David E. Petzal - The Gun Nut

Wal-Mart seems to be having a nationwide, non-coordinated, unannounced sale on premium target loads. I’ve been hearing about this from shooters across the country. Last night my friend Rick called. “I’m at the Wal-Mart in Washington [Iowa]. They’ve got Winchester AA target loads for $5 a box.  I bought all the 20 gauges. Do you want the 12s?” They usually sell for $7.50 a box. I told Rick I’d take whatever he could carry to his car. Turns out there were only nine boxes left, but they’re mine.

Wal-Mart made news last year eliminating firearms from several hundred stores. I may be wrong, but I don’t think they’re getting out of the ammo business entirely. You’ll probably still be able to buy cheap dove loads. Most Wal-Mart shoppers (and that includes me) aren’t going to pay $7.50 for premium target loads.
Whether they’re going out of the shotshell business or not, $5 AAs and STSs are hard to come by these days. You might want to check the sporting goods shelf at Wally World and let us know what you found.

Last week some of the New York staff were taken out to Colorado by the National Shooting Sports Foundation who put them up in a glorified Holiday Inn where they spent a couple of days listening to presentations about the problems facing hunting in the 21st century. I didn’t go, as it is my policy not to attend industry events that don’t involve me shooting stuff. Also, I wasn’t invited.

Those who went came back with a newsflash: access to land is the number one issue facing hunters today. No kidding. It took two days in a hotel to figure that out?

We do a pretty good job of recruiting young hunters, through special hunts and seasons. It’s when the time comes for those new hunters to strike out on their own that we’re failing. If they don’t live where hunting land is plentiful, or if they don’t have dad’s deer lease to hunt on, we won’t keep them as hunters. I always remember a conversation I had with someone at Texas Parks and Wildlife about a youth program that took disadvantaged kids hunting. Being that this was Texas, where everyone pays to hunt, I asked, did any of these kids ever hunt again? “No,” he said.”It’s the only time in their lives they get to go.”

I live in a place where free access to private land remains relatively common, although that’s changing fast. There’s a big public area about twenty minutes from town. It gets hunted hard, but it’s close. In short, it’s possible if you are a high schooler or poor college student – or poor adult for that matter - to find a place to hunt nearby.

But that’s true in fewer and fewer places. It doesn’t bode well for the future of hunting if we get the next generation all excited about the sport then give them nowhere to go. Exit question: how hard is it for the young, impecunious and unconnected to find a place to hunt where you live?

Last time, I talked about lack of access as the number one problem facing hunting today. True enough, but I would like to nominate another candidate, and, no, it’s not video games. Youth sports are killing hunting.

I don’t mean normal youth sports, like Little League (which I didn’t do. I had a very specific, irrational fear of being killed by a line drive to the temple) or playing on school teams (which I did enthusiastically). I blame the year-round, traveling team club sports for sucking up family’s leisure time and squeezing out hunting.

Parents take kids to another city, even another state, every weekend, then sit on folding chairs and watching games. And younger brothers and sisters get dragged along, too. It doesn’t leave much for taking kids hunting, or even for hunting at all. I don’t know how many times dads my age have told me, “We didn’t get out for ducks/deer/turkeys this weekend. We were in Peoria/Milwaukee/Des Moines for a soccer/basketball/baseball tournament.”

Since when did watching a kid play a game become more important than actually doing something with him or her? 

We hunters are an easy target for the popular media, and probably the last group not protected by P-C sensitivity. This link carries you to Monday’s installment of Non Sequitur, a predictably knee-jerk and rarely funny comic strip by Wiley Miller that appears in 700 papers nationwide.

This story line has run for the last five days or so. To get you up to speed, Lucy and Petey are a pony and a dog. Lucy, the pony, has fallen in love with a French Canadian moose. It’s moose season, and all three are in the woods, endangered by hunters or, as we’re called here “terrorists.” That’s right, Wiley uses the “T” word on us. It would be insulting if it weren’t so sadly stupid.

I can guess how you all feel about this, but if you want to vent anyway, knock yourselves out.

I was going to post a funny video of an accidental discharge to start this post, then this news item caught my eye as a reminder that there aren’t any funny accidental discharges. This is the only fatality I’ve ever heard of at a gun club. Incredibly enough, it was the club’s manager who fired the shot. All of us, no matter how experienced, have to remember always:

1. Treat guns as if they were loaded 
2. Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times.

Arguably, rule two is more important than rule one, because if you break rule one, rule two acts as a failsafe. The only two accidental discharges I’ve personally witnessed did nothing worse than embarrass the shooters.

The first was on a trap field, where no one had told a teenager that his borrowed Model 12 would go off if he closed the action with his finger on the trigger. Fortunately, he had the gun pointed safely at the ground, and did nothing worse than blast a divot in the grass.

The second was by an old farmer who accepted our invitation to come hunt with us on his land (you know how they say you’re supposed to do that when you ask permission to hunt? Well, I don’t any more). He went into a shed to get his gun and we heard a muffled boom as he shot a neat hole through the roof from the inside.

Sincere thanks to everyone who suggested a name for my puppy. My wife, sons and I read all 442 entries, voted, re-voted, lobbied, argued, voted some more, and came up with a short list on Saturday. Sunday we found we had turned against Saturday’s names and we had to repeat the whole process. The final short list was:

        Deke
        Cooper
        Levi
        Jed
        Otto
        Skeeter

And the winner is: Jed. It is short, sturdy, easy to yell. It goes well with Ike. I have never known anyone named Jed, so the name is a clean slate for this little dog to work with. And, it gives me an excuse to sing the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme song to the puppy.
Thanks to Scrap 5000, who sent in a very long list of names and trusted one of them to hit the mark. Accuracy is fine for rifle shooters, but we shotgunners know putting lots of pellets in the air is the key to hitting a target.

Levi finished a very close second. Thanks to Fred for the name. My friend Cody McCullough owned a Levi, one of the best of the many good shorthairs I’ve hunted over. I was tempted to name this dog after that Levi but decided ultimately he needed a name of his own. Because of the huge number of entries this contest generated, and because Levi and Jed essentially tied, I will look in my box of knives for a second prize to award to Fred.

To those of you who suggested “Petzal” as a name, Dave is a cat person, and I have made note of your entries. Should there ever be a “name Phil’s cat” contest, you win.

I really enjoyed reading everyone’s suggestions. Some other names never made the short lists but stood out for one reason or another:

Hank, after the hero of John Erickson’s  “Hank the Cowdog” series.  I read a bunch of those books to my younger son as bedtime stories when he was in the second grade. My older son used to listen in even though he was too old for them, and all three of us laughed a lot. It’s a good series to read to young kids. Another good bird dog name from those books is “Plato,” who is the snooty pointer that appears as a minor character.

“Baldur” I like the names from Norse mythology (my wife does too, and lobbied hard for “Loki”). But, given the state of my hairline, I’d have gotten really tired of the “Bald and   Baldur” jokes.

“Sam.” My first shorthair was a “Sam,” a gift dog I should have looked in the mouth. He was a very badly socialized dog who never liked anyone but me. He had such serious “steady to wing” issues he chased a low-flying Cessna for three-quarters of a mile. Equal measures of love and electricity over several years eventually made Sam into a wide-ranging, outstanding pheasant dog. For three seasons he was almost unfair to hunt with, then his health failed.

Again, to all of you, thanks. Scrap, you’re the man. Fred, you’re number two. E-mail your addresses to [email protected] and I’ll get your prizes out to you.