Batchelor Hunting... Or, how to go to college and still hunt.

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wyobohunter

New member
When I was going to college (before the G.I. bill $ ran out and I had to work for a living) I had an old freezer in my dorm room; it was always full of Deer and Elk. You shoulda seen the looks I got from those city slicker type kids when I was riding the elevator (University of Wyo dorms = tallest bldg. in Wyo) with a fresh venison quarter etc. on my shoulder and wearing bloody clothes... priceless. A single guy with a small living space need not miss out on the good life, hell, I even had a tiny little reloading bench set up in the room; when people would ask "what is all that stuff?" I'd just say "it's a DIY meth lab":eek: I met my wife in those dorms, she is from the city part of Florida and had never ate deer, much less Elk backstraps, needless to say the grub was a feather in my hat;)

Anybody else have a similar story?
 
More than once I walked through my dorm hallways with a 30-06 or 12ga slung over my shoulder. I found out later I wasn't supposed to have it in the building. :D
 
Where I went to college, hunting was pretty much the norm or majority. That was in New Mexico though. Our college claim to fame though was engineering, particularly mining engineering. Lots of the Mining Engineering students also collected rare and valuable mineral specimens from long since abandoned mines in the area. Yeah, you could dig in a promising looking vein with a pick and hammer and shovel, but it sped things up if you used dynamite to bring down a face wall. These guys knew what they were doing and I was part of the crowd that entered those old mines and watched them place charges and bring down a ton of ore to pick through. It was the simplest thing to get a couple sticks of dynamite in the dorms prior to doing some high-grading. But the laws about explosives were a lot different back then.

But compared to all that, it was simply no big deal to carry a rifle out to your truck to go for an evening deer hunt and it was a great thing whenever we saw a friend pull up with a big buck in the back of the truck.

Things have changed though. My daughter just graduated from UW this spring and when I was at the ceremony I could just "feel" the difference. Kids there at Laramie would probably panic if I was strolling around campus with a 30-30. Now my daughter is moving to Pullman, Washington for Vet school and it's even more different there. Seems like everywhere is getting more paranoid about reasonable folks carrying a rifle out to the truck to go hunting.

But my son chose to go to college in Nebraska to play football. They still have some good ole boys there it seems. He loves to hunt and fish and they don't seem to raise an eyebrow at him carrying a rifle back and forth across the campus when he chooses to do so.

That's the way the country seems to be everywhere though. Shoot, even here where I live I notice a difference. Even 15 years ago nobody would blink an eye at someone carrying their rifle across the street to their truck or getting out at the gas station with a .45 on their hip coming back from the hills. Now, you always get some long stares thinking you're some kind of lunatic about to start a rampage.
 
That's the way the country seems to be everywhere though. Shoot, even here where I live I notice a difference. Even 15 years ago nobody would blink an eye at someone carrying their rifle across the street to their truck or getting out at the gas station with a .45 on their hip coming back from the hills. Now, you always get some long stares thinking you're some kind of lunatic about to start a rampage.
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Times and people are changing, that's for sure.

I heard on our local radio station that the cops were called about a "man with a gun" near a certain intersection here. I lived within 100 yards of that intersection as a kid, and used to walk down the street headed out north of the college to hunt and shoot. I'd be carrying a 12 gauge, or .243, .22 LR, or whatever and nobody cared. According to the report, the LEO checked out the guy, who had a rifle, and determined he presented no threat and had broken no laws.

I was passing through town the other day with my wife, and we stopped by Home Depot. I had a Ruger Vaquero in .45 Colt on my hip in a western rig, and no one gave me a second look. I regularly open carry a smaller revolver without issue here.

Daryl
 
I'm still in college in a pretty un gun friendly part of the country. Luckily home isn't too far away so that's my hunting headquarters. It's kinda sad how things have changed even since I was a kid, which wasn't all that long ago. I've watched all of my local dove and quail spots fall victim to suburbia hell. I have to drive 4 hours for decent quail hunting now. Five years ago I could have gone to many places within fifteen minutes of home.
 
I think we just need to be open an honest about our intent. If we are openly carrying any gun for a lawefull purpose and somebody gives us the stare maybe we should start up a friendly conversation with the person about it and educate them. FYI, I was in the convenience store wearing my .500 S&W the other day (on my way to go dirt bike riding) and I didn't even get a second look.
 
University of Wyo dorms = tallest bldg. in Wyo)
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Yep, I lived in White hall also.
I now have a daughter moving into Orr in a couple weeks. #1 Speech and Debate recruit for the state. Time has flown. I haven't figured out which pistol she will take down there. No guns in the dorms. hah.
We hunted, etc through college too.
elkman06
 
I loved duck hunting when I was a student in MN and kept the freezer in the student kitchen stuffed with ducks. There was a little pond behind the campus that the ducks would just stack up on and I would slay them there. My wife, who lived in a dorm at the time, told me that the shooting often woke her up in the morning, and that was before we were together. The only problem was I was often too drunk to wake up in the morning, some of my hunting friends would come into my room and try to wake me up to no avail.

When I went to school in california, I shot a lot of squirrels and a few blacktails because I had an apartment with a freezer. My roomates looked at me like I was Grizzley Adams, but they enjoyed sharing the venison, though they weren't crazy about the squirrels!
 
Back in the 60s when I was in high school, a lot of us hunted before and after school, our principle would say boys don't leave your guns in your car bring them into the office where they will be safe sometimes he had 15 - 20 guns in there. My wife is a teacher and she will call and ask me to bring something over and I will have to say no I can't because I have guns in the truck. When I was in college it was the first time hamburg went over a buck a pound there were six of us living in a house out in the country we lived on venison, rabbit, partridge, salmon and trout, in season or out game was never passed up or wasted thats probably why the wardens looked the other way. Six of us guys were doing the Allagash river one spring we set up camp one night and two of us went up river to pick a mess of fiddle heads to go with our trout and Budweiser for supper when we got back to the camp site there were six girls from the Boston area there setting up so we invited them for supper I never knew fiddleheads and trout were an aphrodisiac but they worked that night, go figure.
 
meh...leaving for military college in 8 days. Cant hunt or keep meat in a fridge like you lucky guys. Much like post #2 story however I will be toting a M1A in the hallways :D
 
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