The art of the rifle and Y2K

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I have a really accurate .308 and am proficent in other calibers but in a pinch who knows........will the casual deer hunter be capable or is it all a ruse? Ya have to have the survival, will to live thingy to make it real and to survive. So is it a cluster f--- or will we all go down? I suggest lock, load, prepare with lots of ammo, lots because the rabble will take it,loot and run amok. You have to be able to defend and never mind the consequences, Are you ready to go to war? Just don't make the mistake of coming to my house.......you are toast!!

-- Racegun (g.g.williams@mindspring.com), March 23, 1999

Answers

Hope you don't live in north east, don't need you as my Mr. Rogers.

-- psboot (copestar@canaveral.com), March 23, 1999.

Seems that there are an awful lot of people intending to survive by hunting game. Could there be more wild hunters than wild game? Are you prepared to eat whatever you shoot on purpose or by accident?

-- Not Me (canibals@are.you), March 23, 1999.

Yes. I am proficient and only choose to eat what I shoot.....four footed animals a specialty....all others need not apply!

-- Racegun (g.g.williams@mindspring.com), March 23, 1999.

I don't know about anyone else but here's a list of the stuff I've eaten:

Moose, bear, dear, elk, caribou (raindeer to in uninitiated), squirrel, turtle, beaver, possum, rabbit, coon, seal, whale (not a whole one, just a taste), musk ox, buffalo, marmot, javalina, and more dog and cat tacos than I can remember. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few and there are a few I refuse to mention.

I'm not counting fish and bird species or domesticated species.

BTW, of them all, moose and bear are the best.

So yeah, I think I'll be able to struggle through somehow.

--Greybear, who felt a little canabilistic eating the bear, but did anyway. MaMa Bear cooked a shoulder roast tented in foil with mushroom gravy and spices, man it was so good it would make you slap your mama.

- Got Spices?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), March 23, 1999.


Greybear, you left out the ones we'll most likely be doing:

Woodchuck (err maybe you did say marmot they're close enough)

squirel

Possum (but only under EXTREME duress)

Muskrat (OK THERE's your d@@N Marmot)

Chuck who agrees with his wife that spring woodchuck can only be exceeded by Elk

-- Chuck, a night driver (reinzoo@en.com), March 23, 1999.



Chuck,

The one I tried was a great big fat sucker - musta been 10-12 lbs, up in Alaska. I didn't think it was the same as what I think of as wood chucks. Indian guy I was hunting with came into camp one day all excited hauling this fur ball. Was pretty good.

How big are the woodchucks you reffer to? Same as in "see his shadow"? Don't think we have them in TX. Pretty sure we don't or some of my relatives would have hauled one in by now.

I would like to try skunk but have never figured out a way to get one cleaned. I am curious but not that bad.

We've raised, killed, and dressed our own animals for so many years that it seems hard to understand why someone would be skiddish about it. But then I'm pretty skiddish about a lot of the parts of town in the "Big City", despite having been a cop there 30 yrs ago.

Possum ain't that bad. Catch him. Pen him up. "Starve" him down a few days. Feed him back up on clean stuff and clean water. Bake him in a pan with sweet potatoes. And he ain't that bad. Ain't the good either but tolerable. I may have just achieved what some would consider a new low on this forum - marsupial recipes. Oh well.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), March 23, 1999.


There IS NOT enough game out there to feed the masses should they take up hunting. I think it would be very unhealthy to be out in the woods with a bunch of a--holes hunting for the first time. Got tramma centers?

-- SCOTTY (BLehman202@aol.com), March 23, 1999.

Scotty, I'm with you. Hunters have torn down our fences, shot a deer right in front of my mother's window, on her posted land, and poached out of season. In general they seem to subscribe to the notion that, if it moves, shoot it; if it doesn't, eat it. I come from a long line of hunters, who love killing wildlife as a macho recreation. And no, it won't take anytime for them to kill what remnant of wildlife that hasn't already been destroyed by developers.

-- gilda jessie (jess@listbot.com), March 23, 1999.

I think that alot of hunters will come home hungry, if they come home at all. I can also see a fair bit of hunters shooting each other over a killed critter. Bowhunters have a fair bit of an advantage here; bows are quiet, guns are loud.

There is NO way that all those people are going to be able to sustain themselves by hunting. As I recall, the land can't support more than perhaps 3% (!) of our population if they hunt/gather. Agriculture is a MUST if we want to sustain a high population.

As it is, I stay out of the woods here in PA during gun season for deer. The idea of a million (true!) yahoos out in the woods shooting at anything that moves makes me real nervous. And I bet half of them have been drinking to boot. Screw that.

Any hunter who shoots at me or my property is getting SHOT BACK at.

Most of them are abysmal shots anyways, so...

-- Bill (billclo@hotmail.com), March 23, 1999.


We are surrounded by cattle ranching. 1,000s of cattle. Could see quite a few town BBQs next year. Town will need a huge grill for those events!

-- Bill (y2khippo@yahoo.com), March 23, 1999.


The most dangerous time to be in the woods is during the first few days of deer or elk season. Not one season goes by where you don't hear of somebody getting shot by accident.

