6mm Remington
WKR
This is kind of long. It just sort of came to me one day and ended up on paper. I hope you enjoy it.
David
Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder
As I mentioned previously, we finally have a name for the disease that I feel many of us are afflicted with. It is called Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder or RADD for short. It is a very powerful disease with no known cure. So far the only temporary relief has been found through therapeutic shopping. This is where more firearms are purchased in the hopes of quieting the anguish and grief brought on by reading our Eastman’s Journal, other hunting and shooting magazines, or the frequent trips to the sporting goods store. So far though nothing has appeared to work and once a person is afflicted, it appears to be a life-long illness. As it seems that I went first in admitting that I have this illness and we now have a name for it, maybe by telling my story others will be helped and we will also understand that we do not have to suffer alone. Hopefully they too will share their story and together we might find some solace in knowing there are many others in this group.
Hello everyone my name is David and I am a Rifle Addict and this is my story. As you read my story, you will come to the realization that this disease is even more than just an addiction to firearms but also encompasses fishing, trapping, hiking, boating, snowshoeing, and in essence everything and anything to do with the great outdoors. I feel that the name RADD appropriately fits pretty well and besides that I like the name. I’ll try to tell this in a chronological fashion as I think it might make it easier for the layman to understand how this disease progresses and how severely it effects each of us.
My addiction started as young as the age of three or four when my parents, my grandparents, and aunts and uncles would take me fishing with a fly pole in small creeks and streams near where we lived. It was obvious that I was enjoying it by the look on my face when I would land a whopping 6 inch long brook trout. This then progressed to the age of 5 when my father could no longer come up with reasons that I could not join him and his friend when they went out frequently to check their trap lines. They trapped fox, badger, coyote, and bobcat. This is where the rifle addiction first started. We had .22 rifles with us on these trips to shoot rabbits with, and rabbits were what we used for bait. The .22’s were also used to dispatch the animals that they were fortunate enough to catch. I shot a lot of rabbits with that .22, and was making some shots that my father and his friend envied! We used the cottontails for the baits and turned in the jackrabbits at the mercantile as they gave us 25 cents for each jackrabbit so they could use their hides to make gloves and such. The money made from the jackrabbits was then in turn used to buy a hamburger and play a couple games of pool at a small town bar located in Reed Point Montana at the end of our tough day on the trap-line. That in turn lead to another addiction called billiards, but that’s another story.
At about the age of 8 I was given my first BB gun which was a lever action Daisy that held the BB’s in a large tube surrounding the barrel. I do not recall the exact amount of BB’s it would hold, but it was as I recall quite substantial. It had to number between 200-300 BB’s. Now the Daisy rifle was spring loaded, and the energy to shoot the BB resulted from cocking the rifle. It non-the-less had ample power to kill grasshoppers, starlings, magpies, dirt clods, and other big-game I could conjure up such as a tree stump. I remember finding out just how powerful the Daisy was when another friend of mine who was the same age as me and I decided to have a BB gun fight in the woods near the river where we lived. This particular river was the Stillwater River near Columbus Montana.
Being above average intelligence or so we thought, we decided that there should be some rules of combat laid out so we wouldn’t hurt each other, and maybe even lose an eye! We agreed that we would try not to shoot the opponent any higher than the middle of his stomach area so that we hopefully would not take one in the eye or the face. Our FIRST and ONLY battle started with a bang or a pffff quite literally. I saw right away that I had quite an advantage over my opponent/enemy. I could literally shoot my BB gun all day where as he had to reload his after about 30 shots. Once I figured this out, I really pressed the attack. My friend was running through the woods trying to reload his BB gun all the while wishing that he had a white flag to wave as a sign of defeat, but alas he had none. I continued pressing the attack and he eventually got loaded back up and into the fight again. I also discovered that when he was running away from me, a well placed BB right in the soft spot behind his knee would put him down immediately. Oh sure he would get up almost right away and continue to run in an attempt to get away to a position of cover from which to fire back, but it sure slowed him down.
I was winning this battle we were having by a large margin because of my much greater volume of firepower. We both were taking some casualties though and were quickly finding out that a BB shot at what I would guess was roughly 150-200 fps or so really hurt when it hit you in the leg, the butt, or somewhere else. I remember the battle quickly coming to an end when my “friend” accidently shot me in the mouth after I had taken cover behind a tree and had lain on the ground to make as small a target as possible. I peeked around the tree to try and engage him again and he hit me in one of my upper front teeth. The BB did not touch any part of my lip which might have slowed the impact somewhat. It did not knock the tooth out and it did not break the tooth, but the pain I felt I would be the equivalent of having the dentist drill out a cavity in your mouth without deadening the gums first. It hurt! We never EVER engaged in another battle of this type again. WE decided that it was not that much fun after all.
