In my last musing (or is that "musings"?), I went on about the fun of target shooting. It occurs to me that I left out another recreational use for guns: hunting. I didn't mean to suggest that hunting isn't fun too. It is.
I used to kill pheasants, doves, ducks, squirrels, and rabbits by the score. But I noticed a few things about that. For one thing, I never took any of the meat home. I gave it away. The last thing I ever wanted to do was eat it. I didn't want to clean it, store it, cook it, or eat it.
When we would go out after pheasants, or ducks, or whatever, sometimes we wouldn't find many, or any at all. Then we'd usually go back and shoot at clay pigeons. I enjoyed shooting the clay pigeons just as much as shooting the game. Actually, I enjoyed it more, since there was no walking, waiting, or dealing with the dead animals involved in it. I came to the realization that the hunting was, for me, merely an excuse to shoot the guns. So now I skip the hunting and go directly to the target shooting. There's no walking, no waiting for game to appear, no cleaning game, no pretending to actually like eating game - which I don't.
A friend used to hound me about going with him up to his family's ranch to shoot deer. I finally told him I would be glad to go up there and shoot a deer. But there was no way I was going to clean the thing and take it home to eat. The coyotes could have it. He stopped asking me.
Now, if you do enjoy hunting, and cleaning the game, and eating the game, that's alright by me. I'm not some kind of vegetarian or animal rights nut. It's just that all that hunting business does nothing for me. I'd much rather get my meat from the supermarket and do my shooting at targets. Well, I still shoot the occasional squirrel or jack rabbit, but no one in his right mind would eat those anyway - at least not the ones we have here in Central California.
Back to my home place.