by David E. Petzal

If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on.

The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on a Ruger Number One single-shot which, despite its many splendid qualities, is not what you’d pick to blast the mob at your door. Another managed to shoot off several fingers during a practice session. Yet a third, a resident of the Oligarchy of Bloomberg, took lessons in knife fighting because he was unable to get a gun, ignoring the fact that everyone in the Oligarchy of Bloomberg who wants a gun has one, or several, and when the pistol-waving mob comes to this fellow’s apartment I don’t think that he and his knife will last long.

by David E. Petzal

This took place in the 1990s at an airport in one of Canada’s western provinces, and involved a member of that country’s Immigration Service, which is dedicated to making life as hard for American hunters as it possibly can.

I had been invited to this province by a scope manufacturer to hunt whitetail deer, freeze, and see what great stuff they made. By sheer chance, a few weeks previously, Field & Stream had been visited by a minister of Canada’s Department of Tourism who asked the magazine’s help in persuading sportsmen to visit their country, eh? He left a couple of his cards, and I, in a rare stroke of foresight, kept one.

So I got to the Canadian airport and on the entry card, where it asked whether I was there on business or pleasure, I checked off business, because I was, after all, representing the magazine and was the guest of a manufacturer. This was a mistake.

by Phil Bourjaily

Braced for a jolt of recoil the first time I pulled the trigger of a .458 Winchester Magnum rifle, I thought: That wasn’t as bad as a turkey gun.

A .458—an elephant gun—generates up to 65 foot-pounds of recoil that you feel as a shove. Meanwhile, a 12-gauge loaded with a high-velocity 31⁄2-inch magnum lead turkey load cracks you with up to 75 foot-pounds of recoil. Turkey guns are light to make them easy to carry long distances, and turkey loads contain lots of shot driven at high speed to ensure penetration of skull and vertebrae. The result is massive recoil. It offends my sense of proportion that guns for a 21-pound bird kick harder than rifles designed for the most dangerous game in the world, so I avoid the heaviest turkey loads on principle.

That said, in the excitement of shooting a turkey, no one feels the gun go off. Should we just accept brutal recoil as part of the price of a masochistic sport, along with sleep deprivation, mosquitoes, and chiggers?

--Chad Love

Remember last month, when the EPA was petitioned (once again) to ban lead ammo and fishing tackle? Well, guess what? The EPA has (once again) rejected the petition...
 
From this story on infozine.com:
 
The Environmental Protection Agency today rejected a request for federal regulation of toxic lead in hunting ammunition, again abdicating its responsibility to protect the environment from toxic substances. Earlier this year, 150 organizations in 38 states petitioned the EPA for federal rules requiring use of nontoxic bullets and shot for hunting and shooting sports to protect public health and prevent the lead poisoning of millions of birds, including bald eagles and endangered condors.