California roadside poaching

Back in the summer of 1989, I was at my home duty station of the army reserves as a weekend warrior in San Pablo, California. One Sunday afternoon, one of my fellow reservists (a young Spec4) showed me and two other reservists a turkey in the trunk of his car as we were getting ready to go home after drill. A "wild" tom. He showed me the handgun he took the bird with: a Springfield Armory 45. I believe he had special bird-shot shells for that pistol. He claimed to have shot it roadside that morning on his way to drill right near his hometown of Hollister. Crazy story, indeed! I hate to think what would have happened to him if the law caught wind of it. The tom must have been rather tame to have gotten in range of a handgun.

Sometime in 1992, I was driving in my pickup truck at night in the hilly back roads of Marin County, CA. There was a large herd of 'tame' does right out on the intersection. They were so docile they practically walked right up to the window of my truck. I happened to have had a 45 of my own in the truck: a Colt's Series 70 Govt. Model and some FMJ rounds. The devil was tempting me but God intervened, thankfully. I pointed my gun at one of the deer then thought better than to shoot the doe. I mean what if some farmer or rancher heard the gunshot and called the sheriff. I also thought to myself, I don't know how to even skin, gut and butcher a deer anyway. Ever since then, I've perished the thought of game poaching. A few years later, I would go on a legal deer hunt, my first deer hunt, with a guide in Trinity County, CA, deer zone B2, and his two adult sons helped the father, my guide, gut, skin, wash and quarter the yearling buck I took with my Leupold-Gold-Ring-Vari-X-scoped Browning A-Bolt II .25-06 on his Hayfork, CA ranch.