In
The West Wing of a secluded, tile-roofed Spanish home in San Antonio, Texas is a
room that is one of my favorite retreats. It's a large room, carpeted with the
rich hides of Polar and Kodiak bears and tigers. A long setee is draped with
zebra hides that prickle your back when you sit down for a drink and some talk
with the man of the house. Pairs of elephant tusks stand close to bookcases and
a maze of racked rifles and shotguns of every description. The walls are spiked
with such a forest of mounted heads and horns that the whole effect becomes
blurred, and the guest concentrates on the host, who leans casually behind a big
wooden desk.
He
is a ruddily healthy man of indeterminate middle age, his compact body kept hard
by constant physical activity, his hands those of a working
man. He looks at you with a direct blue gaze that would raise your guard
if it weren’t with a soft chuckle as he asks about your health, your family,
and the advancement of your career. The smile that accompanies the chuckle is
partially hidden by a drooping roan moustache, and overshadowed by the
belligerent nose of a Roman centurion.
He
is Col. Charles Askins, my longtime friend, and one of the most interesting –
some say the most controversial – men you are likely to meet anywhere in this
last of the 1900s.
Since
you are sufficiently bemused by firearms to be now reading the pages of Shooting
Times, you know Askins as a prominent writer whose work has appeared in
about every gun publication. You might know that he is the son of the late Maj.
Charles Askins, the best authority and writer on the subject of shotguns that
this country has produced. The salty, knowledgeable, and for the hidebound,
often outrageous stories penned by this man of guns are explained and mitigated
by a background that would shame the plotting efforts of the most imaginative
novelist.
Askins
is living proof that the use of guns can be a way of life. Reared by a father
whose living came from guns, he worked first as a forest ranger, spent 10 years
in the U.S. Border Patrol in rumrunning days when a gunfight a night was the
rule of thumb, won the National Pistol Championship, then moved into the U.S.
Army for 22 years as an ordinance officer. During those decades of service to
his government he managed to allot time for hunting trips on almost every
continent in the world and became an internationally recognized big game hunter.
Since
his retirement from the army nine years ago, the restless Colonel has continued
to combine shooting and writing in an enviable mode of living that has given
him material for more than 1000 magazine articles and seven books.
When
Askins was born in 1908, his father was a writer and dog trainer. The elder
Askins had moved into Ft. Niobrara, a Nebraska military post, to train some bird
dogs for a wealthy client and incidentally to brush up on his prairie chicken
shooting. Literally cutting his teeth on upland game, the two-year old Charley
was packed off to Oklahoma in 1910, and lived near the town of Ames, on the
Cimarron River, until 1927.
Ames
was also home to a friend of the Askins’ named Charles Cottar, who was doing
well as a grain buyer. In 1912 Cottar went to Africa and hunted for nine months.
Seeing its potential, he moved his family there in 1913 to spend the rest of his
life as a farmer, miner, and professional hunter.
After
World War I, Cottar toured the United States showing motion pictures he had made
of African game, and doing much to stimulate the interest in African hunting
that endures to this day. Encouraging dangerous game to charge him made for
better films and Cottar’s foot was crippled by a leopard. A rhino did the same
for an arm. Many years later he was killed by an attacking rhino.
When
Askins was 15, Cottar invited his father to bring him for a summer’s hunt in
Kenya. Feeling that nothing should stand in the way of a good shoot, the Askins
team caught a boat and sailed for three weeks to arrive at Nairobi and join
their Oklahoma friend.
This
was before the days of motorized and refrigerated safaris, and the party left
Nairobi afoot, with a Model T Ford pickup carrying their camp outfit. Walking 10
miles a day, the hunters roamed the plains for two months, living off the land.
Charley’s dad had fetched along a then-new .35 Newton and a .30-06
Springfield, while Cottar carried a Winchester 95 lever action in .405 caliber.
The
teenaged rifleman confined himself to feeding the safari crew with an abundance
of the varied antelope, while his dad and Cottar accounted for five lions. On
the trip back to the states, the youthful hunter must have reflected that a
tedious six weeks on a slow freighter was a small price for such a summer.
At
19 Charley upped stakes and went to the Flathead Forest in Montana, where he
hired on as a temporary employee with the U.S. Forest Service during the fire
season. He later performed the same work on the Jicarilla Indian reservation in
northern New Mexico, interspersing these seasonal chores with hard toil in
logging camps.
