Your post made me smile. We Californians love our tech. Hunting, it seems, is no exception here. There are very few traditional bowhunters and even fewer taking sidelock muzzleloaders afield. Even the rifles have gone full-bore into the long-range craze where people think that a buck standing broadside at 400 yards is giving you a shot opportunity. If you fail to drop it, it's because you didn't spend enough on your gear (not because you had no business taking that shot in the first place). As weird as CA is about weapons, it often seems more like an arms race in the field than a hunt.
I might be among the younger people in this crowd -- mid-40s. My stepdad introduced me to hunting. While he was a terrible hunter in many respects, I appreciate how he instilled some values in me about hunting that I've chosen to pass to my kids as well. Among them was focusing one's efforts on woodsmanship & experience (time in the woods) rather than technology. He'd always say that the secret to deer hunting is being in the right place at the right time. That was annoying to hear as a kid because I wanted to MAKE it happen -- what was that right place & time? But now, I see it as learning to appreciate being out in the woods and allowing luck to come your way via time and patience, not forceful effort. It's about being a hunter -- always quiet, looking, listening, and always ready. Having a plan and executing a plan to fruition makes me feel good about myself. But serendipity makes me feel good about life, the world around me, and my place in it -- something far more meaningful. It shifts my mind away from pride toward gratitude and reverence.
We hunted with open sights. I never even had a working scope until I was an adult. I learned to shoot with a Red Ryder first and a lever-action 30-30 next. I got pretty good with both. I've let a handful of people who are a little younger than me shoot my percussion gun over the last few years. No one has even hit the target at 50 yards for whatever reason. I've seen them ring steel at extended ranges with a scoped centerfire. But somehow, they can't beat the paper with an open-sighted rifle that consistently groups under 3" at that distance.
But some things give me hope, too. We have our share of road-hunting slobs, but we have a growing cadre of conservation-minded hunters as well. Traditional bowhunting is still a tiny niche, but it's growing. I'm hoping that trend will extend into conventional weapons, like our much-loved sidelocks, and methods like still-hunting instead of sniping.
Great thoughts on this post. Thanks for starting, and thanks all for sharing.
