All I can say is WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Steelhead]

I am doing this on a case by case scenerio that played out at the local gunshop today.


1. CASE 1: A fellow was looking to buy a 22/250 for deer hunting. He shot 2 deer with his 7mm/08 and they both ran about 50 yards before dropping. He said a friend shot one deer with a 22/250 and it dropped at the shot, so he figures it MUST be better. He also decided that he needed some 40 grain loads since they go faster..............

2. CASE 2: Same fellow, the 2 deer he shot with his 7mm/08 were at 40-50 yards. He then missed one 2 days later at 175 yards. I asked what distance he had it sighted in for, and he said that when he bought the gun new this fall, the store where he bought it sighted it in 1" high at 100 yards. I know the store, and they don't have a range, he said they use one of those things that you put on the end of the barrel (boresighter). I asked him how it shot for him at 100 yards. Yep, he has NEVER fired it, except to hunt with........

3. CASE 3 & 4: Two guys came in with 30/30's with 3x9 scopes on and asked for the gunshop owner to "SIGHT" them in. He also used a boresighter. I then HAD to ask if they planned on shooting them before hunting. Of course the looked at my like I had 3 heads. What for, they are sighted in..............

4. CASE 5: One of the above guys with the 30/30 asked it to be sighted in for 100 yards, and then asked how high it would be at 25 yards. I told him it would be about 1/2" low at 25 yards. He said there is NO way, that would make it "WAY LOW" at 100 yards, it has to be high at 25 yards....................


All I can say is that 1 1/2 hours in there SCARED the living hell out of me.

[Mac11700]

Besides having to worry about crazy people shooting you on your on land...you got these kinda guys out there shooting like that...some people don't have a clue...and maybe never will.. ...it's just getting downright  scary anymore..... :eek:

Mac

[Daveinthebush]

I have seen lots of advertising lately for bore sighters.  While it is true that they can save you some time at the range, they do not replace the FACT that you actually have to shoot the gun.  And, not at one distance but a few distances to boot.  

It must be that young generation that thinks everything is microwaveable. :-D

[New Hampshire]

Oh yeah, those guys are in the woods and they are numerous.  Examples from the main area I hunted this year: 1: Kid with shotgun and scope.....yup you figgured it, no binocs.  he would creep a bit, raise his shotgun and scan the area with the scope  :eek: .  2:  Guy sets up on a stand.  Has his buddy run up and down the main trail as fast as he can whistling as loud as he can trying to push deer.  I KNOW the area quite well and can tell you he was not going to push ANYTHING towards his buddy.....'cept maybe a mouse fart.  3:  We meet a guy in the woods and tells us he has 4 guys set up and he is going to do a push (same area and again I knew he wouldnt push anything to anyone, but at least he wasnt whistling and running  :roll: .)  My buddy and I decide its getting crowded in there and take off to let the afternoon goons (we knew once the "prime" time towards the evening we would be the only ones out there,) do their thing.  While walking the ONLY path out of there we have one of the guys sitting stand basically try, as nice as he could, to make us leave.  In an upset tone he warned us there were other hunters around, to which we replied "Yeah?  Well Im wearing orange and if the shoot Im shooting back!"
Luckily I havent run into any "sounding shots" guys.  THOSE are the ones that scare me most and make me happy in my decision to do a lot of tree stand hunting (after all its gonna be tough to explain to the cops why you thought a deer was in a tree.)
Brian M.
P.S. Daveinthebush, Im still laughing at that sig line of yours  :-D .

[Steelhead]

I have seen lots of advertising lately for bore sighters.  While it is true that they can save you some time at the range, they do not replace the FACT that you actually have to shoot the gun.  And, not at one distance but a few distances to boot.  

It must be that young generation that thinks everything is microwaveable. :-D

For what it is worth, not one of the above mentioned people where under the age of 50.

[Daveinthebush]

Corrected:


It must be that older generation that thinks everything is done by the government. :-D

[victorcharlie]

Wait a minute Dave........Second biggest lie in the world......I'm from the government and I'm here to help........

I call them once a year boys.......dust off the rifle, hunt one weekend then you don't see them anymore.......

It takes all kinds I guess......

[Daveinthebush]

Unfortunately there are people that want to be hunters and people that really hunt.  Many of them hunt on Mahogany Ridge.

I already have my broadheads sharpened for bear season, bought clear tupper ware container to organize all the hunting stuff and am researching wild boar hunts in California tonight. For me hunting in not a passion, it is an obsession. In 90 days I can start getting my bear stands ready. :grin:

[sgtt]

I spend 18 hrs a yr at my gun club fullfilling my obligation for range duty during the "deer hunting" sight in.  It is unbelievable the characters that show up.  Scopes mounted 90 degrees, even backwards.  A wide assortment of ammunition of all mfg and wghts.  The WRONG amm. for the gun.  (It seems the 7MM are the most easily confused)  I am sure with the insurgence of the new short mags this will become worse.  

