Hunting 

(written for children who like to hunt) 

Linda transcribed this story as it was told to her by her father, Robert Hess. 

I had a dog named Rover. Rover was my hunting dog, he was always hunting for something.  Sometimes, he would hunt for me, and occasionally we would hunt for each other. 

Hunting is the very best thing to do, because when you hunt, you never know what you will find. Rover  and I used to find many interesting and sometimes scary things. 

As I said, Rover could talk. There was a reason Rover could talk. Long ago, while hunting for a way  home, we happened to find a happy old elf, hunting for his suitcase lost in the field. As I think about it,  the elf wasn’t happy when we first found him, but he was happy when we left him. Elves life to reward  people, and this fellow knew that nothing would please me more than to be able to understand what  my hunting dog had to say. So that is why Rover could talk. 

Talking-hunting dogs make for a very interesting hunting trip. A hunting trip with Rover was something  to look forward to and almost always something to remember. 

One time my hunting dog and I went hunting in the big woods. The thing about the big woods was  mostly how big they were and being big made the other side seem very far away. I had an old truck and  when we hunted on the other side, we put our tent, food and anything else we might use into the truck.  We then drove to where we thought we ought to hunt. 

As I said, when we hunted we never knew for what we were hunting. This was nice, because it was  always such a surprise to find what we were hunting for. 

On this trip, we did not find anything in the beginning, but as we thought about it, one never finds  anything in the beginning because finding always comes at the end. 

After the beginning but before the end, we became very hungry, and so we got out our food. We built a  hunter’s dinner. Just then along came a black bear of great size. Rover and I decided that the bear must  have been hungry too. We decided this because he ate all of our hunter’s dinner. We also decided that  we must be bear hunting, and so I had Rover bring my gun. Just as I was going to shoot this bear, Rover  

said, “Wait!” I could see that Rover had an idea and he wanted me to wait until he thought of it. 

Meanwhile, I asked the bear if he would get into the truck, thinking to myself that he might be too heavy  to lift if I shot him where he stood. The black bear seemed not only happy but anxious to step into the  truck, for his bear nose told him that the rest of the hunter’s food was in the truck. Rover and I always  took a lot of food because hunting always made us very hungry and we never found anything to eat.  The bear got into the driver’s seat instead of the back of the truck, and while Rover was thinking, the  bear kept stuffing our food into himself until he became very fat. 

Meanwhile, Rover decided his idea was not very good, and since we had no food left we decided that  we had been bear hunting and that now we had one, we decided to go home.

The only problem was that it was impossible to get the bear out of the driver’s seat because he had  become so fat.  

Rover, embarrassed because he could think of nothing else, decided he was anxious to get home and so  suggested that we teach the bear how to drive, and that way we would not have to wait for the bear to  become thin again. So I taught the bear how to drive, and bumping into only a few trees, we left the big  woods. 

On the open road, the bear’s foot seemed to grow heavier until the truck was really speeding. Along  came a police car with a loud siren. I don’t know what was more exciting… to be driven by a bear or to  watch a policeman talk to one! 

Someday, I’ll tell you what we did with the bear. 

The End.