother (six years
between us, so I'm a little kid and he's a middle kid,) would ride
out to Krenick's dump. Rock and roll and clunk, cluck down Hacker,
there seemed to always be a fire going, and we would park with the
headlights pointed at the fire and the pile that was burning. There
would be rats running all over. We would sit on the hood of the car
and shoot rats. It was good family fun and good target practice. And
no we didn't eat rats.
Now
when I'm a little older, Dad said when he was our age, him and his
friends would go rabbit hunting. (Now in those days, a game animal
had a season, you couldn't shoot them out of season, and you had to
have a hunting license. If there was no season assigned to the
animal, it was considered a varmint, and with a hunting license, you
could hunt varmints year round, a rabbit was a varmint. Side note; at
that time, there was a fifty dollar (in those days, that was fifty,
one once pieces of silver) bounty on coyotes, you had to show a
hunting license and produce the ears and tail.) They would use his
Dad's car, they rigged up a headlight as a spotlight, and one would
drive, one would be on one fender with the spotlight, and the other
fellow on the other fender with the gun and they would shoot rabbits
off of S road in Galveston. Can you imagine.
Well,
as you can imagine, when Dad's two boys heard this story, we wanted
to do likewise. Sound like a good idea to me. And so we did. My
brother had a driver's license, we got a few friends together, and
Dad's car and we went rabbit hunting. There were so many dirt roads
in Hitchcock and (in those days) Alto Loma and Arcadia, and they all
connected, you could go for miles. There were very few houses in
those days. We'd creep along at idle in second gear, while the
spotlight did the searching from the roof of the car, and we had a
gun on each fender. From time to time, we would see a dead coyote
hanging on a fence, no ears or tail.
If
a rabbit was spotted, I'd turn the car toward the rabbit, while the
spotlight trained in on it, so a shot could be taken. Notice I was
driving, I didn't have a license, but driving was the least fun, me
being the youngest, got stuck. Ya know seniority. To say the least,
we ate rabbit pretty regular in those days.
One
of the best stories, and to give you an idea of political
temperature. We were rabbit hunting as usual, Spotlight on the roof,
guns on the fenders, no license behind the wheel and we made the
mistake of turning onto FM 2004, but just for a short ways, but not
short enough. We get pulled over by the Texas Highway Patrol. We pull
over, stop. He walks up to us, “What in Sam's hills are ya'll
doing..!!!???” He belts out. He's a young fellow, well dress in his
uniform, creased, clean, hat well adjusted. He was looking the part.
“We
're rabbit hunting sir.” We replied
“Do
you know how many dirt roads there are around here,” he began to
point out, “ What the hell are you doing on my highway..!! You get
the hell off my highway..!! I bet if I ask him” pointing at me,
“for a driver license, ya'll would be stuck. Now get the hell off
my highway..!! If I catch you again, I'm throwing the book at ya.!!!”
To
say the least, we got off his highway. Let me point out, he never
show an once of fear, he never mentioned the guns, we never mentioned
the guns. Guns at that time, were mute.
Now
as time went on, I got a driver's license, and friends and we went
right on rabbit hunting and eating hasenpfeffer.
The
trouble was, they kept building houses. Next thing you know, we're
shooting rabbits in peoples front yards, and driving on, then coming
back in an hour or so to pick them up. So how are we going to fix
this. We can't be doing that, so.....
We
got an idea, we got some miner's lamps to strap on our heads and we
would sneak into old abandon Camp Wallace (Jack Brook's Park) and
hunt rabbits on foot. Camp Wallace proved to be an interesting place,
it was first of all over grown, so it was hard to make your way
around. We hacked our way through with machetes, carrying a gun, in
the dark, with only miner's lamps. We ran across the old sewage
plant, which was a strange thing indeed, in the dark, with little
beams of light. The ruins of bunkers and barracks various other
things, it was an adventure, we were Indiana Jones, before Indiana
Jones, on top of being just rabbit hunting. (All those ruins are
still there.)
Well
one night we're out there in Camp Wallace, the 'Great White Hunters,'
hunting. We're in this little clearing, around a wellhead, and all of
a sudden, the bushes started shaking, and making a racket, right over
there, and it's headed our way. We look at each other, and then back,
and the bushes are just a shaking and rattling and making an awful
racket, and it coming right at us. There is talk of lions, tigers and
bears and the closer it got, the more apprehensive we got.
Lion,
tiger, bear give a damn, we were armed, dangerous and ready, if not a
little shook. We had our little miner's lights and guns trained on
right were it was going to break out into the clearing. We were
ready, having given each other a peep talk, and out into the clearing
popped.... An armadillo. We were so shocked and so relieved, we
didn't even shoot it, we all just relaxed, and it walk right passed
us and back into the bushes on the other side, right back to making
a racket and shaking the bushes. Learned a lot that night, first, had
it been a lion, tiger or bear, we most like never would have heard
it, second, keep your fear in check, it might be lying.
One
more... We weren't hunting this time, but we were carrying guns, in
case of rattlesnakes. It was me and a buddy of mine wanting to see
what was in Mecom's big barn out at the old blimp base. We went out
Center Street as for as the car would go, then we walked in across
that big field to the blimp base and had a look. Mecom had all kind
of stuff in that barn, not to mention the big C-47 sitting out front
of the hanger columns. He had a Ford tri-motor hidden in there. A
couple old military half-track, motorcycles, jeeps, parts everywhere.
He had a couple stacks (about five) of radial engines, with a couple
laying on the floor taken apart. Out back he had a couple of what I
think where Twin Beech airplanes, all gutted out.
So
on our way out, we're walking along the outside (the side towards
Center Street) of the old hanger, the big columns. Between the two
big columns, in about the center, is a smaller column aide. About a
third the length of the hanger and about a third the height of the
hanger. Still, well over our heads. So we're walking along and we
come to this column-aide, and the ground turns black, and as we walk,
crunch, crunch, crunch. I look at my buddy, he looks at me, crunch,
crunch, crunch. We walk a little farther, crunch, crunch, crunch. And
we get to looking, this black stripe that runs along this
column-aide, and that's it. It's not on either side or either end.
Just along the column-aide. We walk a little more, crunch, crunch,
crunch. I stoop down and pick up a stick, and dig a little into this
crunchy stuff. When I do, I turn up a bunch of little white sticks,
and then a little skull......ding..!!! I think I heard the bell go
off in my buddy's head as well, cause we both looked up at the same
time, and there they were, about five well fed hawks, looking at us.
Learned a lot that day too. Look up more. And nature is nature, and
what they say about hawks is true.
George
Henry Nichols
September
17th 2025