Hunters and "gun guys"

I would say that just because your one it does not mean your necessarily the other. I for one would have to say I am both. I have hunted here in ny since I turned 12 and for almost twenty years have continued to put in the time and effort to ensure my hunting is successful. However I also served as a 4th echelon armorer in the USMC, and since the day I finished training I have found myself more and more getting into firearms. Everything from target shooting to recently getting into reloading. I have a nice collection of firearms started and intend to get as many as possible as funds allow. Point being, sometimes those who r one may or may not ever get very involved in the other. There is nothing wrong with any choice in this thread, to each there own. What we all need to do is work together and ensure the tools were using continue to be available for our legal needs.
 
I've been a hunter and a shooter all my life. Reloader. IPSC competition, back in the 1980s. Trap, skeet, dove and quail. Lotsa .22 plinking, both rifle and pistol. Way back when, CASS style long before there was a CASS. 30 years of gun show tables; buy/sell/trade. Minor gunsmithing.

Deer, coyotes by calling, prairie dogs...

RKBA since 1967. Moderating here since early 1999. :)
 
I enjoy both aspects of hunting and shooting. I'm a gun guy I spend all year pretty much working with a rifle to get it ready to hunt. There are hunting opportunities that will fill your desire to pull the trigger and big game just isn't it for you.

You should take up bird hunting like pheasant, quail, dove, duck, or goose. You'll have good and bad days hunting, but the good days will let you shoot a bunch, not 100+ rounds but you'll get to shoot. If you head down to Argentina for a dove hunt you might get the opportunity to shoot 1K rounds a day!

Another good thing for you to do is take up varmint shooting like prairie dogs. I don't call it hunting because it really is just glorified target practice. It isn't like the game is elusive, you drive out to a town set up a bench, shooting mat, or card table and proceed to see how many targets of opportunity you can knock down. In a big town on a good day 300-500 rounds of can be shot pretty easily, it is very common to have several rifles of the same chamber so you don't really ever have to stop shooting, just swap out rifles as the barrels get hot.

Hunting coyotes can be quite thrilling and satisfying for the shooter that wants to hunt as well. Things sometimes happen fast, especially when you call in three or four dogs. That is where a semi-auto rifle or shotgun comes in very handy. Taking multiple yotes in a day isn't uncommon, and you might get other opportunities such as bob cat.
 
I've been shooting and reloading lot of years and I've gone in cycles from trap/skeet then over to BR tried little pistol but I always been a hunter and varmint shooter.

I have very little interest in shooting coyote when I'm elk hunting or deer hunting. I have access to couple good ranches for antelope and PD shooting so if I see coyote in range I'll take him.

I've never felt the need that I have to shoot something. This year I had 2 elk tags,antelope and deer and got pretty nice buck is all. PD shooting is pretty slow here with the drought learn some years are like that.

I kind of got spoil living up northern Co could step out front door shoot geese/ducks about 1/2 mile south had pheasants. My wife work for HP and they had gun club and lease some land out east so had place to hunt doves.

Wife and I are getting pretty serious about archery hunting so be doing more of that which may include turkeys this coming year.

I think between fishing/hunting we spend almost 3mos camping.
 
I'd go as far as to say you're not necessarily right.
Click to expand...

But, I'm not necessarily wrong. I'm a gun guy and a hunter. I know hunters who aren't gun guys and gun guys who don't hunt. Not being both doesn't mean you are any less of a hunter or a shooter than any one else.
 
How big a part of your hunt is the actual shooting?
Click to expand...

All in all, the shot is generally anti-climatic and in case of deer and turkeys, probably the end of the hunt. Very few times in my life during a legitimate hunting scenario did shooting play a major factor. With pheasants/grouse and woodcock the majority of the time is spent of watching the dog work and being ready. Shots, even on the best of days total up to only a few minutes of the total experience. Other small game such as squirrels and rabbits is much of the same. During the 9 day gun deer season, the one or two shots needed to fill a tag, will only take a few seconds. Even after a Tom is down or a deer falls to a good shot, I very seldom remember taking the shot. I remember everything leading up to it, and many times what follows till I tag my prize, but the shot itself is soon forgotten. Now some may say that the hunt is just a prelude to the shot, which makes or breaks the whole season. Not me. I enjoy the hunt and I enjoy shooting. That's why I spend so much time at the range puttin' bullets downrange. 'Cause very little shooting gets done on a actual hunt.

My Dad and Grandpa taught me how to hunt deer. They loved to deer hunt and spent the whole deer season in the woods and the rest of the year, they prepared and waited for it. But neither one of them did any target shooting other than to make sure the deer rifle was still sighted in. A box of shells lasted them several years. Their rifles only came outta the closet right before season and went back in the closet the day after. Both being vets of World Wars, maybe they had enough time behind the sights. Maybe since they both lived thru the depression that the thought of wasting bullets on paper was folly. I dunno, but I know I have made up for what they missed out on.......
 
I started out as a hunter who thought guns were cool then later became about even on the hunter/gun guy, now I am probably more of a gun guy (not a good one) but more of a gun guy. I like hunting still but very seldom is it about the kill, sometimes depending on what I am hunting maybe yes, other times I'll let it go knowing without a doubt what the outcome could be. However I am not about all guns. Shotguns are useful tools, they go bang and if you've done it right something breaks or falls, handguns well for me they are mostly just fun, rifles, well rifles are serious I like them a lot and wish I had the time and skills to use them to their potential.
 
