Burn Out

From the D&DH Forum:


DeerCamp
Super Member

Deer season is long, but as you all know the off season is even longer. My question is this, with all the books, DVD’S, magazines, and countless numbers of deer strategies out there, do any of you ever get “burned out?” Here in Michigan, there is about 51 days till bow season. I have all my stands placed accordingly, and feel good about their location. However I continue to read and watch all sorts of hunting related material. How do you cope with a “burn out?” It seems after all my hours and hours of thinking about deer, I have this “burnt out” feeling and the season hasn’t even started yet. Do any of you ever feel this and how to you cope with it? I try to put down the book, or watch a different show rather than hunting, but it seems nothing of interest to me.


I mean deer season in Michigan is 93 days long. Now I know I won’t be able to hunt every single day but believe me I will be able to hunt over 60 days with my current school/ work schedule..I couldn’t help but wonder if any of you ever get this feeling? I’m sure most do during the end of the season, however what about the so called “pro’s.” One would think they would want some time off as well..

But don’t get me wrong I love hunting, I just hate this feeling.

I know exactly what you're talking about.  It does not happen to me as much any more, at least not the acute form of it.  Burn out has been a regular feature of my deer hunting experience.  It probably always will be.

The problem, as I see it, is that deer hunting in itself is a rather boring activity.  It requires massive amounts of pre-planning, expense, etc.  However, when you finally get it all put together, and your butt goes into the seat on the treestand on Opening Day. . .

. . . nothing.    Furthermore, as I faced in a lot of years, nothing happens all season.  Sure, the sun comes up, tracks across the sky and finally sets.  The squirrels come and go.  You have lots of birds, but the actual time you have with deer in sight could be counted some years for me in seconds.  No sane man could do this week after week and not get to rethinking what he is doing out in the woods on a perfect beautiful October day.  He really gets to questioning that sanity when the warm days of October slowly erode into the pin cushion pre-dawn freezing rain of November.  By the time shotgun season rolls around in December, he promises himself that he will get out and stay out for good. But first he must pray to his absent and bitter god to help him get his butt unstuck from that blasted metal seat to which it is now caught in frozen embrace.

I see this process as a trajectory.  Your will power is a rocket.  Your enthusiasm for the sport is the fuel.  Your target needs to be the end of season.  You now know about how much energy you have to expend on your sport.  You know what kind of drag can be exerted on it by family, work, etc.  Eventually your will is going to be spent.  The problem is timing it so that you give out about the time season runs out.  That may mean deliberately starting later in the year to get ready. It may mean rationing the amount of hunting shows you watch.  Every deer hunter needs to manage this. 

Me?  Look, I'm the guy who went so far into this that I made Deer Camp a year-round lifestyle. Most weekends I'm down there doing something related to deer and turkey. My deer and turkey have names. Eventually something has to give.  What I have done to manage my will power is this:

1)  I do not hunt deer in September.  KY's archery season starts the first weekend in September.  I wait until at least Oct 1 to start hunting.  I don't like fighting the heat, and the deer are generally not around anyway.  I focus my efforts on specific parts of the season-- Mid-October to Thanksgiving.  That is when the deer hunting is at its best, and I can get the freezer filled without a lot of muss and fuss.  I also don't hunt in January any more.  Part of it is that I've paid my January dues.  I know what it's like to lose feeling in my extremities.  The other reason is coming.

2)  I try and give myself a deliberate break.  When I'm done, I'm done. After I get  out of the woods, shut down camp, and finish my Christmas shopping, I get my rifles cleaned up and go sit on the couch.  I try not to think about it again for a while.  Usually the weather is most cooperative.  Right about the time I'm ready to hang it up, Cincinnati weather has a way of telling me I am making a wise choice. Twice, I've had to make a mad dash back down to camp-- once at 1AM-- to get the water drained before The Big One hit. The power on our road at camp can be off for over a month at a time in the Winter.  I usually pick up watching NFL Football during the last week of regular season and watch it through to the Super Bowl. Somewhere around there I get out my turkey calls and my shotgun.

3)  Usually my deer hunting jag starts in July.  It happens when I get trapped inside at home for a couple of weekends, because it is just too darn hot.  About that time the Fall catalogs arrive.  I get twitchy.  I know better than to try and feed it-- at least let the throttle go wide-open.  If I did, I would be insufferable to my family, worthless at work and I would be burned out by October 1.  Rather, I let the bug hit  and start off with a managed plan.   Today, I'm teaching #3 son the rudiments of stock refinishing.  Tomorrow, we're going to do some reloading together.  Within the week, I'm going to have a couple of loads of deer clothes washed and packed.  A little here and a little there goes a long way. 

