Courtesy Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries:
- Completely unload firearms at the conclusion of the hunt and keep the action open. Be sure all shells or cartridges are removed from both the chamber and the magazine.
- When in a vehicle, boat or on an ATV, transport firearms unloaded with the action open and in a secure position – preferably in a case.
- Always be sure the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction. This basic rule applies in the field, in a vehicle and in the home.
- When cleaning a firearm or putting it away for storage, double check to be sure it is completely unloaded. Anytime you pick up a firearm, make it a habit to make sure it is unloaded before doing anything else.
- Keep fingers off the trigger and outside of the trigger guard whenever handling firearms in a situation where you do not intend to shoot.
- Store unloaded firearms and ammunition in separate and locked locations.
- Consider use of a lock to make your firearms inoperable while being stored or transported.
- Children and even adults are often curious about firearms, so make sure your firearms are inaccessible to persons who may be visiting your home.
- Discuss firearm safety with members of your household and set rules for firearm access and handling.
Actually in Louisiana I’m pretty sure you’d see more Skunk Apes than Bigfoot (Bigfeet?). Anyone know if the permit includes them too? if so I’d be all about that.
I would not hunt Bigfoot (Bigfeet). They are Libertarians that have actually succeeded.
You can’t kill them, they have the mind of a child!
In Louisiana, I think it’s pronounced “Bigfeets-es.”
Fair enough. I’m of the belief that only guns you intend to use in a self defense situation should always be loaded…
This is why I like the NRA rules better than the Jeff Cooper rules
If all guns are always loaded, how do you dry fire practice?
If you must always keep your guns unloaded until ready to use (NRA 3rd rule), that’s ok because my self-defense gun(s) are indeed ready to use.
By all means, keep your hunting rifles and competition guns unloaded, action opened, and locked away using whatever means necessary to your situation.
Oh crap! You gotta have a tag for one of them? (Shoot, shovel, shaddup.)
Oh crap! You gotta have a tag for one of those? (Shoot, shovel, shuddup.) Nothing to see here, move along.
Why everyone should know someone who has a backhoe and doesn’t ask questions…
🙂
Deer season is a pretty frightening time. I was at the public range this past weekend; I nearly fainted when I got there and saw the line of hunters waiting to zero their rifles. Most of them brought their whole families, there were children running everywhere around the firing line, their parents randomly yelling to keep the gun pointed down range or take fingers off triggers… I barely made it back alive.
It should read BUffalo hunting permit, as the only women one see’s up north during deer camp seem to be large, hairy and the size of a buffalo, and if they set their sights on you, chances are they will run you down, Heaven help if your friends know about it either!
I see you’ve been to up state NY. By the way those buffalo don’t leave after hunting season.
Stationed at Seneca Army Depot (Romulus, NY) in early 80s. Up ’til then, I didn’t know what a “Winter Woman” was.
So, uh, can you imagine how it’d be at the game warden’s crib when, after ten days or so, you brought two of these big-ass specimens in for his/her inspection?
Sorta gamey?
It’s mighty flattering that someone (in Oregon?) thinks Bigfoots run wild around here, but the fact is that their range is a little further north. The best area is over the state line north of Ida in the Boggy Creek watershed. You’ll know you’re there when you see the signs that say “Now Entering Arkansas. Take Precautions to Avoid Being Eaten By Hillbillies.”
Charlie (grew up in that area 🙂 )
“-Completely unload firearms at the conclusion of the hunt and keep the action open. Be sure all shells or cartridges are removed from both the chamber and the magazine.
-When in a vehicle, boat or on an ATV, transport firearms unloaded with the action open and in a secure position – preferably in a case.
-Store unloaded firearms and ammunition in separate and locked locations.
-Consider use of a lock to make your firearms inoperable while being stored or transported.”
1. Maybe. If you’re hunting with a side-by-side and Dick Cheney. Otherwise, what a load of Safety Sallie nonsense. Safety “on”, you betcha. Unload my chamber, let alone my mag? Pourquoi? Never known a gun in a pick-up rack that didn’t have one in the pipe. ‘It don’t do nothing unless it’s loaded’.
2. Gun on a boat, ATV, whatever? Once again, secured, safety on, booger hook off the bang switch. Empty, action open? Sure, if you wear a helmet and repelling gear to climb 10 feet to paint the side of the house. Which is actually far more likely to kill/injure you than the gun. But I digress…
3. Yup, lock up your unloaded guns. Away from your locked up ammo. Talk about conditioning for disarmament. Just when you need it, you won’t even be able to use it as a club.
4. Meh, I guess if your kids are the kind that just won’t listen, or are malfunctioning in some significant way, a trigger lock might serve as a temporary delay of their inevitable Darwin Award presentation. Or, you have failed as a parent, and they have no clue guns can kill. Either way, a trigger lock means no more an a minute delay to anyone motivated, with the mechanical abilities of a smart 12 year old.
+10000- most of that article is over the top, way too cautious, conditioning people to think guns can “go off” by them selves nonsense. Totally written by and for complete FUDs.
