Guess what?
Today. This day after Christmas.
Roy is now the official co-host.
He's always been the.
Official official co-host and I like.
To say it one more time, but I won't.
And in deference to that comment.
But anyway,
my plan came to fruition.
So, Roy, welcome to the show.
Officially as the co-host.
So, guys, say a few words.
That means I get a raise,
Hi there, and welcome
to this episode of the Guns Podcast, U.S., brought to you by guns magazine.
I'm your host, Brant Wheat, and there's another guy
here that I'm going to, talk about in just a second.
But anyway, thanks for joining us here
on one of the world's biggest gun talk programs.
As we discuss the interesting stuff that makes up the world of shooting.
Well, that guy in the other side of the frame is Roy Huntington.
And first off, Hattie Roy, on this day After Christmas, I.
You know, we lived through another one.
We did, except you sent me a comment
and I'm going to read it on the air.
So here we go.
Okay. And, it is.
I won't say who said it, but.
Brant, thanks for another enjoyable episode.
I've been listening since the first show, and you and Roy
have become like old friends.
I don't express my gratitude enough and let you know how much I've enjoyed
all 314 shows.
Well, thank you very much.
I do appreciate that.
It's pretty amazing to hear that.
I find myself agreeing with you 99% of the time
because, which is probably because I, too, am an old Fudd.
Good for you.
Let's all be lethal. Fudge together.
One thing I will beg of you, though.
Please, please, please
stop referring to Roy as the official, unofficial.
Official. Unofficial. Official.
Unofficial co-host.
It drew a chuckle the first ten times you said it, but now it has become
very annoying and shows a complete lack of imagination and awareness on your part.
Well. Okay.
I wish, I.
Wish he would have told us exactly how he felt, though.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I suspect Roy is tired of hearing it, too, but.
But it is.
But he's too much of a gentleman to tell you.
Other than that, keep up the good work.
I'm missing the print magazine.
Well, Yes, I I'll go in reverse order.
I missed the print magazine, too. We all do.
And as far as Roy being a gentleman, we know that.
But I will tell you, it wasn't a lack of awareness on my part.
It was a hope that it would become so annoying when I said that.
That the audience would rise up and tell Roy
that he needs to become the official co-host. And
guess what?
Today it happened. Day after Christmas.
Roy is now the official co-host.
He's always been the.
Unofficial co-host, and.
I like to say it one more time, but I won't.
And in deference to that comment.
But anyway,
my plan came to fruition.
So, Roy, welcome to the show.
Officially as the co-host of the Guns podcast.
You asked, presented by guns magazine.
So, guys, say a few words.
That means I get a raise, Break from nothing.
How much is boy?
No. That's cool.
I feel certified now.
You know. Certifiable. Certifiable? Yeah.
I mean, it is, you know, we're like,
you know, Yang Yin yang and whatever all, you know, twit.
And, I mean.
It's always us, you know?
So, yeah, we might as well.
Well, I and truly not to,
belabor this point too much before we get into our topic, but,
you know, Roy's Roy's living the dream, and Roy doesn't
want any more irons in the fire, and I, I he's here
almost every single week, but I think he just didn't want to add that,
because I know Roy and he'll feel bad if he's not on the next episode.
And he didn't want that.
Am I correct?
Hey. Yeah.
Yeah, because I said I'd help.
Yeah.
Are you.
You know, you're fully part of this.
You're driving the steam train with me.
So if I crash, you crash and vice versa.
And I enjoy it, though I really do.
You know, it's like I, I always watch the comments, and,
I mean, I'm
the one that sent you that last one about a quick call out of your. Yes.
You know, I laughed out loud.
That was so funny.
But I just I'm always it's
always so nice to hear from people who,
if we knew them better, they they would be friends.
Yeah.
You know, definitely as simple as that.
And so I kind of consider them friends.
And so I like this because this is a way to sort of stay in contact with them.
So. Yep.
There you go.
There you go. Harrumph.
I didn't get a run from that guy. So.
Well, on this, day after Christmas, we're going to have,
I think, what's going to be a fun discussion.
I came up with this topic and I was just kind of casting around,
and I found somebody asking this on the internet, and I thought,
and then I got to take it.
Now that's that's actually something that Roy and I ought to discuss and discuss.
