I tie a read bandanna through the trigger guard. It tells me and everyone else that the rifle is loaded. All of my friends get told, you see a bandanna in the trigger guard, that means the rifle is hot. And Hot means hands off. And at the hunting camps we have a STRICT rule that no one picks up another person's rifle without permission. I watched a guys boy pick up our friends Kentucky rifle once without asking, and Dad was on him like flies on you know what. Dad took his boy outside for a few minutes and when they came back in the young man (who looked shaken up) apologized for his indiscretion to the group. He's never touched a rifle sense.
That brings up a good point on gun safety. I was always taught that any firearm I come across is loaded until I can safely prove to myself that it is not. Even then it has to be treated as unloaded. In other words, don't monkey around with them. I know we hear horror stories every day about someone getting shot with someone's firearm. I think a lot of that is poor training.
When I was a kid, (long before hunter safety classes existed) my Dad sat us boys down, showed us the rifles, how they worked, then told us he would beat us into tomorrow if he caught us messing with them. And my father was not one to threaten lightly. And when he took us hunting, he would make us prove that we understood the workings of the rifle. Also if he caught us swinging across anyone, the rifle or shotgun was taken away, and he did not care who heard him yell. But we learned. We learned that the muzzle of that rifle needed to be pointed up, so the good lord could make sure it was unloaded, or down so the devil knew it was not.
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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, a total wreck, screaming Yahoo, with a big smile on your face."
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