It was at about the age of 9 when I got my first bow and arrows. Oh let the adventures begin! I had one of those cheap fiberglass long bows you can still purchase for the beginning archer today in various stores. They aren’t very powerful and I would guess that the bow I had took about 15-20 pounds to pull it back, but not more than that. It would shoot an arrow quite a ways though. I remember stalking deer and other animals back in the river bottom behind our house just practicing for the day when I would finally be old enough, and would either have a rifle or a bow to actually hunt with. One day I was with another friend of mine who also had a bow similar to mine. We were shooting stumps, attempting to shoot ground squirrels, and any other kind of vermin we might come across. All was fine and dandy until my Norwegian Elkhound found a skunk and started barking at it and trying to get at the skunk. The skunk of course was not going to take this lying down so he began fighting back by the only means that a skunk has. The air was soon filled with the aroma that only a skunk can make and boy was it powerful! My dog was barking at the skunk and circling it all the while getting sprayed with that wonderful fragrance. My friend and I decided that we needed to save my dog as “we did not want him to get hurt”. We each shot the skunk with our arrows that only had practice tips on them as that was all we were allowed to have at the time, which probably was a good thing. I have to also mention at this point that we each had only ONE arrow apiece! We were not very equipped for killing anything, but we had to try for my dogs sake, and try we did.
I remember shooting the skunk, and then my friend would shot him as well. We then had to approach this still alive skunk and recover our arrows so we could shoot him again. As you can probably imagine, we both ended up covered in skunk perfume. After just a couple of arrows each we were able to kill the skunk so he would not be getting into anyone’s chicken coop by golly, and our dog was now safe too. It’s really kind of amazing when I look back at this, but did you know that you can smell so bad that at some point you cannot actually smell yourself any longer? I didn’t think that was possible but it really is! We were pretty proud of ourselves so we carried the skunk home to show my mom what a great job we had done getting rid of one of those pesty buggers. I somehow don’t think she needed the visual of the trophy to verify what had taken place as she could smell us coming from several blocks away. Mom surprisingly was not very happy.
This was not quite the end of adventures with my little fiberglass bow. One day I was back on the river and was messing around like any kid does pretending I was hunting. I used to love to sneak as close as I could to the whitetail deer just to see how close I could get. Of course I would never shoot at one with my little bow as I would have gotten my bottom side warmed up a whole bunch! I wish I would have used more sense when it came to the neighbors cattle though. My grandparents had registered Herefords while those folks next door raised them awful Charolais. I spotted a group of about 20 head just on the other side of our fence and I used the wind and cover to sneak to within about 30 yards when they caught sight of me and took off running. The neighbor’s cattle were pretty spooky just like most range cattle are, but our Herefords were more like overgrown pets.
To this day I have no idea WHAT I was thinking or WHY I did this, but I raised my bow and took a shot at the lead cow as she was trotting broadside to me. Imagine my surprise, shock, nausea, fear, and anything else you can think of when my arrow hit that cow right behind the shoulder midway from the top of her back to bottom of her chest. I cringed in horror and started running for home but made it only a few steps when for some unknown reason I had to stop and turn around and see what happened. The feeling was similar in trying to not look at a bad car wreck, for which this situation most certainly was!! Fortunately the combination of the distance, my very weak bow, and the very tough hide on the cow kept the arrow from penetrating. There was only enough energy for the arrow to barely break the skin and hang there for a couple more steps after it hit her before it dropped to the ground. The cow would live to see another day and was fine, but I DON’T THINK I WOULD HAVE BEEN had that arrow killed that animal and my parents had to buy a beef from the neighbor. I guess one good thing that would have come from this if anything could, was the fact that my grandfather had a butcher shop in town and his slaughter house was only 100 yards away from where this incident all took place. I sighed a very heavy sigh that day and never told a soul about it until now. Even as I write this, I have a knot in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it. That was the end of the hunting adventures for a while!