And that would be, are we better shooters today than we used to be?
And, I'll be interested to hear,
because, Roy, you've been shooting longer than I have.
But I've been shooting a while, too, and I'm also very much
a student of history, so might might be interesting.
And this is definitely one that will be interested in hearing
what you have to say about it, especially you lethal thugs
who are our age and older, that have been around
and and been there, done that, seen it, and formed a few opinions.
So anyway, I came up with the topic.
I've got my opinions.
But, Roy, you're the elder statesman here and our our newly minted co-host.
So I'll let you get started out of the gate.
Well, I'm, you know, as usual, but I didn't know about this
until literally one minute before we went on air.
Right. So.
But I like that, though, because it lets you sort of, what's a good word?
A speak from the heart, you know, I mean, because I haven't done
any research, I haven't given it any thought beforehand, but.
And so, so I'm kind of digging in to see what's my opinion on that.
And, you know, and I think you and I are in a very interesting situation
because for the last, you know, 30 to 40 years,
depending on us, we've been in the firearms industry.
And that's meant, you know, interacting closely with readers,
with manufacturers, with guides, with, I mean, you name it,
you know, trainers, competition shooters just across the board.
You know, we've been on countless hunts.
A lot of those hunts
had sort of just regular people in the camps with us,
you know, who booked a hunt at the same time we were there.
And so we actually, I think, have a baseline that we can
sort of look at, you know, and we're after thinking about it,
I, I actually didn't take me too long to, to decide that. Yes.
I think overall, people are better shooters today than it was.
I think today, the average hunter, you know, sort of the average
concealed carry person, you know, even the average weekend competitor,
you know, at your local range, I think they're better shooters.
Because I remember growing up and we spoke about this briefly, is that,
I mean, the average deer hunter with a bolt action, 36
hunting rifle pretty much shot his rifle once or twice a year.
I mean, you
know, I mean, because when I remember when I started shooting
serious rifles, know, I was 16, 17, 18, I used to tell people,
you oh, you a deer hunting, you know, you are you going to be zeroing your rifle?
And they would look at you like you were from Mars.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I didn't do anything, work fine last year.
Then you get the guy that says he, he holds up a box
of 20 rounds of 30, 30
and it's got seven left in it, you know,
and he says all the other ones are deer that I got.
Yep. You know, and
and there are no other empties like where he was shooting, practicing or anything.
Yeah. Yeah.
Of course the other side of that coin is if they do get a deer
every year, well then maybe they don't need to practice any more than that.
Yeah. You know, because that's like shooters versus hunters, right?
Yeah.
Hunters don't really often care what gun they have.
They just need a gun so they can get a deer.
Right.
But the shooters like to shoot.
Yeah.
Well you know. Yeah.
You tease out a couple of
interesting points and I want to try and remember to go back to them.
What I was going to say is I think the difference might be
because I, I completely agree with you.
Overall, shooters are better skilled today
and there's many reasons for that, I think.
But I think one of them is there's fewer casual shooters.
And I think that's the guy you identified, Roy,
because I knew a lot of them growing up too. Same thing.
And I was going to make that very point that, well, I've had this box of shells
for 15 years and,
you know, there's only three left, but every one of them is a deer.
And so it's the, the yin and the yang of, well,
they got their deer every year, but they haven't been out practicing either.
So, you know, the. The
what is it the, the.
Memory, the collective memory is that we were a nation of rifle men.
And every farm kid could shoot you know,
those squirrels at 200 yards with his, flintlock.
And and it wasn't really that way.
At least when I was growing up, there were guys that were really good shooters.
But I would say the level of practice among the masses,
wasn't what it was today.
And I would say, well, it's obvious there's there's fewer shooters
practicing today or, actually
going out and shooting than there were.
So maybe the folks that were just,
say casual shooters,
they kind of gave it up or and that didn't really replenish itself.
So does that make sense?
Well, I think you you brought up a good point, which is it's
it's more difficult to be a shooter today generally.
You know, I mean, guns are more expensive, animals more expensive.
There are less places to go shooting.
The laws are more, you know, comprehensive.
And you have to be pretty motivated to do it, you know,
I mean, I look back in the
middle to late 60s, and when I started going to Public Ranges,
I, I used to see people
who were citing in their deer rifles, you know, at 100 yards.
