Anyway, at 0730 and 1300 hours each weekday, we were required to appear in the squadron briefing room or mission planning room for roll call. At that session we would receive the news from higher headquarters, the scheduled training activity notices, special duty assignments, and flight schedules. If your name was not called for any of those things you were free to go, but of course being freed at the morning roll call did not excuse you from the afternoon one.

Our crew's erstwhile tail gunner, Master Sergeant Ken, would frequently show up for morning roll call prepared for a day's hunting. Out in his old station wagon, parked beside the squadron headquarters building awaited his trusty hunting dog and shotgun, with several boxes of bird-shot ammunition. Just as soon as the briefing officer dismissed the group, and quite often senior gunners like Ken were not assigned to details, out the door he would fly.

Within minutes he was across the base, taking the perimeter road around the end of the runways to his favorite bird-hunting spots. Fairchild AFB was ideally located for some of the best pheasant and Hungarian Partridge hunting in the country, surrounded as it was by miles and miles of lush wheat fields. A stand of small trees beyond the radio communications towers provided great cover for a variety of birds.

Back in those days SAC aircrews also participated in regular skeet and trap shooting, a carry-over from the days when gunnery training was required of all flight crewmembers. So in addition to hunting on base, a seasonal activity limited to the late Summer and Fall months, hunters and marksmen could keep their skills up by shooting skeet. The government provided the shotguns and the ammunition for that, though not, of course, for hunting.