Both my wife, who has passed on, and myself grew up on farms, so that description would not bother us.
Also, her power lift chair had a battery backup, good for about one and a half cycles of the lift, so I made sure to always have fresh 9-volt batteries on hand.

Where I grew up in Illinois, 25 miles east of the Mississippi, and 25 miles west of the Illinois, the only hunting in the immediate area was squirrels, rabbits, and coons.   Didn't have water for waterfowl, although occasionally some geese would fly over.   Back then, there were no deer or turkeys in the area, and the locals didn't hunt quail or doves, because there wasn't enough meat on them to make it worth wasting a shotgun shell.   Used a 22 for squirrels, and a rabbit could be worth a shotshell.  My mother used to say that as a child her family lived on squirrel in the fall.
I have been involved with hunter safety classes for 48 years, and in the last 20, we have seen a marked decline in enrollment.   Here on the Illinois river, we still have some dedicated waterfowl hunters, but that has become an expensive sport for equipment and leasing an area.   The big activity is whitetail deer, but again it can be expensive, unless you own land, or have family that owns land, because having to pay an outfitter is ridiculous.   I have heard of some charging $3000.00 for a week of bow hunting.
I don't hear anyone talk about upland game, because they don't have an area to hunt.   There is a little state owned land that can be hunted, but competition is fierce, and there is some state stocked, put and take, pheasant hunting.
I used to enjoy going out into the woods in the fall, and just sit down on a stump, and let the squirrels come to me.

I remember reading years ago that there are two things that a hunter should never have in a camo pattern, a survival lighter/fire source, and your knife, especially in a survival situation.   Safety orange is called that for a reason.

No personal experience, but I have read where people have recommended not to use a shot cartridge to the face, because it will probably result in blindness for the poor "victim", and a law enforcement office might get away with it, but a civilian will be in civil court, where they will learn that they will get to support the now blind "victim" for the rest of their life.

To me, there is nothing like a classic Colt in the hand.

Like I posted earlier, some time ago there was a poster who was testing for use on snakes, and they used aluminum cans for testing, for both penetration and how close they had to get for what they considered a killing pattern.

As I recall, a few years ago someone on this forum reported on testing they had done with the shot shells.  As I recall, they used aluminum cans as targets, and at that time, the Federal crimped shells had more penetration than the CCI plastic cup shells.
Patterns with both were such that they didn't want to have to get close enough to a rattle snake to use them.

Remember story from years ago about man in southern Illinois serving on jury duty, forgot he had his mini with him, stretched, and prosecutor asked him if he thought that thing on his belt buckle was worth carrying, and the judge replied that he had one just like it at home.

I want to say that NAA dropped them because they were plastic, and too many of them ended up breaking because people over tightened the screw.

I agree with Bill, I check almost every day, but don't comment unless I think I have something useful to say.

Anvil, just tell your wife to look at them as shoes, I'll bet that if she is like most women, she has shoes that she hasn't worn in ages, and maybe only worn once, since they were bought to go with that special outfit she bought for a special occasion, but the shoes aren't comfortable.   

I am going to say that the decision is up to you, whatever fits best in your hand.
Some people may chime in about the appearance or how it looks, but myself, I am a function over beauty person, and how it works is what is important.   If I have to use my EDC, I'm not going to worry about what it looks like.

Somewhat similar story, group used to shoot together, and then go eat together, and talk about their carry pieces while eating, when a NAA owner laid his mini on the table and said "Show me yours".   All the others said theirs were out in the truck or the car, they didn't carry all the time.

Article awhile back by former Sheriff Jim Wilson, where he wrote about exposed triggers.   He stated that Tom Threepersons of Oklahoma and El Paso fame and S. D. Myers designed one of the best gunfighting holsters ever, with exposed hammer and trigger, and no more leather than absolutely necessary.   Pattern became very popular, even used by FBI, during the revolver days, but when poorly trained people started to try to holster their striker fired semi-auto, with their finger still on the trigger, bad things happened.   He said that the problem is not with the holster, but poor trigger finger training. 

My thoughts on shooting distance, just how long is your living room, or the hall from your bedroom?   If your living room is 18 feet, like mine, why do I need to worry about being able to hit a playing card at 75 feet, which is wider than the lot my house sits on, and if the target is further than that, I'm not going to try to take it on with any gun with a one- or two-inch barrel.

