bucket list

Shoot more. Paper, steel, or animals.

 

I'd like to do another out of state hunt again. I live in MI and have been to WY 6 times, but that was 20 years ago. Would like to do something like that again. Along with that get one more deer worthy of hanging on the wall. I'm generally not a trophy hunter but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'd like a nice one again.

Outside of hunting wants I'd like to either join a club or get involved shooting somewhere over 200 yards. Upper midwest hunting is mostly close in under 100 unless your hunting a field but I'd still like the challenge of shooting long.


-Jeff

 

Geez dude...get some mocs and a buckskin jacket. Most of the cowboy crap is just that. Historically correct in terms of early Hollywood only.

Bucket list goal? Alaska moose hunt. I don't hunt much anymore and it honestly doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'd love to be physically and financially able to go on a weeklong Alaska moose hunt and get close enough to a trophy class bull to hear it breathing.
Then I'd never care if I shot it or not.

 

Well I won't go during bear season. I'll wait til they're hibernating.

 

Once you've got a moose on the ground your head is on a swivel watching for grizzlies. Trust me, been there and done it several times.

 

Finish my current 1893 Spanish Lady build. Start a type 99 Arisaka build just because I can from nothing more than a barreled action that I have on hand. Start casting for my Spanish ladies and hand loading for the 7.7 Arisaka build. Shoot hunt and fish more this year. Spend quality time with the family while doing all of this at the same time and bring the new minion home from the hospital at the end of March when he or she is done cooking. While trying not to be too sleep deprived. Thats my bucket list.

 

I thought they got that from elephant dung. I'll stick with my 25c cup and pocket the difference.

 

Like a couple others who posted, I'd just like to keep shooting and reloading for a few more years. In the fourth quarter of life now and hope my body lets me keep in the game 'till the two minute warning.

 

I have debated with myself about responding to this question. Here I am.

In high school (in the dark ages, the 1960s) I enrolled in Junior ROTC so I could compete on the rifle team. I qualified, made the team each year. My friend Jack and I swapped the number 1 position almost weekly in our senior year. My goal each week, each match, was to beat Jack. He died three years ago, ALS, so I guess I won. I wish he were here.

From 1998 to 2020 I was a cowboy action shooting competitor. Shoulder arthritis put an end to my competition. I loved competing in the blackpowder categories because I liked the percussion revolvers, the smoke, the balls of fire, and the fewer number of competitors. The first time I won the Missouri State Championship in Frontiersman category, I congratulated myself for about an hour, then I realized I had to win it again to prove that the first win was not a fluke. So I did. Winning was important to me because I felt like I had something to prove. Poor self image, I guess. Turns out I was the only one who cared. Everyone else was getting ready for the next match, or whatever. I have a stack of wooden plaques stored in a cabinet as mementoes of those wins. I suspect they will be firewood someday.

There was a website that documented "World Record" times for each SASS cowboy action category. I watched some of the videos on that website, and thought to myself, "I think I can beat some of those times." The requirements for submitting a video included setting up the "world record" target array with specified target sizes and distances, having a timer showing the elapsed time in the video from start to finish, etc. My local SASS club kindly allowed me to set up one of our stages to comply with the world record requirements. I practiced, made lots of videos, and between 2016 and 2018 I held "world records" in cowboy action shooting in three categories: Frontiersman, Frontier Cartridge, and Frontier Cartridge categories.

Nobody cared. I thought I would at least get some emails/comments about holding three world records (yes, even in these less popular categories) simultaneously. But nothin'.

Now, I have a pretty good grasp on reality. I was, at my best, a slightly better than average cowboy action shooting competitor overall. There were lots of shooters better than I am/was. I was not truly a world championship level competitor. But still... world records...

I think world records should be held by true champions, and I know I am not really one. So I arranged for Missouri Lefty, (Clayton Wisdom in real life) to try to beat my times at the 2018 Missouri State Championship match. And he did. Since he is a true championship caliber competitor, having won the World Championship of SASS, I am proud to have my times beaten by him, and to have the three SASS blackpowder category world record times be held by him, since he has consistently been one of the top SASS shooters for years.

All of this is to say that "bucket list" goals overall have only been briefly satisfying for me. So I don't have any at this time.

I shoot a couple of times a week at a local indoor range. I still have an ego. I enjoy shooting small groups with my old Smith and Wessons while the kids spray and pray at shorter ranges with their black guns on neighboring lanes. I kinda keep hoping that one of them might come over to my lane and ask me to coach them on how to shoot more accurately. I would happily do so.

Hasn't happened yet. But that's as close to a bucket list goal as I got.

I've just shown you my soul. For what it's worth.

 

I guess I don't really have a bucket list that concerns anything gun-related anymore. I've spent my entire adult life in the military and law enforcement, been privileged to shoot an incredible variety of weapons, have shot in competition, been an instructor, lifelong hunter, been to Africa, owned wonderful firearms... My hope is that my sons in law will finally get the bug and appreciate and use heavily all the heirlooms we're gonna pass on to our daughters, them, and hopefully more grandchildren.

I guess the only thing I'd want is to finish out the last fifteen or twenty years of my life with enough acreage to build my own range. And if I die peacefully, it'll be in a lawn chair while taking a break from shooting a new gun.

And I thought that it was birds that ate, then pooped out those coffee beans...

 

My bucket list hunt was a Kamchatka Moose hunt. Mr. Putin pretty much killed that from ever happening.
Mouflon in Croatia maybe.

 

Tecovas boots

 

Mark...Mark---Would that be a Rogers and Spencer or a LeMatt ?

 

Got a long bucket list, but here's one item. Was recently talking with a guy who's a partner in a pheasant hunting preserve. The one I formerly went to closed with the owners retirement. I want to get out my dad's old 16 ga. pheasant gun, take a pheasant and get a photo of the gun & pheasant. The gun hasn't harvested a pheasant since about the fall of 1942 before he went into the Navy in 1943 and pretty much got stored in the closet after WW2. It's a good shooter and I feel as though I should have carried on its hunting tradition a lot sooner but I was too busy enjoying my High Standard 12 ga. pump.