And basically, if they were shooting a ten inch group, they were happy.
Yeah.
You know, and and I can't say that they were wrong because that certainly
one minute a deer, you know, at 100 yards.
And I mean, I remember there were, at this one range
and they would,
you know, 3 or 4 guys would show up and they'd get out their bolt action
hunting rifles and wanted plopped out and shoot around at 100 yards
and kind of hit somewhere on the target, you know, and say, okay,
I guess I'm ready to go. Right?
You know, clear the guy, next guy come up and do it, too.
But I think that it's the shooters.
There were shooters back then.
There was, there were people who, you know, right over there.
He had a bench arrest rifle.
He was I mean, you know, they were dialed in.
There were custom loaders, and those people were certainly there.
And I think they're every bit as good as the people are today, other than today's
shooters can take advantage of technology that we didn't have in those days.
You know, better optics, better guns, better everything.
But I, touchstone for me was
I started competing in what we used to call wildcat
combat matches in the early, well, middle 70s.
Right.
So that's the early run and jump and shoot steel plates.
Right.
And there were it was very disorganized and, and everything.
And people used to use single action revolvers and stuff.
But even the hot shots, though,
you know, it's like, the guy that always wins, right?
You know, there's always 3 or 4 of those guys.
And then we started going to other hosted matches at other venues,
and it was always this top kind of few guys who used to win all the time.
As I look back on that, they would be hopelessly outclassed with today's shooters.
I mean, you know, these
guys were no slouch, but today's even today's weekend warrior,
you know, club, you know, ID match on the weekend.
I'm afraid those guys would just outshoot all of us from those days.
Yeah.
Well, you know, to tease out a couple of things there.
You talked about technology, and we got to discuss that because it's
just farther along than I ever imagined it would get.
But also the, the idea of information,
you know, there was certainly as guns magazine
was around for 70 years and a lot of our, our, other magazines and things.
Then along came the internet and suddenly
you could find anything,
any esoteric thing you wanted about shooting.
And I think shooters in the past we've talked about this
before were generalists, where a guy was a hunter, he might compete
in a turkey shoot or a weekend match, and then he'd go bird hunting.
And now people tend to be a little more focused on I just long range deer hunter.
I only, quail hunt and very vertical, very vertical.
And they dive in with both feet.
So, that quail hunter guy may not be able to talk about deer,
or he's probably only been a few times, but, man, he can tell you anything
and everything about quail hunting and shotguns
and and technique and places and biology and all that stuff.
And, you know, with this age of communication,
the information, is out there.
And I do think that part has made folks better rounded, at least,
as you said, in that narrow vertical, that the guys that do X or Y know
almost everything there is to know about X or Y.
Well, let's
say it's 50 years ago, of 60 years ago
and you wanted to go hunting and you didn't know how to do it.
Well, you had to find somebody who went dividing, and you had to get him
to tell you what you needed to buy, how to shoot, what kind of shotgun to get,
what kind of loads to get, you know, where do you shoot?
What are the rules?
How do you buy a hunting license?
I mean, and you had to do that all analog, you know.
Yeah.
And nowadays, if you want to learn how to dove hunt well,
within 15 minutes on the internet, you're going to know all that stuff.
I mean, because you're going to have 100 websites of dove hunting, USA and,
you know, of best, but top ten best places to go dove hunting, you know, and.
Dove hunting YouTube channels.
Yeah.
And so I think that contributes to the fact that shooters are better takers.
They're better educated.
You know, I mean, I bought I bought an antique watchmaker's lathe
the other day, over the weekend, at a gun show, oddly enough. And,
and I knew a little bit about it,
and so I got home, cleaned it up a little bit so I could read what it was.
And within an hour,
I knew the complete history of this.
I knew exactly when it was made.
I'd found out the company was still a business.
I found links to spare parts.
I watched YouTube videos on how to use it.
I mean, it was it was we curse the internet.
But on the other hand, you know, and I think,
I think that that's probably though one of the bigger reasons, you know,
and, and it seems like
we have more fanboys than we did when you and I were younger.
I mean, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, there everybody kind of liked all kinds of guns, you know?
Yeah.
