No, I didn’t grow up in the “Wild, wild west,” or a third world nation - just a small town in Wisconsin, where nobody thought twice when seeing a teenager carrying a cased rifle to school.

A blog comment on a homecoming article by a fellow Whitehall Memorial High School graduate, reminded me of the trust and innocence of growing up in a small midwestern town.

I’ve grown up around guns and hunters all my life, not only for the sport, but for the meat. I can remember buying a .22 calibre rifle at the Coast-to-Coast hardware store when I was only 11 or 12 years old. I had saved up the money from my paper route. Gun laws were lax in those days (1970’s), and I don’t even recall having to register it.

So, why would I need a gun? The answer was simple - I needed it to hunt with my friends. That’s what kept us busy on weekends. And, we were required to bring one to gun safety class, offered after school. I recall riding my 10-speed Schwinn to class with the rifle across the handlebars, in a case. It was also the mode of transportation from my house in town, out to the countryside to hunt squirrels, partridge and rabbits in the woods.

As I grew older, I stopped hunting small game, and stuck mostly to deer hunting. It truly is a sport. I got more of a workout hoofing it up and down hills in deep snow, that I would on a treadmill now. And pulling a deer out of the woods by rope wasn’t easy either. They’re a lot bigger in Wisconsin, that they are out here in New Hampshire.

Field dressed at nearly 200 pounds, this was the biggest buck I’ve ever shot. The whitetail was taken near Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1991. Shown with me is my hunting partner, Loren (left). Field dressed means, all organs removed.

If you’re a big city dweller, or have never been to Wisconsin during Thanksgiving week, you wouldn’t understand the popularity and tradition of deer hunting. That’s the time of year when the fields and woods are dotted with bright orange, which is required on the majority of your body when hunting there. I wore so much flourescent orange into the woods that I must have looked like a ball of fire to another hunter. Deer are red-green color blind and can’t tell the difference between a hunter, and the moss-covered stump they’re sitting on.

Students were excused from class for a couple days before Thanksgiving to hunt. Churches held breakfasts for hunters, and all eyes were on the back of pickups for the biggest buck antlers.

Although I haven’t hunted for several years, the sport thrives inside me. I still look for deer tracks when walking in the woods, or around my house. I always check the treelines along fields when driving at dusk.

I will always be an athlete of the woods, weather carrying a gun, or a camera.

-Bob Hammerstrom

bhammerstrom@nashuatelegraph.com

Tags: antlers, athlete, bob hammeratrom, buck, camera, class, deer, Fergus Falls, gun, High School, horns, hunt, hunter, hunting, laws, Memorial, midwest, Minnesota, MN, rifle, safety, season, Thanksgiving, town, tracks, Whitehall, whitetail, Wisconsin, woods