“Hunting is not a sport. A sport is when both sides know it is just a game.”

– Jim Corbett (1875-1955) British hunter, tracker, author of ‘Man-eaters of Kumaon‘

If you want ta start hunting like a pro, listen very carefully….

Here is how it goes down here in Canada. First, you get yourself a hunting license . It is around a hundred bucks (or like any American will say, a Benjamin); you attend a one-day course on hunting regulations and firearms safety and then at the end of the day, you have to pass a written test on everything you learned.

But don’t worry, you’ll pass – the system is rigged to see that you pass. The “Departement du Faune et Parcs” of Quebec needs your membership for its financial survival and the gun manufacturers need your order.

The classroom and the test are a farcical pantomime. It’s like when a company hires its external auditors who sign a contract to audit the very same company that is paying them to audit their books. In the end of the audit, the auditor certifies that the client’s books are up and up and there has been no embezzlement or any other malfeasance during the fiscal year.

Same thing ………… a rigged system, making laws to break laws. 

When I settled in the west there was one thing I learnt very quickly – it is not that the system in the west is less corrupt and more law abiding than in developing nations like India, my country of birth. The law in the west is stretched to bring inside its umbrella of legality all those things that other nations would consider illegal.

One glaring example is the US President, who has been positioned safely ensconced far above the law, by the American legal system. The American Pres cannot be prosecuted for any reason whatsoever, a fact amply proven through a recent Supreme Court order in a series of open and shut cases against Donald Trump that would have sent an ordinary American to jail faster than the speed of light. Trump can commit fraud, embezzle, lie, deceive and cheat – stuff that he has already shown ample propensity for – and it’s all legal.

Likewise, you want to buy a gun in Canada? Just go through a process that is in fact nothing more than a sham and a Canadian hunting licence – a piece of plastic that looks like a debit card – will arrive in the mail within 10 days. It is permanent and you don’t ever have to renew it, unless you turn out to be a schmuck and break the hunting laws down the road.

Next, armed with your hunting permit, you apply for a ‘Firearms Possession Licence’, renewable every five years. A week later another card will arrive, this one with your mugshot on it, that says that henceforth you are permitted to buy, carry and sell your ‘non-restricted’ firearm.

A non-restricted firearm can either be a single shot shotgun or a rifle – bolt action, pump action, breech loading, whatever, but single shot, ie: you have to manually reload after every shot. If you are as young as 12, for you to possess and fire a non-restricted firearm, Canadian law needs just the identity and email ID of your parent or legal guardian.

Then there’s the ‘restricted’ category of firearms – long barreled, heavy caliber handguns and semi-automatic rifles that you can keep on firing one shot at a time, fresh rounds falling into the chamber automatically one after the other every time you pull the trigger, until the magazine runs dry.

Most first-time licence holders don’t get to have a restricted firearm permit off the bat. You have to apply separately for it, with a convincing reason as to why you want to possess one. It’s easy. Sports shooting at a range can fall under the category of ‘convincing reasons’. I got my Glock that way.

There is a third category – ‘prohibited’ firearms. Those are handguns with short barrels, revolvers and pistols that can be easily concealed and are used solely for firing at close range (like killing other humans). Also under ‘prohibited’ are automatic weapons, military assault rifles and firearms that have been modified (like sawn-off shotguns).

I don’t have to tell you why these categories exist. Unlike our neighbors in the south, Canada lets you fool around with guns only for the purposes of hunting. That ‘right to bear arms and protect’ crap that you hear down south of the border is nothing but a pile of horseshit that has turned putrid, with flies buzzing around it.

In Canada, if you are driving with a gun in the car and the cops pull you over for some reason, here are the only ways that they may let you go if you….

  • You have a valid and correct firearms license
  • You are driving to or from a firing range or gun club.
  • You are driving to or from a hunt. And have a valid hunting permit. If you are coming back from a hunt and have your kill on the back of your pickup truck, you have a ranger’s certification (token punched and attached to ear of a valid kill).

Oh yeah, it is very different down south of the border. Let me show you just how different through a real life example…….

Christmas 2014, a doting Nevada dad takes his 8-year old son to a gun show and gets him a cool 9mm Uzi Pro-1W1 assault rifle with a 36-round magazine and a hair trigger. Capable of firing 600 rounds per minute, it is a lethal weapon that is usually carried by members of special forces. That is 10 rounds every second. Try to count to ten in one second and you’ll see how fast that is.

And that is the kid’s Christmas present. 

Not even five minutes have passed since the kid removed the gift wrapper in the parking lot of the show and he is dead, flung five feet by a short burst, accidentally killed by his own little playful fingers.

The kid’s death has turned Daddy dear into a gun control advocate. Lots of good that will do to you now, moronic schmucko.

So now you have your hunting permit and your firearms permit and now you trot over to a gun retailer or outfitter.