And nowadays it's like you're a Glock shooter
or you're an AR shooter or you're FN shooter, or you're,
you know, I guess it's what you were saying about vertical, you know.
Yeah. Well, I was going to say go.
Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Well, I was going to say, can I say something about this gun show?
I'm in the Joplin area,
and I went to this first gun show I've been to in a long time.
Good Lord, everything was expensive.
Yeah. I mean.
I wondered when you told me you were going and hadn't been in a while.
I mean, everything ammunition,
accessories, guns, I mean, I, the average gun
was probably 30 to 50% more than it was five years ago, you know?
And, yeah, I'm not sure why, but it's like, good lord, you know?
Okay, well, I just to. Mention that. Yeah.
Just like I tell my wife after
she comes home from the grocery store every single time.
That's just the way it is.
Everything's more expensive. The way it is. Yeah.
So me actually, you know what?
We may have stumbled onto something, which is.
Maybe that's why people or one of the reasons why people are so vertical.
Because when you and I were growing up, if you were to get a shotgun
and, bolt action hunting rifle and a 22 rifle,
I mean, you know, they were they were all very affordable.
You know? Yeah.
And nowadays, gosh, if you
want to get a decent, you know, hunting rifle and a decent shotgun
or a decent 22 pistol in a decent, well, now we're looking at $4000 or $5000.
Yeah.
You know. Yeah, it's like, oh.
Yeah.
Well, and I wanted
to go back to the, fanboy thing because that phenomenon amazes me.
But I think it's pretty clear why that happens.
And it in talking to folks in different
areas of, of life, not just shooting but other things,
I think it's a result of today's algorithm, person
because we're all,
I guess guilty of this, but the, the, an algorithm
is kind of what drives things like Google and your social media and all that,
and it's a chicken or the egg kind of thing.
We only look at what we want to look at, but that's all that they give us.
Now, whether you look at on social media, when you're searching,
whatever it builds a profile on, it's all goes back to marketing.
Because if if I want to sell golf clubs, I want to
I want to find somebody that is really, seriously heavy into golf clubs
and reads about them all the time and technique
and maybe, you know, hey, what's a good, nine iron?
That's the guy that I want to target with my advertising.
And that's something we couldn't do back in pre-Internet days.
Well, now, for better and for worse, all you're going to see is stuff
that you've been interested in the past and it
you know, it's it's important for all of us.
And this is a general life skill.
We need to look at stuff that, is outside our normal day to day
because we all have that certain set of things,
our own little pattern that we look at every day
and especially like on social media, if you start looking up
duck hunting, you're going to see a lot of duck hunting stuff.
They'll occasionally throw in a deer hunting or a competition shooting,
but it's going to be all duck hunting all the time.
And then you're going to get advertising is about all duck hunting all the time.
And where that goes with the fanboy mentality is,
if you're completely invested in one single,
solitary thing, whatever it is, duck hunting or,
trains, model trains,
you're going to be very protective and very, very,
embraced and in that whole, field.
So I think that's where, you know, we've we've talked about it
countless times before that if, if it's not even if we say anything bad about it,
are if we don't say enough nice stuff about a year,
we get 4 or 5 comments that are just some of them are downright hateful.
And it's like, whoa, it's it's okay, they're Speed Racer.
You can like those, we can like this.
But but some folks just, get pushed over
that edge of they, they are wrapped up in this thing.
That's all they look up at.
That's all they see when they go on the internet.
It's all they can talk about on their forum.
And how dare you not hold that up as the greatest, best thing.
So that's kind of my indictment
of modern life and the internet general, but I think it explains some of that.
And my,
crusty
old opinion to close out that segment is and don't let it happen to you,
keep keep a broad mind so anyway.
Well, I don't disagree with anything there.
I think we both said that modern shooters are better shooters,
and I think a lot of that is for the reasons you just talked about.
I mean, if I, if I wanted to learn how to reload as
17 Magnum, well,
there's going to be somebody on YouTube showing me how to do it, you know.
Yeah.
Well, maybe not on YouTube anymore.
Because, well, you know, but.
You know, I mean, I mean,
yeah, any anything you can think of.
And if we're thinking of shooting,
like if I said, gee, I just got this new semi-automatic pistol,
what kind of a holster should I buy if I want to do a weekend competition?
