Scary Pre-Hunting Story

I live in Washington State and hunt In New York State. Last year I mailed back two deer hunting rifles.
I developer hunting loads for each rifle and had them sighted in.
When I flew back here to New York I always go to the Greene Gun Club and shoot whatever guns I will be using.
One of the guns shot three inches high and four inches to the right.
I hunt every day of the three week hunting season and if we are near the gun range I will send one down at a target just to make sure everything is still where it should be.

A lot of people only hunt a couple of days and have no clue about accuracy and could care less.
A few years ago a friend bought a new rifle for deer hunting and a new scope and factory ammunition. That rifle shot all over the place.
I made some ladder loads up for him with different size projectiles and got it were the bullets were touching each other from a rifle cradle.

Then again some people couldn't hit a barn if they were standing inside.
I have a friend I go shooting with back in Washington State, he is in that category. He has a bunch of nice rifles and handguns, he can't hit nothing but he reloads and loves to shoot.
He fills up gallon milk jugs with water & freezes them to shoot at.
At fifty yards it takes him atleast five shots or more to hit one. But that is his enjoyment.

True story.. Saw a guy the other day bring just the SCOPE in and wanted it sighted in for 200 yds. JUST the scope, no rifle. Got angry when he was told that that was not how it worked...

That is one special guy, I guess stupid is what stupid does.

It is surprising the level of ignorance about the need to verify of impact and point of aim. A State Representative, Judge, and Lawyer I used to go hunting with, he put on a new scope on a rifle and went into the woods without zeroing the rifle. He had a humorous story about the number of rounds he wasted, shooting at a deer at close range (lets say 10 to 15 yards). He also did not understand how to adjust the rear sight on his S&W M29. You would think someone with a College education and years of post graduate education would know how to do things like that. My mechanical aptitude is good and I am always surprised when I find out, I am wrong about assuming everyone knows what I know.

I am a disaster around electricity. Never made sense to me, that current flows in the opposite direction of the voltage, and then there are things like capacitors, inductors, frequency, etc. It is all gibberish and confusion to my mind. I just want to get back to the model of fire, water, earth and air. You know, the simple lies that worked just as well as the complicated stuff of today.

You would think someone with a College education and years of post graduate education would know . . .

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Some of the DUMBEST people I have ever known have been PhDs.
and one of the most intelligent and broadly well-read... a plumber who owned/flew sailplanes w/ me in New Mexico.

Never mistake "education" for Intelligence & Common Sense.

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Saw a guy the other day bring just the SCOPE in and
wanted it sighted in for 200 yds. JUST the scope . . .

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Ya just gotta love the human comedy -- just not in your proximity while armed.

Hokkmike said:

I was driving north from York County, PA to Tioga County, PA to spend Friday night with my friend before going out on Saturday for the first day of PA buck/doe season.

On the way, just for fun, I stopped at a gun store along Route 11/15. The place was packed. At least 4 people were filling out forms to purchase rifles (presumably) for deer hunting.

A scary thought to think that they have zero practice with their weapon(s) of choice.

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Never worked at a gun shop have you? It's a yearly event. It's real fun dealing with the drunks who get belligerent when you won't sell them a gun for deer hunting 10 hours before the season opens. At least I had a gun and they didn't.

Bazoo said:

Maybe those guys are already proficient and just want something new.

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I forgot about the women that would come in with a note, written in a man's handwriting, reading off things they know nothing about.

"I want a [sic] M16 for deer huntin'. I think that' what it says. Yup. A M16. An' lotsa bullets!"

Not happening.

mcb66 said:

True story.. Saw a guy the other day bring just the SCOPE in and wanted it sighted in for 200 yds. JUST the scope, no rifle. Got angry when he was told that that was not how it worked...

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Oh that's a good one

MEHavey said:

Some of the DUMBEST people I have ever known have been PhDs.
and one of the most intelligent and broadly well-read... a plumber while I was flying sailplanes in New Mexico.

Never mistake "education" for Intelligence & Common Sense.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ya just gotta love the human comedy -- just not in your proximity while armed.

