Drive - A Memoir 56th Installment
and
cars filling the parking lots, but even though we hardly ever see two
cars together at the same time, we have high mountain deserts and
meadows with creeks running through them. He could tell about
thousands, maybe millions of people crowded together in huge cities,
where we only have about one person per square mile in Idaho, but
this was just the way Russ and I liked it: no people, just the free
and wild country. You know, forget about tales of the city, I’m
sure the people there are happy, but I don’t think their life can
compare with ours.
Chapter
13
It
was only a couple of weeks later; we were finishing repairs on the
south fence line. Idaho is an open range state meaning that cattle
may graze where ever they darn well please, and it’s up to the
landowner to fence them out
of his farm. The open range law even holds a rancher faultless if his
cows are on the road causing a car wreck – dead people and all. The
Old Man was particular about keeping well maintained fences because
he hated range cattle eating his crops, and he hated hunters from the
city shooting the geese! Vernon saves the geese so he and his friends
can shoot them all. A wild Canadian goose is good eaten’ although
it is somewhat greasier and chewier than chicken but still a
substantial meal.
I
remember one time Vernon had told this bunch of Idaho Falls hunters
that they couldn’t hunt on our place. Our farm was near the border
of the Camas National Refuge, and the geese were protected in the
refuge where they nest, but when they came to the farm to eat grain,
we could shoot them (in season of course). The Idaho Falls hunters
had watched where the flock of about forty geese would land every
morning, and they wanted to shoot them real bad, but the Old Man had
told them “NO!” A couple of days later the Old Man got up at 3:00
a.m., for whatever reason old people get up in the night, and he
noticed a light bouncing around a couple of miles into the desert.
The farm was seven miles from the road that runs from Terreton to
Rexburg. He piled into his pickup and drove to the wheat field and
walked to the south fence by the moon light. He knew every bump and
badger hole in his place so driving and walking by dead reckoning was
easy for him. He met the hunters at the fence, and threatened them to
stay off his farm. The city slickers were surprised they got caught,
after they had walked miles through the desert to poach geese on
private land. They became quite infuriated, to say the least. They
paced back and forth raising and lowering their guns, talking among
themselves, and then stomping around some more. I’m sure Vern was
thinking he should have brought his shotgun
500 more words tomorrow
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