Well, within 15 minutes,
you're going to know exactly what kind of holster you need to buy,
and you'll be able to find it online somewhere.
And maybe by the next day you'll have it, you know?
Yeah.
And and 40 years ago,
if you wanted to shoot on the weekend, you'd, like, show up, right.
Talk to some people there.
There were grumpy people.
And then there was a you 1 or 2 nice people and they would come over
and if they were really nice, they would show you how to do.
Baby, let's use their gun right that time.
Yeah.
Walk you through it, tell you what kind of ammo.
Maybe even offer to.
Hey, come on over to my house. I'll show you how to reload it.
I mean, just things were just.
You had to
take your time, you know, and you had to do the work to get there.
Yeah.
And, I think that's why the deer hunters there shot one bullet a year.
Did that. Because to do more than that, what?
Took a lot of effort, you know.
Yeah.
And and nowadays, you I mean, just like
you can live vicariously, you can go on hundreds of deer hunts.
I never leave that.
You're just a chair in front of the computer, you know?
Yeah. And and unfortunately.
You're learning. Or doing that.
Yeah. Yeah.
But you're learning all the time.
And, you know, I look at our own videos we have,
I don't know, I think we have 2000 videos on the YouTube channel now.
Well, when you scroll through them, I mean, there's how to clean your gun
and how to fix your gun and how to reload ammunition and how to cite it in.
And I mean, the list just goes on and on and on.
And you know what?
A resource which we didn't have, you know, before.
And so, yeah, I mean, if it wasn't in the latest
American Rifleman or Guns magazine, you pretty much didn't know it.
Yeah.
You know, and yeah.
And had to go through that learning process.
And I think that's another, issue with modern life that we've talked about
before is people kind of walk into something expecting to know
everything and have the best gear, and we didn't start that way in the past.
You know, I was laughing when you said you went to the range.
You found somebody that told you how to do this, and,
you know, if they were really nice, they'd give you a hand, a second hand,
a hand-me-down, a holster they didn't use or or something like that.
And you started out generally with worn out or crappy gear,
you know, the, the duck decoys that all needed repainting and all that.
And you learned through that process of getting better and you,
you had bad stuff and you appreciated the better stuff
as you became more involved, more experienced in what you were doing.
But I will say,
another point I wanted to make in there, we were talking about deer hunters.
And this is I will admit, it's totally objective.
Or, not objective, very subjective.
And it's anecdotal, but I do think deer hunters,
in terms of overall accuracy across the board, is getting better.
And I attribute that to this.
This, I don't want to call it a fad,
but a new emphasis on long range competition and shooting.
And I've talked about that before, being an old school police sniper
and then getting out for a number of years and coming back,
you know, we are
so much further in terms of information and equipment than we were.
And I do think that carries over into hunting.
I don't know if folks are statistically taking longer shots,
but I know that when I when I see it, deer check in stations
doesn't seem to resemble the carnage that I used to see 25 years ago.
And for every deer that came in with that 1 or 2 bullets in it,
there might be 4 or 5 that had three, four,
five, six shots, seven, eight.
I've seen that, you know, and it's horrible.
You think this poor animal, you know, eight shots,
that's not good shooting under any circumstances.
How can people do that?
And, you know, if, if, if I took eight shots
to put down an animal, I guarantee you, the very next day I'd be on the range,
burning all the ammo I can afford, trying to figure out what did I do wrong.
And again, I could be wrong.
But it's because.
And I don't think anybody's done a study on this, but it does seem like
the overall accuracy as a whole has gotten a little bit better, at least.
At least judging by the deer check in stations in my book.
Well, I agree, I mean, you look right now you can get a new,
I'll just say bolt action hunting
rifle, one of the affordable models from one of the major makers,
you know, for just a few hundred dollars and virtually all of them will out shoot
anything that was available in the market 40 years ago or 50 years ago.
And if you spend
$100 on a scope today, you have a better scope
than someone who spent $500 on a Lou pulled scope 50 years ago.
Absolutely. And the ammunition is better.
You know, and we have a lot more lower recoiling
hunting rifles, you know, six point fives and stuff like that.