I was still about 9-10 years old when I was back with another friend fishing one of the small creeks that ran through our place. We were using lures and were not having much luck on this day. Boredom began to set in and of course we started messing around because we were not catching any fish. I remember having on a three barbed lure at the time, and I believe it was a red and white Daredevil (how appropriate). I let out about 6 feet or so of line and began swinging my pole to the front and slapping the water with the lure, and then pulling it up just as hard and as fast and slapping the water behind me. Oh what great fun. I remember doing this for several strokes, and so was my friend. That is until after the lure slapped the water on my back side on one of my strokes, and when I pulled very hard on the pole to pull the lure over my head and slap the water in front of me, the line looped under itself on the up stroke, and that was enough for the lure to hit me in the middle of my back. It buried two of the three prongs on the lure as deep as they would go! My friend pulled the lure out of my back which was quite difficult with the barbs on it. We never said a word about it, certainly not to our mothers.
As I made mention to earlier, at about the age of 5 my dad was unable to keep me at home when he went to check his traps. Since I was now ten years old, he figured I was old enough that I could trap muskrats and raccoons in the woods behind our house, hopefully doing so without too much drama. This might also keep me occupied so he and his buddy could have some time alone without this young pest tagging along. This seemed relatively safe enough and my dad figured that I was probably not going to put too much pressure on the rats or the raccoons and he was correct. One day as I was checking one of my Muskrat sets I was in for quite a surprise. I caught something that I certainly had not targeted, that being a very large and a very angry Mallard drake! All of us enjoy hunting and fishing and eating the animals we harvest, yet we still are the most caring people when it comes to animals. That is why I would bet that most of us have pets who are a part of our families, and we as sportsmen took it upon ourselves to tax our equipment, and donate thousands of dollars and man hours each year to support our wildlife, and to make sure there is always a place for them so that our children will have the same experiences we have had. Okay back to the story………..
I was upset that I had caught this duck in my trap and I could see that his leg was broken. I did not intend to hurt him and all I could think about was taking him home and fixing him up. Now came the tricky part. How the heck was I going to get this very agitated duck out of the trap without him getting his pound of flesh out of me? I don’t remember all the details very clearly as it happened so long ago now, but I remember it was quite a battle that took several minutes before I was able to pin him in the water somehow and use my other hand or foot to release the trap. I do recall there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and it was in the 0-10 degree range so it was quite cold. I got wet and can tell you it was VERY cold. The Mallard also got his pound of flesh out of me too! Who would have ever thought that they could bite the way they do, and it also hurts like @#$% when they peck you with their bill!! Trust me on that one.
David
Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder
As I mentioned previously, we finally have a name for the disease that I feel many of us are afflicted with. It is called Rifle Addiction Deficit Disorder or RADD for short. It is a very powerful disease with no known cure. So far the only temporary relief has been found through therapeutic shopping. This is where more firearms are purchased in the hopes of quieting the anguish and grief brought on by reading our Eastman’s Journal, other hunting and shooting magazines, or the frequent trips to the sporting goods store. So far though nothing has appeared to work and once a person is afflicted, it appears to be a life-long illness. As it seems that I went first in admitting that I have this illness and we now have a name for it, maybe by telling my story others will be helped and we will also understand that we do not have to suffer alone. Hopefully they too will share their story and together we might find some solace in knowing there are many others in this group.
Hello everyone my name is David and I am a Rifle Addict and this is my story. As you read my story, you will come to the realization that this disease is even more than just an addiction to firearms but also encompasses fishing, trapping, hiking, boating, snowshoeing, and in essence everything and anything to do with the great outdoors. I feel that the name RADD appropriately fits pretty well and besides that I like the name. I’ll try to tell this in a chronological fashion as I think it might make it easier for the layman to understand how this disease progresses and how severely it effects each of us.
My addiction started as young as the age of three or four when my parents, my grandparents, and aunts and uncles would take me fishing with a fly pole in small creeks and streams near where we lived. It was obvious that I was enjoying it by the look on my face when I would land a whopping 6 inch long brook trout. This then progressed to the age of 5 when my father could no longer come up with reasons that I could not join him and his friend when they went out frequently to check their trap lines. They trapped fox, badger, coyote, and bobcat. This is where the rifle addiction first started. We had .22 rifles with us on these trips to shoot rabbits with, and rabbits were what we used for bait. The .22’s were also used to dispatch the animals that they were fortunate enough to catch. I shot a lot of rabbits with that .22, and was making some shots that my father and his friend envied! We used the cottontails for the baits and turned in the jackrabbits at the mercantile as they gave us 25 cents for each jackrabbit so they could use their hides to make gloves and such. The money made from the jackrabbits was then in turn used to buy a hamburger and play a couple games of pool at a small town bar located in Reed Point Montana at the end of our tough day on the trap-line. That in turn lead to another addiction called billiards, but that’s another story.