I have a friend who used to work for a large firearms dealer.  He said the busiest day of the yr. was deer opener eve.  Bore sighting!  He finally got tired of dealing with the idiots.  He even had a customer come back and demand a refund due to the fact he had missed the shot.

[Bart Solo]

I call them once a year boys.......dust off the rifle, hunt one weekend then you don't see them anymore.......

What scares the hell out of me is the string of 8 shots taken in 3 seconds by some over armed yahoo whose trys to make up for his lack of shooting skill by invoking the US Army of doctrine of overwelming firepower.  Those clowns would use belt fed guns if they could.  

What do you do about the "once a year boys?"  How do you get them interested the other 51 weeks of the year?  

I know that my question may sound like something that is nobody's business, but I figure the more "real" hunters are out there the safer it is for everybody.   I am especially concerned about making sure everybody knows his firearm and can shoot straight.  Any ideas for encouraging people to go to the range and shooting 5 or so boxes of ammo in the run up to deer season?  Maybe some kind of competition?  Around here the main range is north of town and it is nearly empty 8 months and then gets busy in the weeks running up to deer season.   Most of the guys feel pressure to take a few shots and leave as quick as possible to let the next guy have a chance.  

When was the last time you invited the guy in the next cubicle to throw his hunting rifle in the back of your truck and go to the range for some target practice?

My goal this year is to make sure that at least one guy (my son) learns to shoot better-- two, if I count me.

[victorcharlie]

I invite them to go to the range all the time.  Rarely do I get any takers.  Hunting offers a few problems to the average guy.  Around the bigger cities it's getting harder and harder to find a place to hunt, although many don't really try.  They wake up on opening morning and drive out some where and decide that's where they are going to hunt!
 
Land owners worry about getting sued if the hunter steps in a hole......climbing fences at the wrong place......leaving gates open.....god forbid livestock gets shot.......that will close a farm forever.
 
The pressure to be successful is overwhelming to some.
 
Liberals teach in the public schools that animals have rights.
 
I mentioned to my wife about taking up bear hunting and I was told in no uncertain terms I'd better not bring a bear home!  
 
I've hunted and fished all my life, but am now having to travel farther to hunt than ever before.   The big farms I grew up hunting are gone, so are the farmers.
 
How do you get them interested in the other 51 weeks a year?  
 
Not sure....modern life is changing the face of hunting and fishing, and with more people and less space.....more hectic schedules with less time off, well....It getting harder to balance for most.

[jschance]

The corollary to this about 'once a year hunters' is a friend of mine's father.
 
Every year, a week or so before deer season, he takes his old rifle out of the case, runs a patch through it, sets a target and fires one shot.
 
He then goes out hunting, fires one shot to take his deer, cleans and oils the rifle and puts it back into the case.
 
This guy makes a box of ammo last almost 10 years, been doing it this way for decades.  My friend can't ever remember his dad shooting for fun or practice, nor can he ever remember him requiring more than one shot while deer hunting.  He bought his dad a few boxes of ammo years ago, thinking that if he had the ammo, he'd be more inclined to shoot more, but nope, he just put the extra up on a shelf to keep until he needs it.

[HogFan]

I've invited everyone I work with at work to go to the range with me, but only one has ever taken me up on it. The others just want to wait until a week or two before the season,  see if they can hit a target at 100 yards, and then be doen with it. My current job has afforded me plenty of range time, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I will be moving in March, and range time will be harder to come by, but I will be there every chance I get.  I love to shoot, and believe in practice makes perfect.

HogFan

[Bart Solo]

The corollary to this about 'once a year hunters' is a friend of mine's father.
 
Every year, a week or so before deer season, he takes his old rifle out of the case, runs a patch through it, sets a target and fires one shot.
 
He then goes out hunting, fires one shot to take his deer, cleans and oils the rifle and puts it back into the case.
 
This guy makes a box of ammo last almost 10 years, been doing it this way for decades.  My friend can't ever remember his dad shooting for fun or practice, nor can he ever remember him requiring more than one shot while deer hunting.  He bought his dad a few boxes of ammo years ago, thinking that if he had the ammo, he'd be more inclined to shoot more, but nope, he just put the extra up on a shelf to keep until he needs it.