And so,
you know, I in the old days, it's like if you were a man, you shot a 338 win
mag or a 300 when mag and you know, and were people were terrified of them
and so they missed
and they had to shoot their deer eight times because they kept missing it.
You know, having said that, though, I will say
the downside of all this internet
accessibility is, you know,
Howard Milquetoast decides that he wants to be a duck hunter tomorrow.
And so he jumps on the Cabela's website
and he buys new camouflage and orders a shotgun and two cases, ammunition
and decoys and duck calls and every single thing
you possibly would ever need to be a duck hunter, right?
Now, does that make him a O'Connor?
No, no.
You know, and so, that is the other side of this, you know,
because I talked about a little bit
50 years ago, if you wanted to be a duck hunter, you really had to find
mentors, you know, and it it was a learning curve.
And like you say, you started with a crappy shotgun and your
waterproof boots weren't, you know. You.
And you froze to death and your coffee was cold, and but we still did it.
It was fun. And you learned.
Yeah.
And, and I think the fact that a lot of this stuff is sort of easy money today.
And so,
I mean, I, you can go to a public range and see somebody
who's decked out to the nines, you know, new fancy, you know, fat striker
fired pistol with a light and a laser
fancy holster, shooting glasses.
You know, I mean, everything.
But he can't hit the target.
You know, and I those are the, like,
lifestyle stylist kind of people, you know,
but but I think, on average, the person who wants to be a shooter
today is better at it than they were 40 years ago or 50 years ago.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it was funny.
I was at a media event a couple of years ago, and,
I a wide cross-section of gun media.
I'll use air quotes.
And there was one guy there who he was that guy in any group.
And you've you've been there countless times. Roy.
There's always one guy that talks way, way too much.
And it's okay at first.
And then after, you know, 2 or 3 days at media events, you know, you're
you're typically in a van or,
you know, you're going back and forth, you're hunting hard or you're
you're shooting a lot and then you stay up too late and, and all that.
So it does kind of get to be a drag toward the end of it.
And by day three of the guy saying, you know, listen, I think I know.
And I know, oh.
Please, please shut up.
Well, anyway, I finally thought, I need to find
I want to find out how much does this guy really know?
Because he was he was he had an opinion on everything,
especially tactical, because he was very much a tactical guy.
So I made sure I was a shooting partner.
The next day. And I'll never forget this.
I said, so, tell me, what's your background?
Because I expected military law enforcement
something because, you know, he was he was a high speed, low drag guy.
Well, you know, I picked up shooting three years ago, and I said, oh, my lord.
Really? Oh, are you serious?
I mean, I didn't say that.
I just went, yeah.
And in three years he had learned everything and was
was very confidently telling these other gun writers,
some guys I know who, you know, served in the military,
you know, law enforcement or at least shot for, you know, decades and decades.
And but he he sure knew everything.
And to me, that was the guy that don't be that guy, you know.
And he probably doesn't shoot better than people in the old days,
you know, and and also, I think in the old days
there was a lot more subsistence kind of hunting and shoot truth, you know,
I mean, you all you have to do is look at the percentage of Americans
who lived rural and was on farms 50, 75 years ago versus today.
And it's just a fraction today.
I mean, there
probably are people out there who hunt for subsistence.
Well, I'm sure there there are. Right.
But generally that's not the case.
You know, you do it because it's interesting.
And you, you know, I'll call the deer herd, supply meat to the public,
you know, kitchens and stuff like that.
But, but I don't know, I think people because as we said, it costs more,
it's more of a challenge to, to do it
because you have travel and costs and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And so I think the people who do it today,
they want to do better because it takes some effort,
because, you know, 50 years ago, if you wanted to go deer hunting,
you just you borrowed your neighbor's 3030,
then got in your car and drove 20 miles out of town
and knocked on a farmer's door and said, I shoot a deer over here.
And they'd say, sure, don't shoot the cows.
Yeah.
You know, and then you'd mosey out and you might or might not shoot a deer
seven times, you know. Yeah.
And throw it on the hood of your car and drive back.
Yeah.
That doesn't go on anymore, I don't think.
Well, I was going to.
And you reminded me of one of those points I wanted to go back to when I was a kid,
and I cert.
I know it was when you were a kid, right?
Like you said, it was so much easier to find a place to shoot.