4)  I've given up on TV, outside of D&DH.  I DVR it and watch the episodes a little later in the year.  I also save up a stack of magazines and don't start reading them when they first arrive.  After nearly 30 years of this, there really isn't anything all that new anyway.  Media just adds gasoline to the fire.

5)  Budgets:  I set a number and try to stick to it, and I try to squeeze as much out of a tight budget as I can.  Well before season I have a target of what I want. I know when the stuff goes on sale, and I'm watching a few sites waiting to strike.  I hold off on hitting BassPro at the mall and doing all my window shopping and impulse buying until I have the big stuff nailed down.  This keeps the whole thing throttled back.  To many lunch hours at too many sporting goods stores gave me an empty wallet and a bad case of pre-season burnout.

6)  If it ain't right, it ain't right.  If it gets to the last week in October, and I see a 3 day rain coming on and I've got deer in the freezer and I'm getting over a cold, I no longer throw the cough syrup and cold pills into the duffel and head out.  I did.  I did for years. I don't anymore.  I've gone hunting with my foot wrapped in bandages. I've come out of the stand and changed into a business suit for a meeting.  I've picked ticks out of my scalp in board rooms.  Not anymore. I try and be the Taoist sage and go with the flow of things.


Despite all these measures, I've found myself at Zero-minus-Forty on the Opener,  sitting in the pre-dawn gloom wondering what the heck I was doing, a grown man with a family and a good job, 15 feet in the air dressed in funny clothes.  Now, I'm an unemployed 52 year old with nothing else better to do, and I still get to wondering.  Hopefully, I get it all stuffed out of my head before I hear that first twig snap, the crosshairs come up and the safety comes off.

Publish Post

What made your most successful hunt successful

My most successful hunts are nearly identical in details.

2003 Opening Day -- The Savage Spoke



2007 Opening Day -- The Savage Spoke Again



The story is real simple:  I went to my favorite stand, climbed up and sat down. Shortly before sunrise, The Big One came out and stood broadside to me at short range. In 2003, it was the first rifle hunt out of this brand new stand.  In 2007, it was a nigh-on repeat, except the buck had   a hat rack considerably larger.

What made the hunts the most successful:

1)  The Rut.  In both cases, the bucks were in a feisty mood.  In 2003, I witnessed a fight between bucks and managed to bag the winner.  In 2007, the lesser bucks were all acting cagey and scared, because the big boy was taking on all comers.  I blew a little half-hearted grunt, and that was all it took to make him come prancing in from a good 200 yards off.

2)  The Stand Location:  I worked for two seasons prior to this trying to find the optimal spot to locate the stand.  I knew this was a hot spot from the beginning, but it had not paid off.  What I had was a saddle offering the best, easiest traverse between two large creek systems.  I had tried several places, and finally positioned a stand on the gully leading away from the western side of the saddle.  In the process, I had tried a similar position on the eastern side of the saddle, as well as near a bedding area further down the western side.  I made my final choice, because I had the best possible view over the most ground. Additionally, I was located in the midst of a stand of oaks that seemed to produce acorns that the deer favored. Truth be told, what really cinched it was the number of remnants of old rotted stands close by.  As best as I can tell this location had been producing since the beginning of the Modern Era.

3)  The Big Picture:  I'm not going to try and kid you about my superior skills as a hunter.  I am in a great spot in a great state.  The farms around my parts have gone from tobacco to beef and are slowly going fallow.  The deer outnumber the people.  We're on the edge of one of the top B&C counties in the state. 


On the emotional side of this, what made these two hunts so good was the feeling of accomplishment.  This was the culmination of 20 years of work, trying to make time despite a lot of important commitments.  It was the pay-off of several years of concerted effort to take the land I had acquired in 2001 and turn it into something better.

The rifle and load were both new in 2003.  I'd been trying to find just the right rifle for me.  This is probably my best stab at it to date:  a Savage 99 in 308 WIN.  The load mimicked a 300 Savage.  This has remained my GOTO gun since.  I am not going to say the rifle made the hunt, but I have to say having a rifle that feels just right does make a difference.  It was worth the effort.

