Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Sharp Shooter

This weekend we headed down to High River to visit my grandparents and celebrate Father's Day with them. My grandparents live a busy life, sometimes busier then us, so we don't get to see them as much as we would like to. Saturday morning I got out to the farm and we made the 3.5hr drive south.

My grandparents live in a valley right next to the Highwood River. It is a beautiful spot, and where my mom and her brother grew up. It is great to hear some of the stories that get told about that place. Everything from my Grandpa's newest creation for the Alberta Beef, to the cattle stories from the early 80's when Highwood Land and Cattle was in its prime.

Grandpa's gun collection. 2 Centential guns,
a CPR gun, his grandfathers gun, and a
Calgary Stampede gun. Most have never been shot.


After having a great dinner Saturday night in Okotoks, more on that to come later this week, we went back to their farm for the evening. A pretty relaxing but great day.

Down where Grandma and Grandpa live there are a lot of gophers. While these animals may be cute, they actually are pretty bad animals to have on your land. 20 gophers will eat as much grass as 1 cow will in a year, and they leave holes all over the place that animals can fall through and hurt themselves.

Grandpa love to sit on his deck and shoot gophers, but on Sunday morning it was dad who was out there shooting away at these little rodents that were on the lawn. After breakfast he told me that I was going to go shoot some gophers with him, so I better get my coat and shoes on.


I have never shot a gun before. Actually I take that back, I shot an air pistol once before during a Pony Club target practice. I have never shot a real gun before, let alone killed anything. It was #8 on my 101 in 1001 list, and as you can see that item is now crossed off.


In a matter of about 30 mins I had 4 gophers killed, and dad had nick named me "Snipper". It was a ton of fun, and I think I even made the comment that I wished we had gophers at home so that I could shoot at them! I guess the mangy coyotes will have to do for now!

1 comment:

Heather said...

Love to shoot gophers, especially when you see them in the scope, flopping away!