I love the sound of shotguns in the morning - not. Hunting season.

[greyl]

Who else lives in an area relatively free of emergency vehicle sirens, but with the calming effect of the sound of fowl being blown out of the sky every few months?

Has anybody invented a shotgun silencer yet?

edit, pic from last season:

[maine_raptor]

1. Sorry, but no.

I'm here in the Great North Woods of Maine and it's Bambi Season (along with Daffy, Bugs, and just about any other tasty woodland creature).

Silencers are verboten for one very good reason...........poaching. Bad enough you gotta shine a light in their eyes to make them stand still, but the night time sound of a 12 Gage is sure to bring every warden within 3 counties a runnin'.

I'm glad there is no "shotgun silencer", and I'm a hunter myself.

[greyl]

2. That makes plenty of sense.

How about something which would be better called a muffler?

[maine_raptor]

4. Anything that "muffles" the sound would be wrong.

Wardens hunting poachers (night time and out of season jerks) depend on two primary clues; 1) a light at night, and 2) the sound of a gunshot at the wrong time of the year/day.

The first clue is rapidly becoming out-modded with wide availability of commercial night vision scopes and glasses. If you add in some sort of sound deadening device, then poaching becomes easy.

Hunting is a right and privilege. Like any right and privilege there are rules and laws that are followed for the common good.

As a hunter, I agree that the sound of a gunshot early in the morning is disconcerting. But in a way it's like Free Speech; I may not like the sound of what you are saying, but I have to support your right to make that sound.

[greyl]

7. On that, I think I could argue

that it depends on the degree of muffling. If the common good is considered, I can imagine a minimum/maximum decibel level that would please the majority of residents who don't hunt, while not being so quiet as to provide total stealth to a poacher or someone disobeying the season laws.

I don't see the Free Speech connection at all. There are plenty of common good laws on the books that regard sound polution, correct?

[maine_raptor]

9. Some numbers and a thought.

Shotgun blast - between 130 & 150 decibels (depending on the type of gun, muzzle brake, barrel length, etc.).

Thunder/Lightening strike - approx. 120dB.


Yes, there are good laws regarding sound pollution, and there are also good laws regulating hunting. For example; here in Maine, you can't hunt within 300 feet of a dwelling (unless it's your own). And since sound lessens over distance making that zone wider would lessen the impact. Take a look at the hunting regs in your state and see if there is some way that you can post or otherwise keep hunters away from your ears. But please don't interfere with my right to put food on my family. Or the ability of Game Wardens to do their job.

[greyl]

14. Could you make your point about thunder, please?

But please don't interfere with my right to put food on my family.

My OP wasn't some coy attempt to start a discussion about interfering with the right to hunt altogether at all.

[ThomWV]

13. That's NotThe Reason

If you were to try to silence a shotgun its accuracy would fall apart. The silencer would casue additional shot deformation, in addition to that cuased by the choke, and the distorted shot (no longer round) would fly in a disorderly fashion.

[doc03]

21. I love the sound of a shotgun and the smell of nitro in the

morning. Pretend you're watching Apocalypse Now on TV.

[KyndCulture]

3. I feel ya

and send a :hug:

[greyl]

5. Hehe, thanks! :)

When I decided to move here, I never considered hunting season for a second.
It's much more bearable if I'm already awake when it begins, but having a beautiful dream interrupted by images of bursts of bloody feathers isn't so fun. ;)

[B Calm]

6. Sounds like a war outside during deer season...

[H2O Man]

8. The guns start today.

It's been bow season, but I've heard plenty of guns warming up in the past week. Every year, I have people ask permission to hunt on my clearly posted property. I do let two neighbors, because they supply food to the elderly people in this neighborhood.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

10. I am a country boy.

Hell, been living in the country so long, I remember when you could spend all day in the woods and never even think about Lyme Disease. In fact, I don't remember ever getting a tick as a kid.

Of course, hunting and fishing was like breathing out here. It was just something you did. One christmas, my brother got a sweet Fox side-by and I got a nifty Stevens pump. We had arrived. Oh lawdy, I must have used a gallon of oil on that thing, polishing it, before the christmas vaca was over. You could have eaten off of the inside of that barrel, it was so clean.