I don't remember where I learned about NAA.   Back when I was young and dumb, and living in anti-gun Illinois, there had been occasions when I had illegally carried a 1911 in a shoulder rig, but never on a daily basis.   Then when it started to look like the federal courts were going to force Illinois to allow concealed carry, I started to look at carry handguns, wanting something light and easy to conceal, and I started buying and testing auto pistols.   Every one of the small autos I tried out, I got either hammer bite or slide tracks, except for the Colt .380 government model.   Because of these problems, I wondered if carrying was worth it, until my old college roommate pointed out that our age marked us as easy targets, so went back to look some more, looked like it was going to be a Colt Detective Special.
Then I saw an article on the NAA original Ranger in a magazine, had never seen an NAA for real, and looked on GunBroker, to find the Ranger was already out of production, so I bought a 1 1/8-inch convertible, and like some on here say, you can't stop with just one.   Currently carry either a sidewinder in a pocket holster, or a black widow in one of Rick's driving holsters.   

Used to shoot steel years ago.   Steel needs to be hard enough and thick enough that what you are shooting doesn't crater the target, or you will have problems.   Back in the day, when it was called action shooting, my club had two plate racks, and we required only lead bullets, no jackets, and I don't remember the minimum distance that we had to stay back to avoid splash back.   Then some tactca-cool fool decided to try his AR on the plates, cratered them, and the plate racks disappeared.
I think our minimum distance for lead pistol bullets was ten yards.

As someone who has started having major problems with hands and fingers, I would prefer # 1.
Also, since I carry one as a concealed carry, I don't give a darn what it looks like, it is how it works for me that counts, function over style.

I do agree with Rogue partly, maybe twenty years ago I was setting up a Hunter Education class, and taking to a Captain of the Illinois  Conservation Police.   We got to talking about wardens, and training, and he said that the department had become aware of the fact that since they had started requiring a college degree or prior law enforcement experience, the number of officers who were injured on duty had gone up, and finally they had realized that most of the college educated applicants had never been in a fist fight, or played football, so they had to totally revamp the hand to hand component of the academy.

I don't agree with Rogue's assessment completely.   I don't think that it is the duty of an officer to go hand to hand with a drunk or other violent person.   I know that every time I got in a fight, I always got hurt.
I few years ago the Peoria paper carried a story about the first Peoria female patrol officer's retirement.   In the article, she was asked how she had handled bar fights, and she replied that she had only ever been in one bar fight during her career.   In the first week that she was working solo after her training, she got called to a fight in the south end of Peoria.   Said she walked into the bar, and this big ape turned around and flattened her.   She said as she laid there on the floor, and watched him raise his foot to stomp her, she thought "no way" pulled her pistol and shot him.   From then on, when I go into a fight, I yell stop it, and the fight stops, because no  one wanted to get shot.
Somewhat similar occurrence, Jacksonville N.C. 1968, a Marine went AWOL from Force Recon training at Camp Lejune, went into a bar in J'ville, took out the bouncers, city police responded, got thrown out, so they called the MP's.   I was riding with the duty traffic investigator when we heard the radio call for the P's.   In a matter of minutes, the call came that everything was under control.
The MP I was riding with said I have to stop by the sub-station to find out how that little b******d handled that.
Response was that as soon as the AWOL saw their white hats, he broke a beer bottle, and dared them to try to take him.   The little guy said I just reached down, unsnapped the flap on my .45, and told him that I had just been back from Nam for about 72 hours, it's been about 96 hours since I killed somebody, so lay down and put your hands behind your neck, which he did.

i read about the over reactions, and the wrong address cases, but there are sometimes reasons for these over action.
Last Tuesday night, in my small town of 6000, one of our local officers became involved in a fatal shooting.   
I have been told that he had retired from our county force, but started on our city force in January.   He spotted a car that matched the description of a car reported as having been stolen in another nearby city, and started a traffic stop.   The stopped driver came out shooting, had two shots off before the officer was completely out of the squad.   The officer took one in the chest (was wearing his vest) and one through the hand, and now recovering at home   The shooter was described as deceased at the site.   The driver had been booked into the Peoria County jail 32 times, all of them for auto theft or burglary.   Sheriff has been quoted as saying that at least they won't have to book him a 33rd time.
My daughter is a teacher at the local high school, and has the officer's son in one of her classes, and has talked to the son about the incident.

A couple of weeks ago I bought off GunBroker a new Marlin, made by Ruger, 1894 in .357, and I can't believe how stiff the action is.   It is nothing like my old 1950s Marlin 336, and I hope it lightens up with use.   Makes me think I bought the wrong carbine.