I like guns and hunting....Ever since I was a kid....

It sounds like pig huntin..pig shootin..is for U....
 
during my younger years I was not a gun guy, I was a hunter though. I knew that my rifle was a 243 and my best friend that always hunted with me shot a 30-30, neither of us knew or really cared about what make and model our guns were. he was content knowing it was his dads gun and I was happy to know that mine also belonged to my dad before I inherited it.

many years later, while I was on watch onboard the USS George H W Bush, I realized that I had been active duty for over a year and had yet to touch a single firearm in the line of duty(i never got a chance to go to live fire exorcises in boot camp due to illness and only dealt with dummy guns) so for some reason I decided I wanted an AR15 since the navy wouldn't give me one. I looked at the only company I knew of that made them, Colt of course, and called my brother with instructions to get $1,400 out of my bank account and get me a Colt AR15(I dont even remember the model I was looking at but it was very highly recommended). he laughed at me and told me to wait for a couple months and we would talk about it while I was on leave and sure enough, we went hunting and he brought his DPMS AR15 and after shooting it I was quite surprised to learn that it cost him less than half of what I was about to pay for that Colt. he built me a custom AR15 over the course of the winter for under $1,000 and all the research I did on parts for it carried over into a hobby that turned me into a "gun guy"

don't get me wrong I'm still a "hunting guy"...I just like guns too.
 
Hunters aren't necessarily shooters and shooters aren't necessarily hunters. People that buy that one gun for home defense are most often neither. The hunter who is not a shooter has been the topic of criticism by the 2A folks on the forums. But I say, different strokes for different folks. We are all in this together.

I started out a shooter who shot for fun and as a precourser to hunting. I didn't punch holes in paper at 200 yds unless it was in preparation for hunting. Shooting was expensive and there had to be a reason for doing it except for 22's. Those are cheap fantastic plinkers.

As I got older, I hunted less and shot more, but the shooting became episodic. I'd shoot a lot for a few years and then very little for a while. Go back to shooting and it was really amazing how well you do very quickly. So I am not one of these people who say you have to shoot every week to retain reasonable skills. But certainly those skills are nothing like the ones developed by people who try to improve and shoot frequently.
 
The actually shooting part is over in less than a second. Well more if you're going after birds.

Even including sighting in and training, you're going to spend more time not shooting.

If hunting is what you're all about, then the gun is just a tool to make it easier.
 
I love to hunt. Been doing it for over 50 years. I enjoy all aspects of it. If there is nothing in season, you will find me at the range, reloading, or tinkering with a firearm.
 
Don't take this wrong for there are many great "gun guys" but............

IMO, an average hunter is more knowkedgable about guns and their use than the average "gun only" shooter. It's true, some hunters only fire enough cartridges to sight in and put a deer on the ground. But most hunters shoot far more than that and take what they are doing very seriously. I see far more "gun only" types doing nothing more than burning ammo. Even when they are so-called "practicing" it really isn't much more than plinkin.

Me, I don't know what I am. All my guns, long and short, are based around hunting and field use. Still, I'm constantly working on my guns, handling them, working up loads and of coarse shooting. Some at paper, some at reactive targets, some at game. Doesn't mean I'm not having fun and enjoying my guns.
 
Does it really matter?......maybe if you're a marketing analyst for a gun company.

Just an observation, very few gun writers that are not hunters.
 
My father was a great hunter, but was far from a gun guy. He'd hunt with his 270 and then when the season was over, he'd put it in the gun case. Uncleaned and unoiled, it would sit there till I did a mercy cleaning for him and it. I was a hunter at 12 or 13 and became a gun guy slowly over many years. Or maybe I should say that this hunter just added 'gun guy' to the resume. I'm both. My brothers are neither.
 
I'm with a lot of folks on here. Course they're probably better hunters than me. I'm a hell of a gun guy, and a sorry hunter. But I prefer the time alone in nature.
 
It has been mentioned before here on TFL that cops are not necessarily "gun guys". I wonder if a similar thing is true with hunters?

I consider myself a gun guy. I keep up with guns (pistols and rifles), I reload, I go to the range often and punch paper (usually 150-200 rounds per week). I enjoy the heck out of all of it. I have been hunting twice in my life and while it it pleasant to be out in nature, if I go a whole weekend and only fire one or two shots I am disappointed.

THe first time I went hunting it was for hogs. Neither I nor my father in law saw any hogs, but on the last day I finally saw a coyote and thought "That'll do" so I bagged him. The other time it was for deer and I only saw one the entire time and it was on the run. On the last day a Road Runner came hopping up close enough to the blind for me to get off a shot at him with my revolver so I though "That'll do" and bagged him.

My FIL and the other group I hunted with...they don't seem to mind no shooting at anything. But when I hunt, I am out to shoot something. That's pretty much the long and short of it. I didn't grow up hunting; perhaps I have the wrong attitude towards the whole thing? Or maybe I need to hunt different things...things where there's a lot of shooting, like maybe prairie dogs or something.

How big a part of your hunt is the actual shooting?
Click to expand...


FWIW

Thats why it's called hunting and not killing..... The hunt is about the comaraderie, rhe relaxation,and the pursuit. The killing of the prey is not the guarantee....Only the topping on the cake.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top