I hunted a bit, then two things happened: One day, I got my limit of ducks in one flight. 3 ducks. I looked at those ducks and it dawned on me I liked those ducks a lot more when they were alive. That was that. Never hunted small game or birds again.

Next, I went deer hunting the first day. I had staked out a spot in a brush pile. I went to that spot at zero-dark-hundred and set myself. It was cold. No, it was goddamned cold. No, it was goddamned, m*****-f******, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here cold. As the sun came up, I noticed that my lovely secluded spot in a brush pile was now surrounded by people I had never seen before. Lots of people. Some of them who, apparently, barely knew which side of the gun goes bang-bang. 1st day of Deer Season, in NJ, is amateur hour, you see.

I was surrounded. It was a cross between a Nam freefire zone and a circular firing squad. If by some strange turn of fate, a retarded deer with no sense of smell should have happened by, the chances of getting shot were very, very good. I cradled my gun and crawled, on my belly, through the snow, all the way from the trees out into the field.

On the way through the deeply snow-covered field, I came across a guy, dressed head to tow in green woolen plaid(no blaze orange), armed with a 20 guage side by side. Deer hunting. In the exact geographic middle of the field. He started screaming at me about me ruining his hunting spot. In the middle of a snow covered field. With a 20 guage. On a bright and sunny day. In the middle of a freaking field covered with snow, in green woolen plaid and smoking a cigarette.

I got home and decided, I would not hunt again. And so I haven't. To this day.

There are too many fucking idiots out there, and they have guns, and I kinda like my default state of not bleeding an awful lot.

Late on, when I lived on a farm that had the land leased to a hunting club, and I saw the guys shoot a deer after dark when they were quite drunk, that just confirmed my decision.

[maine_raptor]

11. I hear ya,

Like that too up here and it's one of the reason why I'm on the PC this nice sunny Sat morning during hunting season. Damn flatlanders have ruined it! But their money is more than welcome :rofl:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

12. Yup, gotta love the cash.

You gotta get a lunch wagon with a liquor license and a BBQ grill and set up in a good spot. You'll be the richest Mainah in your neck of the woods. ;-)

Oh yeah: go down to the labstah pound and buy a few bushels of bugs. B'ile them up and sell them at premium price to the flatlanders. They'll sell 13 to the dozen.

You'll be able to retire to Provence after one season.

[ThomWV]

15. I ThinkShopping Shold Be Outlawed In Citys

Why not? People get hurt and its awfully noisy when they are out and about. No one has a right to be out shopping, its not in the Bill of Rights, so I think the so called 'right to shop' is bullhsit and undeserved by any citizen.

[Mountainman]

16. Where I live we have to put up no hunting signs to keep the hunters off our property.

Frankly I don't get hunting. I don't understand the desire to shoot wild animals. It made sense when that was the way to get your food, but you don't need to hunt to eat anymore. Now it is a desire to shoot something. I once lived next to a large corn field and had aluminum siding. There were lots of little dents in my siding from "stray" bird shot. Seems the pheasants came too close to my house to get away from the hunters and they got shot anyway. Also what's with all the road signs that have been blasted with shot guns and paint balls? We have guys here who bring 22 rifles and blast the squirrels away. The don't eat them, they just like to shoot them. It's called squirrel hunting? Why?

I especially don't like the kind of hunting were you pay someone in an enclosed field to chase animals to you so you can blast them away.

Also why are there hunting seasons? Why is it ok to shoot a deer some weeks and not others? Driving around the mountains where I live I see lots of bucks and does. They are magnificent. I feel bad when I think of someone blasting them away. My dad was a hunter. He would take me along and I would not shoot anything. He made me clean the rabbits he killed to try and make a man out of me. I hated it and he would get pissed when I would not eat the pheasants and rabbits he killed.

I remember the idea from the Bible were God gives man dominion over the animals. I think that is a fucked up concept. The animals have as much right to live as we do I think. Yes I'm one of those fucked up vegetarian animal lovers.