The last thing that made it all successful was that for the first time, in 2007, I got to share it all with all three of my sons.  My younger two sons you have all heard about,  Angus and Moose. They both hunt with me and are becoming avid outdoorsmen.  You usually don't hear about Junior, my oldest, because he doesn't hunt.  He has a bunch of things going on that keeps him out of the field, the biggest one being autism.  For once, he got a chance to come out and be a part of it.  Out of all my hunting experiences, the trophy I probably most treasure is this picture from the Opener in 2007:

So you STILL want a new Deer Rifle???

This is a continuation from last year's diatribe on deer rifles.

http://blackholecoffeehouse.blogspot.com/2009/06/so-youre-looking-for-new-deer-rifle-huh.html

Which was a thread on D&DH

RE: So you want a new Deer Rifle, huh?

Larry Miller, the comedian, used to do this bit about the five stages of drinking.  As part of one of the stages, you find you have spent arguing for the past hour against Astroturf.  By the end of the next stage, you've argued for Astroturf.  By the end of the five stages you are Astroturf.  

I was thinking about what I wrote last year.  It is kind of obnoxious to leave folks with the impression that my best suggestion for a deer rifle is a Savage 99, which has not been made since 2004, or that my Remington 7600 in 35 Whelen is a great choice as well.  They're both great deer guns for me, but they may not be right for you.  I was looking at my rack this morning and realized I have never found the "ideal" deer rifle.


What would be ideal for me?  Let me take you through a tour of what rolls around in my head.

I used to go plowing through the new color brochures every year, as well as the big wholesaler's catalogs.  When the Internet hit, it wasn't too long before I found I could download them.  I read magazines.  I did my comparisons.  What did I find?  I found I wanted them all.  Then again, I wanted none of them.  Every rifle I saw was a bit of a comprimise.  

At one point in my life, I really wanted a full-stocked Ruger International, but Ruger didn't have it in the chambering I wanted.  Another time, I got really hot on a Remington 700 BDL, but I was leery of the safety.  I thought about doing a custom, but I could not see spending all the money for blasting something as mundane as a deer.    I did finally break down once and buy a Marlin 336 in 30/30 on pure impulse, but as a guy who spent most of his hunting career with a  30-06 , I always found the round anemic. After 30 years of going through this process, I have come to the conclusion that my ideal deer rifle does not exist.  I know parts of rifles I have grown to love.  I doubt I could ever put them all together.

Action:   Probably my favorite actions I own are my lever actions.  I love the Marlin 336, but I am not enamored of a tube magazine.  I love the Savage 99, but I prefer an exposed hammer.   There is also a soft spot in my heart for semi-auto's and pumps.  I started hunting in Ohio, a shotgun state.  Somewhere in the back of my head is a pump deer rifle with a hammer like the Win 1897, or a Browning BLR with a pump instead of a lever.   They just ain't gonna happen. I love the Remington 7600, and I loved my 742, but both have those problematic detachable magazines.   I love my bolt guns too, but. . . well, they're bolt guns.  Really, for just the feel of it, my hands-down favorite is my 54 Hawken caplock.  If looks could kill, the M1 Garand is it for me, but picking up a 10.5 lb deer gun is another thing all together.

Chambering:  Last year, we were also talking about the ideal deer cartridge.  My nominee is the 300 Savage.  Others love the 7mm-08.  However,  I have seen the case made for everything from 223 REM all the way up to 45-70 Govt.   It really does not matter all that much; deer are not that hard to kill.  My point in picking the 300 Savage is that it operates well in the range most hunters encounter most deer, and does so with a reasonable amount of recoil.    A few years ago I embarked on the process of designing the ultimate deer cartridge for myself.  I made two attempts.  One was trying to see if there was room between the 44 Mag and the 444 Marlin for a compromise. There wasn't.  The second attempt used some pretty advanced software that was kind of like the Solver routine in Microsoft Excel on steroids.  I fed in the whole Hodgdon reloading database and told the software to find me the best cartridge for delivering a shot on a deer inside 200 yards, optimizing for a variant of Taylor Knockout (TKO) versus felt recoil.    The software spit out a few suggestions.  One was a 300 Savage load.  Another was a light 35 Whelen load.  It's favorites were a 280 Rem loading and a 6.5X55 Swede. However, if you look at these suggestions, you'll see that a lot popular deer cartridge comes close.   For instance, I'm sure you could use a 140 grain 270 WIN load and mimic the 280 Rem.   You could use a 358 WIN and duplicate the 35 Whelen load.  It's just Hodgdon did not have the data to act as seeds for the program.  The bottom line:  Yes, one of those will do nicely; stay away from the extremes.   

