Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Hunt, Eat, Live! Roundup

It has been a while since I’ve posted because I was traveling for the last seven days straight for my J.O.B. I took along my laptop and thought, “Oh, this will be great. While I’m sitting in my hotel room or flying from point A to point B, I will bang out a couple of draft posts.” Yeah, right.

The days on this latest trip started early and ended around midnight after the ‘mandatory’ social activities. So, needless to say, I am beat thus this is a good week for a Roundup.

Evolution of the Non Hunter
I wrote about a non hunter friend who had expressed an interest in learning how to hunt here. Thanks for all the advice that I received about smart steps in bringing his interest along.

Shortly after I wrote that piece, I took The Friend out to introduce him to the gun, talk about safety, and ultimately shoot some sporting clays. You’ll recall that I feared being too ‘preachy’ with him about our safety talk. Well, I heeded your advice and just put it on the line.

“I don’t mean to insult your intelligence,” I said, “but safety is the single most important thing about being a successful hunter so I am going to share everything I know with you.”

“No worries, I’m all ears,” was The Friend’s reply.

That set the tone for a very good, long discussion about safety, followed by gun handling, and eventually firing a round of sporting clays. The Friend did very well, hitting 38 of 100 targets. Not shabby for someone who had never fired a shotgun two hours earlier. Best of all, he was perfectly safe!

Last weekend, while I sat in a Los Angeles hotel watching the hills glow orange with fire, The Hunting Partner took The Friend out for one of those 2:30am hunts I’ve written about previously. While the weather here in Northern California has been absolutely non-ducky (warm, sunny, calm), I understand they had a good time and The Friend was able to fire on some mallards that decoyed. Unfortunately he didn’t connect on this first adventure, but he is excited for what the next trip may bring.

Speaking of the Importance of Safety
Some of you may have heard that a 16 month old toddler was killed by a stray bullet from a deer hunter in New York last week. After shooting a deer from a tree stand, the hunter climbed down and fired again at the deer just 400 feet from a trailer home next to the land where he was hunting.

A true testament to the gun safety rule: Know what is beyond your target before pulling that trigger. What a tragedy.

Thanksgiving Write About the Good Challenge
In stark contrast, the Outdoor Bloggers Summit is running a wonderful essay challenge. The goal is to write a post about someone who mentored or inspired you. Thanksgiving - thanks for giving. We all are blessed in many ways and I hope you’ll share your story with OBS over the next week.

Friends Getting Famous
One of our own is starting to get famous in the outdoor world. In the last two weeks, Holly over at NorCal Cazadora has been interviewed for a small city newspaper, which was then promptly discovered by NRA radio. Check out her interview on the streaming NRA radio here. Keep representin’ Holly!

I’ll be back in the next week with a few more stories about new adventures. For now just pray for weather to push new birds into our area. Enough with this Indian Summer!

5 comments:

Holly Heyser said...

Thanks for the tout!

And, is it just me, or are there a lot of deer hunting deaths this fall? I've only been monitoring internet traffic on hunting for a year, so I don't have many years to compare to. But it seems I'm hearing about deaths a lot.

That 8-year-old is getting a lot of attention, but there was also a 26-year-old woman who apparently shot a guy who was in a blind, which sounds like all kinds of safety rules were being tossed out the window.

Just goes to show you, you can never preach too much about safety.

Blessed said...

I'm glad things with The Friend are progressing nicely! Good luck recovering from your trip and getting out to hunt some more!

Tom Sorenson said...

No Indian Summer here! Man, it's been in the low teens all week when I get up.

Glad to hear your friend is still interested in hunting - hope he gets some success soon.

Lots of tragic hunting stories this year. They say a lot of people are hunting because of the economy - perhaps these people have never hunted before or haven't hunted in many years and are thus not so careful with safety...could this be the reason? I don't know - thought I'd throw it out there.

Jon Roth said...

Nor Cal, I was thinking that very same thing - seems like there have been a lot of hunting accidents reported this year. They are typically so far and few between that any spike like we've seen really stands out. I wonder what is going on?

Tom, I would love to have some mornings in the teens to get the animals moving. Its just too nice!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for mentioning the Challenge and I hope you'll participate. The more the merrier.

And wasn't Holly's interview fabulous. We're lucky to have such an articulate woman to represent us.