Squirrel Hunting Can Be a Dangerous Thing

I was checking out the FBI files and other things over at Footnote.com tonight and decided to search for my Lantz surname which is a less common surname after looking for another one that was more common. (Neither family appeared to be of interest to the FBI, but I did decided to do a global search for the less common name.) What I discovered made me call my mom and tell her that she never told me that Harry went squirrel hunting. (Harry was Mom's first cousin or my first cousin once removed.) Mom's immediate response was that he got shot squirrel hunting, so I knew that she knew the account that I'd just discovered in the 25 October 1930 edition of the Woodville Republican. When I saw that article, I knew that there couldn't be that many Harry Lantzes living in Scooba, Mississippi at the time so I knew it was "our Harry." It seems that Harry was out hunting squirrels and one of them got stuck in a tree so he went up after it. Another hunter who didn't know Harry was up in the tree saw some movement up in the tree so he shot. Nothing came down so he gave up and moved along. Later someone else came along and heard Harry's moans. He was able to rescue him.

According to Mom, that bullet is what eventually caused Harry's death. You see, they never removed the bullet, and it eventually made its way to his heart thirty-four years after the incident.