{"id":1017,"date":"2023-12-08T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/?p=1017"},"modified":"2023-12-15T08:23:39","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T08:23:39","slug":"christmas-stories-5-tales-of-our-favorite-holiday-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/08\/christmas-stories-5-tales-of-our-favorite-holiday-gifts\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Stories: 5 Tales of Our Favorite Holiday Gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"browning<\/p>\n
\"F&S+\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
The author unwrapped this Browning Superposed 20 gauge over the holidays. Phil Bourjaily<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more \u203a<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Lesson of the Shattered Nipple<\/h2>\n
\"muzzleloader
The author killed his first deer with the .50-caliber muzzleloader he was given for Christmas when he was 9. Will Brantley<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The box under the tree was wrapped in colorful paper and shaped in such a long and slender way that inside, there could\u2019ve only been a boat paddle or a rifle. It was 1991, I was 9 years old, and one heft of the box told me it was too heavy to be a paddle. But instead of the .22 I was expecting, I unwrapped a sidelock .50-caliber muzzleloader. \u201cI wanted to get you something you could deer hunt with,\u201d Dad said. \u201cAnd I thought you might learn something with a gun like this, too.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Dad was a hunter and had a cabinet full of guns, including .22s and 20-gauges that he was already letting me use in the squirrel woods. But I\u2019d never been deer hunting and moreover, had never so much as touched Dad\u2019s muzzleloader, a .50-caliber Thompson-Center Hawken replica. I remember when inline guns, sabots, and pelletized powder took over muzzleloader seasons, but this was before that. In those days, black-powder hunters used percussion guns with open sights, loose black powder, and patched round balls. It was a specialized, 50-yard sport, and Dad particularly enjoyed the process of it all.  <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery deer I\u2019ve ever hit with a black powder fell dead on the spot,\u201d he said. \u201cA .50-caliber rifle is a lot of gun, but we\u2019ll start with light charges so it won\u2019t kick the shit out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gun broke on the first shot. We measured out a 60-grain powder charge, loaded a round ball, and I fired it at a board that we\u2019d leaned against a tree maybe 15 yards away. I missed it clean, shaking like I was. Dad pulled the gun\u2019s hammer back to half-cock, to flick away the spent cap. That\u2019s when we noticed the problem. In all the black-powder shooting Dad had done previously, and in the thousands of rounds of it that I\u2019ve done since, I\u2019ve never seen anything like it. The nipple, on which the percussion cap is placed to ignite the powder charge in the breech below, broke as if it were a shattered piece of glass. It was maybe a $3 part that could be replaced in 20 seconds, but it was absolutely required for the gun to work. And on Christmas morning, we had no replacement.  <\/p>\n

Despite the man-size gift, I was crying a child\u2019s tears. Dad hustled inside, grabbed his \u201cpossibles\u201d bag from the hunting closet, and removed the nipple from his own Hawken with a special wrench. \u201cSee, it\u2019s an easy thing to fix,\u201d he said, confident he\u2019d found the solution to save his boy\u2019s Christmas. But the threads on the two guns were different. We had to clean my new muzzleloader, rendered to the usefulness of a heavy, sinking boat paddle, and put it in the cabinet on Christmas morning after just one shot.<\/p>\n

A small box with a dozen replacement nipples\u2014some for my gun, some for Dad\u2019s Hawken\u2014soon arrived in the mail. I killed my first deer with that muzzleloader the next fall, and I hunted with it for the next decade before finally retiring it in favor of a scoped inline. It\u2019s always been kept clean, and it still shoots straight. Right now, it\u2019s in the safe at Dad\u2019s house, sitting next to his old Hawken.<\/p>\n

Dad hoped I\u2019d learn from that muzzleloader, and I guess I have. These days I\u2019m not a guy who overpacks ahead of a hunt. But I do keep an extra rifle and ammo in the truck. Another duck call in my blind bag. An extra release aid in my bowhunting pack. Two knives. Two flashlights. A copy of my license. I back up the stuff I must have to finish a hunt. Sometimes, on Christmas morning, your nipple will shatter, and without a replacement handy, you\u2019re up Shit Creek. But at least you\u2019ll have a paddle. \u2014Will Brantley<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pistol from Santa<\/h2>\n