What?  No 30-06?  How can this be?  The truth is that 30-06 and its near-twin 308 WIN are tad overkill.  Overkill's not a bad thing, but remember that we're talking whitetail deer here, and your average shot will probably be inside 100 yards. The 30-06 is still probably the best overall cartridge for North American game, but as a deer cartridge there are those better suited.  My rack is full of  '06 and 308 WIN rifles.  Overkill?  I've hunted groundhog with 30-06.

Safety:  I have had enough problems with safeties over the years, that I just don't trust them.  Whenever I can, I carry with a cold chamber and rely on fast, quiet loading.   I prefer exposed hammers with half-cock safeties, especially with kids.  You can look down and see instantly how the little booger has his safety set.  I also don't mind the extra cross-bolt safety of the Marlin. I only engage it when I'm unloading the magazine.  Ditto for the 3 position safety on bolt actions. However, if you do a lot of carrying with a hot chamber, your requirements for a safety are going to be different.  Safeties should go on and off with as little fuss and as little noise as possible.

Barrel:  Barrel length for normal whitetail conditions is largely a matter of taste.  Shorter barrels reduce velocity, but not to any extent that you're going to have to worry about it at 100 yards.  My Savage 99 is just a hair too long  to be called an absolute joy to hold in my treestand. It gets caught on the shooting rail. On the other hand, I have to say that having a 26" barrel when shooting in a box blind is a godsend, because the farther you have the business end of the rifle outside the box when you pull that trigger the longer your hearing is going to last.  Hint:  blast energy seems to spread out to the side of the barrel more than directly back.  Remember this when you buy a yute rifle for your kid.  

Sights:  My eyes are such that I'm really stuck with telescopic sights.  For my treestand guns, I generally have a 1.5-4.5X variable set to about 2.5X .  Optics are really a whole other subject here, but suffice it to say you should have thought this out before you buy your rifle.  

Magazine:  I have learned to truly detest the metal magazines that Remington has saddled its lines of pump and semi-auto rifles.  They are my least favorite of means of holding cartridges.  Still, I love the rifles.  Tube magazines mean you need flat-nosed bullets; that is not a huge drawback for whitetails.  Probably simple blind box magazines on most of my bolt actions are the best way to go.  I generally load no more than 3 rounds anyway.   if I  have to shoot more than 3 times, you're probably doing something wrong, and it might be a good idea to sit down and catch your composure.

The rest of it?  I like a sling, especially on the long slogs.  I like wood stocks, but I'm getting warmed up to synthetics.  Secretly, I loathe those black rifles Jim Zumbo got all worked up about, but I'm not stupid enough to admit it and I also never get drunk enough to think it is a good idea to have them banned from the hunting woods.  It would also be a bit hypocritical:  I've hunted with an M1 Garand and an SKS.  Just because they're a generation or two older don't mean the idea is any different. Trust me:  it ain't about hunting.  


Afterward:

Probably, if I was going to listen to all that stuff, I might very well go out and buy a Marlin 308 Marlin Express.  But if I really was going to spend that kind of money, I'd probably go get a Browning BLR in 358 WIN-- the one with the pistol grip.  Then again, a nice full-stocked  Ruger MK II International stainless/wood in 7mm-08 still looks good, or  . . . or. . .

From the shamanic archives:

Ode to a 30-30 PT I

What is the best place to shoot a deer?

From Deer & Deer Hunting



About this time of year, we all get to talking about a list of "bests." What's the best deer caliber? What's the best broadhead? What's the best. . . I remember once having a fellow get on AllOutdoors.com (that's dating me) and ask what was the best camo for squirrel hunting. He had gotten an invite and he had never been before and figured he better buy a new wardrobe. I remember there was a lively discussion that came out of that question. The best?

So where is the best place to aim to kill a deer? I know I can give you my preference. I know when other pro-staffers check in, they'll have theirs. I have reasons. They'll have reasons. I know of some really bum places to hit a deer, but the best?

