Never let up on gun safety

The Big Lake Lions Club Boat and Sports Show begins today and runs through Sunday. The show is being held at the Big Lake Lions recreational facility — the same place where the Big Lake gun show was held a few weeks ago. If you’re not familiar where the recreation center is located, just follow the boat show signs after turning onto the Big Lake cutoff at Mile 52.5, Parks Highway.

I was glad to see Andy Couch’s fishing column back in this past Tuesday’s newspaper. I’ve known Andy for a long time and I enjoy talking with him and occasionally picking his brain about fishing. For those who enjoy fishing in the Valley, I can heartily recommend the information and tips you will see in Andy’s column. I read his articles to learn something about where or when to fish and what lure will increase my chances of hooking a fish.

Now a little bit of shameless self-promotion — if you see the current edition of Hunt Alaska magazine and you notice an article about bison hunting with a black powder cartridge rifle, I’m the guy who shot the bison and wrote the article. So far, I’ve had one person come up to me and ask if I was the guy in the magazine. He liked the story, but he was more impressed with the rifle I used – a Gemmer-style replica of an 1874 Sharps rifle in the “Big Fifty” caliber of 50-90 referenced in the history of the professional buffalo hunters.

The rifle was built by the Shiloh Sharps firearms company back in the mid-1980s. The caliber was originally developed for professional bison hunters back in the 1870-1880 period as a longer range, heavy bullet cartridge better suited to killing the huge one-ton bison at ranges as far as 400 to 600 yard away.

In the Battle of Adobe Walls in Texas, Billy Dixon used a 50-90 Sharps rifle borrowed from the trading post manager to knock an Indian chief off his horse more than 1,500 yards away. That shot effectively ended the hostilities between the small group of buffalo hunters and the larger group of warring Native Americans.

Those big, slow moving, heavy-for-caliber bullets in the old black powder cartridges have tremendous penetration and killing power all out of proportion to the “paper ballistics” used to rate our modern cartridges in their ability to down large animals. The load I used held a 550-grain hard cast lead bullet propelled by 110-grains equivalent of Pyrodex black powder substitute. That load is capable of killing any animal in North America and most, if not all, animals in Africa.

While we’re talking guns, I want to mention some safety issues making the news recently. About a week ago, two adult men were shot while one of them was handling a handgun. The bullet struck the person holding the gun, passed through him and struck the other adult present.

This past weekend, a 16-year-old shot himself with a handgun while attending a teenage drinking party. Both of these events happened in the Soldotna area.

I just finished teaching a muzzleloading hunter education class a couple of weeks ago and a gun safety session for a Boy Scout turkey shoot last Friday. In both of these teaching sessions, we emphasized three critical points related to these incidents in Soldotna. First, never point the muzzle of a firearm at anything you don’t intend to shoot — never ever! Second, keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are lined up and you are ready to fire the shot. And third, treat every gun as if it was loaded. Another gun safety rule we present but don’t hammer quite as hard as the three mentioned above is to never mix alcohol and drugs with handling or shooting firearms.

Obviously, between the two incidents, all four of the mentioned safety rules were violated. If I knew all the details of the two incidents, I could probably cite a few more gun safety rules these people broke.

Luckily, nobody was killed, at least as far as I know. The 16-year-old was being charged with misconduct involving a firearm and underage drinking. I haven’t heard if any charges were filed in the two-adult shooting, but one of the adults was hospitalized for his injuries.

If you’re going to own and handle firearms, take the time to learn how to do so safely. You just might live a little longer if you do!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.