A Little Off the Top: Avoid close calls this hunting season

We've all had close calls in life — times when we barely escaped serious injury. Some people chalk it up to luck, fate, God, or just being in the right place at the right time.

Regardless, those episodes usually make you sit up and think. Or wipe your brow. Or pour yourself a stiff drink. Or all of the above.

One such episode happened to me a couple of weeks ago while on a hunting trip, and it's worth repeating here in hopes that everyone has a safe time out in the woods.

It was a beautiful Saturday in Pierre, S.D., and I was lucky enough to be pheasant hunting with a group of my dad's friends, for a combination birthday and early Christmas present. We had been skeet shooting the night before, and after Friday night's target practice, we were chompin' at the bit to get our share of pheasants in one of the best spots to hunt them in the country.

I was borrowing a friend's shotgun for the weekend, and we were all experienced in firearm safety. Before we hopped into the truck, I opened the breech on his over/under Beretta shotgun for a safety check. It was empty, unloaded, and safe to transport.

We drove to our hunting spot, piled out, and took the shotguns out of the back. Again, a quick check of the breech revealed nothing, as I began to get some 12-gauge shells out to load up.

But something was nagging at me, that little voice in the back of my head. On a hunch, I pulled the breech all the way up to my face and stared down the barrels.

Lodged halfway down both barrels were two live, 20-gauge shells, stuck perfectly in place in the 12-gauge barrels.

I paused while that sunk in, and went over to show my friend. He looked at me and our eyes met. "Thank God I checked" was all I could say.

While some of the other hunters in our group congratulated me on having the foresight to do that, it did little to calm my nerves. All I could think of was "What if?"

I've never met anyone who has discharged a 12-gauge shell with a live 20-gauge shell lodged in the barrel, but the best-case scenario would probably be that the barrel would explode — hopefully outward, away from my face. On the Beretta model I had, you can select which barrel will fire first, the bottom or the top, but either way, it spelled disaster. Both barrels were plugged.

Berettas are known for their solid craftsmanship, but it's entirely possible the breech could have opened up, sending shot and gunpowder back into my face. Or the barrel could have exploded, taking parts of my fingers with it.

Who knows?

And that was the worst part of it, I guess. For half the day the only thing I could think about was the fact that I had just dodged a trip to the emergency room that could have had severe repercussions.

Of course, the larger issue was how the shells got there in the first place. We had been skeet shooting the night before, and nobody had a 20-gauge, but mixed in with the 20 boxes of 12-gauge shells were one or two boxes of 20-gauge.

As best we can figure, someone must have put two 20-gauge shells in, which then slid halfway down the barrel, and then attempted to fire the gun a few minutes later. With the shells "safely" down the barrel, the gun wouldn't have gone off, and if you opened the breech to check it — without looking down the barrel — you would have thought you forgot to load it, what with a dozen of us taking turns shooting skeet.

Still, no matter what scenario we tried to come up with, we just couldn't understand how two live shells got lodged in the barrels.

That incident made me think of all the other close calls I've had in life. My life hasn't really been any different than yours — we've all had them — but still, it makes you think. I thought about the time when I was a little boy and my mom rushed me to the hospital after I drank some pesticide, which looked just like apple cider in the clear jug sitting on a table outside. I was limp in her arms when she arrived, she told me later.

Or when my house burned down in 1983. I happened to be upstairs watching TV with my brother at the time, and we all got out safe and sound, even though the house was fully engulfed in less than 10 minutes. Had we been asleep an hour later, it might not have been the same. Our kerosene heater erupted in the kitchen, and my bedroom was located off the kitchen — the only way out of the house for me.

Later, after a great day of hunting, I was reflecting on the situation with one of the guys on the trip. He pointed out that the more you deal with firearms, the greater the chance of something happening.

The idea behind firearm safety, of course, is to eliminate that, but I suppose there's some truth in his observation. All it takes is a moment of carelessness, inattention, forgetfulness, irresponsibility, alcohol, or immaturity, and a serious accident can unfold with a bang. In this case, it was probably carelessness.

Just something to keep in mind when you head out on your hunting trips this season. Despite the fact that I ended up safe and sound, I spent most of that morning wondering "What if?" — and that's not always a fun question to ponder, even on a beautiful fall day spent hunting with your friends.

Among Other Things: Politics and Trouble over Bridged Waters

Paul Fugleberg

Well, the election has come and gone, barring whatever challenges may arise. And the sun comes up, the sun goes down, the hands on the clock keep going 'round — and so do the Republicans and Democrats. Somehow the system survives, thank goodness.

