© Valeriy Kirsanov | Dreamstime.com
Bob lived on a farm in Eyota, MN about 12 miles east of Rochester, MN on Hwy 14. Whereas Larry and I lived in Rochester. Bob had seen a fox roaming on his acreage recently and he thought his farm would be a good convenient place to go fox hunting.
We planned to meet at Bob's farm one upcoming Friday or Saturday when the moon would be mostly full. There we would tether one of Bob's chickens to a stake near the front entrance of the family barn. We knew that the fox liked to eat chickens because of all the stories about foxes raiding chicken coops. We would then climb into the hayloft of the barn, and snuggle in our sleeping bags as we aimed aim our .22 caliber rifles out the hayloft doors waiting for a good shot at our fox as he (or she) came for the chicken bait.
My gun was a 1911 Model 06, Winchester pump action .22 rim fire rifle which dad have given me from Kraher's Meat Market in Kasson, MN after he closed the Market in 1958 and moved to Rochester. The gun apparently had quite a history and aside from the standard legend that "someone had killed themselves with it one day", it was regularly used to dispatch cattle and hogs with a close-range bullet between the eyes, on designated "slaughter days" during the work week. The gun given to me was in bad shape and greasy. I fixed it up, sanded and refinished the stock and re-blued the barrel.
The weekend came and we met at Bob's farm just before dark as planned. We tethered the chicken to the stake and hid in the hayloft of the barn with our guns pointed out the hayloft door. It wasn't long before dropping temperatures caused us to shiver in our sleeping bags while our trigger fingers got cold inside thin winter gloves. Deeper into the evening we discovered that our near full moon was either being obscured by a cloud cover or had set early, I don't recall. Consequently the night was so dark (there were no farm lights burning), that we not only couldn't see the farm field below where the fox was supposed to be roaming, we also couldn't see the chicken nor could I even see the aiming sight on the end of my short Winchester rifle!! I worried about the chicken as we didn't hear any sound from it and I feared it freezing to death! Bob, knowledgeable in chickens assured me that our chicken bait would simply fluff up its feathers and wait until this hunting nonsense was over so it could go back to the coop.
Around midnight, shivering greatly by this time, we made a group decision that we likely were not going to shoot a fox and that we should call it a night and go home to warmer surroundings. Fortunately for the fox and for us this would forever be the end of our fox hunting under a full moon!