At about the age of 8 I was given my first BB gun which was a lever action Daisy that held the BB’s in a large tube surrounding the barrel. I do not recall the exact amount of BB’s it would hold, but it was as I recall quite substantial. It had to number between 200-300 BB’s. Now the Daisy rifle was spring loaded, and the energy to shoot the BB resulted from cocking the rifle. It non-the-less had ample power to kill grasshoppers, starlings, magpies, dirt clods, and other big-game I could conjure up such as a tree stump. I remember finding out just how powerful the Daisy was when another friend of mine who was the same age as me and I decided to have a BB gun fight in the woods near the river where we lived. This particular river was the Stillwater River near Columbus Montana.
Being above average intelligence or so we thought, we decided that there should be some rules of combat laid out so we wouldn’t hurt each other, and maybe even lose an eye! We agreed that we would try not to shoot the opponent any higher than the middle of his stomach area so that we hopefully would not take one in the eye or the face. Our FIRST and ONLY battle started with a bang or a pffff quite literally. I saw right away that I had quite an advantage over my opponent/enemy. I could literally shoot my BB gun all day where as he had to reload his after about 30 shots. Once I figured this out, I really pressed the attack. My friend was running through the woods trying to reload his BB gun all the while wishing that he had a white flag to wave as a sign of defeat, but alas he had none. I continued pressing the attack and he eventually got loaded back up and into the fight again. I also discovered that when he was running away from me, a well placed BB right in the soft spot behind his knee would put him down immediately. Oh sure he would get up almost right away and continue to run in an attempt to get away to a position of cover from which to fire back, but it sure slowed him down.
I was winning this battle we were having by a large margin because of my much greater volume of firepower. We both were taking some casualties though and were quickly finding out that a BB shot at what I would guess was roughly 150-200 fps or so really hurt when it hit you in the leg, the butt, or somewhere else. I remember the battle quickly coming to an end when my “friend” accidently shot me in the mouth after I had taken cover behind a tree and had lain on the ground to make as small a target as possible. I peeked around the tree to try and engage him again and he hit me in one of my upper front teeth. The BB did not touch any part of my lip which might have slowed the impact somewhat. It did not knock the tooth out and it did not break the tooth, but the pain I felt I would be the equivalent of having the dentist drill out a cavity in your mouth without deadening the gums first. It hurt! We never EVER engaged in another battle of this type again. WE decided that it was not that much fun after all.
It was at about the age of 9 when I got my first bow and arrows. Oh let the adventures begin! I had one of those cheap fiberglass long bows you can still purchase for the beginning archer today in various stores. They aren’t very powerful and I would guess that the bow I had took about 15-20 pounds to pull it back, but not more than that. It would shoot an arrow quite a ways though. I remember stalking deer and other animals back in the river bottom behind our house just practicing for the day when I would finally be old enough, and would either have a rifle or a bow to actually hunt with. One day I was with another friend of mine who also had a bow similar to mine. We were shooting stumps, attempting to shoot ground squirrels, and any other kind of vermin we might come across. All was fine and dandy until my Norwegian Elkhound found a skunk and started barking at it and trying to get at the skunk. The skunk of course was not going to take this lying down so he began fighting back by the only means that a skunk has. The air was soon filled with the aroma that only a skunk can make and boy was it powerful! My dog was barking at the skunk and circling it all the while getting sprayed with that wonderful fragrance. My friend and I decided that we needed to save my dog as “we did not want him to get hurt”. We each shot the skunk with our arrows that only had practice tips on them as that was all we were allowed to have at the time, which probably was a good thing. I have to also mention at this point that we each had only ONE arrow apiece! We were not very equipped for killing anything, but we had to try for my dogs sake, and try we did.
I remember shooting the skunk, and then my friend would shot him as well. We then had to approach this still alive skunk and recover our arrows so we could shoot him again. As you can probably imagine, we both ended up covered in skunk perfume. After just a couple of arrows each we were able to kill the skunk so he would not be getting into anyone’s chicken coop by golly, and our dog was now safe too. It’s really kind of amazing when I look back at this, but did you know that you can smell so bad that at some point you cannot actually smell yourself any longer? I didn’t think that was possible but it really is! We were pretty proud of ourselves so we carried the skunk home to show my mom what a great job we had done getting rid of one of those pesty buggers. I somehow don’t think she needed the visual of the trophy to verify what had taken place as she could smell us coming from several blocks away. Mom surprisingly was not very happy.