The S&W 22A was a cheap rimfire pistol with an alloy frame that looked to be coated with gray paint. It had oversize, even bulbous, plastic grips, and the full-length rail made it tough to grab the slide and pull it back. It also had a nice, steady heft to it and a surprisingly sweet trigger. Best of all, though, I could afford it\u2014and it would be a complete surprise. I owned no handguns and wasn\u2019t particularly interested in them, which I knew was a source of frustration to both of my boys.<\/p>\n

At 14 and 10 years old, our sons no longer believed in Santa Claus, but we still divided gifts between the wrapped presents we gave to one another and the unwrapped gifts “from Santa” that Pam and I would put under the tree after the boys went to sleep. I stuck a red bow on the blue plastic box with \u201cS&W\u201d embossed on the side and wrote a note from Santa Claus that read something like: Gordon and John, Merry Christmas, Enjoy this pistol and shoot it safely! -Santa.<\/em><\/p>\n

The boys were always up before we were on Christmas morning. I heard them going out to get their stockings, and I heard them exclaim in disbelief when they realized what was in the box. As Santa gifts went, the pistol was the all-time showstopper.<\/p>\n

The only way to make the gift better was to shoot it, and that meant a trip to the Pit after breakfast popovers. A lot of towns have a nearby place like the the Pit, which was exactly that\u2014a steep hillside excavation at the local WMA open 24\/7 as an unsupervised range. You never knew what you\u2019d find there: appliances, computer monitors, signs, pumpkins, and sometimes weird stuff, like mannequins\u2026whatever people felt like dragging downrange to shoot. To an adult, it was unsavory and squalid. To a kid, it was wondrous, a dump where you could not just find bullet riddled trash-treasures, you could put more holes in them.<\/p>\n

There were always people at the Pit, any day of the year. There were a few there that day, looking like\u2014how to put this\u2014the kind of people who would shoot appliances on Christmas Day. That group now included the Bourjailys. We rolled up in a minivan, took our place on the line, and shot up all the .22 ammo I had bought for the day. My wife, not a gun person, gamely took a few shots, and I made a point of gathering up our targets and trash when the range went cold, and we left.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything about that trip to the Pit seemed wrong in the very best way,\u201d said Gordon, my older son, much later. \u201cI had never seen Mom fire a gun. We were dressed for church and we were shooting. The contrast between the Apollonian order of Christmas and the Dionysian excess of the Pit was mind-blowing.\u201d (He talks that way. He was an English major.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere shouldn\u2019t have just been a pistol under the Christmas tree,\u201d says John. \u201cIt seemed like a mistake, but it was too big to be a mistake and there it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite its impact that day, the pistol lost its magic over the years. When the kids were home, we\u2019d take it to the gun club, where it misfired and stovepiped way too much. The awkward rail\/slide arrangement made it a chore to clear. Last year I asked the boys\u2019 permission to trade it in for its successor\u2014the much better S&W Victory. \u201cThat piece of junk?” said Gordon. “Get rid of it.\u201d Now when they visit, we shoot the Victory. The 22A is gone, except in all of our holiday memories, where we will keep it forever. \u2014Phil Bourjaily<\/em><\/p>\n

Boots Like the Old Timers at Deer Camp Wore<\/h2>\n
\"The
The author recalls the Christmas gift that helped him fit in at deer camp. Pixabay<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Deer camp<\/a> is a special place. It\u2019s always been one of my favorites\u2014and the atmosphere the night before opening day<\/a> is filled with grand speculation and gear preparations. When I was young, the old timers in our camp would spend that night by the fireplace, telling tales, oiling rifles, and dressing boots. The smell of wood smoke and gun oil mixed with boot dressing will always be of the first things I remember when I think of deer camp. But until I was about 14 years old, my only participation in this poignant pre-hunt event was listening. I didn\u2019t have my own rifle or any tales to tale\u2014 and my boots were rubber.<\/p>\n