I have run into guys like your friend's father.  In fact, my dad was like your friend's father. So were a lot of other guys who came home from overseas in 1945, and then later in 1952.  They are wonderful, but not normal.  Don't kid yourself, sometime, someplace they ran a lot of ammunition though a rifle learning how to shoot.   That is why they have so much confidence.  They have also spent a lot of time in the woods, that is the reason they always find a deer.  The average Joe just isn't that good.

[JPSaxMan]

Stupidity at it's finest, no? Yikes, that's just down right scary. To the point of giving me nightmares. And I thought the people in my neck of the woods were ignorant and stupid.... :eek:

[crawfish]

I’ll relate two for you.
1. This happened this year at my barber. He gave me a POS (according to him) Leupold handgun scope. He told me it was black and you couldn’t see anything out of it. I told him to send it in to Leupold and they would fix it. He told me that for something he paid so much money for it should work out of the box and that if I didn’t want it to pitch it in the can. So I walk over to the window, hold the scope out to shooting distance and see a perfect sight picture. From across the room I hear my barber say, “oh that’s how you use it”; I gave him his scope back.

2. A friend of son #2 has a Savage 99 in .243Win (I’d just about kill for one of these). He wanted to sell it to me for $100 bucks with scope mounted. Right away all my red flags went up. So he brought it out to the farm and we took it out to the range to shoot. Sure enough he couldn’t get it on paper at 50 yards. But I saw something he wasn’t seeing through the scope. I saw where the bullet hit. So I took the gun and called the next shot after holding off to compensate. This kid was amazed that I hit the paper right where I said I would. So I asked him “how did you adjust the scope?” I could see the question in his eyes even before he opened his mouth, “what do you mean adjust the scope, I just put it on.” So we did the adjustment thing and that old 99 is a 1.5-inch gun all day. He still has that Savage (I’d still just about kill for one) and he calls me every time he kills a deer and always thanks me for not taking advantage of his ignorance.

[Varmint Hunter]

One of my favorites is the guy I meet at the range with a brand spanking new Weatherby Mark V rifle chambered in 7mm Wby mag.

The poor guy was having all kinds of trouble getting the factory ammo to chamber. One quick look at the ammo box revealed that he was trying to chamber 7mm Rem mag ammo into his 7mm Weatherby mag chamber. When I asked him if he realized that he had 7mm Rem ammo he told me "reah, that Weatherby ammo is much too expensive".  :roll:

Unbelievable.

VH

[BnSC]

yeah, my dad also is one of those guys that shoots one time for practice then heads out.. He's used the same setup for as long as I can remember.

I love to hear his "one shot" go off through the woods. If I hear 2 shots, that means I better be ready to skin 2 deer....

[IowaBuckHunter]

Boresighters are garbage.  They work somewhat, but trust me, always shoot your rifle before hunting with it.  I do lots of boresighting for the gun retailer I work for, and they are not that great.  Sure you will hit paper at 20 yds, but that is it.  You will miss the target completely at 75 yds!  I always tell my customers to shoot it once at 20 yds, make some adjustments to get it close, then back up to 50 and do it again, then your desired distance.  It hasn't failed me yet.  For those of you intersted in a bore sighter, the lasers work by FAR better than the arbor ones.  And no, I do not mean the laser ones that go into the end of your barrel, I mean the ones that look like bullets that you actually put into your chamber- those are accurate!  Never buy a magnetic one!

[Redhawk1]

Boresighters are garbage.  They work somewhat, but trust me, always shoot your rifle before hunting with it.  I do lots of boresighting for the gun retailer I work for, and they are not that great.  Sure you will hit paper at 20 yds, but that is it.  You will miss the target completely at 75 yds!  I always tell my customers to shoot it once at 20 yds, make some adjustments to get it close, then back up to 50 and do it again, then your desired distance.  It hasn't failed me yet.  For those of you intersted in a bore sighter, the lasers work by FAR better than the arbor ones.  And no, I do not mean the laser ones that go into the end of your barrel, I mean the ones that look like bullets that you actually put into your chamber- those are accurate!  Never buy a magnetic one!

A Bore sighter is used just to get you on paper. It does not make them garbage. I have a leupold magnetic and a laser that goes in the end of the bore. I am always on paper the first shot. As far as I am concerned they did there job. Now it is up to the shooter to make corrections and get the gun sighted in at the correct distance.

