22 Birds with One Stone

Emmett's 1929 Hunting, Trapping, and Fishing License (paper) and Eddie's license (button).  The license numbers are off by one, dad (Mark) also has the paper license of Eddie and the button for Emmett.

Today's post is a story about how Emmett solved a problem.  It comes from my dad (Mark), the third child of Emmett and Anne:

Dad had a huge pile of coal ashes next to the driveway from years of burning coal. When he got a few extra dollars he paid someone with a loader to remove the ash pile.  Then he got a load of topsoil and spread it out and planted grass seed for a lawn.  

A short while later he came home from school and found many starlings on the lawn eating his grass seed.  He said, "I need to try and stop that project." Dad enjoyed bird hunting (pheasant and grouse) and had a .22 rifle and a 12 gauge double-barrel shotgun.  He got his shotgun and said, "we'll go out to the barn and see if we can correct this."

The barn had two large doors and each had smaller wooden hinged doors within them.  Dad opened the door enough so that he could insert the barrel of the shotgun in the crack near the hinge.  I was with him and we waited in silence for at least five minutes.  Then he shot one shell and told me to get a brown paper bag and pick up the 22 dead starlings.  I did as he requested and then reported back that he got 19 starlings, not 22.  He calmly said, "no, there were 22 so go out and find the other three."  Sure enough, when I check on a slightly lower level beyond the new lawn I found the other three birds. 

Back of the 1929 license.  It is interesting to note the statement encouraging hunters to "kill all you can" of vermin.