To start off this discussion, let me throw in a little personal experience on the not-so-good places. I shot my first deer just about 2 O'clock and a couple of inches north of the anus-- a Texas Heart Shot. It was a mistake. The doe crossed in front of me as I was taking aim on a buck. However, the doe went down and died quickly. I had minimal meat loss, and no involvement of the intestines. I was extremely lucky. A quarter century later, I watched my son shoot a small buck with his M1 Garand. The first round hit just behind the near shoulder. The deer did nothing. I encouraged him to take another shot. He was excited and took the second shot a little further back and it emptied out both the chest and abdominal cavities-- again, no serious involvement of the stomach or intestines-- they were laying intact on the ground. When we got to the carcass there was nothing left to clean. My son was extremely lucky. These two instances are fliers. My reason for including them is to show that, in the former, the worst possible situation may not yield bad results, and in the latter the best intentions can sometimes go awry.

I taught my kids that the vitals in the deer can be thought of as a soccer ball sitting in the middle of the rib cage. If you shoot the soccer ball, the animal dies, usually right there in front of you. How you reach that soccer ball is more a matter of taste.

My preference has been to leverage my bow hunting experience as much as possible and shoot for the chest. With a bow, you have a very narrow window of what is going to be an optimum shot. The idea is to get the animal quartering away from you and angle the arrow through the ribs, through both lungs and out the other side. When I became primarily a rifle hunter, I didn't change a whole lot except the optimal quartering-away angle now became more of a straight broadside affair. Most of my shots take out both lungs as well as the top of the heart. With the deer standing broadside, I point my crosshairs where the foreleg meets the body and then rise up about 4 inches up and 4 inches to the rear.

The advantages that I have found to taking this shot are several. In the vast majority of the cases, the animal goes down right there or I can stand where they were shot and see the carcass. The only meat loss is in the thin rib region. The exit wounds can be large if the bullet hits a rib on the way out. The blood trail is significant and short.

The disadvantages to aiming for the lungs and heart? Well, I caught my processor one day when he was having a hard time of it, and asked him if there was a chance he could give me a pack of ribs. Jake looked at me and snapped, "If you wouldn't keep bringing them in with their chests all shot up, I might be able to!" There was truth there. Honestly, I have never been all that attached to venison ribs anyway.

My preference is to stay away from the shoulder. That may be a bias based on my years as a bow hunter. Breaking a shoulder blade and taking out a foreleg, has been largely an unnecessary exercise. The few times I have managed to hit a shoulder blade, the animal went down right there. I suppose you could argue for a preference of meat: do you prefer ribs or shoulder roast? I have the shoulder roasts ground anyway so I get a bit more burger out of each deer. It is a matter of taste.

The advantage as I see to the shoulder shot is that it can preclude running. The disadvantage is that more meat gets torn up. Done right, the shoulder shot does essentially the same thing as chest shot. The lungs and the heart are involved. The animal goes down. Maybe the best thing that can be said for the shoulder shot is that it is farther away from the abdominal cavity than the classic boiler room shot that is my preference.

The Brisket shot: This is my least favorite way to reach the soccer ball, but I've done it. You're reaching the heart and lungs from the front. It's harder to get both lungs and the heart all at once. You also run a good chance of getting into the abdominal cavity. That's always a good spot to avoid. A shot through the front door will bring them down quickly. If they are in close and that is the only shot available, I will take it.

Now let's look at the shots that do not rely on the "Soccer Ball " model:

Gut shots: Ick. If you've ever blown up a stomach or seriously involved the intestines, you know this is not a good idea. The deer dies. How soon is the problem. A got shot deer may last 6 hours and cover a lot of ground in the interim. This is not a good place to aim. I have had two sincere gut shots to deal with in my career. In one case, my son shanked one on a doe, and the animal bedded right there. I finished her when we found her. The second was on a follow-up shot on a buck that I took in 2006. For some reason, the animal took one in the chest and was still alive when I got to him. Hint: deer with their legs drawn up underneath them are not dead. I walked up on him a little too close. The buck jumped up and started to run, and I threw an anchoring shot into him. It anchored him all right-- hit the chest and lungs by way of the stomach. I still retch when I think of cleaning that one out.

