Spirits of the Wilderness

Keith M. Sheehan

Description

This is the story of the fifty-year adventure of one man's shooting and wilderness education and how it evolved into what it is today.  It started in 1958 on the south shore of Long Island, advanced through Upstate New York, North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, California, Africa, New Zealand, and, currently, back to California.

Every incident in this book is true, thus allowing the author the luxury of being both opinionated and, perhaps, a little unorthodox in his odyssey.  It is filled with great humor, bone-chilling dangers, high triumphs and devastating tragedies.

Sujets

• Adventurers
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Biography
• Shooting
• Wilderness
• Adventure
• Autobiography
• Explorers

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 19 juin 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781467040044
• Langue: English

Extrait

SPIRITS OF THE WILDERNESS

Keith M. Sheehan
 

 
AuthorHouse™
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
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© 2010 Keith M. Sheehan. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 11/28/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-4343-6662-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4343-6663-4 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4670-4004-4 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008902823
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
 
 
 
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO F. GEORGE KLEIN; MY BEST FRIEND, a fine hunter, a fine shootist, a fine outdoorsman, a genuine Cowboy and above all, a fine gentleman. Without his friendship, encouragement and support this book may never have been brought to life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
I thank my father for originally opening my eyes to the pleasures and principles of handgun shooting. I thank him for teaching me that all life has meaning and that the taking of a life must have purpose, merit and honor in order to have justification.
I thank Tito Balistrieri, the finest rifleman and coach I have ever known. I thank him for teaching me the principles of precision shooting, focus, practice, concentration and bullet placement.
I thank Uncle Sam for allowing me the opportunity to be a member of the Third U.S. Army Advanced Marksmanship Training Unit (TUSAMTU) and the “All Army” Marksmanship Training Unit (USAMTU) High Power Rifle teams and letting me shoot forty hours a week year after year with the finest equipment and coaches in the world.
I thank my brother, Brian for teaching me the art and principles of wing shooting with a shotgun.
I thank Chris Sussens, of Tshukudu Safaris, Hoedspruit, South Africa, for guiding me through the pristine perils and unforgettable adventures of hunting in Africa with my “Cowboy Gun”.
I thank Peter Chamberlain of Kiwi Wilderness Safaris, Christchurch, New Zealand for an unforgettable and totally successful hunt on the South Island of New Zealand with my “Boat Anchor”.
I thank my wife, Karin for sacrificing our savings and encouraging me to go trekking off into one wilderness or another in pursuit of the sport I cherish so much. I thank her for enduring all my adventure stories over and over, and for becoming a first class chef of all kinds of wild game.
Finally, I thank the late John W. Segal, who, through his example, showed me how a truly kind and generous human being can influence everyone with whom he comes in contact. By his actions and example, he will fondly live forever in the minds of all who knew him.
PREFACE
 
