Alpo Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 Did so good with the last one. This is a teen/young adult novel. I read it in the 60s. It's taking place in the mid-fifties. Daddy is an army officer. He's been transferred to Europe for a year. He and Mama are going, but the kid is staying with Grandpa for that year. Grandpa lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The kid is a Boy Scout. There is only one other boy of scouting age in the general area. He talks the second kid into joining the Scouts, and they are Lone Scouts. This is for boys that wish to be Scouts but there are not enough boys around to make a troop. You take all the tests. Any adult can sign off on them. You send in your results to the district officers and they send you your patches. All of the one boy's camping equipment is Army surplus. When he takes his new friend on the first overnight, they discover a beaver pond. And someone is poaching the beaver. When they tell Grandpa about seeing the poacher, although it was dark enough they could not tell who it was, they did see that he had a revolver. This upset Grandpa. It was one thing to have a rifle or a shotgun in the woods. That was normal, for shooting animals. But a REVOLVER!!??!? The only use for one of them is to shoot people. For some reason that comment has stayed with me for 50 years or so. Aside from that stupid statement, I enjoyed the book and would like to reread it. Unfortunately I have no idea what the name of it is. Does it sound familiar to anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trailrider #896 Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 Poaching a beaver? I thought the mountain men preferred to fry or bake the tail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpo Posted May 25, 2019 Author Share Posted May 25, 2019 And just think how much wood it would take to bring the water in the beaver pond up to boiling, so you could poach the beaver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 Boy, that sure sounds familiar... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpo Posted May 25, 2019 Author Share Posted May 25, 2019 For the longest time I thought it was The Black Fawn, by Kjelgaard. Then I found a copy of The Black Fawn. Nope. The second kid showed up for that first camping trip with his stuff in a croaker sack. It included a cast iron skillet and a 2 lb can of coffee. Yeah bubba. Let's hike ten miles in the woods totin' that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 It did sound a bit like Kjelgaard; that was my initial thought when I first read your opening post. However! When I was a Boy Scout back in the early-mid 60's, we had no fancy modern camping gear. Many times we'd set out hiking to a camping spot carrying sacks or, if we were lucky, using old Army knapsacks - even canvas radio bags. AND there was a small cast iron skillet that fit my pack. I remember a couple time having a canned ham on board! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpo Posted May 26, 2019 Author Share Posted May 26, 2019 Do you read for pleasure? I found this series on Gutenberg. Boy Scouts, and it was written in 1913, so they'd only been around 5 years. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20434 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Mark Flint #31954 LIFE Posted May 28, 2019 Share Posted May 28, 2019 Quit reading Alpo, the wire can't spare the electrons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoky Pistols Posted May 28, 2019 Share Posted May 28, 2019 Is it this one? https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Scout-Pathfinders-Strange-Beaver/dp/B002NS6DOE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sixgun Sheridan Posted May 28, 2019 Share Posted May 28, 2019 On 5/25/2019 at 10:27 AM, Alpo said: This upset Grandpa. It was one thing to have a rifle or a shotgun in the woods. That was normal, for shooting animals. But a REVOLVER!!??!? The only use for one of them is to shoot people. Does it sound familiar to anyone? Like most of you I'm old enough to remember when the anti-gun folks were only interested in banning handguns. Rifles and shotguns were okay, but a handgun was only designed to kill other people so they were bad. Nowadays they've left handguns alone for the most part while they try and convince everyone that a semi-auto rifle is designed only to kill people. Once they succeed you can bet your buttocks that handguns will become Public Enemy #1 again. As for military surplus gear, that was virtually all I used as a kid and teen when it came to camping, frolicking in the woods or sometimes even taking to school. I liked it because it was cool and always good stuff... my dad liked it because it was cheap. Man, how I miss the good ol' days of true military surplus stores! The last one I found a few years ago had nothing but cheap imported junk that resembled true mil-surp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpo Posted May 28, 2019 Author Share Posted May 28, 2019 2 hours ago, Smoky Pistols said: Is it this one? https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Scout-Pathfinders-Strange-Beaver/dp/B002NS6DOE Too old. That's 1913. Kid's daddy was either WW2 or Korea. Thanks, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.