The
year 1929 found him a full-fledged forest ranger, in charge of the Vaqueros
Ranger District in the Kit Carson National Forest. This is where Charley began
the intensive pistol shooting that was to make him a national champion.
The
Vaqueros District was badly overgrazed by a herd of 2600 wild horses that
threatened to strip it of vegetation. Game was suffering from lack of forage,
and a burgeoning population of mountain lions waxed fat, killing horses and game
animals indiscriminately.
Charley
coursed the lions with a big pack of dogs. To feed these hounds he killed the
scrubs among the wild horse herd, getting lots of practice with the .45 auto he
packed in that period, as well as a variety of rifles.
Tiring
of what he likens to “a sheepherder’s existence,” Askins succumbed to the
siren call of adventure. His old friend George Parker was serving as a border
patrolman in El Paso and having a fine time running down the smugglers who were
shotgunning Mexican booze into the bone-dry States. Parker’s exciting letters
caused Askins to ride down to El Paso, where he joined the Border Patrol in
March 1930.
The
evening of that first day on the job, the young horseman was dispatched into the
Franklin Mountains west of town to bring out the body of a dead smuggler on a
pack burro. The contrabandista had elected to shoot it out when
challenged by officers, and his earthly remains suggested to Charley that he was
in for some busy times. He was.
Several
weeks later he and his partners were lying in wait as five smugglers sneaked
their contraband up an alley-way leading from the border river. As in most of
these encounters, they in darkest part of the night, and were armed and ready to
shoot. In his new book, Texans, Guns, and History, Askins describes what
happened next.
“When
they got to within nine steps of us we challenged. All hell broke loose! The cholo
in the lead had a 10-gauge, both hammers back but the gun unfired. After the
scrap I gathered up this gun and after carefully lowering the dog-eared hammers,
broke the gun open and found it was loaded with Winchester Hi-Speed No. 5 shot.
If he could have set off those two charges before he took the double load of my
buckshot he’d have evened the odds considerably!”
This
was one of many times that Askins had to use his guns in river gunfights during
that period when newsmen on the El Paso Times would phone Border Patrol
headquarters each morning to inquire, “Who got shot last night?”
Not
all of Charley’s gunwork was so grim, and the stories he seems to prefer to
tell involve occasions on which he missed his target.
One
misty morning near Strauss, N. M., the young Patrol Inspector cut sign on two
sets of tracks moving north. The drizzle made seeing difficult, but he stayed on
the tracks, sixgun in hand as they led him to a camp where two people lay bedded
under a tarp.
Southpaw
Charley flipped the tarp off the suspects with his right hand, leveling his
revolver with his left. One man sat upright, aiming a carbine at the Askins
belly. Startled, Askins fell back, firing as he did. His slug went over the bad
guy’s shoulder blasting a big hole in the wet ground and causing immediate
capitulation.
It
was miss that Charley was dammed about. The two “smugglers” turned out to be
a standard American hobo and his wife, on the bum toward California. When for
some inexplicable case the “Bo” pointed his weapon at the future pistol
champ, he didn’t know how close to death he was. The “carbine” turned to
be a hickory pick handle.
After
Charley had a couple of months service under his belt, it was decided that
tryouts would be held to find the five best pistol shooters in the Border
Patrol’s El Paso District. These five would make up a pistol team which would
go forth and do battle with civilian competitors and teams from the 7th
and 8th Cavalry regiments. No one was surprised when Charley shot
number one among the border guards.
In
1932 the 8th Army Corps promoted a pistol tournament in El Paso that
was big doings for that Depression year. It attracted top shooters from the
entire Corps Area, which included Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New
Mexico. After two days of shooting, the El Paso Border Patrol team had captured
the team championship, Charles Askins had won each individual match, and his
pretty wife, Dorothy, had walked away with the trophy in women’s competition.
In
that year, Charley’s match guns included a Colt Woodsman .22 with weighted
barrel, a heavy Colt shooting Master in .38 Spl., and a commercial M1917 Smith
& Wesson revolver in .45 ACP. He was shooting these guns when he lost the
1932 Texas pistol championship to Air Corps Lt. Charley Denford by one point.
In
1933, Askins won the Texas Championship. The next year, 1934, was a hot one for
the Los Angeles police, and one of their team took home the Texas cup. For ’35,
’36, ’37, and ’38 the champ of Lone Star State was Charles Askins.
By
1936, Askins had been designated Chief Firearms Instructor for the entire U.S.
Border Patrol and moved from his little New Mexico station at Strauss to the
district headquarters in El Paso.
