As I remember it.......

The Gun Incident……..as I remember it.

My brother Bill and I have been hunters most all our lives. This story happened in my teenage years. Unknown to our dad, one day Bill decided to take Grandmother Lynn’s Winchester lever action rifle over to our barn for some target practice. He then climbed to the top of the hill behind the barn. On reaching the summit he heard some crows calling back and forth and decided to see if he could get a shot at one. While waiting for them to come into range, he rested the barrel of the rifle on the toe of his shoe, not realizing he had the hammer of the gun at full cock. It had rained the night before and the ground was muddy. He started to shift positions. He began to slide on the slopping ground an accidentally pulled the trigger of the rifle. The bullet entered his foot between the big toe and the next toe to it. I don’t know how he stood the pain; here he was close to half a mile from the house high on our hill and no way to get help. Some how he made it back to the house and went to bed without informing anyone as to what had happened.

No one thought anything about his being in bed because he occasionally would get a violet migraine headache and go to bed to sleep it off. The next day everyone was out of the house or in other parts of the house. Bill was still in bed and I was helping out at our general store. I went to the house for some forgotten reason and as I entered our bedroom, Bill, was out of bed.

When he saw me he began to hop on one foot and dived into bed. I ask him what was wrong with his foot. He said nothing but I knew better and throwing back the covers discovered the foot beginning to turn different colors. He then had no choice but to tell me what had happened. I rushed back to the store and told dad what happened. He was so angry he didn’t trust himself to talk to Bill. He told me to get Bill in the car and take him to doctor Dudney at Gainesboro. Off we went and reaching doctor Dudney’s office we were taken right into his examination room. Doctor came in looked at the wound and proceeded to start treatment. He told Bill how lucky he was, because another day without treatment and he might have lost his foot to gangrene. I often wondered what occurred went dad and Bill finally had their discussion. May be Bill will offer us his version of this tale.