ayoob files: dueling rifles - Jeffersonian's Home Page

HANDGUNHUNTING
tIPs, tecHNIQUes AND PoLItIcAL INcorrectNess J.D. JoNes
he hilly country of eastern Ohio is simply beautiful
in the fall. This evening driving east with the sun
shining on the early colors reminded me in a week
or so the colors would be at their peak. Assuming of
course we don’t have a storm to destroy the foliage.
Hunting seasons are either starting or in full swing. I’m
leaving for a deer hunt in two days and by the time you
get this hunting will be over for another year. Perhaps
it’s time to sit back, relax and review the past season’s
hunting. You did hunt, didn’t you? Shame on you if
you didn’t. You missed one of the better things in life.
Spending some time in the outdoors seriously hunting
investing in Ammo
L ets
take a look back and see what we did wrong — and
what we did right. How much trigger time did you invest
in before the hunt? Yeah, I know —investment. Ammo
and time are investments. The current cost of factory ammo
is horrible. Reloading helps, but ammo cost is still significant
if you shoot a lot. Most everyone’s time is at a premium, with
too many “have to do things” on your mind, when you’re
trying to get that trigger time in.
Did you get out to do some preseason scouting, or put in a
little time with the bow getting to know the area you’ll hunt
later? No? Well I never get the opportunity to do that either.
Just go where you always go and most of the time it works
out. Sometime’s there’s a new dog in the neighborhood, sometimes
the coyotes have excessively thinned the herd and worse
yet, there is a posted sign where you usually park the rig.
If you were lucky and none of that happened, and
your hunt went fine, did you really not see anything that
first morning? Was it because you set up, so deer moving
toward you got your scent while still a quarter-mile out?
Did you pick a good spot on a hillside and watch squirrels
all day? Take a nap while the big guy
J.D. has hunted over the entire world, having taken some
of the most exotic game imaginable. yet, a deer hunt in his
native state of Ohio is still a highlight for him every year.
— or just enjoying being outdoors and not caring about
the everyday stressors of life — heals things.
Okay, so maybe you did hunt. Were you successful in
putting meat on the table and a rack on the wall? Good
for you if you did. If you didn’t, that’s okay too. But a
successful hunt is always a bit better than one where a
shot isn’t fired — or where one is fired and it misses!
It certainly happens, and I’ll be the first to confess it’s
sometimes downright demoralizing when it does.
A memorable deer like this one — and
the story surrounding the hunt — is what
keeps drawing hunters back to the woods
each year. Don’t stay home next year!
moseyed past hot on the trail of a doe? Andy, your hunting
buddy on the other side of the valley is wondering, ”Why
the hell isn’t he shooting?”
That can be the hunting story of the year and yeah —
you’ll get tired of hearing about it, while the buck gets bigger
and bigger with each telling. And we keep going back year
after year for more of it.
Hindsight
Oh, and did you take the right gun? Could you
have gotten the big guy with a scoped gun
instead of iron sights? Just maybe though, thinking it
over you can look back and see some judgment calls you might have done
better on. One I can recall is taking a new guy in the group to the spot I
had intended to hunt and setting him up. I went to another place while he
dropped a big buck. I confess it sort of made me feel foolish and a little
envious. What I really felt later on was pissed, as the new guy took off
with the buck without a word of thanks for the help he got in setting up,
dressing the deer, dragging it out — and was never seen again.
Don’t let that sort of a situation ruin your next hunt. Plan ahead
regarding the hunt location, your gear, guns, ammo and keep
an eye on who you’re hunting with too!
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32 WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • MARCH/APRIL 2013