Jackrabbits and GPA

In the fall of 1961, I attended Austin College in Sherman, Texas as a sophomore transfer student. 

Attended may be a bit of an exaggeration - I did show up for most of my classes, but formal education was not even near the top of my priority list.  The majority of my time and effort went to learning to play contract bridge, singing in a folk-music quartet called the Converts, and hunting rabbits at night from my pickup truck.

We had a five man cadre of rabbit hunters, and three of them – all mediocre shots – used shotguns.  John Stuckey and I used 22 rifles. Mine was an old open-sight single-shot Savage that was older than I was.  We usually used my truck, and I usually drove, but one night Johnny was driving.

That was when I made what had to be the shot of a lifetime. 

Johnny had seen a jackrabbit out in a pasture, and stopped the truck at the end of a dirt road.  The rabbit was no longer visible - just past the edge of the high beams – all we could see was the glow of his eye about a hundred yards beyond the barbed wire fence.

Standing in the truck bed, I propped my elbow on the top of the cab and squeezed off a shot.  The glowing dot disappeared.

“You missed” yelled the guys in the back of the truck.  I’ll admit I didn’t know if I hit it or not – I wasn’t even sure that there was a rabbit out there.

Johnny got out, ducked through the fence and walked out into the pasture.  A few minutes later, he returned with a dead rabbit, shot through the eye.  “He got it.” he said, “He never misses.  That’s why he always drives - to give you other guys a chance.”