As I sat on my "High Chair" stand in the piney woods last weekend, not seeing any deer but enjoying the morning, I got to wondering if I shouldn't just go back to the camp and do some shooting with the .58 Hawken that was sitting in the gun box in my truck.

That got me to thinking about hunting vs. target shooting, and how much I enjoy both. I hunt every weekend during our 12 week season - morning and evening, but sometimes all day. Sometimes I quit the stand around ten in the morning, return to camp, and either take a nap or do a little target shooting before the evening hunt.

But I do a lot of shooting from March through May when the weather is nice and I can piddle around on the range for hours. I really look forward to those sessions and think I may enjoy them every bit as much as hunting. One thing for sure, they are a lot less hassle free and you don't have to get up at 0hDarkHundred and bundle up.

I would probably give hunting a tiny bit of and edge on the enjoyment factor, but not by much. What say you? On a scale of 10, how would you rate hunting vs. target shooting?

What is "bundling up" in LA? A long sleeve T-shirt? Long pants instead of shorts?

I do enjoy shooting but it's no where close to the enjoyment I get out of hunting-even if I do not kill anything. Sadly, I get to do very little of either nowadays but when I do, all the worries melt away!

both pis s me off at times.

Hunting would be my favorite as my rifles already dialed in and im just walking around the the animal i have a tag for.

What the heck are you talking about TN? Last weekend was COLD. I wore my polypropylene underware under my pants and shirt, and a heavy fleece jacket and overpants. I also have to keep a fleece blanket in each box stand that I can wrap myself in if I get chilled.

Well because of you guys I am just getting started blowing smoke! I have always enjoyed each and every hunt this yr.
I found punching holes in paper was far more fun than I anticipated but it does not compare to the hunt.

So I am about 80/20......80% hunt but I do 110% preparation towards that hunt and that is what makes it fun..........I have never done anything half-c o c ked and have jumped in full force now with this inline that I look forward to taking time to shoot my dad's custom hawkens.......

JW

I thought you cajuns were real men lol.we get snow here at just under 4000 ft elevation and wind that flat out howls, which brings temps down dramatically and i have never worn long underwear.we sit under any bush or tree we can find to glass also and not in box with a fleece blanket..man up SEMIdeserts, especially high deserts get down right cold.now to answer your question,as i get older it gets a lot harder to hump these steep mountains here in cali,but i must say i still enjoy the hunt more than range sessions.

This might sound terrible but I enjoy target shooting far more then hunting. Even when I was a kid, I was antsy. My Dad used to have fits with me when he was teaching me to hunt deer because I could not be still. I'd move my feet, swivel my head at every sound, and loved to point that old shotgun at anything that I took a fancy to. But because of my father, I learned to sit still, and spend hours in the woods without moving. And I learned to stalk deer, and most of all track deer. So hunting when I was younger was fun. Now they've shot off the deer herd. At least when there were a lot of deer, I could SEE DEER. That made it fun. Now you sit for days, and watch the same squirrel or set of leaves that look like a deer. I guess with age comes boredom. This year I sat there and replayed in my mind every deer I ever shot. Man that was a lot of deer. But I actually think I remembered them all. That is the first sign of boredom.

I like to shoot. I like the noise, and the smoke. I like to stack bullet on bullet. It makes me smile. When I hunt I seldom if ever get to shoot. Also killing something just does not thrill me like it used to. In fact it kind of bothers me after the deed because I look at what I have taken the life of and ask myself.. did you really need to do that? This might sound silly but after the last deer I shot, I felt terribly guilty for doing that. But I do like venison, and the one way to get it is to hunt. But if I had to hang one up.. the hunting clothes would be washed and hung in the back closet in a heart beat.

BowHunting..BLKPwdr....9
Range Time...1
Rifle Hunting...0

Now that I have reached the age of 70, I enjoy range time more than hunting. Love to shoot my ML and keep trying to shoot tighter groups and longer ranges each time out. Our ML season just ended yesterday and even tho I had an opportunity for a nice buck I declined to shoot. Just watched him for about 20 minutes browse in front of me, then he left. I thought to myself how much fun it was to just observe and not shoot.

I enjoy target shooting more then hunting.