Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Poll: Do you hunt with a round in the chamber?

Yawn.

Funny how when confronted by rational and effective disagreement

ONLY in your limited cerebral function is it possible to make that "reasoning".....we can clearly see what led you to that Obama vote.

You still don't, and likely never will...get it.

Can't blame us tho' for your shortcomings, you've been led to water sooooo many times, on soooo many things.

Guys handle guns carelessly when they "know" them to be empty. Not saying that anyone present is a bad gun handler; to the contrary, I suspect everyone here is a very GOOD gun handler.

Went back and looked.

I was mis-remembering. It's more like pushing 80/20 percent, hot to cold carry while hunting.

BOY that 20+ percent are some noisy bastids! Comes with knowing it all, I suppose.

You just said one thing, then you said something very different. If everyone here is indeed a good gun handler as you say, the your first quoted sentence makes no sense. The folks I know do not handle guns any differently whether the chamber is hot or not. And I don't expect any less of them or of myself. In fact, I won't be around anyone who handles a gun less carefully when it is empty than when it is hot. The rules are rules and no government dictum will change the fact that their compliance for safety reasons is voluntary. People who are willing to treat an unloaded gun differently are people who are almost certainly going to end up doing two things; they will at times also treat a loaded gun just a bit less carefully, and they will eventually discover that their "unloaded" gun isn't- perhaps even making the discovery when the "unloaded" gun discharges.

But, go into a gun shop and observe gun handling from the general public when they "know it's empty". It's horrendous.

My point is that that mentality would flow out into the woods.

Lot of emotion flying around. Not sure why folks deem that necessary.

First, you made MY point very concisely. Guys handle guns carelessly when they "know" them to be empty. Not saying that anyone present is a bad gun handler; to the contrary, I suspect everyone here is a very GOOD gun handler. But we, or at least I, am talking in general terms here. Make it mandatory that everyone carry cold (I say that not because I favor government regulation, but because it's the only way to set up a hypothetical where everyone is carrying cold), and you know as well as I do that there'd be some damn sloppy gun work out there. Why? Because, you see... everyone "knows them to be safe", right?

You are wrong about my driving analogy. It's actually a very GOOD analogy. Here's why. The core of this debate, hot vs. cold, is safety. The safety of an individual, and those around him. Driving is exactly analagous. It is a statistical truth that less people would die on the highway if we drove 55 mph. Period. So, driving faster is a choice that you and I make (hell, I do anyway) because we want to, and the FACT that it endangers ourselves and those around us, exposes everyone to more risk, is something we are willing to live with for whatever reasons.

I challenge you, bendy-boy, to explain why that is not a superb analogy. Further, if you do drive faster than say 55 mph on the freeway, I'd like hear how you justify endangering yourself and those around you. Thanks in advance.

Lastly, YOUR analogy is fundamentally flawed and thus, meaningless for the discussion at hand. This is a thread about managing risk while doing something you want or need to do. Not about creating risk doing something like running across a freeway. Not applicable. Try harder.

As I've said before, there's a continuum here, a scale. I unload (unchamber) a rifle all the time, and I've carried "cold" when it seemed reasonable or prudent. When I'm hunting alone, which is most of the time, out in the big woods, I hunt hot and in my opinion that's perfectly safe and reasonable. I'm not in this life to be some puzzy-ass risk avoiding freak (not saying anyone here is). I'll drive 75 on the highway... I'll drink too much... I'll play my guitar too loud... that's just how it is for me.

I'll say again, the deer I killed a few days ago wouldn't have died that night if I'd been hunting "cold". Maybe one of you bad-asses would have gotten him that way; I'll concede that (though I doubt it rather strongly). But that doesn't fill MY freezer.

Some of us are hunting elk and deer with tags in the 10%, 15% success rate range. A guy made a comment earlier about how "the meat always seems to come down the mountain". With all due respect, it ain't like that in some places. Guys go years and years between Oregon public-land elk, for example. I'm not missing out on one because I handicapped myself by needing to chamber my friggin' rifle just to shoot the bastid.

YMMV, bendy-boy. Oh- better go wipe those counters with the anti-microbe stuff.. and don't forget to wash your hands again! Danger lurks everywhere... can't be too careful, bendy-boy.

While searching back for when I totaled up the percentage of who hunts how, I read some stuff from in the middle of this thread. There's some good, reasonable, debate happening there. I suggest we move back in that direction, but, it's not really up to me.

When I hear guys say they chamber a round and take animals say at 30 yrds,I wonder about the game. A mature whitetail here is no way in hell going to let you chamber a round at close range like that. Now maybe a dumb young mulie buck sure that is possible.I can tell by reading post that things vary dramatically across the country.