I passed my hunter education test last night with flying colors.
If I could sum up all of hunter education in two words, it is these: muzzle control.
Firearms have a “business end” (if I were punny, I would add ‘with a bullet’, heh), and handling them requires that the business end be pointed exactly where you want at all times. The choice to shoot is completely in the hands of the shooter, and that choice is both *to* shoot the thing you want to hit, and *not* to shoot absolutely everything else.
Everything else in the class is just another refinement of this concept; hunter safety, marksmanship, even conservation (If you shoot the wrong animal, you’re not practicing conservation) — it’s all about muzzle control.
It’s at times like these that I think about all that I’ve learned, and also when I start to realize that this is all the training I’m going to get, and, more specifically, this is all the training that all the grade-school-age kids who attended the same hunter education class are going to get. This is a sobering thought.
It reminds me of driver’s ed, and how I feel like they should force people to take a physics test before getting behind the wheel. A simple demonstration of the magnitude of the forces involved in driving these hurtling steel cans around would probably cut down on some of the crazy driving.
Do you know where your muzzle is?