I don't know if this is true or not, but as far as the cylinder opening on the wrong side, I read once that Sam Colt was a lefty, and designed his guns for his use, and almost everyone continued in his path, although the cylinder on a S&W turns the wrong direction.   Also read that back when double actions were first being developed in this country, and Colt's double actions were based on the SAA style frame, Winchester was unhappy about Colt getting into the long gun business with the Burgess designs, that Winchester sent a double action revolver, with a swing out cylinder, on the right side, to get Colt's opinion about the design, and Colt quickly dropped out of the long gun business and Winchester never entered the handgun business.

Looking at the title of this thread, the one lesson I learned from my dad was how not to use a pocket knife.   He always had a pocket knife and a pair of pliers in his pocket, and whenever he went into a hog lot, he added a claw hammer to his back pocket, which might be used to prod, tap with the handle, on rare occasions the head would be used.   The hammer got added to the pockets when I was about five, when a Berkshire sow had my ten-year-old brother down, chewing on him.
The problem with my father's knife (usually a single bladed freebie from some farm dealer) was that it got used as everything but a knife.   He used it to scrape dirt off disk blades and plow shears, to pry off can lids, tighten screws, just about everything but to cut with.   It was usually so dull that it would not cut baler twine, and he would ask to use mine if he needed to cut something.

Quote from: top dog on January-09-24 07:01
LHB,
That knife that the DI took away??  It is in his pocket now.

                                                                        Top Dog

Probably not now, since that was in 1966.

Case 6344 Stockman in left front pocket.  Still pissed that DI took one away from be at boot camp.

I remember the first time I ever heard of angel dust back in the 60's, was in Guns Magazine, in which a California police officer shot an attacking druggie five times with 12 gauge slugs.  The druggie then took the empty shotgun from the office and beat him to death with the empty shot gun.   The story said that the five slugs in the chest had destroyed the heart and lungs, but didn't put the man down.

As I may have said before, the world has been warming up and drying out since the end of the last ice age, and will continue to do so until the next ice age starts.   Twelve thousand years ago, Arizona and New Mexico were tall grass prairie, and Illinois was boreal forest, like todays northern Canada.   In that twelve thousand years, gas engines and other man made devices have had little overall effect.

Back when Warthog was posting, he said that he had a friend drill and tap a hole in the bottom of the grip frame to allow the use of a lanyard ring.

Back in the day, they used to warn people that if you found a muzzle loader up in the attic, you should assume that it was loaded.  When it hung over the fireplace, or the door, and was taken down to be replaced with a cartridge gun, it went to the attic still loaded,
They were kept loaded, because when you really need a gun, you need it ready to use, not after taking two minutes to load it.
I know that back in the fifties, a boy I did a little rabbit and coon hunting with, was messing around in his grandmother's attic, and was fooling around with a muzzle loading rifle, and put a ball through the end of the house.

That slide is sure a lot more attractive than the Askins Avenger that I bought back in the early eighties.   In fact, it has been years since I've seen that holster, not sure which box it's in down in the basement.

bearcatter's comment about sun glasses and muffs reminds me of the story I read years ago, about the time law enforcement were starting to switch to 9mm.   Story went that the Colorado Highway Patrol was carrying Pythons, but did all their practice with .38 target ammo, but carried .357 on duty.   The story was that three troopers got into a situation where they needed to use their sidearms.   It was just about dark, when the shooting started.   Two of them fired one shot, the third fired twice, and they were all done shooting.   None of them had ever fired a full bore .357, let alone in near darkness, and they were not prepared for the flash and bang, and their vision was messed up for a while from the flash.
I remember the first time a heard a .357 go off.   Young and macho, we didn't use hearing protection, and when the shot went off, I thought someone had slapped me across both ears.

My father used to say that all he had to do was look at his hands or arms, and it would bruise, while I now get bruises that I don't even know where they came from.   I want to have the lilac bushes in my back yard cut out, because every time I get close to them while mowing, I end up bleeding.

I have a H&R Young American in .22 short.   I'm not sure how it happened, but when I first became aware of this revolver, it was in a toy box or chest in my grandparent's attic,  along with most of a H&R .32 S&W long that I was told had gone through my great grandparent's house fire.  Interesting finds in a toy box.

One of our former posters said that he had a friend who was a jeweler drill and tap a mini for him.