[Rmouleart]

I have seen allot of crazy things over the vast years of hunting, i have seen two groups of hunters pushing into eachother, then jumped some deer and started shooting at eachother, this was very disturbing, I was in a tree thankGod. I was amazed to see know one got shot. Another time I was in my climber up high in a tree, spotted a hunter heading my way, works his way right to me right under my stand, sits down, pulls off his backpack, pulls out a beer, cracks it open and gulps in down, as he got to the bottom, he was looking up and noticed me, listen to this, asks me how long have I been up there, that blew my mind. One smokepole season I see a crowd of hunters working there way down the trail, then they set up across eachother and start pushing a peace of woods, in doing so I noticed they were using there primer caps to push, they were popping them off every twenty yards or so,I guess to scare the deer;), in tern if they saw a deer they would of been empty as well LOL, plus it was illegal push to boot, ten guys pushing oh boy what next, I personally try to find remote places as much as possible, there seems to be those jerks everywere, they give all us good hunters a bad name, its a shame. So many more story's I could write a book, but its bad publicity for us hunters, forget that, P.E.T.A would love to see that. Aim small hit small. RAMbo.

[New Hampshire]

Rmouleart, here is another good one.  Where I work there is a maintinance man who was telling me his kid dragged him up to Pittsburgh, up north, one year.  He says his kid tells him to sit on this little ridge and wait, so he does.  Sure enough an hour later this guy hears what he thinks is the four horseman of the apocalyps charging through the woods.  All of a sudden he sees about 40 people in a skirmish line, including kids and women, banging pots and pans together with the men armed with hunting rifles.  All of a sudden he says the shooting starts!  He told me he buried his head deep in the ground that day and prayed not to get shot.  Thats the last time he ever let his kid pick his stand for him!
Brian M.

[BrushBuster]

I've taken the time to read all these painful reports on hunting practices, and I would like to offer a constructively intended suggestion.

As a Canadian watching the door close on hunting as I have known it in my country,  I can with hindsight see that it was the hunting fraternity itself that should have become more aggressive in setting higher standards for licence applications and hunting practices.  The public needs to be shown that the sport can police itself. Do not leave it to the bleeding hearts and enviro-geeks to put the clamps on something they could never understand or care about. The Boone and Crocket "Fair Chase" standards are a fine example of tougher policies.

In Canada, newly licenced hunter figures are dropping rapidly because of the stigma attached to hunting by the general public. We now have comprehensive training mandatory for all applicants, but its simply too little too late. Gun registration and ownership has become an onerous and at times humiliating  process, threatening incarceration for the legal gun owner rather than the criminal element.

Please learn from our mistakes, and don't think it can't happen there.

[Rustyinfla]

Trying to tech these fools anything is like trying to teach a pig to dance. It's a terrible waste of time and only serves to irritate the pig.

                        Rusty <><

[Spyro Andes]

Actually, I am quite disappointted to hear all of this and find it a little sad for a couple of reasons.

We should not be discouraging or ridiculing our "own".  We need the numbers for the fight so EDUCATE rather than HUMILIATE.

I am shocked that nobody at these shops has any business sense.  All I hear about from these "Mom & Pop" stores is how Wal-Mart, Cabela's or Bass Pro is going to run them out of business.  Well how about offering something that the large guys don't... PROFESSIONAL ADVICE, EXPERIENCE & SERVICE.

I guess when you are a college kid with a bad hunting addiction, you find ways to get where you want to go and what you want to hunt.  Atleast, I was lucky in that school didn't start until the last Thu/Fri in September.

When I was 18-22 (censored word) years old, I would make between $300 - $1200 every week from July to the end of September just by going to the range 1-3 times a week.

I'd would thoroughly clean the rifle and properly lube.

I'd reseat the action using proper torque settings.

I'd mount or re-mount the scope using loc-tite & a leveler.

I'd sight it in with the customer provided ammo.

I'd clean the bore.

The charge was $85 + a box of ammo.  The shop would keep $20 and sell a few boxes of ammo.



Anyway, those shops denifitely benifited from the service.  They made it well know that the rifle was only sighted in for that Brand/Bullet Weight/Bullet Make.  

Guys would keep on coming back to the shop to buy ammo for hunting and shooting.

SA

PS.  Lots of guys that would shoot or practice with their rifles had no clue how to sight in a rifle and would pay the $ as well.

[JPSaxMan]

Spyro, I believe that task is easier said than done. By all means, it is such a monumental task. Even some teachers are completely out of it. So, what do you reccomend? We shoot and/or kill all the stupid ones then start from scratch? Go to a Saddam Hussein regime in order to make the race 'smart'? NO. Can't do it. So the only way is to educate. And as I said, even some teachers are stupid. You have no 100% surefire method to ensure idiodicness is erradicated. So don't even try. You'll fail...I guarantee it. The only way is to into every single school, watch every single teacher, try to fire the ones who are stupid, then bring in good teachers. Then watch every single student, if they're stupid, knock it out of em somehow and make em smart. If you can do it...more power to you.

Sorry bout the rant. I kinda needed all those words in order to express my thoughts.