Sunday afternoon, 13 January 1935 found me with cousins Eddie and Albert, tracking a fox we had spotted shortly after we started the hunt. We trailed the animal all afternoon in vain. Since it had followed a circular route and had returned to near where it was sleeping when we alarmed it, we judged that we had a good chance of getting the fox on the following day. Next morning brought with it several inches of newly fallen snow. The temperature had dropped, and at noon, when we set out, the thermometer was still near zero, not exactly an ideal day for hunting. However, with the previous days chase still fresh in our minds, we decided to give it a try. We hated to pass up all that nice new tracking snow, In spite of the cold. We soon located the animal's tracks and followed them for several miles. Unlike Sunday, the fox was traveling in more or less a straight line, across the river, past Ryant's farm towards Jim Kubik's place. Northeast of there we finally gave up the chase.

Near home, on the riverbank near a sharp slope in a wooded pasture, we spotted fresh rabbit tracks going into a brush pile at the base of a thick elm tree. None came out. None of us had rabbit loads but that didn't stop us from trying for that rabbit. Eddie backtracked a bit and took a stand there. Albert walked on ahead for 40 or 50 feet and took a position there. As for me, I set my shotgun loaded with Super X #2s, the shells we all had, against the tree. Locating a long stick, I poked it into the brush pile. Probably because it was so cold, the bunny wasn't scaring easy. Suddenly out he came, heading up the slope and towards the right. I dropped the stick, grabbed my gun, jumped to the right side of the tree, and brought the gun to my shoulder. Almost immediately, I experienced a warm sensation in my right leg, and fell to the ground, with the rabbit still making tracks up the slope. It was only after I glanced down at my leg and saw my shredded pants that I realized that I had been shot. For a time I experienced no pain, but just a bit of warmth in my right shin. It was only after I tried to move my leg that pain was evident. I also found that I could not move my foot.

In the meantime, both Eddie and Albert came running up. None of us quite knew what had happened. Eddie knelt down by me, pulsed back the torn pant leg to look at the wound, and got white in the gills. Reaching in, he removed a sliver of bone almost two inches long and a quarter of an inch thick. It was only then that I realized that maybe things weren't too good. I honestly believe that at that moment, Eddie felt worse than I did. For some reason, perhaps because there was so little discomfort, I felt no shock, and was only mildly concerned. While Albert took off on the double to get help, Eddie fashioned a splint out of some fallen branches. I do recall that he had difficulty finding straight, solid ones. While Eddie was doing that, I checked my gun and found that I also had fired, evidently at the identical moment Eddie did: Neither of us was aware of more than one shot.

It took me some time to figure out why it happened. Come to think of it, I don't recall that Eddie and I ever discussed it. I think we both figured that it happened, we couldn't change it, and let it go at that. My conclusion was that Eddie decided that the rabbit would run exactly as it did and thought that to get a shot at the rabbit he needed to get into a position between Albert and me. Although I was vaguely aware that he was changing positions -- we were chatting back and forth all this time -- I didn't realize that he was behind me when the rabbit popped out. When I jumped to the right of the tree, I jumped directly into his line of fire.

Though he was unable to stop the trigger squeeze when I jumped in front of him, he did manage to lower the gun. When the three-inch spread of the lead hit me, most of my weight was on my right leg. I had jumped sideways and had twisted my body somewhat to aim at the rabbit. When we shot, the rabbit was several feet up the slope. Had he been aiming at the rabbit at the moment the charge left the barrel, it would have missed me or hit my upper body or head. By the same token, had he been another two or three feet further back, the spread would have been enough larger to have blown off my leg.

As Eddie attached the splint to my leg with parts of his sweater, I sat up to look at the wound, a jagged, bloody hole, full of bone splinters. I saw enough -- and laid down again. Albert soon came back with John Falada, driving a team and farm sleigh. John and Albert took one of the sides off the box and, with Eddie's help, got me on the board and into the sleigh. Someone with forethought had thrown in a couple of blankets to cover me with. My uncle's farm was less than a mile away. There they moved me, still on the board, to the back of Uncle Albert's truck. In Spillville, my uncle stopped a moment to tell Mother, then took me to Dr. Horton's office in Calmar. He had been notified and was waiting. After checking the wound in his office, Horton called Decorah to have me admitted into the hospital. He then transferred me to a stretcher and into his car. By this time I was hungry. As we approached a hamburger stand in Decorah I asked could we stop for a couple of hamburgers but he wouldn't go along with that. On the table in the emergency room, Dr. Horton cut away my pants. I recall that I was somewhat upset about that: the pants were new and the only good work pants I had.

With the clothes cut away, it was now possible to see how deep the wound was. As Dr. Horton was cleaning out the debris, the hole looked deep enough to drop a tennis ball in. The charge of number two shot had taken out the shin leaving only the back portion of the tibia. X-rays showed that it also was split in both directions. The smaller leg bones were also fractured. After Horton consulted with another doctor, I was wheeled into the operating room.

When I had awakened from the ether I found my leg encased from toes to hip. The only part exposed was the wound, to permit changing the dressings. Later I learned from Dr. Horton that when he had entered the operating room he had expected to have to take off my leg. It was only after I was under and he had had a chance to clean out and trim the wound that he decided to try and save it. His plan was to let the bone heal and later reinforce the tibia by grafting in a section of bone from the left leg. As it turned out, enough bone grew back to make this procedure unnecessary. In the morning Uncle Charlie brought Mother. Today I chuckle at his first words after seeing the cast. A veteran of World War 1, he had said: "At least he'll never have to go to war."

The Decorah Journal wrote: "SPILLVILLE BOY SHOT IN MISHAP - Decorah, Jan 16. - - Cyril Klimesh, 17, son of Mrs. Mary Klimesh of Spillville, who was wounded Monday in a shotgun accident near Spillville, was reported much improved last evening at the Decorah hospital, where he was taken following the accident Mr. Klimesh was hunting with some friends, when one of the members of the party discharged a 12 gauge shotgun, the shot hitting Cyril in the foot, and causing severe flesh and bone injury. The wound, while painful, was not considered serious. "