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My Dear Grandchildren: oday is the day they come to take my guns. I thought I���d write something about the way I feel about it, because, being my grandchildren, you might otherwise never get a chance to know how much so many of us cared about our guns and how deeply they represented a precious part of our lives. Of course, the hunting has long since disappeared. It wasn���t too long after the so-called ���humane societies��� had seen to the end of gunning seasons that there were no more birds or animals to speak of. The white-tailed deer were about the first to almost disappear from a combination of overcrowding, disease and starvation. After Ducks Unlimited was forced to close down, the breeding grounds were no longer cared for, and except for a few mallard crossbreeds and the odd farm-raised Canada goose, the skies were empty. It seemed that once they got the hunting stopped, that was all they cared about, and when the money that hunters had contributed every year dried up, so did the animals ��� and that was virtually the end of it. A lot of us had predicted what would happen, but we were voted out and that was that. It was like the end of a crusade. Once the thing was over, the people who felt they were righteous all forgot what the point of it was. It seemed, as so many of us tried to say to the politicians, that the Brothers of Bambi and all the rest didn���t really care about the animals themselves. All they wanted was the end of what they thought was cruel. Now they know what cruel is ��� or should. Some of the gun clubs continued for a while, and a few of us stayed on to shoot a little trap and skeet, but somehow it wasn���t the same. Crowds would come around and wave signs and carry on against us, and the simple pleasure of smelling a little powder and breaking a few clay targets was nationally shouted down as something akin to criminal. Looking back on it, I can see how it all happened ��� I think. A lot still believe it was the growing criminal lobby that was at the bottom of it. And it turned out that it would be easier to stop the hunting seasons first and then make a play for the guns than the other way around ��� which they had tried first. I know you���ll read about it in school, but I wanted you to hear the other side of it at least one time. You might get some idea when you see the pictures of me and your grandmother and friends with our bird dogs and retrievers. We had some marvelous times together, especially down along the Eastern Shore. Back in the 1970s there were nearly a million geese there, and early in the season fine flights of pintails, which were our favorites. (You ought to look up the pintail in one of your books to see what a beautiful bird it was.) And there were always the old standbys, like the green-headed mallard. Somewhere in my stuff you���ll find a couple of duck calls ��� you ought to save them. I suspect they���ll be collectors��� items before too long. The one that makes a sort of a quack is the mallard call, which we used most. The others are goose calls, and I think I saved a couple of pintail whistles. S P O R T I The game was gone and hunting along with it, so the obvious next step was to confiscate our beloved firearms. The Day They Took My Guns By Gene Hill N G C 102 L A S S I C S