The Head Shot: A lot of guys who read military magazines think this one is great. A large number of guys who think they are great shots think this one is great. The problem that I see is as follows: for they guys who read military magazines, this is not the military and the target is not human. The anatomy is different. The motivation is different. Deer generally do not take hostages. I have never seen a deer put a knife to another deer's neck. Deer do not radio your position to artillery. You do not have to worry about return fire. If you take a chest shot at a human, it is hard to take out both lungs and the heart with one round. Front on, the organs don't line up. From the side, you have the arms in the way. Deer also do not wear body armor. The head of a human is also on a much shorter neck and it does not move as much in relation to the body. Yes, done right, the head shot is an instantaneous kill, but if it is slightly off, the deer can have its snout or lower jaw shot off and the wound causes a long lingering death by starvation.

The Neck Shot: Look, no one is going to argue that disruption of the Central Nervous System leads to instant incapacitation. The only arguments I can make against shooting for the neck are similar to head shots. Necks move around a lot. The target is smaller-- we're talking aiming at broomsticks vs. soccer balls. Clipping the esophagus instead of the spinal cord is bummer.

All the others: Having successfully pulled off one accidental Texas Heart Shot in my life, I can tell you that deer can die quickly no matter how bad you screw Wup. Deer shot in the femoral artery can bleed to death very quickly. Deer shot in the spine behind the shoulder blades can drop instantly. Finding the heart and lungs by way of the anus will work if you rifle and stomach are up to punching through all that intervenes. My answer to all these : don't do it.

If you get through thirty seasons and raising two sons into the sport with as few runners and as few lost deer as we have had, we can talk sometime around the campfire about the best place to aim. Until then, I wish you all the best with whatever you pick.

Update: I put up a poll. 88% of the respondents picked the boiler room. 2 picked the shoulder. One said "close to an access road"

From D&DH Forum

Everyday Hunter asks: 

 

Is it a moral decision to hunt or not to hunt? 

Let's get philosophical. I recently re-read an article in Sports Illustrated (Nov. 24, 2008) on the decline of hunting. It ended with this sentence:
"Wolves do not make moral decisions, he decided. They just hunt."

So, if hunting is not a matter of morality for wolves, is it for man? Why, or why not?

Steve

My response:

Is hunting moral?  Everything is moral or immoral to one extent or the other.  A lot of it has to do with motivation.   A man can go hunting and follow all of the game rules, engage in Fair Chase, but still commit an immoral act if his intentions are wrong-- say his motivation is to hurt living things.  On the other hand, you have the example of the man who poaches to feed his hungry family.  Is it a reasonable motivation, or is it just a sly excuse to get off being prosecuted?  The question comes down to what is in his heart.

I could say that a man who goes hunting and does not contemplate what he is doing is acting immorally.   However, I would also have to confess that the closest I have have come to achieving Bliss was while I was hunting.  In doing that, I was able to shed thinking altogether.   I could run down the bunny hole further, and say that any man who is not fully aware of what he is doing, aware of where  his weapon is pointed, aware of what lies in the path of the projectile, etc. is acting in an unsafe and therefore immoral manner.  Having said that, I will also say that all that careful thought, as well as the thought of the hunt, the dilemma that we kill so that we may consume life and continue living, the enormity of taking life--   all of that has to be turned off and we need to act in a state of non-thinking so that we can make a successful, ethical shot otherwise we are acting immorally.  When we squeeze the trigger or release our arrow we should be acting mostly out of muscle memory. 

Why I prize hunting is that it brings all this out.  It brings all this out in me.  I learn more about myself in a day in the field than I learn in a year of the rest of my mundane life.  Hunting tempers me.   It brings it out in my sons.  Hunting with them got this fire of ambiguity going in them, and it gave me a chance to show them how I have been dancing with it all these years and let me give them guidance as to how to work with it themselves.  I doubt we would have had the same talks over the years if we had been discussing golf.

High Court’s Big Ruling For Gun Rights -- from Fox News

from:  http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/28/high-courts-big-ruling-for-gun-rights/

 