Whether we legally had permission or not.
First of all, when's the last time anybody knocked on the,
you know, a farmer's door
and said, hey, you mind if I go out and hunt pheasant in your field?
It was never a guarantee.
But more times than not, they said, sure, just like you said, don't.
Don't shoot cows.
Close the gates behind you, and, you know, now it's even hard to find
who owns this. The stupid ground.
Oh, yeah. Nobody's going to let you.
On, and nobody's going to let you on. It unless you know that.
What he do know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, and, you know, just it wasn't uncommon.
Well, for example,
and I think I talked about it a long time ago, there was a gravel pit.
And I now know the owner, but it was kind of like the public gravel pit.
And it hadn't been an operation for a long time.
But everybody went there camping, fishing, shooting, and nobody said a word.
And then now, having been in law enforcement,
our county is one of those counties that it's growing dramatically, but
especially from southeast to northwest.
And if I remember these calls plainly,
this man's shooting over there.
Yeah, we shooting.
Well, he's on his property and you're out in the country,
and it's allowed what he can do that it's like you moved in from Chicago,
didn't you? And it's it's just amazing.
It just everything has gotten more challenging.
So makes sense. It's it's true.
Yeah. Right.
But having said all this, if you went to
an NRA handgun
match in 1945 and there were all those old guys with
fedoras shooting revolvers, 100 cigarets, a left hand in their pocket and stuff.
Yeah.
Most of those guys would out shoot anybody
today who is shooting the same thing, right?
You know, but again, that was a pretty narrow focus.
You know, those were really motivated people.
They went out, they found the equipment.
They, you know, and they did it themselves.
But, I, I'm afraid,
definitely the average person today.
Well, if we think about it too, if you want to carry
a concealed weapon today, you, you know, you have to get some.
Usually you have to get some kind of training.
You know, it depends on the area,
but which is more than anyone who ever went hunting before ever got.
Yeah.
You know, and
and nowadays, you know, kids especially, they have to take hunter safety.
Yeah. You know which 50 years ago and. Yeah.
And have to do it in.
So 1976 I took
I took Hunter's ed and I was one of the first people in our state to do it.
And I was the high score in the class.
But it was such an unusual thing.
Now you have to take hunters, Ed, I think in every state
now to get a hunting license or be over a certain age.
Right.
But it, you know, I, I loved my hunter ed class and that's why I did so
well because it's like we get to talk and and we'll talk about guns and.
Well, you know, so. Do it, you know.
Yeah.
When I was in the seventh grade,
I don't know when that was 1966 or something.
My dad signed my brother and I up, and he.
So he was our no. Ten.
No or less eight.
Who signed us up for, like, we met, like,
three weekends in a row and we shot 22 rifles.
And they taught us, you know, how to shoot the rifles,
and we shot from arrest, you remember? Love to shoot.
Not from arrest.
But all of that was geared toward making us gun safe
and making us want to go shooting, wanting to go hunting with our dad.
It was a real hunting focused kind of a thing, you know?
And I remember the dads
there were all real interested, you know, and and everything.
The I know the guns, though, were all really basic guns,
single shot, 22 rifles and stuff.
I today, it's really interesting.
Sometimes, a reader or I'll, there'll be a comment on YouTube
and they'll say, you know, I'm gonna buy my, son his first rifle, 22 rifle.
And I was thinking, and they'll give me a list of, like,
expensive semi-auto and stuff like that, you know, or high proportion.
A good first gun.
Well, yeah, it's a good gun.
It's like.
Yeah, well, yeah, but, you know, I mean, that's why they invented,
you know, single shot Savage, 22 rimfire, you know,
so I guess it's a blessing we have everything we ever want
today, but but, you know, sometimes people don't always understand
where to put the boundaries.
Well, and I think that, to close this out, I think that's part of the modern
problem is I was reading a story about this
the other day, and it wasn't talking about shooting.
It was talking about just life in general.
People are far more dissatisfied with life now.
And it was kind of looking at, you know, if you look at crime rates,
poverty rates, all these other rates, life was harder back then.
So we've we've and I'm not saying it's not hard now, but
we have more resources and we have greater ability to communicate.
We can be entertained whether we want to be or not.
24 over seven we can communicate across the globe,
you know, medical science.