Firing
a .45 in the National Individual Match at Camp Perry that year, he flubbed his
slow-fire string, shooting “a big, fat 80, with a four in the string.”
“This
completely relaxed me,” says Askins, “and I knew nothing could win for me
then.”
With
the pressure off, he went on to shoot a 98 timed and a 98 rapid, winding up with
a score of 276. he won the match.
Introduced
at Camp Perry in 1937 was the first aggregate match – a combination of the
scores of .22, centerfire, and .45 guns, and a much more meaningful test of
shooter and guns than had previously been posed. The NRA paid money prizes that
year, along with medals and a trophy.
Askins
won the aggregate, received $8.56 cash, a medal, and the promise of a trophy
which somehow was never delivered. He now wishes the $8.56 had been withheld,
too, since it was later ruled that his acceptance of it disqualified him as an
amateur, and he was not permitted to try out for the Olympic pistol team.
That
year at Perry there was an incident which Askins describes as having “…been
played up, discussed, and gotten me criticized ever since it happened. It was
during a rapid fire match and I had a misfire.
“The
range officer watched as I opened the gun, and there were six cartridges in the
cylinder; the rules called for only five. This was a violation of the rules. You
couldn’t put six rounds in your gun. I’d done this because on a rapid-fire
match if you ever let that hammer slip out from under your thumb the cylinder
will roll by and then you won’t get off five shots. So, in violation of the
rules as the existed then, I had six cartridges in my gun.”
The
NRA range officials did not challenge this action, and allowed him to shoot the
string over for record.
In
spite of the acceptance of NRA officials of this insignificant overstepping of
the rule book, someone complained so vociferously to Askins’ superior officers
in the Border Patrol that an investigation was initiated by that service. The
upshot was that the 1937 all-around pistol champion was punished by not being
allowed to shoot on the Border Patrol team in 1938.
The
champion shot at his own expense as an individual in ’38, winning the high
aggregate on the All American Team after placing first in .22, third in
centerfire, and fifth in .45 events.
Askins
was returned to grace in 1939, and reinstated tot the Border Patrol team. He
promptly became the center of another controversy. Today’s competition rules
provide for three phases of pistol shooting: .22 Long Rifle caliber, any
centerfire (.32 caliber or larger), and .45 ACP caliber. Charley Askins is
probably personally responsible for their addendum in parenthesis after “centerfire.”
In
1939 the rule was simply “any centerfire” for the second event. Most
shooters banged away with .38 Spl. revolvers, a few with .32 S&W Long
wheelguns. The .38 Spl. automatics so popular today were unheard of.
Then
and now, competition pistol shooters agree that automatics are easier to control
in timed and rapid fire than revolvers, and that small calibers are easier than
larger ones.
Askins
thought so, too, and did something about it.
The
almost-extinct 5.5 Velo Dog was an inexpensive, nine-shot French revolver that
still occasionally cropped up in Mexico and Latin America in those days. An El
Paso hardware dealer showed Charley some of the scarce ammunition that remained
after exporting most of his stocks across the Rio Grande. Struck by the
dimensional similarity of the tine centerfire cartridge to the .22 Long Rifle
shell, Askins formed a beautiful scheme.
First
he bought all the 5.5 Velo Dog ammo the dealer had. Then he contacted Frank
Kahrs, the shooting promotion director of Remington Arms, who sent the last
2000 rounds of Velo Dog the factory had in stock, and seemed glad to be rid of
them. As Askins now gloats, “I had control of the entire remaining supply of
Velo Dog ammunition.
J.D.
Buchanan was a well-known West Coast pistolsmith, and an Askins friend. Charley
shipped him a new Colt Woodsman .22 and a few rounds of Velo Dogs, with
instructions to mate the two. In a twinkling, Buchanan altered the Woodsman’s
firing pin to a centerfire, changed the extractor to handle the somewhat thicker
rim of the French shell, and rechambered the barrel to accommodate the slightly
larger diameter and the shortened Velo Dog case. While he was at it he added an
adjustable weight and custom sights.
While
this was going on, charley got busy on the ammo. He pulled bullets and dumped
the powder charges of the Dogs. He trimmed the cases to .22 LR length and
reprimed them. He re-charged with tiny measures of Dupont #5 pistol powder, and
seated .22 Long Rifle bullets. Askins was now in the .22 centerfire business.