I had rubber boots was because money was always tight, and my feet grew every year. Mom and Dad would pick me up a new pair of cheap rubber boots at the general store each fall. My feet got cold when I hunted, and instead of dressing boots at night I treated blisters. However, before my fifteenth Christmas, I put a pair leather boots out of the Gander Mountain catalog on my wish list, knowing good and well it was a lot of money to spend on a pair of hunting boots\u2026for a kid. But I included a note with my list that said, \u201cI think my feet have stopped growing, these boots should last a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

By then my sister and I knew who Santa Claus was, and we got our gifts after the extended family had left our house on Christmas Eve. The first package I opened was the one sized just right for what I wanted most\u2014and there were my Gander Mountain exclusive, all-leather, hunting boots. They came with the smell of new leather and the hopes of hundreds of miles of hard terrain to cover. I put them on and wore them until I went to bed. In fact, I wore them as we visited family on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

Eleven months later, while all the hunters were sitting by the fireplace, telling lies, oiling guns, and dressing boots, I was there too. I didn\u2019t say much\u2014didn\u2019t have to. Those high-dollar leather hunting boots said that I belonged right there, right then, and forever more. For those raised to hunt with their feet instead of feet-per-second, on Christmas morning a pair of good hunting boots is better than any gun. They\u2019ll help you leave your footprints through the wilderness. \u2014Richard Mann<\/em><\/p>\n

The “Super” Surprise<\/h2>\n
\"browning
The author unwrapped this Browning Superposed 20 gauge over the holidays. Phil Bourjaily<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I never got a gun for Christmas when I was young, in large part because I wasn\u2019t interested in guns. I\u2019ve heard about other people getting guns under the tree, both as kids and adults, and it always sounded magical. It finally happened to me. It was worth the wait.<\/p>\n

The last few New Year\u2019s Days, my wife and I have gone over to have dinner with a couple who were friends of my parents from the time I was 10 years old. Rudy and my dad hunted together. Dad gave Rudy his first gun dog. My father is gone, and my mother no longer lives in town, so now Rudy and Gloria come to our house for Thanksgiving, and my wife and I go there on New Year\u2019s Day. It\u2019s a nice tradition.<\/p>\n

They set an incredible table. Rudy is Italian and cares deeply about food and drink. Gloria is a terrific cook.<\/p>\n

So, we finish dinner and we can hardly move. We drink some Strega. Rudy says, “Did you ever see A Christmas Story<\/em>, where the dad tells Ralphie to look behind the desk?”<\/p>\n

I nod. Everyone has seen A Christmas Story<\/em> and knows that Ralphie finds the BB gun behind the desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook behind that chair,\u201d Rudy told me. The chair is a big easy chair in the corner of the dining room.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking, Is Rudy giving me his BB gun?<\/em> I know he has his old Red Ryder from when he was a boy. He refinished the wood and has it hanging over his bar downstairs.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a gun-shaped thing in a cheap vinyl case with a bow on it behind the chair. I pull the gun out, and see that it\u2019s a 1958 20-gauge Browning Superposed skeet gun, just like the one my mom used to own.<\/p>\n

Rudy knew I always wanted a gun like Mom\u2019s, which she sold back before I cared about guns. He had owned this one since 1970 and never fired it. He said, \u201cI’m 83, I\u2019ve got no kids, I\u2019ve got all these guns and nothing to do with them. I want this to go to someone who feels the same way about shotguns that I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

My wife, who isn\u2019t even a gun person, had tears streaming down her cheeks. I was overwhelmed and pretty close to sniffling myself.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of those gifts you can\u2019t possibly repay, so I only hope I can pay it forward some day, because I can imagine the only thing better than getting such a heartfelt gift is giving one. Meanwhile, I\u2019ll have my new Christmas gun out next week for the last few days of the season, and if I put anything\u2019s eye out, it will be on purpose. \u2014P<\/em>.B.<\/em><\/p>\n