Me, I didn’t have to buy my first gun, since I already had one – Dory, my trusty Lapua338 with the Nikon Monarch scope from my days at the SOAS. Dory is an all-in-one – lightweight, accurate at 5000 feet, the 8mm round leaping out of the muzzle at an astonishing mile per second, it can drop a half-ton moose in its tracks with one shot.

Gun owners are never satisfied with just one gun. This is as plain as Pythagoras’ theorem, trust me. You buy your first gun and you’ll get hooked. Soon you’re spending a better part of your savings on guns, rounds of different grains, scopes and accessories. My colleague, Michel, owns no less than six different scopes alone and has turned a large closet in his house into an armory. He has a Sako A7 .338, A Nosler M48 .306, a Mossberg Patriot .306 and has just struck a deal on his brother-in-law’s Ruger18004 Limited Edition.

Another thing – gun owners don’t just own guns, they brag about them – how they acquired them, what a great deal they got, how it was going to go away if they hadn’t bought it right there and then, how they got a whitetail at 500 yards with it and so on.

Me, I just have a gun rack along one wall of my walk-in closet. I too have some beauts and I’ve been carrying on and on about guns and you must be sicka listening. But before I change the topic, let me tell you how I got my Marlin. Last spring, my buddy Simon was going off on a bear hunt and said he had a place open in the package with the outfitters because his bro had dropped out. I had vacation time left.

Bears need a heavier caliber, if you don’t want them to keep coming at you even after you’ve put a round ‘em. You need something that’ll stop them dead in their tracks. I went off to Baron and got myself a Marlin .450 lever action. With bears, you got to go with lever action because with a charging black bear you won’t have the time to work your bolt.

If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll tell you all about my first black bear kill some day. I am a right proper blabber-mouth.

Hold on a moment. There are other very interesting stuff you can go for, besides a rifle or a shotgun. In fact, for some of them, the hunting season is way longer, an advantage given to them because it is harder to get a kill with them, but that’s something I’ll come to later, if you’ll have some patience. 

Those others are bows and arrows and crossbows, but they are close-quarters stuff, accurate only within just 50-60 yards. Besides, the turn-around time (ie : reloading) takes too long and the whitetail may be gone by then. 

Never ever try to hunt black bear with crossbows or bows and arrows (though some folks do). With a maximum range of 60 yards, if you miss (the chances of which are very good), you will have no time to reload. A charging black bear covers 60 yards in three seconds. I mean, we all have to die some day, but being gradually crushed and mauled and mutilated, your skin torn of your back, your spinal chord severed with one twist, isn’t the way you’d like to go, is it?

Or if you’re up on a tree stand and a 500-lb black bear is tearing the bark out of the tree in rage, he might just starve and freeze you to death, if you’re hunting alone and don’t have cellphone coverage there. 

In hunting, there are many interesting ways to die and if you’re a schmuck, chances are that you’ll find one of ’em.

Then there are guns that fall under the category officially known as ‘Black Powder Firearm’. A black powder rifle is nothing but a modern version of the old musket that was in military use in the mid-18th to early 19th centuries, where you stuffed a measure of gunpowder in the barrel and then dropped a steel ball after it, pulled back the hammer over a sliver of flint, cocked it and fired. And then you cleaned the barrel with a long narrow brush and repeated the whole procedure for your next shot, the time lapse between shots around 3-5 minutes.

The white settlers in those days preferred those leather powder pouches to store their black powder. They gave them a sense of supremacy. And that is because in 19th century Mid-West America, the most popular powder pouch material was squaws’ tit, no kidding. Ask the Harold Robbins character, Nevada Smith, if you don’t believe me.

The black powder guns used today are nothing but a sleek fad. You can get one with a Zeiss scope and the powder comes in the form of neat little pellets, so you don’t get your hands dirty. So, instead of having to pour a measured quantity of gunpowder down the muzzle from a powder pouch like Daniel Boone used to do, you just stuff two little pellets down the muzzle and shove the round in. You fit a percussion cap (which is like a tiny explosive charge), under the hammer, cock the hammer and fire.

And spend the rest of the day cleaning your gun.

Shooting with a black powder rifle

The feel of firing a black powder gun isn’t exactly the same as a regular rifle. If you are using those older black powder pellets, the gun will take two seconds to fire, after you’ve pulled the trigger. And when it does, it will look like the whole thing is exploding in your face. Flames will shoot out not only from the barrel but also right in front of your nose where the percussion cap explodes after being hit by the hammer.

So, hold steady after you’ve pulled the trigger and wait for the gun ta fire. Second, immediately after the flames, there’s an awful lot of smoke that the barrel discharges, which will block your view and leave you coughing and spluttering unless you take care ta hold your breath. If you have managed to just injure a whitetail, it’ll be gone before you are able to clearly see once again through the smoke and you won’t know which way it went. 

If you wish me to continue enlightening you, I am trying to imagine the next part, so hang on for Part-5…