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I thought this was funny:


The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Carlo M. Cipolla

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla

These are fun stories. Thanks for them. I love knowing where my gun is shooting. I've killed 4 deer in the last 5 years and every shot went exactly where I wanted it to. Using a BOG Death Grip Tripod and my reloads, every deer has dropped without a wiggle. 2nd good story. I bought a Marlin 30-30 that my nephew inherited from his grandfather. It had been shoved around in various closets for about 40 years. had a side mounted scope. I cleaned it up some, but left the scope alone. Bought a box of 30-30 ammo and headed to the range. I shot two shots at 50 yards and they were side-by-side dead center about the size of a quarter. Maybe those old guys are doing it right?

troy fairweather said:

Shoot you won't believe how many buy rimfires thinking they can use them. I used to help out when I was a kid at the shop dad worked, I would mount and bore sight scopes for customers. Made some good spending money then even tho I don't change, a lot would say after season they didn't even get shoot the gun or sight it in. I was pretty good at getting a gun close with the old Bushnell truscope, but there just to get you on paper.

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I hunted with a friend that bought a win m70 7mm tem mag, a scope and a bore sighter. Opening weekend he hunted on a family members property in Syracuse, had a shot on a standing buck at 200 yds, deer ran away. He missed completely. The following Saturday we hunted state land, cascade Valley NY, it was close to sunset when he told me about missing, my first question was did you sight it in. He says no I bore sighted it. Spent about 20 min zeroing his rifle. I doubt that he ever hunted again.

You would think someone with a College education and years of post graduate education would know . . .

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Make no mistake, most of those people are very intelligent. But their scope of knowledge is very narrow and laser focused on their specialty. They do what they do very well. But taken out of their environment are often lost.

I've seen many examples of stuff like this over the years, but from where I'm sitting I believe it is happening less often in relation to hunting. Partly because the number of hunters is declining and most who still do hunt are older, more experienced folks.

There are a large number of people buying defensive firearms recently with no experience, and no one to mentor them. That does concern me.

This happened some 40 years ago.
My uncle and 2 friends were in a dirt road in a VW Bug and he was in the back seat.
They were going a bit fast around a bend and hit a horse, hurting the animal and breaking a couple legs.
The driver exited the car and looked to the horse on the right shoulder of the road, over the top of the car. Seeing the legs broken, he drew a 38 and shot the horse over the top of the car.
This guy in the front seat exited the vehicle and positioned his head on the front of the bullet, making the last mistake of his life.
Another one: a couple guys were hunting capivaras and they had a one shot shotgun, and they had to cross a fence. The first one jumped and the guy with the gun tried to pass the gun to him, so he could jump the fence too. Stupid guy left the gun cocked and he passed the gun to the first guy barrel first, who yanked the gun off his hand, causing it to fire a shot point blank in his chest.
Another one, this hit the news 2 months ago: couple guys were boar hunting and one of them thought it would be funnny to scare the other one. He crouched and jumped growling in front of the other hunter, who instinctively fired a shot at him, blowing his head to bits.
Yeah, people do stupid things.

Slamfire said:

It is surprising the level of ignorance about the need to verify of impact and point of aim. A State Representative, Judge, and Lawyer...

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Why was a State Representative even mentioned?

Might as well have used the "doctor, lawyer, priest" trope known to Latin America...

MEHavey said:

Some of the DUMBEST people I have ever known have been PhDs. and one of the most intelligent and broadly well-read... a plumber who owned/flew sailplanes w/ me in New Mexico.

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It's also quite possible that we think they're dumb because we know so little

jmr40 said:

Make no mistake, most of those people are very intelligent. But their scope of knowledge is very narrow and laser focused on their specialty.

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Bingo.

Most of these guys probably don't care much for what we associate with for JimBob smarts.

My son showed me that... No more country bumpkin hubris from me. He sure put my high school education, "practical world knowledge" in its place, of all things, in plumbing... My plumbing and hardware supplies shop (since closed ) put him through part of college. Grad and PostGrad, he did on his own - ramen nights and flipping burgers

If they put their mind to something, they typically exceed us in every way. We're just too dumb (and insecure or arrogant) to appreciate that.