Onkel Adolph’s Gift<\/h2>\n
\"Boy
A vintage snapshot of the author unwrapping his bow on Christmas morning. Gerry Bethge<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Adolph sat dead in his living room lounger in the summer of 1974. He was the first dead body that I had ever seen in my life. I was toast. He wasn\u2019t my blood grandfather, which is why, I guess, he always insisted that I refer to him as “Onkel” instead of “Opa” <\/a>when my Oma Helen married him but I was pretty much fine with addressing him as such.<\/p>\n

In every regard he was my first hunting mentor, though\u2014not that we ever referred to guys who told deer-hunting stories back then in such a sanctimonious way. Hell, he never regaled me with tales of big deer\u2014didn\u2019t have any of those in southern New England back then\u2014but by telling me about his own deer hunts in vivid detail.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen do you think is the best time to hunt deer?\u201d I once asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s in a blizzard,\u201d Onkel Adolph responded, as if I should have known that fact. \u201cThey can\u2019t see you, they can\u2019t smell you, and you can sneak right up on them because they can\u2019t hear you either. One day on top of the hill right behind the house, I walked up on eight of them just laying under some hemlocks in the snow. I shot a buck from the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

That little tip remains one of the best pieces of deer-hunting advice that I\u2019ve ever gotten, and I still follow to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid I ever tell you about when I shot two bucks with one shot?\u201d he said another time. \u201cThey were standing right behind each other. I really didn\u2019t want to, but it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019d never let me shoot his guns\u2014it seemed as if he had dozens\u2014he took painstaking effort to teach me about them all in the finite detail that an aircraft engineer naturally would have. \u201cWhat do you think wouId make a good deer gun?\u201d I asked. \u201cI think I really want to get a bow and arrow, instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAch, du spinnst!<\/em> [Oh, you\u2019re nuts!],\u201d he said in German. \u201cYou can\u2019t kill a deer with a bow and arrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps he was right. No one that I knew bowhunted back then\u2014and it certainly did seem to be a lofty goal. Time to rethink?<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In summer, when I heard a shot from his house, I\u2019d grab my bike and race down the road to his house to see what he\u2019d taken. Mostly it was woodchucks that were invading the raspberry patch or garden. My lord, he was continuously at war with those woodchucks, but we\u2019d eat every one that he shot. Things were odd with his last woodchuck hunt, though.<\/p>\n

I zoomed to his house to find him sitting on the bench out front clutching his chest. Onkel Adolph had heart issues for years, but this seemed different. \u201cI saw him run,\u201d he said. \u201cI hit the hole with vinegar.\u201d (He always smashed a giant bottle of leftover apple cider vinegar directly into the chuck\u2019s hole to evict it from its lair.) \u201cHe came out, but I missed. Scheissdreck!<\/em>\u201d In hindsight, I guess, it was my first view of a true Hunter\u2019s Heart.<\/p>\n

Just two weeks later, my Oma found him in his living room lounger. The garden was picked clean by mid-August with no vegetables to put up in jars in the basement for winter.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

That December was the first time Dad took me deer hunting. Though, it wasn\u2019t so much a hunt<\/em> as it was a wintry walk in the woods with guns. He doled out Onkel Adolph\u2019s shotguns to my brother, Ken, and I, and we went looking for non-existent tracks. Even in retrospect, there\u2019s no way to create drama from a terrible day in the deer woods, nor the sadness of the holiday season without a loved one.<\/p>\n

Oma joined us that year for the first time in 10 years, and we were joyous that she did. Somehow, inexplicably, the youngest\u2014me\u2014got to open his gift first. My tearing and pulling and yanking on a long box revealed, perhaps, the greatest Christmas gift that I\u2019d ever seen: a Fred Bear 55-pound Grizzly Recurve bow and a dozen Easton XX75 aluminum arrows tipped off with Herter\u2019s broadheads.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey Ger,\u201d Dad whispered to me. \u201cThis isn\u2019t from your mom nor I. Onkel Adolph wanted you to prove him wrong.\u201d \u2014Gerry Bethge<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Christmas Stories: 5 Tales of Our Favorite Holiday Gifts<\/a> appeared first on Field & Stream<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author unwrapped this Browning Superposed 20 gauge over the holidays. Phil Bourjaily We may earn revenue from the products […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agonyway.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}