Okay. It’s about 2 hours before the rain hits, and it is going to be fairly consistent until the end of KY’s Rifle Season. I’ve got 2 tags filled, a buck and a doe; that was my target. I’m sitting here trying to wrap the alternatives:
1) Embark on an extended “Not-Hunting” season of going out fully-kitted, but refusing to shoot.
2) Shoot at yet another doe and then beg friends and co-workers to help me out eating it.
3) Man up, and accept I’m done, and have been done for 3 days, and I’m just hanging around camp because I don’t want to go home.
#3 is where this is all headed. However, I don’t want to waste a drizzly morning at deer camp and not have last final winge about it all.
The reason why I’m picking this venue to do my cranking is that I find myself left in yet another conundrum. I should be feeling great:
1) I blooded a new rifle with a new chambering (The TC Compass in 7mm08), while still on my first batch of loads. The receiving deer got knocked over backwards and died on the spot.
2) The Mauser from Hell (Kar 98 in 8mm) not only dropped my buck, but I loaned out to our FNG, Remnar and he nailed his deer with it, nearly matching the camp distance record doing so.
3) I managed to go the whole season with my Ace #1 rifle, the Ruger Hawkeye in 30-06 never making it out of the case.
It is this latter triumph that catches me and causes me to write. I mean, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT OVER? I find, for me at least, the best whitetail rifle I will ever find shooting the same load I’ve been shooting for 20 seasons and . . . I leave it cased up? And feel happy about it? This is a level of rifle looneyism that I’m not quite ready to accept.
Additionally, you can add in the mixed despair/elation over losing the Ruger Model 44 to an incipient design flaw (Lordy, I loved that rifle) and having to leave the Whelenizer at the gunsmith, so he can remove a stuck round. In both cases, I’m really forlorn at not having these as options. However, I’m happy as a clam that I was able to just reach a little further back in the rack and pick replacements.
Oh, but as I stare into my navel on this dreary morning, I find the loonyism runs even deeper. I’m grousing that I never got to try out the SXS 12 GA slug gun on a deer. Think of it, I’ve been trying to find the best possible mix of whitetail lethality, and recoil for 20 years and yet I was salivating over the chance to go out with a 10 lb double-barrel and bust my shoulder with Remmie Sluggers. What kind of insanity is that? Help me here, guys!
It runs even deeper. Yes, I love my new TC Compass. However, I don’t like the cosmetics. Black Tupperware stocks give me psychosomatic hives. However, I find myself oddly attracted to this rifle in a way I cannot describe. I thought about a nice Boyd’s stock for it, but do I want a nice walnut one or some blaze camo monstrosity? Or maybe one of those AT-One jobs? Or maybe Krylon the whole thing and let it go? I’ve not even cleaned it for the first time, and already I’m planning to tear it apart.
I’m falling deeper, and I don’t know if I need to run away or mash the accelerator pedal to the floor. Is this what being a rifle looney is really like? Am I still just in the shallow end looking at deeper water? Will I drown?