Howland937 said:

13 rounds fired, 5 sighting it in, one more verifying zero. Other 7 rounds all killed deer

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Make that 8
Dead in it's tracks, dad said. Not bad for a rifle that's been sitting in the safe unfired since the last deer he killed last year. Down to 6 rounds left in the box.

I recount these stories from time to time. I used to be a member of a private shooting club. You didn't see many people there at any time except competition events and the last couple of weekends before deer season. It was crazy how many people would shot up. Anyway, lots were there to verify zero or to zero new ammunition (good for them). However, the methods some used were disturbing. One guy was using a 9" paper plate at 50 yards...because that is "the size of a kill zone on a deer." With a scoped bolt gun, he scattered 5 of 7 or 7 or 9 rounds on target. He showed me the target and said, "That'll hunt." He said he was leaving that day to go fill his feeder. I asked how far his feeder was from the stand. He said it was 80 yards.

I sat next to another guy sighting in his .308 with 150 gr. FMJ and was going to hunt with 170 gr. hollowpoint ammo, but he wasn't going to verify zero with the hollowpoint ammo because hunting ammo is "expensive" (this was some 15 years ago when ammo was cheap, LOL, and being a member of the club was actually expensive. Anybody that could afford to be a member of the club would have no problem affording the cost of a few rounds of hunting ammo to verify zero.

Slamfire said:

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

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I always thought Law 4 was exceptionally funny, indicating that non-stupid people are actually stupid.

Slamfire said:

I thought this was funny:


The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Carlo M. Cipolla

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla

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Ipolla wrote this kind of tongue-in-cheek. It’s humorous, but actually true. Socially, non-stupid people have to first make up for the losses caused by stupid people before they can make any progress. Stupid people are a huge tax on human progress of all kinds.

BrazilianSnowMan said:

This happened some 40 years ago.
My uncle and 2 friends were in a dirt road in a VW Bug and he was in the back seat.
They were going a bit fast around a bend and hit a horse, hurting the animal and breaking a couple legs.
The driver exited the car and looked to the horse on the right shoulder of the road, over the top of the car. Seeing the legs broken, he drew a 38 and shot the horse over the top of the car.
This guy in the front seat exited the vehicle and positioned his head on the front of the bullet, making the last mistake of his life.
Another one: a couple guys were hunting capivaras and they had a one shot shotgun, and they had to cross a fence. The first one jumped and the guy with the gun tried to pass the gun to him, so he could jump the fence too. Stupid guy left the gun cocked and he passed the gun to the first guy barrel first, who yanked the gun off his hand, causing it to fire a shot point blank in his chest.
Another one, this hit the news 2 months ago: couple guys were boar hunting and one of them thought it would be funnny to scare the other one. He crouched and jumped growling in front of the other hunter, who instinctively fired a shot at him, blowing his head to bits.
Yeah, people do stupid things.

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A few more that qualify as 'scary', an elk guide here in NM told me of a guide friend of his whose client had an AD/ND with a .300 Win. Mag, the round did severe damage to both of the guide's legs.

Another guide at the Vermejo Park Ranch I later heard had a client have an AD in the cab of the guide's truck, the muzzle was a few inches from his ear. He couldn't even see anything for a half hour.

Another elk guide on a private ranch here said he had a client who needed 39 rounds to get his cow elk. Really, these people should just borrow the guide's rifle.

Paul7 said:

Really, these people should just borrow the guide's rifle.

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No, they really should not.

Stupid people are numerous, and walk amongst us. Worse than that, they breed! I can't help but relate a story that happened to me a few years ago:

A friend of mine asked if I'd like to go deer hunting with him and his cousin, who was visiting from the city. Needing a bit of meat, I said why not and met them at their "land" at the appointed day and time. My friend is a safe and successful hunter, and I like to think I am as well. The cousin, however, left a little to be desired. We both had rifles, where the cousin was using his Super Redhawk in 44 Mag. He told us he just got it, and had shot it "a couple times" and really wanted to kill a deer. So we started across the lease, in my truck, with the cousin in the front passenger seat. Friend spots a deer out the drivers side. Cousin says "watch this!" and proceeded to touch off the aforementioned 44 inside the cab of my truck before either of us could get our ears plugged.... at least the windows were down.

