Shooting with the Men

I learned how to shoot and was not a bad shot.

Good sportsmanship and safety was the rule.

Amagansett was still country when Kenneth Edwards and I were married in 1943.

Ken and I were not only husband and wife, but friends and companions. We liked doing things together and since game was a big part of the winter larder, I needed to learn how to shoot.

Ken would take me to the dump and would bring his pistol. He would set up bottles for me to shoot at, but try as I might my aim was not good enough to hit them.

Let a rat show its nose, though, and I would have it. The dump was infested with them at that time.

Little by little I did learn how to shoot and was not a bad shot. I was so proud of my prowess that I decided to have Ken's brothers and their wives over for a festive dinner. I had shrimp cocktail, candlelight, and wine, and the piece de resistance, a wild goose that I had shot.

However, I had never cooked wild game before.

Ken, with knife in hand, made a grand gesture of carving the bird, when the knife bounced back at him and the goose bounced off the floor. The dinner had to proceed without the goose.

I discovered there is an art to cooking game. I made it a project from then on, and did learn how to do it well. The old folks used to boil the birds first, which I did not like, since all the goodness was cooked out. I steamed the goose first, with the seasonings, and then roasted it.

We wanted to teach our son to handle a gun, and gave him a BB gun with instructions as to handling it. We let him practice in the backyard until we found him trying to shoot a bird out of a tree two houses down, in Ken's sister's yard. The gun was put on hold for a while after that.

One time we heard bullets whizzing by and traced it to the Bistrians' house on Atlantic Avenue. Peter Bistrian and family lived in the third house on the east side, past Old Montauk Highway. We found that the boys, Pat and Bruce (I believe), were practicing with a rifle, shooting in our direction. After we spoke with Pete, their father, the rifle was no longer theirs to practice with.

Hunting was natural for us. Game was plentiful at that time. Ken spoke of how in years gone by he would walk a long distance to get to Oyster Pond, in Montauk, and then return with game on his back.

We belonged to the Indian Field Gun Club, which had a shanty on Oyster Pond, where we spent many a weekend. It was complete with outhouse. We cooked and heated with a coal stove, used kerosene lamps, and had a pump at the sink for water. We hunted, looked for clams and oysters, and enjoyed the privacy. The East Hampton gun club had a shanty nearby and the Montauk gun club had one across the pond.

Good sportsmanship and safety was the rule. We shot only what we could eat. The one exception was a fox that we thought was killing our birds and was mangy.

When the hunting season opened, we were always concerned about the people who drove out from the city to hunt for the day. We figured that they took their guns out once a year and were not careful about handling them. With their red outfits on, they would pile as many into a car as possible and head out to the country to hunt.

One day Ken, Kenny, and I were at Lazy Point, on the lookout for pheasants, when we saw one crossing the road. We got out of the truck just as an out-of-town car arrived. People streamed out, as if from a Barnum and Bailey Circus car. I said, "Let's get out of here," but Ken said, "No, we were here first." We let the dog out to flush the pheasant, as we all stood at half moon. The pheasant flew and we raised our guns to shoot, when one of the stranger's guns went off, peppering our son. Fortunately the only shot that penetrated was one pellet that went into his finger. No one would admit having the safety off, before raising their gun.

Our son Ken Jr. would bring his Chesapeake retriever, Dash, to the Indian Field shanty, and now and then his friend Terry Parsons. Terry's family owned the Amagansett Lumber Yard.

We would occasionally invite friends like Betty and Erwin Schellinger, who lived in a house built by the Schellinger family in 1763, on Main Street in Amagansett - doctors' offices, today.

One time when the Schellingers were at the shanty, hornets invaded the attic. We worked hard to smoke them out. We thought we had succeeded, until bedtime. The bunkroom had four bunks and Ern had the upper bunk and as he sank into bed, he jumped up and shouted: "Ow! He stung me in the ass!" We laughed about it many times. We had missed one hornet.

The camp was sold in 1961. The shanty was moved behind the Town Marine Museum on Bluff Road in Amagansett. It is pretty much the way it was, except for the bunkroom door, where everyone had written their names, the date, and what game was taken. The door was stolen. It would add so much if it could be found and replaced.

The state park bought the other camps at the same time as the Indian Field Gun Club.

My husband was associated with Gardiner's Island, as was his father before him. Sam Edwards owned the Magdalene, an old 110-foot sub chaser which had been converted to a fishing boat. He would transport things back and forth for the island. Ken took over and we were very good friends with Jimmy and Alex Eccles, who were the caretakers at that time. We would visit them now and then. They lived in the old manor house, which later burned down. We slept in an upstairs bedroom with no heat or bathroom and no insulation. We cuddled close to keep warm and used the under-the-bed potty.

Winston Guest was renting the island at that time and he had a downstairs game room, with all his trophies which he had collected from all over the world, which included javelins. When he and his friends got tipsy they would throw them at the back door. Sometimes the javelins would go through the back door and hit Virginia Hall (the slaves' quarters).

We hunted on the island also, but that is another story. The memories come floating back and, once started, can go on and on.

Louise E. Edwards moved to Amagansett at 17, and lived there until 1994. She now lives in North Carolina. Her husband and son are now deceased.