My daddy bought a semi-automatic Remington Model 742 Woodsmaster from JCPenney the identical yr I used to be born. He topped it with a easy Bushnell 4×32 scope; it was simply the most important buy he’d made in a very long time, in all probability one he might barely afford. However for a person who hunted to place meat on the desk, that rifle wasn’t a luxurious.
That gun turned Daddy’s satisfaction and pleasure. He carried it with him via the Virginia mountains for greater than 40 years and killed extra deer with it than he might keep in mind. The walnut inventory and metal receiver had been nothing fancy, however they had been robust and sincere — like him.
The Mannequin 742 was identified for its gentle recoil and fast follow-up photographs. It additionally had a popularity for being fussy if not cleaned correctly. However my dad babied that rifle and stored it far cleaner than his truck (and he additionally beloved his truck.) Daddy broke it down on the kitchen desk after each season, wiping each nook and cranny prefer it was one thing sacred.
He let me maintain that rifle for the primary time on Thanksgiving morning in 1986 whereas he field-dressed an enormous doe. Earlier than that, I wasn’t allowed to the touch it. He didn’t belief me to deal with it with the care he believed it deserved. I knew he was giving me an enormous duty, entrusting me with one in all his most prized possessions. It felt like he had laid the entire world in my arms.
I toted that rifle slung throughout my proper shoulder, my very own beat-up 30-30 hanging from my left, whereas he dragged that deer over tough terrain towards the truck. Nicely after darkish, Daddy’s headlamp was the one seen gentle within the woods. It felt like 10 miles of rocks, laurel, and deadfall earlier than we hit the highway — or what we had thought was the highway.
We’d come out too low, in a steep-sided creek mattress, staring straight up on the highway some 30 yards over our heads.
Daddy shined his gentle up the embankment and sighed. Then he began hauling that deer straight up the hill, his boots sliding via the useless leaves over scree, dropping no less than as a lot floor as he was gaining.
“Alice! Hike up there and see if you happen to can flag anyone down to assist us!”
However I used to be solely about 13, possibly 80 kilos soaking moist, drowning in too-big boots and weighed down by two weapons that appeared to be getting heavier by the minute. That 742 alone felt like a heavy lead pipe with a scope. However I attempted. I climbed tree to tree, hauling myself slowly upward, Daddy shouting out behind me.
“Be careful for the scope, dammit!”
“Don’t beat up my gun!”
“I instructed you to watch out!”
We made it to the highway finally, sweating via our layers regardless of the freezing chilly. I sat on the deer whereas Daddy hiked up the highway to get the truck. No person ever stopped to assist.
For greater than twenty seasons, I adopted that man — and that rifle — via the woods. I as soon as held it, loaded and prepared, when a bunch of unusual males pulled into our backcountry campsite in the course of the evening. Daddy was headed out to fulfill them when he handed it to me.
“No matter you do, don’t shoot me,” he mentioned.
My father wasn’t notably sentimental. He was robust as nails and infrequently important of me once I was rising up. However he confirmed his love in different methods. Like taking me searching once I was itchy to go, even once I was unable to take a seat nonetheless. The hearty shoulder slap he delivered once I killed my first deer. The light approach he used the blood to color two thick stripes throughout my cheeks.
Years later, my oldest son, Daniel, hiked with us within the mountains, watching that very same rifle sway throughout his grandfather’s again. By then, the checkering had worn clean, and the stained wooden had dulled with age.
Daddy died in 2017. He suffered a coronary heart assault on the final day of the Virginia deer season. He held on for 2 days within the hospital. I had the privilege of being with him when he took his final breath. My mother and my youngest three kids had been there, too. However Daniel, serving within the Military, didn’t make it in time. After I needed to inform him over the cellphone that his granddaddy was gone, I might hear the load of it drop into his chest like a stone.
When the Military lastly let Daniel go, he drove via snow and ice from Fort Bragg to Hampton to be along with his household. After hugging every of us, he walked straight into the spare bed room, slid the gun case out from beneath the mattress, and took that Mannequin 742 into his shaking arms. He held it to his shoulder and positioned his cheek tenderly towards the inventory. And cried large, heavy tears into that walnut inventory.
It was the closest he might get to hugging his grandfather goodbye.
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The next season, I acquired to look at my youthful son, Silas, take a shot at a buck with the identical rifle — an attractive 125-yard shot. Freestanding. No relaxation. His cheek pressed to the identical worn wooden that held my father’s face via a whole bunch of photographs. One shot dropped that buck proper in its tracks.
That rifle nonetheless shoots straight.
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