The
new Woodsman shot just as well as any .22 rimfire of its day. This gave charley
an advantage of several points over the best centerfire shooters in the country
who had to use revolvers.
Word
got out about Charley’s scandalous little gun, and he was again under as
cloud. Old friends came to advise him that it would be “unethical” to shoot
the imaginative .22 against shooters who had only .32 and .38 wheelguns.
The
Border Patrol brass got wind of the affair and Charley remembers a letter from
them forbidding him to shoot the pistol in the National Matches. Knowing Askins,
I would estimate that his neck bowed larger by several sizes.
Range
officials examined the offending Woodsman minutely and could find no regulation
it abused, until one book man, sharper than the rest, found that the front and
rear sights were a hair too far apart to meet maximum sight radius requirements.
Askins hastily remedied this by knocking off the Buchanan sight and rather
crudely reinstalling it farther forward with solder.
The
day came, and Charley obstinately marched to the firing line at Camp Perry.
Behind him, “The Border Patrol brass all gathered to bear witness that I had
shot the gun against orders,” he smilingly recalls.
The
gun shot well and Charley shot well, although not good enough to win the match.
At the end of the day he sat down and wrote a letter of resignation to the
District Director in El Paso.
“I
resigned from the Border Patrol from a feeling that they were going try to
dictate how I was to shoot, and I wasn’t going to stand still for it. They had
a point and I felt I had a point, too.”
So
ended nine years and nine months of service.
By
this time, Askins was writing a considerable amount of gun-related material,
having published on book, Art of Handgun Shooting, and being employed as
firearms editor for Outdoors magazine.
Askins’
father had moved to the Rio Grande Valley at his son’s urging, continuing his
studies of firearms and to act as firearms editor of Outdoor Life and
later Sports Afield. When asked if his dad had encouraged him to become a
writer, Charley shakes his head.
“It
was just a good opportunity to trade on his name. If I could get something into
print, people might think it was written by the real authority.”
With
whatever impetus, after he left the Border Patrol Askins continued to live in
the valley above El Paso, “eking out an existence” writing for Outdoor
Life, Field and Stream, and The American Rifleman.
He
had been a non-commissioned officer in the National Guard since 1930. When the
Guard was called to duty in 1941 he contacted his friend and fellow shooting
authority, Gen. Julian S. Hatcher, asking for a commission into the regular
army. Maj. Gen. Kenyon Joyce of the 1st Cavalry Division and Col.
Caswell gave him their hearty endorsements, and he was give a direct commission
as a 1st Lt. Of ordnance in February 1942, reporting for duty at the
Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
Ninety
days later Lt. Askins left the States with Patton’s 2nd Army Corps,
and plunged into the invasion of Africa. There the inexperienced logistics
planners found that they could not supply their depots with ordnance as fast as
it was being used up. It was necessary to recover and overhaul equipment
abandoned in the field, and Askins was assigned as a battlefield recovery
officer in command of provisional company. This company and others like it were
eventually found so effective that they were permanently placed in the Table of
Organization.
Askins
recalls: “We slept all day and worked all night” to avoid enemy fire and
ambushes. Under cover of darkness, he and his men reconnoitered, located
abandoned vehicles and weapons, and found means of returning them to U.S. lines
for repair and reissue.
By
the time of the Sicily invasion, Askins had been promoted to executive officer
of an ordnance battalion. Asked if he carried any personally owned weapons
during his wartime service, Charley reminisced that in Africa and Sicily he had
packed a Buchanan-accurized .45 auto.
After
Sicily he returned to the States for five Months, then shipped out again for the
invasion of the Continent. When he did he left his .45 at home and took along
the revolver he had carried in the Border Patrol, a Colt New Service .38 Spl.
Askins still has this gun, and it is quite beautiful, carrying a red-posted King
rib and adjustable rear sight on its four-inch barrel, and carved ivory stocks.
The front of the trigger guard has been cut away.
Knowing
Charley’s predilection for the auto pistol, I asked why he had changed to the
sixgun in the middle of the war. He answered that he doesn’t remember now what
the reason was, but that he was fond of the Border Patrol gun.
He
was carrying this sixshooter, loaded with high speed, metal-piercing, Winchester
ammunition while searching a house in a village on the Rhine plains. He heard
someone making a hasty exit, and ran to a side door in time to see a German with
a pack on his back making a dash for the next house.
Askins
“let drive” with the .38, its bullet passing through the pack and into the
German’s chest. After making certain there were no more Heinies in the house,
he loaded the wounded Nazi onto the good of his jeep and drove him to an aid
station.
