Thursday, May 16, 2024
The fall and early wintertime bring back wonderful memories of years gone by. Times spent walking through a field with a good quail dog, wing-shooting ducks from a blind, and being camouflaged sitting against a tree waiting for a Tom turkey were hours spent in the great outdoors enjoying the thrill of the hunt.
Seems like I learned to shoot at an early age, with most of my instruction coming from my grandfather. I remember well the first time we were bird hunting, and a large covey of quail rose, beating their wings in rapid ascent, scattering in a thousand directions. The sound of the birds breaking from the brush overwhelmed my heart with excitement. The gun rose to my shoulder, while my eyes took in the chaotic scene. The trigger was pulled, and then pulled again and again, and no birds fell from the sky. Turning to my grandfather, I could mutter nothing other than, “how did I miss?” There had been as many as 15 to 20 birds in the covey, and when they rose the sky seemed to be literally full of quail. How could I miss all those birds? We had practiced with a clay target thrower and been proud of the progress I had made. My taste buds were salivating thinking of fried quail in the skillet, and yet I had not dropped a single bird. Granddad had dropped two.
Granddad’s face did not change expression. He simply said, “aim small, miss small.” The blank look on my face revealed confusion as I tried to interpret what the heck his statement meant. Speaking rhetorically, he elaborated. “Did you look at the covey or did you aim at a particular bird? If you do not focus on one bird at a time, you will miss all of them. Try to focus your eye to aim at a specific part of the bird. Imagine your target is the bird’s eye. If you focus on that specifically, you will hit your target, then you can move to the next bird and do the same thing. You will find you will get a lot of “doubles” when you aim small.”
It took me a bit to let Granddad’s wise words settle into my brain. As we walked, I had a pep talk with myself, and the next time the dog stopped on point alerting us a covey was near, I was ready. When the covey rose, I focused on a single quail in the group, dropped the bird, and then swung to aim at another. I missed the second shot, but the results proved the coaching I had received was meaningful. I had focused on the smallest part of the bird and got a positive result.
Texas politics got me to thinking about “aim small, miss small.” One of the reasons why our government keeps getting bigger and bigger is because our politicians do not “aim small, miss small.” They focus on grandiose accomplishments, rather than simply doing the job for which they were elected. It seems like most politicians feel like they must do more than their predecessor so they have accomplishments they can recite when they run for reelection, or more often, when they seek a higher office. This “ambition” leads officeholders to expand their office into even more and bigger government.
I am not sure how much I care if a county commissioner or justice of the peace has an opinion on abortion, on school vouchers, or the border. Understand these are all issues that need to be discussed and debated among the electorate, but none of these issues fall under the duties of those office holders. If our office holders would simply invest their time into performing the job for which they were elected, and doing it as well as they can, we would all be better off. Our government would be more effective also. A man or woman officeholder who takes care of the business at hand instead of spending much of their time wooing voters for their next campaign will get my vote. They should get yours too.
Thought for the day: Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems, and then campaign against them.
Until next time…I will keep ridin’ the storm out.
sam@hcnews.com