I don’t see a problem with those guidelines as suggestions, not regulations to turn hunters into criminals. You’re gonna unload the thing eventually, so you may as well do it as soon as you’re done hunting. I’m a believer in redundant safety. People make mistakes. Making three or four mistakes simultaneously is a lot less likely. Let’s not forget that after a negligent discharge, the most common quote heard is, “I thought it wasn’t loaded.” Followed closely by “I thought the safety was on.”
With regard to preventing kids from hurting themselves – Children are physically able to pull a trigger long before they are mentally able to comprehend the danger. It isn’t just about raising kids right. Trigger locks and safes are among the viable options to prevent tragedy.
Curtis, I may have been born at Cook County Memorial, but my parents left before it infested my thought processes.
C’mon man, you have to know that sooner or later they won’t be “suggestions”. They will be “rules”. Then they will become “law”. Why I am going to “unload it eventually”? Sure, maybe for 30 minutes to strip and clean it, then it will be promptly reloaded when done. Sure, when you’re collection is in the 250-2000 range, most aren’t loaded. No matter what, everybody I know with guns has at least 10 loaded. Unloaded guns are useless.
I won’t disagree about the “wasn’t loaded” or “safety on” quotes. I would just offer that is merely pathetically piss-poor gun handling, If they don’t treat every gun as loaded until they have verified it isn’t, the problem is simply the handler being an effen moron. If they screw around with the safety on, the handler is simply an effen moron. Layers of safety are readily defeated by inbred r-tards bent on self-destruction everyday. Quit caring about them, they will do themselves in one way or another.
Look, I’m not about to argue to leave a 2# trigger match tuned SA handgun on the floor with your toddler. But if your 6 year old can’t figure out life and death, let alone that guns can kill you? Do us all a favor and send him to speshul skool.
Charlie is correct; most of the sightings have been in the Pacific Northwest areas, usually in pretty remote forest and bog, with only rare human visitations, primarily hunters and fishermen. Some otherwise pretty level-headed outdoors types and some with scientific backgrounds seriously think some sort of creature is out there, and the local Indians and longtime guides are certain. Louisiana and that whole area would probably be a tad warm for the buggers.
And if I was out there and I saw one of them dragging a store clerk along the ground and putting them on their knees with a gun to their head, I’d have no hesitation whatsoever in letting one fly; of course, based on the sizes reported, I hope I’d have at least .500 S&W. With JHP. And a speedloader. With air support.
Yeah, also be sure to have the gun 100% disassembled with every single piece in seperate locked container and every single round locked in a seperate container, locked in another seperate container, and all locked containers locked within two seperate locked containers, and forthwith. Because you know if a gun and ammo is transported together in any way shape or form it will automatically load it’s self and waste you and everyone in the car and then explode causing a 10 megaton Nuclear Blast…..
The sad but true thing here is that you could stipulate everything that AllAmerican said right there to some members of the Body Politic and they’d nod very agreeably and enthusiastically and write up the legislation for it on the spot. And congratulate your ass for being a fine, forward-thinking citizen.
Sidebar: Years ago, an accomplished deer hunter told me, a (gun) ignorant teen, that no land creature existed that couldn’t be felled by a good rifled musket made after ~1850. I found the logic behind his point totally correct – ergo, no Bigfoot existed.
More telling – media and Hollywood dopes never seemed to grasp such a fact.
*Completely unload firearms at the conclusion of the hunt and keep the action open. Be sure all shells or cartridges are removed from both the chamber and the magazine.
Ok, I can understand no round in the chamber (just in case the gun may have some wear on safety, etc, but from the magazine? Seriously?
*When in a vehicle, boat or on an ATV, transport firearms unloaded with the action open and in a secure position – preferably in a case.
So what if the action can’t stay open without an empty magazine present?
*Always be sure the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction. This basic rule applies in the field, in a vehicle and in the home.
Technically the safest direction to point a firearm is down (usually), so how will that be accomplished in a vehicle (especially a car)?
*When cleaning a firearm or putting it away for storage, double check to be sure it is completely unloaded. Anytime you pick up a firearm, make it a habit to make sure it is unloaded before doing anything else.
And yet we hear many times a year that someone is shot while “cleaning a gun”. How many times has it happened to cops (you know, the ones that are trained enough)?
*Keep fingers off the trigger and outside of the trigger guard whenever handling firearms in a situation where you do not intend to shoot.
Good common sense.
*Store unloaded firearms and ammunition in separate and locked locations.
I don’t generally agree with this.
*Consider use of a lock to make your firearms inoperable while being stored or transported.
*Children and even adults are often curious about firearms, so make sure your firearms are inaccessible to persons who may be visiting your home.
and
*Discuss firearm safety with members of your household and set rules for firearm access and handling.
My dad taught me at a young age to respect firearms, that they could injure or even kill someone if you were not careful and didn’t respect them. I was taught all the safety rules, BUT the guns were kept under my bed in their cases along with the ammo. I had free access to them and in fact I was given the job of cleaning the guns at a fairly young age. I think that the fact that they were not locked away or hidden from me didn’t make me “curious” about them.
Lots of good advice, some questionable, but I really see zero logic in keeping the ammo separately locked away. In fact, it fails on multiple levels.