I was about 16, my Uncle was 19. He, along with me as his spotter, had been shooting his Savage 30-06 at the old white rock that was about 200 yds above the old home place of my Grandparents ranch. For some reason, i was back inside with Grandma when he called out. Russ had ventured back outside and upon looking up at the big ol bare hill above and behind the "rock", he notice a thin vein of smoke and a black spot no bigger than a garbage can.
"FIRE" he yelled, "FIRE"
Uncle Russ and i had been trained by Grandpa in such situations as it was really not that rare to have a fire now and again somewhere along the County road that ran through a lot of the ranch properties. We each grabbed a 5 gal Bucket that was full of water soaked barley gunny sacks. One of our chores was to make sure that these buckets always got fresh water and never evaporated out. Anyway, we each grabbed a bucket of stinking wet sacks and threw them in the back of our old military ranch jeep and hauled ass as fast as she'd go up that road with high anticipations of having to putting out that "FIRE"
By the time we got there, the fire had spread to backyard size, was growing and was moving pretty fast toward the old two track ranch road. We parked a bit below and grabbing our buckets, we soon were beating the fire down with the wet sacks as it approached the road. Grandma had called down the hill to the Volunteer FD and they arrived 5-10 minutes later but we had pretty much drew the line along that 2 track and had kept the growing fire from jumping the old ranch road. We saved the day and felt pretty darn good about it with only minor reservations.
Of coarse, we had no idea how that fire had got started and Grandma kept our secret. If that "FIRE" had jumped that ranch road, it would easily have gone for miles and miles and surely burned many thousands of prime deer and cattle country acres. Russ and i had done good that day with only sore throats, from breathing in all that smoke, for our efforts. I believe he and i are the only ones living that know for sure that, that fire was started by his ricochet '06 bullet sparked off the ol white rock up on the hill. Until now that is...
Joey