Anyway, long story short, we tend to discount all the great stuff
we have now.
And we think, you know, it was a lot better 20 years ago.
Well, in some ways it was.
And in a lot of ways it wasn't.
And I think shooting falls in that do.
And, kind of drawing that curtain on this.
Ryan, I've talked about it multiple times on this podcast.
We're living in the golden age right now.
And, we can extend that now, I think, to shooters, because we both agree
that I think shooters overall are probably a little bit better.
Maybe not more rounded, but probably in one narrow, little path.
They're probably a lot more sophisticated than folks even 30 years ago.
So any any parting or final words there, Roy, on that?
Well, if you I'll just look at myself.
I mean, am I a better shooter than I was 50 years ago, you know,
and I can absolutely on a unqualified say. Yes.
You know, I mean, I absolutely am a better shooter.
I'm safer.
I know more about guns. I'm more accurate.
You know, I do fewer stupid things.
You know? And,
and it's a lot of that is because
of the resources we have, you know, that you take advantage of.
And so I think if you translate that across the board,
then I think that proves that, that we're better because any shooter
who started shooting today or, or the shooting today and started shooting
five years ago, hopefully is a better shooter today
through, you know, with all these resources we have
and if they started 20 years ago, probably they're better shooters today.
And yeah, I think if you took the average deer camp
today, you know, five guys and a woman
and 2.5 minorities and, you know, sorry, I.
Yeah, but if you take an average deer hunt, deer camp today
versus 50 years ago,
yeah, there's no doubt in my mind the average deer camp today has better
equipment, better optics, you know, better communication.
Better.
Better, navigation.
They had they have more accurate rifles.
They have better quality ammunition. You know.
So better.
Better close to keep you warm. So. Yeah.
So, yeah, it's they're better.
They really are.
And some of it is technology, but a lot of it is I just think people
take advantage of the knowledge we have and they're motivated.
And so they do it. So there we go.
And if you don't agree, then tell us in the comments exactly.
So, you know, the overarching thing on
this podcast is we try to, as I often say, gun and fun or one letter apart.
So we are living in the Golden age.
So, there's a lot of trouble and heartache in the world, but
stop and appreciate what we've got.
And, everything that we, we didn't used to have.
So it's it's a pretty cool time, right now to be a shooter, but I have to.
I can't let it go.
It kills me.
You know, if, first of all, you'd never see a commercial with a deer camp.
Maybe for a light beer, in a fun moment.
But you're absolutely right.
There would be a differently abled person.
There would be a a gay couple and every possible nationality under the rainbow.
Right. Would be there.
So I don't know how you'd get a native Pacific
Islander there with an Eskimo, but they would do that.
So yeah, just as.
It is for the times they not are just changing.
They have changed.
They have. Changed.
So so well, we appreciate like Roy said,
leave us your comments.
I'd be interested to hear from both the Graybeards and,
the young folks or the, the less experienced shooters.
I'd, I'd be interested to hear your perspective on this.
You can also reach me at editor at guns podcast.
Dot us and I'll send anything along to Roy.
And hopefully, as you saw in the very beginning, we do actually read
those comments a lot and take them to heart.
Except those occasional ones, we just laugh about those.
But for the most part, we really enjoy, seeing those comments.
So, before we go, course, make sure you check out guns magazine.com.
They've got daily newsletters.
You can sign up for an.
I still write there, once a week.
And, likewise with American hand Gunner.
I know Tom McHale's slaving away over there.
And, Roy, I don't know if you saw it. I think I dropped you an email.
Tom covered the Rhino pistol, the ten millimeter, the one we shot at your place.
And I was so mad because he's to cover that, and he.
He beat me to it.
So you do take that up.
Yeah, exactly.
So I guess I'll just have to come back to your house again. Yeah.
There you go.
You have a plan for the official co-host
of The Guns podcast U.S, brought to you by guns magazine.
So on behalf of Roy Harrington and the whole gang at,
Guns magazine.com, and of course guns podcast.us.
I hope you got through the Christmas season. Good.
And now we're facing that.
Next week will be the changing of the new year.
And and we'll look forward.
I'm going to look forward to 2026.
So anyway, until that time, as I always
say now get out there and get shooting.