A lot of the experienced locals don't even go out during the first week any more. Too dangerous.

Add to that the fact that deer and elk are not exactly stupid. They know when hunting season starts, and they know how to make themselves scarce. It's a lot easier to find other "hunters" in the woods than it is game.

Add to all that the chance that a lot of the "hunters" will be unescorted newbies out there for the first time in their lives, maybe with a gun they just bought, not having used a gun in years or ever, and getting hungrier with each step they take, and you have a good opportunity to see a large-scale example of modern Darwinism.

-- LP (soldog@hotmail.com), March 23, 1999.


As I have long said:

You don't need to make up stuff to try to be funny. Real life is funny enough by itself.

I couldn't improve on this.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), March 23, 1999.


Some "hunters" are both optimistic and persistent. Read a report some years ago of a wheat farmer in Montana, pulling a load of hay behind his large red John Deere tractor. It was hunting season, so he was wearing a yellow jacket. Thwupp! a large cal. bullet went by him close enough to hear it cut the air. He looked toward the sound of the gun and saw a guy with a rifle some ways off. He stopped the tractor and stood up on the seat, waving his arms and hollering. Thwapp! the next round went thru the engine block. He abandoned persuasion and hid behind his load of hay for a while. Figured he got off easy, considering.

I had a chance to taste marmot once at a mine messhall near Leadville. (Yes, it was cooked.) Could have been the altitude (about 10,500 ft.) but I've never been tempted to try it again. Bleccchhh! Of course I wasn't starving, either.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), March 23, 1999.


I think someone should arm the deer. That way it becomes a fair fight.

-- Jerry (jj@Jj.jj), March 23, 1999.

Grey,

Your possum prep sounds similar a way of prepping clams. Put those suckers in a tub of water and some cornmeal; they eat the cornmeal, which cleans and stuffs them at the same time. Umm, umm good. (Any way to get the possum to skin and clean itself?)

Just west of here one of the service clubs (I think) sponsor an annual woodchuck feed. Just heard about last year. Never been to it though.

Got a recipe to share with us? (During the past few years those little buggers have knocked out my telephone service, undermined deck deck, and decimated the brocolli - they owe me a good meal...)

On skunks, a buddy of my dad's who claimed to do trapping years ago, told me how to catch a skunk. Shine it, it will freeze, walk up to it (keep shining), pick it up by the tail and club it. But never told me what to do with it after that. (And I never did try the technique - just passing it on and take no responsiblity if anyone tries it only to find out it stinks.)

Good Eating jh

-- john hebert (jt_hebert@hotmail.com), March 23, 1999.



Last time I tried "flashlighting" a skunk the situation changed to one not of the best.

It started out with me shining the light in the eyes of skunk. His to little eyes really shined in the dark.

As I got closer I say some movement and realized that I could only see one "eye" now and it was not glowing.

A hasty retreat was called for and executed. ( At lest back to acceptable gun range)

We have had a terrible proble here the last few years with an overabundance of skunks and the resultant outbreaks of rabies.

--Greybear, He who warns against approaching "one eyed" skunks.

- Got Distance?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), March 23, 1999.


All this carnivorous salivation reminds me of the old Fred Hoyle SF story: guy out hiking Scottish highlands wakes up in confinement area of alien spaceship, sees Earth receding from a porthole. Walking maze of corridors, can't locate alien captors per se, but finds several other Earth abductees. They all start talking, eventually it emerges: 1 guy was a butcher, 1 lady experimented on animals in labs, 1 guy dealt in leather products, 1 guy was a torturer (of humans), but our hero ends up asking "but why ME ?" (he was just a mailman or something). At the end he realizes he simply knew about all that stuff and never give a shit. In the end I think the aliens experiment on 'em then eat 'em or something.

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), March 23, 1999.

There lot of so-called "hunters" out there who only whip out the gun a few weeks a year. They band together, buy lots of beer, rent a cabin, and make a party of it. They play cards, litter the land, make lotsa noise, thus scaring away the targets.

-- Jenny (noSnart@GI.com), March 23, 1999.

got blaze orange?

-- y2kbiker (y2kbiker@bellatlantic.net), March 24, 1999.

Yup. There are some real d*ckhead so-called hunters out there, and here in Aussie also. Last year I accepted an invite from a friend while I was still living and working in Sydney. I visited his remote weekender, about a hundred miles south of Sydney. There he and his brother and his son hopped in a large four-wheel-drive and pounded across the hills to try their luck on a herd of feral goats. Well, the goats heard us all coming. (I was gun-less and went as a neutral observer :-) The goats scattered and none was hit. Next they tried for kangaroos and wallabies which approached one of their dams. Again, lots of bangs, but no results. Eventually, the day ended with them emptying their guns on tin cans, bottles, trees etc. (Yep. One guy was cutting young trees in hard with a 12-gauge over & under shottie.) A tremendous waste of ammo. I told those guys I was planning to bug out of the city because of Y2K and I suggested they start stockpiling food and tools. They wouldn't hear of it. They are convinced they can live high on the hog shooting game. Ha! I feel sorry for the kid, though...

-- David Harvey (vk2dmh@hotmail.com), March 24, 1999.

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