I turned around, drove them back to the truck, and went home, after expressing in the strongest terms that my friend was not to invite me to hunt when the cousin was along ever again. Matter of fact,, there are still some 44 bullets in my console from when I taken the gun from him and unloaded it and handed it to my friend. Took all I had not to chuck it out the window, and him with it. My friend and I still hunt together often, but I've not seen the cousin since.

RE: checking zero each year.

My dad is a lot like the other guys mentioned here. Two days before season opens, he steps off 25 steps, shoots one shot from the M77 270 at the bottom of a Dr. Pepper can, and if he hits it (and he usually does) he goes hunting. I think he has 6 shells left for it right now, and mentioned that he might want to find "another box just in case he needs them". Of course, you can't find any 150gr Core-lokts around here for love or money. Not to mention, season was over last night except for a week around Christmas. Maybe he can find some before next year.

Mac

earlthegoat2 said:

My dad hasnt shot his gun at a paper target in a decade. Kills a deer or two every year.

Granted, this is just an isolated anecdote but if you have a quality scope and use the same ammo, it is unlikely the gun will lose hunting accuracy.

Sure it is a little scary thought. Just not that scary.

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Your rifle isn't going to lose accuracy but your eyes and muscle memory are.

There are many ignorant people when it comes to firearms. Many years ago I won a free hunt on a plantation that charged $300/day to hunt. Some guy from New Orleans had just bought a 300 Win Mag and had the shop owner sight it in. He shot a fawn in the guts and blamed the shop owner for tricking him.

Jerks are everywhere. Beware!

Officers'Wife said:

Your rifle isn't going to lose accuracy but your eyes and muscle memory are.

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You're right, it is a perishable skill.

MacAR said:

Stupid people are numerous, and walk amongst us. Worse than that, they breed! I can't help but relate a story that happened to me a few years ago:

A friend of mine asked if I'd like to go deer hunting with him and his cousin, who was visiting from the city. Needing a bit of meat, I said why not and met them at their "land" at the appointed day and time. My friend is a safe and successful hunter, and I like to think I am as well. The cousin, however, left a little to be desired. We both had rifles, where the cousin was using his Super Redhawk in 44 Mag. He told us he just got it, and had shot it "a couple times" and really wanted to kill a deer. So we started across the lease, in my truck, with the cousin in the front passenger seat. Friend spots a deer out the drivers side. Cousin says "watch this!" and proceeded to touch off the aforementioned 44 inside the cab of my truck before either of us could get our ears plugged.... at least the windows were down.

I turned around, drove them back to the truck, and went home, after expressing in the strongest terms that my friend was not to invite me to hunt when the cousin was along ever again. Matter of fact,, there are still some 44 bullets in my console from when I taken the gun from him and unloaded it and handed it to my friend. Took all I had not to chuck it out the window, and him with it. My friend and I still hunt together often, but I've not seen the cousin since.

RE: checking zero each year.

My dad is a lot like the other guys mentioned here. Two days before season opens, he steps off 25 steps, shoots one shot from the M77 270 at the bottom of a Dr. Pepper can, and if he hits it (and he usually does) he goes hunting. I think he has 6 shells left for it right now, and mentioned that he might want to find "another box just in case he needs them". Of course, you can't find any 150gr Core-lokts around here for love or money. Not to mention, season was over last night except for a week around Christmas. Maybe he can find some before next year.

Mac

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Friends cousin shot a 44 mag off across the front of you and friends faces? Did y’all duck? Y’all have hearing loss?
I laughed at the way it was worded, but I feel for you. That’s just crazy.

Bazoo said:

Friends cousin shot a 44 mag off across the front of you and friends faces? Did y’all duck? Y’all have hearing loss?

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We didn't have time to do anything, honestly. Ducking would've gotten me killed, since the barrel was about 6" from my nose; my sunglasses saved my eyes from the muzzle blast, thank God. I only have one that works anyway and that likely would've done for it. We're also both a bit deaf from shooting guns and operating tractors and machinery without ear protection. (According to the wife, my favorite words are "Huh?" and "What?") It could've been much worse, but thanks to luck and my "mostly" even temper, no one was hurt apart from six ringing ears and a bit of singed eyebrow on my part.

Mac