Back in the last Century when I was a fourteen-year-old kid I started the season with a box of 20. I sighted in my iron-sighted rifle, which brought me down to approximately 15 rounds. I shot a buck and put it down but it raised its head and I put a round into the neck.
I then checked the sights on a couple of jackrabbits, and suddenly I was down to five rounds for the reminder of the season and I did not have the funds to buy additional ammunition.
A big storm had triggered a migration from high altitudes to lower elevations. Mid-morning I spotted a group of four 4x4 blacktail bucks watching me. They were across a canyon, because they were in a cluster I tried to neck shoot one. I emptied my rifle and they stood there and starred at me.
I was rather frustrated and on the hike out to the road I encountered two different 2x2 bucks. When I hit the road I encountered another hunter. I took him back to the last buck I had jumped and he collected it.
Lessons Learned:
1. Work hard and buy lots of ammunition.
2. Left eye dominate, but right-handed. With factory buckhorn sights I started shooting left-handed.
3. While practice at fifty feet with a .22 is good, practice at 200 yards with the deer rifle is better.
4. Installed Williams peep sight on rifle and shooting improved.
5. Was not blessed with fighter pilot vision and started wearing corrective lens.
6. Earn money haying to buy reloading press, and components. More ammunition resulted in more practice.
7. Had a scope installed on the rifle a couple of years later and now shoot right or left-handed.
That experience should have been enough to encourage me to carry an adequate supply of ammunition.
But I flash back to my hunter safety course and the discussion on firing signal shoots when lost or injured. Clearly one must have adequate ammunition to accomplish that goal. During the hay day of the deer herd my patrol area went from a few locals to a large number of deer camps on opening weekend. There were always concerns about over due hunters. In most cases they all showed up by ten at night. But there were a few that spent the night in the woods.
During the day a series of shoots would not get much attention that a series of shoots would get at night. At the start we did not know if the hunter was lost or injured. In a couple of cases the hunter had taken a deer and was waiting for his buddies to find him and carry the deer out.
Most of my deer kills have been with one shot including this year’s kill. But I will never forget that early lesson.
And the California woods have become more dangerous. It was bad enough with the locals growing dope, but now the Mexicans have been planting large gardens involving 30,000 or more plants. These guys will kill you. On the Shasta-Trinity N.F. a skull was found in an old marijuana garden with a bullet hole in front. The dental work indicated the victim had the work done in Mexico. In Eduardo County a Mexican guarding a garden planted on the hunter’s private land located next to the National Forest shot a young hunter, and his father. This fall two bow hunters were threaten by a gringo growing dope on the National Forest. The gringo fired a number of warning shots. In Southern California a grower open fire on a raid team with a full automatic weapon. He lost.
So the fourteen year-old is now a tired old man with bad knees. The old man reloads his ammunition, and buys factory ammunition on sale. He carries a daypack or military web gear with a butt pack. Depending on the rifle it will be loaded with four or five rounds. In addition there will be another fifteen rounds in his gear. If the old man is hunting out of a camp away from home there will be green or red plastic box with additional ammunition in the pickup. The old man just bought four boxes of ammunition on sale. Hard to get over the trauma of running out of ammunition with bucks all over.
The last time a deer required more then one shot was 25-years ago. But now the old man has entered the high-risk age group. Heart attacks kill more hunters then any other cause.
What age group are you in?
