Shot a hole in the bottom of that boat killing a surprise drop-in cottonmouth...setting off an interesting chain of events
.
Oh no, you're not gettin off THAT easy! C'mon B, we need details!
OK, the story from the beginning...
The job was to trap fish for a research project to determine optimum size for fish hatchery brood stock...big enough to show high fecundity while being small enough to be easy to maintain in the hatchery ponds. I ran 10 or 12 weir traps in the Okeefenokee...they had to be checked every other day. Spread out as far as they were, it took most of my time.
I was just a kid, 17. The lead fisheries technician who showed me how to set the traps, where, how to handle the fish, etc. when I first started the job told me that he felt it was a good idea to have a small caliber pistol for the occasional cottomouth moccasin that turned up in the swamp. He was an old school waterman, of the opinion that a good cottonmouth was a dead one.
So I took my first paycheck and bought myself a Ruger 22 auto at the local pawn shop. This was not hard to do in south Georgia in 1970.
A few weeks later my boss, the hatchery manager, decided to take a day out with me running my traps, to see how his new kid was doing handling the trailer, boat, traps, fish, etc. In due course he observed that I was in possesion of the firearm, and informed me that while he understood the reason for it, and acknowleged that it might seem like a good idea, it was a violation of policy and as a supervisor he couldn't allow me to carry on the job. I said "yessir, you won't see it again" and that was the end of the discussion.
The pistol moved from riding in a crate of gear beside the helm seat to inside my daypack...out of sight, out of mind I told myself. Even though the chances I'd need it seemed remote, I rather liked that pistol, and had some fun target plinking with it in my off time.
Another month or so passes, and then comes the word that a couple of HQ office types where coming down from Atlanta to review the hatchery program in general, and as part of their tour they wanted to go out in the boat to see the trapping operation firsthand. On the appointed day we set out with two 18' aluminum johnboats, me in the lead with one of the city guys on board followed by the hatchery manager and the other city guy.
As we slowly wound our way down one of the innumerable little creeks that crisscross the swamps overhung with cypress, spanish moss, and vines heading to one of my trap sets, an undesirable event occured. A decent sized cottonmouth dropped from a short distance overhead and landed with a loud thud right on the floorboards amidship, halfway between me in the stern and the geek in the bow. Never had happened before, and never did again, but there you have it.
With a shriek he stood straight up and somehow managed to run back and forth along the gunnels of the forward section from port to starboard and back again, rocking the boat pretty well. I thought he was going to dump us over for sure if I didn't do something fast...and I was not at all interested in ending up in the drink with that rather unhappy cottonmouth so close at hand.
Soooo...out comes the Ruger, sharp little crack that the .22 long rifle spits out, hole through head of snake...and bottom of boat. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, on the geeks balance on the gunnel...he went over backwards into the coffee colored water, and came up sputtering, drapped in duckweed and looking absolutely terrified.
I picked up the quite dead snake with my boathook and hung it over a nearby branch, and helped the man overboard back in. I then cut a small branch, whittled it to fit and jammed it into the bullet hole, stemming the little geyser of water.
Throughout all this, my boss in the second boat was not more that 50 feet behind. I'm pretty sure I heard someone back there shout "SHIT" when the Ruger barked, but that might have been my passenger. Everyone checked that everyone else was OK, but nothing was said about the pistol.
After the commotion died down, we proceeded along with the day's agenda.
It was back at the boat ramp, after loading up both johnboats onto our trailers and after one dry and one still damp office fellow had left in their state-issued sedan that my boss ambled over to where I was finishing up strapping my boat down.
"I seem to recall us having a talk about that pistol" he says. "Yessir, we did" I reply with a sinking feeling, 'cause he had a pretty firm look in his eye.
"Nice shot", he says, cracking a huge smile..."let's go park these things, then you stop by my house...time I bought you a beer, son."
The subject never came up again...well, except for the ribbing I got down at the welding shop getting a patch put on that hole.
