GUNS Magazine October 1956

Basic safety act of opening and unloading gun while going
through fence is often neglected by thoughtless hunters.
Carrying guns disassembled in car prevents any chance of
accidental discharge and is mandatory law in some areas.
would pay for it, an entirely specious theory.
A rolling volley of shots started about a mile away, trav-
eled in our direction. One bullet whistled over our heads.
"Duck!" yelled the game warden and we hit the snow as
the shooting started in a new direction. The game warden
brushed the snow from his clothes, grinned wryly. "I gotta
wife and kids," he said. "These crazy hunters start shooting
at a deer, the high-powered rifles carry and you never know
when you will stop one. Too many hunters in the woods,
too damned many !"
That night in camp, four of us soberly discussed what
we had seen and heard that day. One of the group had
bagged a nice plump buck with a good rack of horns. The
buck had been cleaned and proudly hung to a limb of a
tree close to the small cabin. Two of us had been through
some narrow escapes. We planned to return home the next
morning to escape the hazards of the "If-it-moves, shoot-
at-it" philosophy of the horde of new hunters who infest
the woods in increasing numbers each year.
"What's the matter with today's hunters?" one of my
Cleaning rifle at end ot day is wise gun care and also
avoids putting arm away in dangerous loaded condition.
companions asked bitterly. "People don't know how to
handle guns, they have no respect for the safety of others,
no regard for property rights. I saw a group of Pittsburgh
hunters huddling around a big fire on a farm today. They
had torn down a perfectly good rail fence for fuel, and
they were passing a bottle around. I'll bet within an hour,
they were blazing away at anything that moved in the
woods, without regard as to whether it was a buck, doe,
man, or a strayed cow."
We talked, tried to diagnose the maniacal frenzy that
seemed so evident. All of us were past middle age and we
had been hunting since our youth. We had learned to hunt
and handle a gun from fathers who were also hunters. Our
fathers were pretty stem about it, too. I was taught to
carry a gun with the barrel pointing down. I was taught
never to carry a cocked gun, but to carry it with a thumb
on the safety. My father showed me and trained me to push
the safety off as I raised my gun to fire, something that
soon became automatic. By example, he showed me that
when I came to a barbed wire (Continued on page 50)