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I just KNOW I'm gonna piss somebody off here, so I'll just apologize in advance by saying that I don't mean *you*, I mean some other guy who resembles you... the guy I'm talking about wouldn't bother to post here - he already knows it all. Face it, I'm a crank - not old enough to be a curmudgeon but looking forward to that period of life so I can justify my crankiness.
Anyhoo, my pet peeve is the guy who shows up to go hunting with a lot of gadgets. He's got a stainless steel gun with a plastic stock - he paid extra for that plastic stock but isn't really sure why a stamped out piece of crap is more expensive than nicely finished walnut.
He's got a lazer range finder but has no clue what his bullet drop is - he's only fired his plastic gun about 50 times at 100 yards. When you inquire about bullet drop, he opines his .340 Scudbuster will drop about 3" at 500 yards (cuz the ammo costs $60 a box), but when you ask why he needs a range finder since he apparently has a lazer gun, he isn't sure what you mean.
He's got an 8 X 20 scope that looks like something the Defense Department rejected as being too complex and expensive - and of course with that high power scope, he's absolutely blind within 50 yards where he'll see most deer.
He's got a GPS thingie, but no map - he didn't even know you could get topo maps at the hardware store. When you show him your map, he points confidently at a spot ten miles away and says "Ah, this is where we are, huh?".
He's got a three pound revolver, a water bag thingie in a backpack with a tube leading to his mouth, a knife a foot long, a brand new expensive camo suit in green leaves and tree bark, that he bought to hunt in brown grass and brush.
When you ask where his frame pack is, he looks blank - he's planning on dragging a deer out through 3 or 4 miles of rough mountain country.
And you have to take this guy along, because he's your brother in law or the friend of a friend or your boss. So when you get to the top of that awful ridge, you tell him to just edge along the crest over that-away, and you'll go this-aways and we'll all meet at 1100 over there-away.
And five minutes later as you edge along the crest, here comes dummy right down the center of the valley you've walked three miles and climbed 2000 feet to glass. He's breaking brush and making as much noise as a herd of panicked cattle while a dozen deer are making tracks out of the valley ahead of him.
He has no clue. When you explain to him later that he blew your mornings hunt, as well as his own, he still has no clue - he had walked over and look down into the valley you sent him to, and he didn't see a thing, so he just went the other way.
This, or a variation of this, has happened to me too many times. So much that I will no longer hunt with most people (a loner with a gun!!!!). I've even lost a few friends that way, but hey, to me hunting is a serious business that is based around experience and knowledge rather than gadgets. I think I'm becoming a minority in that. I see too many people with plastic and electronic whoozits and whazzits who spend more time with their nose in a Cabella's catalog than out in the boonies. They don't need to know anything about game because they've spent a lot of money.
And that's my opinion - OK, it's my "rant". Throw your gadgets away, spend some time in the woods, move slow, look, listen, observe, remember. You'll be a better hunter.
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Keith
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