When I turned 16, I became eligible for a few manly favours forbidden to kids. You couldn't get a hunting licence till you reached that magic age. There was rules for smoking too. We were told smoking stunted your growth before 16. Nothing else, no cancer.

At 16, I was six feet, two inches tall –so much for that theory. The 'Marlborough Man' image was what guys wanted and most of my pals took up the filthy habit at 10 or 11 years of age.

Toting my Stevens 12-gauge double barrelled shotgun and a pocket full of bird shot, I set out for the wilds of Mohawk Road. My sister's dog Beebe, a large black Labrador retriever, trotted along happily beside me. From my home at 65 Munn Street, I cut south across the fields south till I reached the old 'City Ditch'.

I lit up my "Tartan" fag, which was rough on the throat, but cheap and manly. That old Mountain drain that started west of us near the McVittie mansion at Wentworth and Inverness was, as usual, full of raw, putrid sewage and rain water racing eastwardly across the Mountain to Buttermilk Falls, where it spewed over the escarpment into Red Hill Creek.

I got to Fennell Avenue, a two lane gravel road with deep ditches on both sides and walked west to Sherman Avenue, and south to Mohawk Road, the old Indian Trail. Not far from the corner, I spotted the old wooden Burkholder Church with its rickety, white picket fence around it.

There was a cold nip in the air this October day and I sought shelter there. Perched atop an old wood bin at the rear of the building, I laid my new Stephens across my lap to rest a while. I lit up another Tartan, when much to my surprise and Beebe's surprise, a large jack rabbit leapt out from behind a headstone in the cemetery, scaring the dickens out of me.

Instinctively I pulled up my gun and let go a shot at him. The rabbit stumbled and fell wounded to the ground. There it laid on it's side, heaving its last. I was stunned. I had never killed anything before, having used the gun only for target practice.

On closer inspection I noticed the poor thing's stomach was heaving and she was pregnant. With no chance of survival for the mother or babies, I had to make a terrible decision. I fired the other barrel into the pathetic thing and her life ended quickly.

My day ruined, I returned home to tell my dad what had happened. Later we went up to Geddes's Hardware on Concession Street to trade my shot gun for a .22 calibre Cooey target rifle. I never killed another animal from that day on.

It was a hard lesson learned and never forgotten to this day. My target shooting did have some rewards as I was to find out. Later in life I became a Master Marksman, sniper quality in the Army. Even there, I didn't kill a living thing and hopefully never will. I even throw fish back. Some Marlborough man eh? Now I only hunt for stories to tell.