My wife, Karin, thinks that my guns are too heavy and much too loud and although she enjoys the pleasures of target shooting, she has only hunted once. Since then we have mutually agreed that all her future hunting will be done with a Credit Card.
Although not destined to be a hunter, she seems otherwise fully rational and is the logical half of the family on virtually all other issues and topics of importance. For example, she tells me that some people actually don’t know the difference between a .45-70 and a 12 bore, and although I find that hard to believe, I accept her wisdom. She also tells me that I need to explain some of my early background which fostered my intense interest in firearms, hunting and the outdoors in language that folks, (maybe even a few non-hunters) can understand. I’ll do my best to comply.
My Father was a 6’4” Irish Police Captain in Nassau County, who conducted the Firearms Training Bureau for 27 years. He was responsible for teaching firearms safety and proficiency to all the new recruits as they went through the Police Academy. It was he who instilled in me the concepts of how I was to conduct myself with, and around firearms.
The only hunting I ever saw him do in those days was twice a month, when he would pile me and my brother into the back seat of his police car and drive down a deserted farming road, shooting cottontail rabbits through both open front window frames, with his S&W K38 Target Masterpiece revolver, while driving and switching hands as needed. My brother and I sat in the back seat, covering our ears. He would drive about five miles up the road and drop one of us off to backtrack and pick up all the rabbits, while he would drive down another nearby road in the opposite direction, take out a few more rabbits and then drop off the other brother to fetch the rest of them. He’d come back in an hour or so and pick us both up with our trophies and bring us back home before he left for work. We cleaned the rabbits in the garage, gave them to my mother, and headed off to school. His rules were simple and still stand today; if you shoot it, you eat it.
My Mother, all 5’2” of her, was the brains of the outfit, having graduated Summa Cum Laude from Skidmore University with a Masters Degree in Journalism. She spoke nine languages and wrote a weekly column in the N.Y. Times for many years. The scariest thing about her was seeing her finish the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in less than an hour, IN INK. Oh, yes, she was a master chef of wild game, especially rabbits, and game birds.
My parents, my 5-years-older-than-me brother, Brian, and I lived in a modest, brown shingled house, heated with a coal furnace in the wintertime, in the town of Wantagh, on the south shore of Long Island, New York, when it was still a small potato farming community. At the time I was growing up, I never knew that we were on a tight budget, but looking back, there were four of us living on Dad’s cops’ salary of less than $100 month.
Some of my earliest memories were of my father coming home with his pistol case full of his handguns, spreading a canvas cloth over the dinning room table and disassembling and cleaning each one of them. The only acceptable cleaning solvent in those days was the famous Hoppe’s Number 9. It had a very strong and wonderful smell that drew me to the table like a bee to honey. Dad would take the time to explain how each mechanism worked and why they assembled in a certain way, and kept me fascinated for hours. Finally, as my seventh birthday approached, (June, 1950) he agreed to take me to the range and teach me how to shoot. The size of my hands were such that I was only allowed to shoot his three smallest and lightest Smith and Wesson revolvers; a .22, a .32, and a .38 Special. At the end of the day, and after firing several hundred rounds through each gun, I realized two things: the bigger the caliber, the bigger the noise and the greater the recoil; and I had acquired and undying love of guns and my dad. Fifty years later, nothing’s changed.
In later years, Brian became a member of the famous All-Star Champion Rifle Team at St. John’s University and his prowess with a precision .22 target rifle was well known on the East Coast. After graduation his interest slowly changed to hunting with a shotgun. He is one of very few people I know who could make the transition from the steady squeezing of the trigger of a match-grade target rifle to the required swinging of a shotgun and the slapping of the trigger, and has become a superb wingshot of those humiliating, fast flying and elusive ducks. My Father held 5 East Coast pistol Championships, and, after college, I joined the Army and eventually became a member of the All-Army Rifle Team in the High Power Rifle category.
The world and I lost my Father in 1979 and my Mother in 2006. Brian retired after his 25-year teaching career and moved to Florida, where he has become a fishing fanatic.
This is a tale of simpler times during a not-so-distant bygone era. Life was not so cluttered and complicated. The lines between right and wrong, and the Good guys and the Bad guys were much easier to see and accommodate. I have been fortunate beyond all measure to have lived in, and even lived through, some of these adventures and I’m grateful for how all of them have shaped my devotion and dedication to every aspect of shooting and hunting.
I am an opinionated person. I’ve earned the privilege. I have been shooting, reloading, hunting, learning about, and listening to qualified instructors about my craft for more than fifty years. My formal education into the intricate world of shooting began in 1950 when Dad agreed to take me to the range for my very first shooting lesson. I was seven years old. That lesson taught me that simply pointing and shooting actually made hitting the center of the target a rare and strictly random act of luck, and that to be consistently accurate required sight alignment, trigger control, total mental focus and, as it turns out, many, many years of serious practice.
I have been blessed by being in the company of truly talented and knowledgeable shooters for most of my life. They are treasures of wisdom and the instructions and guidance they have given me are just as rare and precious as finding a pearl in an oyster. However, believe me, you have to go through a whole lot of oysters before you find one.
Every shooter you meet has his or her own opinions about the sport, but very few of them are able to teach you anything worthwhile. Just as you cannot learn to bec