High Court’s Big Ruling For Gun Rights

June 28, 2010 - 10:07 AM | by: Lee Ross

In its second major ruling on gun rights in three years, the Supreme Court Monday extended the federally protected right to keep and bear arms to all 50 states. The decision will be hailed by gun rights advocates and comes over the opposition of gun control groups, the city of Chicago and four justices.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the five justice majority saying "the right to keep and bear arms must be regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as the States legislated in an evenhanded manner."
The ruling builds upon the Court's 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller that invalidated the handgun ban in the nation's capital. More importantly, that decision held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was a right the Founders specifically delegated to individuals. The justices affirmed that decision and extended its reach to the 50 states. Today's ruling also invalidates Chicago's handgun ban.
Backgrounder:
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court appears poised to issue a ruling that will expand to the states the high court's historic 2008 ruling that individuals have a federally protected right to keep and bear arms, following an hour-long argument Tuesday. If so, the decision would mark another hallmark victory for gun rights advocates and likely strike down Chicago's handgun ban that is similar to the Washington D.C. law already invalidated by the justices.
Tuesday's lively arguments featured lawyer Alan Gura, the same man who argued and won D.C. v. Heller in 2008. He now represents Otis McDonald who believes Chicago's handgun ban doesn't allow him to adequately protect himself. Gura argued the Heller decision which only applied to Washington D.C. and other areas of federal control should equally apply to Chicago and the rest of the country.
"In 1868, our nation made a promise to the McDonald family that they and their descendants would henceforth be American citizens, and with American citizenship came the guarantee enshrined in our Constitution that no State could make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of American citizenship," Gura told the Court.
He argued the language of the Constitution's 14th Amendment forces the states to protect the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The Bill of Rights, which was adopted in the late 18th Century, was then commonly viewed as only offering protections from the federal government.
It wasn't until after the Civil War that the Supreme Court in a piecemeal fashion began to apply--or incorporate--parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. It has used the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause to incorporate most of the Constitution's first amendments but has not yet done so for the Second Amendment. Gura argued that another part of the 14th Amendment would be a better vehicle for the justices to make their ruling but there didn't appear to be enough support from the bench on that front.
Chief Justice John Roberts was the most vocal advocate of using the Due Process Clause to extend the Second Amendment rights to the states. "I don't see how you can read -- I don't see how you can read Heller and not take away from it the notion that the Second Amendment...was extremely important to the framers in their view of what liberty meant."
The discussion over "liberty" was a major philosophical theme of the arguments. Gura and National Rifle Association lawyer Paul Clement argued that the rights articulated in the Second Amendment are fundamental freedoms and would exist to all Americans even if there was no law specifically saying so.
James Feldman, lawyer for the City of Chicago, defended his city's handgun ban and argued why the Heller decision's Second Amendment guarantee doesn't comport with the view that it represents a vital protection of liberty that needs to be expanded to the states.
"[T]he right it protects is not implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Feldman said. "States and local governments have been the primary locus of firearms regulation in this country for the last 220 years. Firearms unlike anything else that is the subject of a provision of the Bill of Rights are designed to injure and kill."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in Heller and wondered why the right to bear arms was necessary to extend to the states. "[I]f the notion is that these are principles that any free society would adopt, well, a lot of free societies have rejected the right to keep and bear arms."
Later in the arguments Roberts disputed that notion. "I do think the focus is our system of ordered liberty, not any abstract system of ordered liberty. You can say Japan is a free country, but it doesn't have the right to trial by -- by jury."
Roberts was part of the five member majority in Heller and there's a good chance Tuesday's case will result in a similar 5-4 outcome. All of the members of the Heller majority are still on the Court and at least one of them would have to rule against extending the Second Amendment protection in order for the opposing side to prevail.

Come On! Really?

You know, the more I think about this whole Scent Lok thing the more annoyed I get. You figure an entire generation of hunters has been working under these assumptions about scent management. I am not saying scent management is bogus, but I am saying that Scent Lok and its ilk have certainly muddied the waters. For 20 years we've been hearing experts tell us this is one of the primary keys to successful deer hunting. I would be the first to admit that a lot of my thought has been down those same lines. I never did agree with Scent Lok's claims, but I always figured there must be something to the issue. My whole view of hunting has been clouded by this detritus-- and I never even bought one of their stinking suits.

Look at WoodsWalker. He's big on his ghillie suit. Mine has languished for years in the closet. Why? Part of it was that I found the suit to be overkill for my type of hunting. Part of it was that I was not all that comfortable in it. However, a major component of my dislike for the suit was that always stank of wet jute and no matter what I did, I could not get that stink out of it. Well ( DUH!) maybe Woodsie is right, and maybe a ghillie suit is the way to go, and it doesn't matter that it stinks like jute or hemp or that you can't throw it in a washer and do it in baking soda. It just may work, because the deer don't care.

