An Outdoor Sporting Life

Scott Irwin

Scott Irwin grew up in a time when children did chores that instilled a hands-on work ethic, but there was still time to explore the wild things. Armed first with a slingshot carefully crafted from a forked box elder limb and powered by pre-WWII red rubber inner tube strips, he was soon using a Daisy BB gun to hunt backyard critters. He also enjoyed small-water fishing. By age twelve, he was stalking squirrels and cottontails, and it wasn't long before he'd mastered a tack-driving Remington 511 .22 with five-shot clip that thinned out the jackrabbits that swarmed southwest Kansas in the 1950s. Later, he'd buy Winchester Model 12 that opened up a whole new realm of wing shooting. It was a love affair that would continue through marriage, graduate school, and a distinguished career as a public school and university teacher--all the way until "retirement". He'd also write a popular...