Elections in Polson have always been interesting since the very first one. The late Emil Swart, a crusty, outspoken printer with the Flathead Courier for many years, recalled Polson's first election held in 1910.

Here's how he put it:

"As I recall, all but a very few of us wanted to be mayor. We had a sort of mayor, Jim Dawson, a mortician who had been appointed by someone.

"Suspicion was rife but soon three groups evolved, and this later became but two, and so the battle line was drawn.

"Old Man Carter, who was charged by some with being an ex-Quantrell guerrilla and by others of being an ex-Kansas Redleg, headed one ticket and Charley Mansur the other. Charley, having the Willing Workers Club, Ben Cramer, president, behind him, won.

"There were only about 116 registered ballots cast and Charley held a comfortable margin of about two-to-one. Of course, the result was never in doubt, as Ben had about a hundred ballots in reserve which, it proved, were not necessary. It was rumored they quit counting when they reached 116.

"There was much dissatisfaction over the result, but the losers found a scapegoat in the person of a jeweler, Arthur Mizell. Arthur, a great joker, boasted that he voted several times at each polling place; and after weeping scalding tears down his wife's backbone, during which she called him many kinds of a fool, he was dragged by the law to Kalispell where we heard he was fined $200."

Trouble over bridged waters

Bridges aren't always connecting links. Sometimes they've been known to create wide gaps among the citizenry. It happened in Polson in the summer of 1910.

People didn't vote on the city's first bridge, but judging from the ruckus it raised, it would have provided more controversy than the Burns-Tester race.

As homesteaders and city residents looked forward to completion of the new city's first bridge across the Pend Oreille River (now the Flathead River) which would connect west shore communities with Polson.

The Lakeshore Sentinel, Polson's first weekly paper, painted an optimistic picture: The bridge would be strong enough to "safely carry a railroad train of thirty cars. Construction will be about 400 pilings, 180 of these 40 feet long, remainder running in two-feet grades from that to 26 feet. There will be five 50-foot spans . . ."

Original plans called for a single approach on both sides of the river with Flathead County putting up $7,100 and local people providing the balance of funding as well as contributing labor on the approaches.

Construction of the 1,842-ft. long, 16-ft. wide bridge began in June. The trouble started when merchants began arguing about the approach on the Polson side of the river — whether it should connect with B Street or C Street (now the highway and 3rd Ave. W., respectively). Ultimately a "Y"-shaped, twin approach was constructed which connected both streets to the bridge … but only after a huge hassle.

Burrill Bridge Company construction engineer R. W. Sweet and foreman John Gore soon found themselves in the middle of a major dispute.

Tempers reached the boiling point in mid-August when work on the C Street approach was halted by an injunction filed by B Street proponents.

The majority on the city council, however, favored C Street and responded by agreeing to allow B Street to be graded as soon as the C Street approach was done. This roused the ire of the B Streeters, who began grading the street without a permit the next morning.

"Two men were put to work," the Flathead Courier reported, "but the mayor soon hove in sight and told them to quit. They failed to obey his orders so they were arrested and the work stopped until that evening when four men started in to grade. They were almost immediately arrested but later released.

"The men evidently thought the mayor didn't mean it for they returned to work. Chief of Police Hern gathered them in, escorted them to the jail, and locked them up for the night."

The next morning the dispute intensified. The mayor put up a sign closing B Street. Bridge Engineer Sweet nailed up a barricade to the bridge. A man working for the C Street people fixing a temporary approach was arrested. The Cs retaliated by pinching another B Street workman who was charged with cutting a tree in the park.

Some west side ranchers who wanted to get across the river tore down Sweet's barricade and crossed on the bridge without looking at the "no trespass" signs.

Meanwhile, Salish and Kootenai Indians, who had never had any difficulty crossing the river before the bridge, watched stoically from the sidelines.

At this point Sheriff O'Connell came down from Kalispell and things quieted down a trifle.

A C Street delegation took the noon boat to Somers and went overland to Kalispell where they obtained an injunction which tied up the entire project.

The Courier editor commented, "With eight men under arrest, two injunction suits, every attorney in Polson employed, police and justice court working overtime, special officers being sworn in, everybody talking 'writs,' 'the code,' and how stubborn the other fellow was, it began to look like pickings for news.

"But now it is all over, the injunction suits have been withdrawn, the arrested men turned loose, the lawyers have gone fishing, the mayor is rusticating in the hills, the sheriff and commissioners have come and gone, the bridge is completed and will soon have two approaches, and everybody loves his neighbor no matter on which street he lives."

The bridge and its twin approaches served Polson until being replaced with a single approach, piling span built by W. P. Roscoe in 1927. The present concrete bridge was completed in 1966.