“Sight In Day”, A Mini Vacation: Part 2

One interesting facet of sight in day is that it’s for hunters. Ranges are usually awash with super marksmen competitive shooters; this is not their day. Sight in day is the day when “minute of deer” is what most people want and they usually get it easily.

This makes me nervous. I’m not a big fan of aim small, miss small.

I’m probably overly obsessed with the “perfect shot”. I’ve spent a lot of time watching animals through rifle scopes trying to pick out the particulars of skeletal structures and remembering precisely where organs are arranged. I pass up far too many totally reasonable shots. Sometime the shot is perfect and any idiot would make it and I’ll still pass it up. Why? Doesn’t feel right. No particular reason. Yes, I’ve “Casey At Batted” myself out of meat a few times. No regrets.

I keep trying to get better. Every time I field dress game it’s an autopsy. Any time an animal runs I replay in my mind the shot; could I have hit it harder? Deer, in particular, amaze me in that I can take out two lungs and a shoulder with a hit that would fell an Ox and they’ll still run 50 yards. How do they do that? Other times I’ll nail ‘em so perfectly they’re dead before they hit the ground. Can I get good enough to do that every time?

But that’s me and I’m too uptight. Most folks will line up, take a handful of shots, declare things “good enough”, and be walking off the range in the time it takes me to open my rifle case and get my head on straight. I think three holes in an 8” circle at 100 yards is scandalous. But then again lots of freezers get filled by dudes who can just about pin a paper plate at field goal distance. They shoot to hunt, I’m disappointed with a shot that’s not practically an assassination. So, it is me that’s unrealistic. Who am I to judge?

Also, I have a huge loathing of tracking. I don’t want to deal with it. Obviously, it’s a great skill to have but I’ll pass up anything that’s less than perfect because tracking sucks donkey balls. YMMV. It has worked for me. I’ve never tracked anything further than a few hundred yards.

Sight in days are also social affairs. Everyone knows everyone (except me.) Hunters arrive in groups (except me). There will be 3-5 men, and increasingly women, carpooling in anything from an F-150 to an SUV.

Ogling the machinery is fun too. Usually there are a few Greybeards, who’ll sight in a wood stocked something or other that predates push digital watches. Depending on the location, slug guns might show up. AR-15 types are more common every year. Most interesting are younger folks who gravitate toward firearms that look like they were specifically designed to make politicians break out in hives. Some are ridiculous assemblages of bolt-on fluffery but others are excellent rifles with harmonious selections of parts. These I watch carefully, in case I can learn something. (Gadgets don’t usually buy shooting any better or worse than a Greybeard’s lever action cowboy gun. But you never know…)

The outlier, as often happens, is me. I’m a bit of a loner. I show up alone, I don’t know anybody, and (despite previous experiments with a firebreathing M44) have a rifle that’s “modern” but bland.

Last post comes tomorrow…