This was not quite the end of adventures with my little fiberglass bow. One day I was back on the river and was messing around like any kid does pretending I was hunting. I used to love to sneak as close as I could to the whitetail deer just to see how close I could get. Of course I would never shoot at one with my little bow as I would have gotten my bottom side warmed up a whole bunch! I wish I would have used more sense when it came to the neighbors cattle though. My grandparents had registered Herefords while those folks next door raised them awful Charolais. I spotted a group of about 20 head just on the other side of our fence and I used the wind and cover to sneak to within about 30 yards when they caught sight of me and took off running. The neighbor’s cattle were pretty spooky just like most range cattle are, but our Herefords were more like overgrown pets.
To this day I have no idea WHAT I was thinking or WHY I did this, but I raised my bow and took a shot at the lead cow as she was trotting broadside to me. Imagine my surprise, shock, nausea, fear, and anything else you can think of when my arrow hit that cow right behind the shoulder midway from the top of her back to bottom of her chest. I cringed in horror and started running for home but made it only a few steps when for some unknown reason I had to stop and turn around and see what happened. The feeling was similar in trying to not look at a bad car wreck, for which this situation most certainly was!! Fortunately the combination of the distance, my very weak bow, and the very tough hide on the cow kept the arrow from penetrating. There was only enough energy for the arrow to barely break the skin and hang there for a couple more steps after it hit her before it dropped to the ground. The cow would live to see another day and was fine, but I DON’T THINK I WOULD HAVE BEEN had that arrow killed that animal and my parents had to buy a beef from the neighbor. I guess one good thing that would have come from this if anything could, was the fact that my grandfather had a butcher shop in town and his slaughter house was only 100 yards away from where this incident all took place. I sighed a very heavy sigh that day and never told a soul about it until now. Even as I write this, I have a knot in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it. That was the end of the hunting adventures for a while!
I was still about 9-10 years old when I was back with another friend fishing one of the small creeks that ran through our place. We were using lures and were not having much luck on this day. Boredom began to set in and of course we started messing around because we were not catching any fish. I remember having on a three barbed lure at the time, and I believe it was a red and white Daredevil (how appropriate). I let out about 6 feet or so of line and began swinging my pole to the front and slapping the water with the lure, and then pulling it up just as hard and as fast and slapping the water behind me. Oh what great fun. I remember doing this for several strokes, and so was my friend. That is until after the lure slapped the water on my back side on one of my strokes, and when I pulled very hard on the pole to pull the lure over my head and slap the water in front of me, the line looped under itself on the up stroke, and that was enough for the lure to hit me in the middle of my back. It buried two of the three prongs on the lure as deep as they would go! My friend pulled the lure out of my back which was quite difficult with the barbs on it. We never said a word about it, certainly not to our mothers.
As I made mention to earlier, at about the age of 5 my dad was unable to keep me at home when he went to check his traps. Since I was now ten years old, he figured I was old enough that I could trap muskrats and raccoons in the woods behind our house, hopefully doing so without too much drama. This might also keep me occupied so he and his buddy could have some time alone without this young pest tagging along. This seemed relatively safe enough and my dad figured that I was probably not going to put too much pressure on the rats or the raccoons and he was correct. One day as I was checking one of my Muskrat sets I was in for quite a surprise. I caught something that I certainly had not targeted, that being a very large and a very angry Mallard drake! All of us enjoy hunting and fishing and eating the animals we harvest, yet we still are the most caring people when it comes to animals. That is why I would bet that most of us have pets who are a part of our families, and we as sportsmen took it upon ourselves to tax our equipment, and donate thousands of dollars and man hours each year to support our wildlife, and to make sure there is always a place for them so that our children will have the same experiences we have had. Okay back to the story………..
I was upset that I had caught this duck in my trap and I could see that his leg was broken. I did not intend to hurt him and all I could think about was taking him home and fixing him up. Now came the tricky part. How the heck was I going to get this very agitated duck out of the trap without him getting his pound of flesh out of me? I don’t remember all the details very clearly as it happened so long ago now, but I remember it was quite a battle that took several minutes before I was able to pin him in the water somehow and use my other hand or foot to release the trap. I do recall there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and it was in the 0-10 degree range so it was quite cold. I got wet and can tell you it was VERY cold. The Mallard also got his pound of flesh out of me too! Who would have ever thought that they could bite the way they do, and it also hurts like @#$% when they peck you with their bill!! Trust me on that one.
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So RAD would work better in either case.....either as Rifle Addiction Disorder, or Rifle Aversion Disorder.
