There was a time when November 11th was my favorite day of the year. More so than Christmas, more than Thanksgiving, even more than my birthday was November 11th – Veteran’s Day. Veteran’s Day was always a special day for me because my father, James E. Brewer, was a veteran who lost his life in WW II. My stepdad, Daddy George, was also a Veteran, serving in the Pacific with the U.S. Navy. But November 11 was also the traditional opening day of quail season in West Virginia, and I lived to go quail hunting.
We had moved to Lewisburg in 1955 and Daddy said I could go hunting with him when I turned 12, which happened in 1956. I devoured every issue of Field and Stream and counted the days. I had been hunting with Daddy before, but never with a gun.
On November 11, 1956, I stuffed a half box of Remington .410 shells in my hunting coat and walked behind the dogs along with Daddy and Melvin Crantz. I was on Cloud Ten, a distinct notch over Cloud Nine.
Around noon, a single quail got up wild and I took aim and fired, winging the bird, which immediately lit in a tree. Daddy saw what happened and shot it out of the tree. He said if he had waited until I was able to reload my single barrel Stevens shotgun, the quail may have sailed away and we could have lost it. When Rebel, our German Shorthair, retrieved the quail, Daddy handed it to me, and I put it in my coat. I had shot it, but it wasn’t the same thing. I desperately wanted to shoot a quail by myself, which was no easy task for a 12-year-old boy with a single-barrel .410 shotgun hunting beside two crackerjack shots. There was no such thing as “Let Jimmie have a shot.” It was every man for himself when the birds flew.
About 4:30 that afternoon, the dogs began acting “birdy”, pointing and trailing, pointing and trailing until they locked on point when we reached a ditch. A big covey erupted from the brush and flew in every direction. One went my way, I turned and fired, and it began to fall. I knew I had it hit, but I didn’t see it drop. Daddy did, however, and led the dogs to that spot. Rebel found it, a plump bobwhite, and I had killed it by myself. I have never been so excited.
I think about that Veteran’s Day often. It all happened in the little town of Lewisburg many years ago, but it remains one of my life’s great memories.
