By: Ted Nugent
My wonderful Catahoula/black mouth cur Happy was singing the ultimate hound howl as I strained to find the limb-clinging bushytail high aloft in the old Live Oak tree. Old Happy is never wrong and wasn’t about to give up and neither was I.
Along with Sadie the lady yellow Labrador and Coco the ultimate hunting German Shepherd, the four of us must have circled that giant old tree more than a dozen times before I caught a glimpse of a miniscule red hair ever so slightly flicker from a way up forked crotch.
AHA!! Gotchya you pesky old sneaky Pete limbrat!
I shouldered my suppressed Ruger 10/.22 as I ever so cautiously side stepped to my left. When the Bushnell crosshairs found a tiny little ear barely visible along the heavy limb, I snicked off the safety, inhaled and exhaled slowly, and touched off another aim small miss small magical trigger squeeze moment in the always stimulating squirrel woods of my life.
OK, “so what” you may be saying. “What’s the big deal about hitting a squirrel in the eyeball with a scoped .22 rifle?”
Well, for this old lifelong bowhunting, squirrel hunting, triggertime gun/archery nut, it still represents quite the big deal in my life, for every moment of projectile management in my life continues to turn my crank and light-up my happy meter, not only as much as ever, but even more than ever at the tender age of 72.
Shooting is a daily ritual for me, and not only continues to fascinate, focus and stimulate me beyond measure, in these challenging days of unprecedented political insanity in a world gone haywire, that magical Samurai/Zen escape quite honestly keeps me fully bright eyed and bushytailed and very, very happy.
I know not everybody lives in an area convenient or practical to shoot every day, but that being said, I know plenty of guys that manage their shootist lives to find the time and place to keep their triggerfinger tuned in, and their happy meters are pegged quite nicely as well accordingly.
Having once again celebrated THE best hunting season of my life, I attribute this madly gratifying experience to my constant aim small miss small routine.
Though some archer/bowhunters still shoot fingers, the vast majority of us have achieved dramatically increased accuracy with the nearly universal use of the array of state-of-the-art mechanical releases available today.
The relationship with my firearms triggertime practice/management dedication manifests beautifully with my archery triggertime shot sequence and mindset.
And I hate to miss!
In fact, when I release an arrow, I literally envision the iron sights and/or crosshairs of my rifles with the positioning of my Mathews pin and peepsight, and the resultant hand-eye coordination moment unfolds exactly the same.
Training my children and grandchildren with Red Ryder BB guns and their bows and arrows in the living room, triggertime is triggertime and the more we can execute a finely timed trigger with our eyeball, brain and spirit coordination can do wonders to avoid the torture of missed shots on game come huntseason. Keep your triggerfinger well exercised throughout the year and the payoff come gametime will surely make it all worth while.