by Phil Bourjaily

Here’s me, on the set of the Gun Nuts TV show, holding my pick for the ideal youth turkey gun: a 20 gauge 870 Express Jr. with a red dot sight.

It is short, light, doesn’t kick much with the right loads, and it’s easy to hit with. My younger son shot his one and only turkey with it, and I have since taken it from him and killed turkeys with it, too. While you don’t have to put a $500 Zeiss Z-point on a kid’s gun, I think some form of red dot sight (and a lot of target practice before the season) is the best way to be sure a kid doesn’t miss.

by Phil Bourjaily

Today’s tip: Have a backup plan, and have a backup to your backup plan.

This morning’s Plan A was to hunt a gobbler I found earlier in the week. The season is almost over and the wildlife area I hunt has been deserted for days so I was very surprised to find the only other vehicle on 6,000 acres parked at my spot this morning. So much for Plan A.

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 Phil Bourjaily

There is a small percentage of the U.S. population that hunts, and a small percentage that hates hunting. While many of us believe the general public looks on at hunters with disapproval, the truth is, most of them rarely think about hunting at all.  

When they do think about it, the non-hunters I encounter believe two things:

- We are crazy for keeping the hours we do and going out in the cold.

- Hunting is okay if you eat what you shoot.