His name was Rick about 5 years older than my self, married and 2 young sons, skilled trades machine setter was how he earned his living.

He like me had grew up on a small farm mid Michigan near the town of Clare.
Unlike me he had family on his mothers side who were hunters and fisher persons. They were always getting him to spend a week end hunting with them.

Unlike me he left school after graduating, went south to find work ending up at a GM Lansing plant.
He lived in a subdivision when we met but was working on moving to a country home. Our first hunt was a small game hunt on a coworkers farm for rabbits.
Later when Pheasant season opened we hunted those there too.

The coworkers name was Tom and fell right in the same age bracket. Tom had 2 red Irish setters beautiful dogs and very good with pheasants pointing and retrieving. We hunted Toms farm on a Saturday and got several rabbits hunting them with out dogs but on a property done up right. They burned fire wood so piled brush to make habit for the rabbits
.
Walk up to a brush pile and one person climb on and start jumping. Rabbits many times would run out of the piles for us to get a shot. We took turns doing the jumping.

Next day we went to some public land and I was taught how to hunt southern Mi squirrels. We didn’t have many around the farm growing uo except the pesky red squirrels.

Rick taught me to rub the edge of two quarters together as a squirrel call, also the edge of a shot shell hull worked too. Rick taught me you could walk thru. Wood patch slowly and not see a squirrel but the same wood patch a hour later walk in and set down for a bit and have them running all thru the trees you were setting beside.

Was a fun week end for me and very enjoyable. I invited him up to my folks farm for the following week end to hunt partridge we always called PATS.

Al