hunt. This enterprise was young York’s great calling and delight. He had be-
come an excellent shot while still quite small. His father, York wrote much
later, ‘‘threatened to muss me up right smart if I failed to bring a squir-
rel down with the first shot or hit a turkey in the body instead of taking
its head off.’’^2 By the time Alvin reached his twenties his marksmanship—
and drunken scuffles—were becoming legendary in his part of the moun-
tains. He swilled moonshine and flipped cards in rustic Kentucky-border
‘‘blind tigers’’ and rode his horse home, swaying in the saddle yet looking
for targets. The sheriff came when, on a drunken bet, Alvin shot a neigh-
bor’s goose. Another time, when Alvin was also drunk but testing his steadi-
ness, he killed six domestic turkeys with six shots. Deadly when inebriated,
a sober young York was apparently unbeatable in shooting contests. He
favored ‘‘pony purse’’ matches in which each participant ponied-up a quar-
ter (while onlookers made side bets), and the most accurate marksman won
the purse. A more formal contest was ‘‘shooting for beeves.’’ Men would pay
in advance for chances at a target, the cash going to purchase of a steer.
Then came the contest, careful measurement and accounting for accuracy,
and usually a division of the beef into five parts for the five best marks-
men, the best part going to the top shooter. On one such occasion, Alvin
York won all five awards and went home with his beef on the hoof. Turkey
shoots, too, remained as popular ca. as they had been throughout the
previous century. Here a turkey was secured by its feet behind a substantial
object (often a log), with only its bobbing head exposed to riflemen stand-
ing forty yards distant. The first to decapitate the turkey with a ball or bullet
won the remainder of the animal’s corpus. Most country males excelled at
shooting things still and moving, but York may have been the top gun.
This he would remain, but at last, in his mid-twenties, Alvin became ex-
clusively the sober gunman. He got religion and quit drinking and gam-
bling. His spiritual home was now the Church of Christ in Christian Union,
a fundamentalist sect with roots in nineteenth-century midwestern Meth-
odism. This was . Two years later, Alvin had still not backslid. He was
working hard, reading his Bible daily, and courting a young lady from a
neighboring farm when he received notification that he must register for
the draft. On advice from his pastor and mentor, he sought conscientious
objector status: ‘‘Don’t want to fight,’’ he wrote on the form. County and
state draft boards refused; so with grave misgivings, Alvin reported for army
training at Camp Gordon, Georgia, toward the end of . When he was
assigned to an infantry unit of the Eighty-Second Division, York repeated