Freedom to Play: We Made Our Own Fun

HUNTING GOPHERS IN SASKATCHEWAN

HUNTING GOPHERS IN SASKATCHEWAN Harold Zwick grew up on a farm near Ryerson, Saskatchewan , where he and his brothers perfected the art of gopher hunting. Charlie Riley’s Pasture for Gopher Shoots Charlie Riley’s pasture was a favourite place for the young Zwick boys to catch prairie gophers. The hot summer sun on the prairies always brought the gophers out to sun themselves. The prairie gopher is a golden brown creature about seven inches long, a burrowing animal that loves to stand upright on his haunches beside his burrow with his body pointed straight up while surveying his neighbourhood. The prairie gopher squeaks when frightened and scurries about to gather his family and dash down his hole to apparent safety. The Zwick’s Ryerson farmhouse was on a slight knoll on Section 3, Township 10, Range 33, west of the 1st Meridian in Saskatchewan. The dining and living rooms of the isolated farmhouse both faced the south, about two hundred yards from the dirt road separating our farm from Charlie Riley’s pasture. Hence on warm, sunny summer days we could see dozens of gophers from our dining room table as they played near their burrows. This often inspired a summer afternoon of fun and marksmanship , since during lunch someone would shout “see all them gophers out there today!” That was usually all it took for Edward or Walter or one of the other older boys (on Sunday when they had time off) to say, “Mom, I’m going to shoot gophers for Wal167 ter’s pet hawk,” and we boys would gang up behind whomever got down the family 0.22 caliber weapon from its nail rack above the door in the hallway between the dining room and the washroom . The gun was always loaded with about 10 rounds of “longs” (purchased from Gerald Sandel at the Maryfield Hardware on Saturday night) in case a chicken-stealing fox or coyote appeared, so there was no need to waste time finding bullets. Off we went to shoot gophers. This involved trying to sneak up within range (about 50 yards or less) so that the shooter had a realistic chance of hitting the 1.5” wide and 5 inches tall vertical target using the simple iron sights of the Cooey bolt-action rifle. I preferred the well-worn single-shot Winchester .22 rifle, probably because I was the youngest Zwick with least influence, and no one else wanted that old gun. That was the same reason I preferred the 410-gauge single-shot shotgun for duck hunting since the rounds were too expensive for gophers. In a large family you quite naturally learn to work with (and love) whatever small blessings you are allowed to get your hands on. 168 Freedom to Play The Pinsonneault children in a wheat field, Gravelbourg, SK, undated (Saskatchewan Archives Board [R-A19540]). A Gopher Bite at Sorenson’s Farm Another method of “catching” gophers (a misnomer really since the object was to kill them) was to “drown them out.” Drowning out gophers is a skill learned by all prairie farm boys. The principle is simple, though the technology and timing require some degree of precision. To drown out a gopher we would watch which burrow a gopher goes into and rapidly force him to re-emerge by flushing a large quantity of water down the hole after him. It is necessary to be reasonably quick, since the gopher may block his hole to keep the water out if he is given sufficient time and if he senses a water threat. The trickiest part of the enterprise is the capture itself, since the gopher is quick and will not pause when he rockets from the watery hole. A strategy that often works is to have a ring of boys at the burrow entrance which causes the creature to momentarily pause with only his head out of the hole while he surveys the lay of the land and formulates his escape plan. It is at this moment that the well-prepared farm boy jerks on his binder twine noose, carefully placed around the burrow entrance. This jerk should garrotte the gopher and chalk one up for the farm boy. An alternate or backup strategy is to have the farm dog (Sport, the border collie, in the case of our family) close at hand so that should the gopher bolt without a pause as he...