Summer Excitement

This summer I didn't do too many things. But I did go on a few fishing trips before I started working. Most of the trips were pretty lame, because I either had no rod or I caught a very few fish and nothing exciting really went on.

But there was this one trip I went on with Garrett, Anthony Nick Jr., Greg, Norma and Dan that was pretty exciting and kept me entertained throughout the trip. On our way up to Willow Creek, Anthony, Greg and I were shooting at ducks seeing if we could knock any down with our .22 caliber rifles. When we got to the spot where Garrett wanted to fish, we all tried fishing. But we didn't have enough rods, so Anthony, Norma, Gregg and I shared rods. Norma was the first person to catch a fish. Garrett and Dan hopped out of the boat to try and catch fish from the bank. Anthony and I hardly caught any fish so we gave up. Then Greg, Anthony, and I started shooting at some ducks that landed on the other side of the slough. We also shot at some ducklings that were swimming around. We even shot at a swan that was flying high above us. Although none us hit even a single fowl, it was more fun than wasting our time trying to catch some lousy fish. After a while we got bored of shooting ducks, so we started targeting sticks and other things that would make good targets.

Meanwhile the others were still busy catching fish and had by now caught a lot of fish. Anthony and I tried a little fishing again but only caught one each. Then Greg got into the act and fished near Norma because she was catching all the fish. Garrett and Dan were doing good also. We had limited gas so we had to stay in one spot or go to others that weren't too far away.

Anthony and I got bored of fishing so we sat in the boat and talked about all kinds of things, including boats, snow machines, basketball and traveling. When evening came around, Garrett and the others decided it was time to head home. On our way out we saw a loon and thought it would be fun to hunt it for a while. After 20 minutes of wasting our shells we took off. At the mouth of one of the sloughs in Willow we came upon a beaver. We hadn't noticed that there was another one swimming around. Garrett, Greg, Anthony and I got our .22's ready and when we saw it swimming we shot at it. Sometimes it would dive for minutes but we knew where it was by the direction it dived. It would go upstream and downstream and sometimes it would swim near the bank to try and sneak away from us. Every time we shot at the beaver we would come very close to hitting. A couple of times one of us thought that we'd hit it but then it dove just before the bullet hit dead center in the head. Once in a while we would trade .22's.

About half an hour later Garrett gave up shooting. Greg asked if he could use my .22 rifle and Anthony was using my pistol. I then asked Garrett if I could use his gun because it seemed better than my rifle. I told the guys that this time I would hit the beaver in one shot. As soon as we saw it swimming towards its house I pulled Garrett's gun into position and with split second aiming I shot and hit the beaver. I didn't even give Greg and Anthony time to shoot. Then we zoomed over and got the beaver before it drowned. As we headed for home I felt that this trip was worth my time.

Fred Alstrom