Or cigarettes. Take ciggies. I know a bunch of guys who smoke-- here in KY it's more the rule than other places nowadays. They're successful deer hunters. How can this be? The deer don't care? If they don't care about that stink and they didn't care about whatever stench was leaking out of the Scent Lok suits and they don't care about rank, stanky ghillie suits. . . DANG! What do they care about.

Human urine? Nope, I know that ain't true. Human poopoo? If Scent Lok don't work and all these guys have been farting in their Scent Lok suits for 20 years. . . well, you do the figgerin', Braniac.

And what about all these experts that were telling us scent management was so important and how you really needed one of these stinking charcoal suits if you were going to be serious about the sport. Now what? Where they taken in by the fraud knowingly or unknowingly. Did they all go running off the cliff together like lemmings, or did they pull this off like a bunch of Chicago politicians. Are these guys rogues or rubes? My feeling is the the answer is, yes. One of those will do nicely.


I'm going to tell you a story to explain my answer. Take out of it what you want. Back when I was first getting into hunting, I acquired a neat little book. It was the 1939 edition of the Outdoor Life 'Cyclopedia. It was a wonderful little compendium of everything you could think of for the outdoors: fishing, camping, hunting, shooting, hiking. I treasured it. In fact, I have scrounged up more copies of it over the years so my sons would each have a copy. It wasn't until I got the farm that I got to try some of the stuff they suggested. A lot of it you can't do on public land or in a public campground anymore. Once I had my own place, I could do what I wanted.

Example: Here's the dream:

Here's the reality:

I tried for two season to build a hearth like the one in the book. There was no freakin' way that was going to work, and there was no freakin' way that hearth could be put together for a short-term camp that made any sense. Pounding that many stakes in was ridiculous, filling up the interior with that much dirt was ridiculous, and after one rain, the whole thing started to settle, lean, fall apart, and otherwise disintegrate.


I should have known better. They also had this picture in the book:

My comments from the summation of this project:

[quote]

Yeah right!

Okay, here are some study questions:

1) How many trees were cut down in the making of this home away from home?

2) Who the heck would actually build all that stuff for "but a few days"

3) Are they still selling the stuff he was taking without prescription?

4) Imagine trying to pull this off in a State Park Campground. How long would that last?

5) Imagine if you saw these two men in the woods today. I count only one mattress. Would you be expecting the wives to show up at any minute?

Imagine the caption : ". . . So I said to Bruce, 'Oh you wicked, girl! I was going as Bette Midler's Gift from the Oceans, and you stole my whole costume idea.'"

I see this as a new show on the Outdoor Channel: Queer Eye for the Straight Camper.
[/quote]

The stuff on hunting was just as bad. Some interesting facts from this tome:

1) Turkeys have to go to water first thing in the morning after they hop down off the roost. Therefore, the best way to hunt turkeys is to situate yourself between the water and the turkeys and ambush them.
2) Deer hunting with buckshot is a highly effective method out to 80 yards. At 80 yards, the average shotgun shooting 00 will put half a dozen pellets into the chest of a running deer. They even had a drawing.

The list goes on and on.

The point is that this compendium of knowledge of the outdoors was really a pile of drivel, put together by a bunch of fey city slickers that really had no idea what was going on in the outdoors. However, if they dressed it up and made it look good, guys would buy the book. That was the 1930's. Honest and truly, I don't think the folks who put out the drivel these days are any more in tune with reality than what they were back then. I'm not going to paint the whole lot of them with the same brush. However, between the urge to make money, the urge to make reputation, the urge to make deadline, and the urge to go with the flow, I don't think many people who create content for the consumption of hunters really have much room left for original thinking, critical thinking, or (for some at least) ethical thinking. D&DH is an exception in this, but D&DH also has to address their own involvement with Scent Lok over the years. I feel no one in the industry is immune from this. Everyone has Scent Lok's taint all over them right now.

What about me? First off, no one ever confused me with an expert on deer hunting. Second, I've been saying Scent Lok was goofy in both intent and execution from the get-go. However, I'm the first to say that scent management as a concept has ruled my deer hunting life since about 2 years prior to Scent Lok first showing up. It has only been in the past 3 or 4 years I have even started to question the extent of my anti-scent compulsion. It has only been since this Scent Lok decision came down that I have realized how totally taken in I am ( even though I was a Scent Lok skeptic) and started asking the hard question: What's really the truth here?