OK hunters flame away.

[MadHound]

17. LOL, I hear you

I live out in rural Mid Missouri, and out here it isn't fowl being shot out of the sky, it's deer. We're right in the middle of deer season, and have had random gunfire for the past three weeks, one week of gun tune up, and two weeks of hunting. All in all though, I think that it's worth it, the other forty nine weeks each year all I hear are the glorious sounds of nature:shrug:

[greyl]

19. lol, flying deer? :)

And yes, it is totally worth it. I love it here, but just wanted to have a chat over coffee about the occasional nuisance. :)

[MadHound]

20. My biggest beef is idiots with ATVs

Those little four wheeled buggers. My neighbor has set up a little track right on the edge of my property and delights in getting out there and roaring around at some point most weekends(including at eleven at night). He also likes to take them out and race them up and down the road, and tearing up the road doing 360s, etc. The rest of us neighbors are currently getting together to do something to stop his happy ass from this shit, so hopefully we'll have quiet again.

[blindpig]

23. I feel ya

Same here, though they haven't been at it lately. No problem with regulated hunting or firearms but how the hell can one appreciate the wood roaring about on those damn things? They really screw up the trails too.

My kingdom for a brace of claymores.

[radfringe]

18. AAARRRRGGG

we have a knuckledragger next door -- shotguns in the morning -- arrrrggghhh

last week there was a flock of turkeys in his backyard - freaking idiot opens his backdoor and fires off a couple of rounds

didn't hit a turkey, but almost hit his propane tanks. saw a poof of dirt just in front of the tanks when he fired the 2nd time

[brook]

22. Ha!

I will be feeding wild turkeys in my yard - and across the street, in the bay, hunters are shooting brants. This is a national estuary, flyway, bird sanctuary. In about six weeks we'll have our annual Bird Festival. The disconnect is 'disconcerting'.

[undeterred]

24. Gun/deer season opens today in Wisconsin for 9 days

Usually about 15 people get killed, I don't know how many animals. I live in the city so I just read about it. Huge herd this year, they say.

[DenaliDemocrat]

25. Hmmmmm

Our ranch is surrounds one little 160 quarter acre section that my dad should have bought years ago...but never did.


That little 160 acre piece of property has been a pain in the ass for years on end. Seems like it keeps getting turned over to all of these "city folks" who don't realize that

1) airplanes fly the crops early in the morning (the wind is usually calmer)
2) we run tractors at night (the alfalfa is at a better moisture content to cut then)
3) your six or seven dogs aren't welcome on OUR place. They chase the livestock and are a nuissance. Leagally we could have shot them, but we like dogs and are trying to be a good neighbor. You try too please.
4) Your cats are even less welcome than the dogs. They are killers. We like our pheasants, magpies, and swallows around here. Keep your damned cat inside or if you can't do that don't keep a damned cat at all.
5) Cows stink
6) Pigs stink even worse
7) We like to hunt, we like hunters, it is something we have done for years and we have friends who like to do it as well. Sorry you don't like it. We respect your opinion and YOUR land. Please do the same for same ours. Honking your horn to chase the deer out of OUR fields during hunting season is unacceptable.
8) I am glad you like our horses. No, you can't pet them, ride them, or have them pull your kid on the sled. This is not a freaking petting zoo for the love of God. We use these animals to help raise the livestock we sell to feed our family. It is our business. Could I go into Costco and ask to take their floor sweeper for a ride?
9)Leave the damned gates like you found them! If you need to come on our side for something, go ahead, but we have been doing this a lot longer than you, and we are pretty sure if we leave a gate down, there is a REASON. If we leave a gate up, there is a REASON. NO! You don't need to know the REASON. Just leave stuff alone.
10) The country is a great place to live, raise animals, and raise kids. WE did not ask you to come here, YOU chose to come here to live by US. We must be doing something right because you liked it here well enough to come on out. Now that you are here, be a good neighbor and quit trying to have us change the way we have done things for years. If it was THAT good where you came from, why are you here?