In
the town of Schmidt, on the Ruhr River, Charley became bored with what he
considered his sedentary existence and borrowed an M1 for a bit of sniping.
Local
GIs, happy with the unofficial ceasefire they shared with the seemingly
acquiescent Krauts across the river, were chagrined when Askins moved into a
second-story room, stood well back from the shot-out window, and commenced to
pick off enemy targets of opportunity.
After
three days of this his sport ended when German mortars found his hiding spot and
sent him running for more substantial comer. It is doubtful that his comrades
were sorry that his idyl had terminated.
At
the war’s close, he was discharged as a major, immediately signing on as a
field editor of Outdoor Life. After nine months of the traveling and
public relations work involved in the new job he tired of it, and accepted a
regular commission in the army. In July, 1946, Maj. Askins reported for duty
with the 1st Army and was sent immediately for training with the 82nd
Airborne Division at Ft. Monroe, Va.
While
conditioning to the tough life of a paratrooper, Askins renewed his interest in
pistol shooting after a separation of eight years. He believed that the Army
should have one pistol team, as had the Marines and Navy. As of then the Army
fielded teams from all its services, such as Cavalry, Infantry, and Engineers,
thus spreading the top shooter apart on separate teams.
He
was permitted to nominate shooters for tryouts, and got together 10 or 12 of the
entire army’s best prospects for training and elimination at Ft. Bragg. A team
was selected and sent to the National Midwinter Championships, where Sgt. Joe
Benner won the individual championship.
Charley
shot on this team. By this time he was 40, and could look back on an average of
34,000 shots per year, by actual records, that he had fired in his pistols
between 1930 and 1940, a total of a third of a million rounds. His interest was
jaded, and he gave up match shooting.
“I
just couldn’t fire myself up to the degree of enthusiasm for the necessary
practice. Practice was just a hell of a lot of hard work.”
By
this time the ex-National Champion had accumulated 534 medals and 117 trophies
in state, regional, and national competition.
The
next few years were pleasant for the Askins family. Ordered to Spain in 1950,
Charley served in the U.S. embassy as an assistant Army attaché, his arms
expertise being well utilized as he made a study of the Spanish military
posture, its arsenals and its assets.
He
loved the Spanish people and gloried in the fine partridge hunting his tour
afforded him. During the war and this postwar Spanish service, he found time to
hunt in Portugal, Morocco, Angola, the Sahara desert, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
and Botswana.
He
topped off his four years in Spain by graduating from the Spanish Army’s
parachute school. In passing he also picked up the National Skeet Championship
of Spain.
Charley
returned in 1954 to the Combat Development Section of the Infantry School at Ft.
Benning, moving to the 18th Airborne as an ordnance officer. In 1956
he was assigned to the Vietnamese army as Chief Instructor of Firearms.
In
contrast to the hellhole it is today, Nam was pleasant between wars, the French
having just been deposed. There was not even any guerrilla activity during
Askins’ occupancy, and he traveled the length and breadth of Vietnam, alone in
a jeep.
The
French army, rulers of the country for 75 years, didn’t believe in
marksmanship training, and had erected no ranges. Charley spent a year building
range complexes for each of the 10 VN divisions. He also enjoyed some of the
finest big-game hunting of his life.
In
the jungles of the little Africa, Askins confronted the gaur, a buffalo larger
than the African Cape buff, weighing up to 3000 lbs., and the largest of the
five varieties of buffalo in the country. He found the gaur to be shy, but
dangerous when wounded, needing plenty of lead to stop him.
There
was an abundance of elephant, bad tempered because of continual harassment by
the natives. There were Bengal tigers and a smaller tiger which was found along
the South China Sea. Leopards, wild boar, Asian bear, and seven species of deer
roamed this rifleman’s paradise. Charley’s shotguns took a dove that is the
image of the U.S. breed, along with the jungle fowl, the progenitor of the
domestic chicken.
Anticipating
this good game country, Askins carried seven guns and 2600 cartridges to
Vietnam. He had one of the first M70 Winchesters in .458 caliber, along with a
lever-action M71 Winchester that was made up by an Alaskan gunsmith named
Johnson, who rebored it from .348 to .450 caliber. The rest of the Askins
battery included a Savage M99 .358, Browning .22 autoloader, Winchester M12 pump
12 gauge, Browning two-shot auto 12 gauge, one of the first S&W .44 Magnums,
a Ruger standard .22 auto pistol, and a little Walther .22 PPK.
