It really depends, but last year, the only time I put my safety on was the two days I got my does, one at 40yrds and one at 17yrds and closing....of course, the other times I was hunting was with guns that DON' T HAVE SAFETIES[&:]. My Ruger Super Blackhawk, my old marlin 1894, and my .45-70 W&H BC don' t have them, so I CAN' T put them on, but the hammer never goes back until I' m ready to let it drop.

If you can' t ease your safety off slowly enough to make it not click loudly try some of these: wear gloves that leave your thumb and pointer fingertips exposed, so you can grip the safety better and maybe put a couple pieces of electrical tape over the ' handle' so there is no metal to metal click for 3position bolt safeties, take that retainer ball out of the x-block safety (trigger guard), or file down the edges of the ball' s retaining notch so that it doesn' t have to drop so heavily. If none of the above works, and you can' t think of anything else, then, if you find it to be quieter, which it often can be in a bolt gun, just rotate the bolt, I don' t know of any bolt gun that will fire with the safety off even and the trigger depressed when the bolt isn' t locked down, I' ve done this during benchrest shooting a bit, and even the RO' s that saw me doing it never said anything, as they know as well as I do that it' s safe. Just sit with your pointer finger running along the stock, ready to drop into the guard, and your thumb hooked over the top of the bolt handle, time comes, drop the thumb, and drop the deer.