One Shot
My grandpa had a saying when it came to hunting.
One shot, one kill.
I doubt he knew it was shared by the marines, but the way he meant it was unique to him.
It was a lesson he learned as a child growing up when money was scarce. A single cartridge cost just pennies, but spending more than one on a single animal could mean the difference between eating and going hungry. He learned to shoot and to make every single shot count. It was something he carried with him for the rest of his life and passed on to his kids and grandkids, including me.
Despite the fact I didn’t have to worry about not having bullets if I used more than one, it was a good lesson to learn. It taught me to not take a shot if I didn’t think I could deliver a clean kill to the animal. That, I believe, is at the very core of an ethical hunter and distinguishes them from those who aren’t.
Anyone can shoot at an animal and hope they hit it, that’s easy. But if you shoot and only injure the animal, you risk not only losing it, but wasting the meat and making its death pointless and unnecessary. It takes much more restraint for a person to let an animal walk than it does to take a shot they aren’t sure about, but that’s the ethical thing to do. If there is an inkling of doubt in your mind of whether or not you can down the animal with one shot, you should pass on it.
While a lot of people may not share my view, I believe most true hunters will agree with me on this. It’s people who take the pot shots I mentioned who give ethical hunters a bad name. They’re also some of the ones who provide ammunition for all the anti-hunters and their campaigns against the tradition we love.
It’s very simple people.
One shot, one kill.
Cliff
Lessons, ethics, ethical, beliefs, values, hunting, hunter, tradition
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