He
was joined for a two week’s hunt by his Arizona friend, George Parker, whom he
had known since the 1925 rifle matches at Camp Perry. The preponderance of his
hunting was done in the company of a Chinese sportsman, Ngo Van Chi, who
arranged for guides and packers from the Moi tribe of highland savages.
Chi’s
safaris were outfitted with 20 elephants, each with a mahout and
assistant mahout. Each man received a wage of $1 a day. The Moi tribesmen
each demanded and were daily paid one liter of rice wine, three ounces of
tobacco, and one pipeful of opium. This was the standard arrangement for safari
crews in that area, but Askins found the handling of the wine a definite
inconvenience. “We had to pack all those damned bottles – 25 liters of wine
a day.” In spite of their peculiar wage negotiations, Charley heartily enjoyed
the company of the Mois.
He
completed his Vietnamese duties by going through VBN parachute school before
retuning to an assignment with the 4th Army Headquarters at Ft. Sam
Houston, San Antonio, Tex.
While
he alludes infrequently to his paratrooper experiences, I have pried from him
that he has made 138 jumps. One of these was with an eight-man stick of hardies
who were helping him celebrate his promotion to full colonel. Charley banged up
his back and foot on this one and as a result occasionally perches on a rubber
doughnut while he types. He doesn’t say, but simple arithmetic tells me that
he was more than 50 when he took that dive.
Askins
retired from the Army in 1963, and continues to shoot, hunt, and write. His name
has appeared in many gun and outdoor magazines and is shooting editor of Guns
Magazine and Shooting Industry. He has also written a shooting column
for Army Times since 1958. Texans, Guns, and History is the latest
of his well-received books.
Charley
has made 17 hunting trips to Africa, and is planning another for the summer of
’72. He has hunted twice in India, six times in Alaska. He has killed the game
of Mexico, and scores all the Africa “Big Five” among his trophies. Along
with tiger, gaur, and Sambar, he has bagged five Kodiak and two Polar bear.
Charley
has quit bear hunting in the interest of conservation, and entertains no plans
to tackle the category of game sheep. While he hasn’t eschewed big-game
hunting, Askins favors the shotgun nowadays, knowing that days of hard stalking
after a big game animal might offer a single shot, while the bird hunter
may shoot 20 or 30 rounds in an afternoon. After a moment’s pondering, he
admits that his favorite quarry is the bobwhite quail.
To
stay in good form, Askins shoots almost every day. He arises at 5 a.m., cares
for his horses, runs his dogs. A bit of riding, a couple of hours of shooting,
and he ready to devote the rest of the day to writing and answering
correspondence.
Charley
regularly practices with an air rifle, preferring the Model 150 Anschutz. Once a
week he drives to Ft. Sam Houston for a couple rounds of skeet. His centerfire
rifle practice is all offhand – to stay in trim for game shooting. Pistol
practice comes only about once a week – enough to keep his hand in and to beat
Skelton whenever he feels like it.
He
stays in excellent condition by being active in outdoor sports. He has never
smoked.
I
once asked Askins how he felt about match pistol shooters who took a toddy for
their nerves, and he told me of that Texas match in 1934 when the Los Angeles
police beat the pants off him.
Between
relays, the L.A. cops would retire to the old Cadillac hearse in which they
traveled, and draw the curtains. Moments later they would emerge and clobber the
next relay. Charley sent out spies and learned the back of the hearse was
stacked high with gin. From then forward he attended his matches fortified with
the same brand.
Askins
is concerned about the future of hunting. He feels that despite the rosy picture
painted by some conservationists, the increase of the game population cannot
keep pace with the human population explosion. With game under graduating
pressure he predicts that game farms will play a major role in U.S. hunting in
the coming years. African hunting, he surmises, is doomed unless poaching can be
controlled, and domestic animals be substituted as a source of meat for the
swelling populace.
On
my last visit to Askins’ diggings in San Antonio, I noticed a large sheet of
new tin that had been nailed around the bole of a big tree near his kitchen
window. I asked my curious question, and the gunfighter and killer of dangerous
carnivore explained, “My cats were climbing the tree and catching the baby
birds. Had to do something.”
If Charley Askins had been born 100 years earlier he would have been a mountain man, and Indian scout, a buffalo hunter, or a horse soldier. As it is, close now to the end of the 20th century, he has lived the kind of life that boys think they're going to live and that most old men wish they had.
May
his breed continue.