You Know You're Old When.........

There is an old saying: "You know you're old when Christmas comes too soon." It is starting to appear to me that the same thing could be said about deer season. I was not really ready for it this year, and now I'm tired of it already. That's why I never got serious about bow hunting. I tried it for a few years but found that I was tired of deer season before it got here.

Michigan's archery deer season runs for three months, October, November, and December. The regular firearm season is from November 15-30, which ought to be enough for anybody. The muzzle loader season starts on the first Friday in December and runs for ten days. When I used to work for a living, I frequently couldn't get out as much as I wanted to during the regular season, which is why I got into bow hunting and later, muzzle loaders. The trouble with bows is that they don't go "bang". They now allow the use of crossbows in archery season, but not spears.

Muzzle loaders make a satisfying "boom", filling the air with smoke, which is lots of fun. The loading process is laborious compared to regular guns, but that's kind of fun in its own way. The .50 caliber is the most popular around here. Because muzzle loader bullets travel with less velocity than regular bullets, they rely on a heavier weight to bring down a deer. The original muzzle loaders were replicas of antique firearms and shot a spherical lead ball, but now they are producing modern variations, which some purists distain. The most popular bullet for the modern guns is called a "sabot". You put the bullet inside a plastic sleeve before loading it into the barrel. This makes the bullet itself less than .50 caliber, with the plastic sleeve making up the difference. When the assembly leaves the barrel, the plastic sleeve falls away and the bullet continues on. I'm not sure why, but this is supposed to make for better accuracy, and I think it increases the velocity as well.

I've often wondered about the way the news seems to run in streaks like that. You hear the same thing over and over again until you're sick of it, and then you don't hear about it anymore. Maybe it will resurface later, and maybe not. I think that's called "the news cycle", but I don't know why they do it that way.