The Homesteader's Rifle

As most of the readers of this blog know, I like to hunt.  Hunting is a very important aspect of our environment, but it gets a bad rap.  As with most things, the few bad things make the news, and people react in an uproar.  However, most hunters are conservationists and strongly disagree with poaching, over harvesting, and illegal marketing of pelts/meat.  Hunting is important because it helps keep the animal population in control.  In Texas, the number of whitetail deer are closely monitored by game wardens, civilians, and Texas State Biologists, so their numbers do not get out of hand.  Ever hear about someone hitting a deer in their car?  That happens a lot here in Texas, and the State tries to balance the fine line between over harvesting, and keeping the public safe.  It's not an easy job.

With Fall fast approaching, it's time for deer (and several other animals, for that matter) to begin their annual mating.  This coincides with the beginning of most hunting seasons.  While watching a video about hogs yesterday (I am determined to get a hog this year), I ran across a video that brought up something called "The Dog Bowl Theory."  The author had a very interesting point.  He stated that if a domesticated dog were brought to the wilderness and released, it would likely die.  The domesticated dog does not know how to get food - he knows that food magically comes from the food bowl.  Now picture humans and grocery stores: an eerie resemblence.  There are millions of people in the US that have never seen a cow, hog, or chicken butchered.  What if, tomorrow, there were no grocery stores.  Poof: gone.  What would people do?  If I had to guess, I would say most would simply starve to death.  Another small percentage would probably die of poisoning (thanks to poisonous or contaminated food).  I don't mean this to be a doom & gloom post, but the sad fact is, a lot of people have no idea how their food gets to their dinner plate.  Heck, they don't know how it gets to the Styrofoam tray covered in cling-wrap.

So why do I bring all this up, related to hunting?  Well, I made a purchase recently :-D.  I purchased what I consider to be the all-American all-around perfect gun.  The Marlin 30-30.  This small lever-action rifle is powerful enough to take literally any animal in the United States (seriously, they have killed everything from bobcats to Moose with this tiny thing).  It's a valuable tool if one has access to hunting land, as it can cheaply provide meat.  I paid an amount so small for this mint-condition rifle, I feel bad about posting the price.  Hopefully it will pay for itself soon - it already has provided a bit of protection when today, 7 cops showed up in our neighborhood looking for someone on the loose who was feared could break into a house to get away. 

So let's say I kill a average sized deer and hog.  That's going to be over 120 lbs. of meat, easily.  We like to use most of the deer (along with a bit of the hog for the fat content) for hamburger meat.  That's a lot of hamburger meat we do not need to buy at the store.  And it tastes exactly the same as ground beef, in my opinion.   Maybe a very slight (nearly unnoticeable) spicy flavor to it.  Then we use the rest of the pork for sausage.  Mmm, you cannot beat Spicy Sausage that you harvested and made yourself.  If only there were wild cows, we'd have it made!   Mmm wild rib-eye! 

To make this purchase, I sold my shotgun to come up with the cash.  I like shotguns for a lot of reasons, but I am not an avid bird hunter.  If I ever want to go bird hunting, I'm easily able to borrow a shotgun from a friend or family member.  So I figure the good outweighs the bad.

Here is an image of the rifle, though not my exact one.

Until another day, happy shooting!