Hunting in Hitchcock, Texas

 

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 17^th 2025