A Time with Harold Wylie

In the course of my father’s career as an educator, he took a lot of psychology classes. One of only three times that I ever saw him explosive, before his stroke, was when I impugned Freud’s character. I only remember him swearing once and it was while hunting with a Presbyterian minister; a neighbor of ours in Wyoming. He said, once, that he had learned from one of his psychology class that punishing bad behavior is generally counter productive as there are many who desire attention, any attention, and find even the attention of a punishment to be a rewarding experience. He said it is better to simply reward the behavior you want while ignoring behavior that is undesired.

The Presbyterian minister was Harold Wylie. They had been driving for quite some time looking to bag a deer or two. I got to ride along in the back seat. One of them spotted a dear in the bottom of a valley. The road we were on snaked along it's top. The dear was two maybe three hundred feet down at the bottom of the valley. The other side sloped more gently up and away from us.

Boy, was I excited. This was what deer hunting was all about. but I noticed that dad and Mr. Wylie (we never called him Reverend or anything like that) were not particularly excited nor were they in a hurry. Eventually, they realized that the deer was not going to run off and they almost reluctantly turned off the engine and went about the business of getting their guns out. Dad used the hood of the car to steady his relatively heavy 30-ought-six -- a military version with bayonet mounts.

I was in disbelief that they were not moving faster and worried that the deer was going to get away.

Dad fired a shot and I saw a plum of dust in the ground behind and to the left of the deer.

At missing, Dad allowed himself to swear, "Damn."

He then immediately apologized to Harold who quickly said, "That's okay, I know how you feel."

The deer stopped grazing looked up at them then slowly turned and walked away.

I think Dad and Harold were a lot more interested in whatever conversations they were having than in field dressing a dead deer and lugging its carcass up the side of a valley.