So I’m thinking about purchasing a fire arm. Both a hunting rifle (?) and a handgun. I’m currently living in Maine but will possibly be relocating within a year. I currently have absolutely NO experience with hunting and/or gun ownership or use.
I now turn to you dopers, to give me the knowledge I need to find/purchase/operate my fire arms safely. I’ve done some pre-preliminary google’ing and from that I gather I could just walk-in to a gun shop and buy a pistol with no permit or anything like that?? I don’t think that could be true, so, what permits do I need, what classes need to be attended or licenses acquired for a handgun in Maine? If I move how do I go about legally moving said firearms and permits and licenses and such to the new state of residence?
Now to hunting…
Being in Maine has shown me that everyone and their mother goes hunting up here and knows how to hunt. It seems you just grow up with it and learn from your family… I’m from Long Island, NY… I have no idea how to hunt what hunt where to hunt… how do I learn? A lot of my friends go hunting very regularly do I just go with them and see what happens? Are there “learn to hunt” courses? All that stuff i said about safety/permits/licenses what have you also applies…
That is 100% true. The only exception is that you have to buy your handgun in Maine or have it shipped from a FFL in one state to a FFL in Maine if you buy it from someone on the Internet.
When you move to a different state it is your responsibility to know the laws of the state you are moving to.
There are hunter safety courses available, although I don’t know whether they are mandatory in Maine or not. My suggestion is if everybody hunts except for you it would behoove you to ask one of them to tell you where to start. Who knows, maybe one of them will take you hunting. The only way to do it is to learn.
A few tips on the handgun side. Hunters will have to chip in on the hunting side, because I only stalk paper & cardboard.
Think about your reasons for getting a handgun. Home defence vs. target shooting vs. competition vs. a carry permit for self defense will each have different implications for your choice.
Take an NRA basic handgun safety class. It will also give you the basics on operation and recognition of the different kinds of handguns.
Find a range near you that lets you rent different kinds of handguns. Try therm all out. There are many styles of handguns, and people can find that one totally doesn’t suit them, and another feels completely natural. Make sure you try at least one Glock, one S&W or Ruger revolver, and at least one 1911. These are extremely popular, and have lots of available accessories. Do not trust gun magazines from the newsstand, they are total whores for advertisers.
The High Road is a very respectable American internet gun board. If you post the very same post in the general forum, I suspect there will be many people falling all over themselves to welcome you with open arms, offer you advice, and even to invite you to their range near you. I have found the level of discourse there to be quite high, kinda like the dope, and the people there to be, for the most part, very reasonable. The few wingnuts are easy to spot in any case.
Please be aware that buying a handgun makes you a shooter to the same extent that buying a violin makes you a musician. They are harder to shoot accurately than portrayed in media. A little bit of training, and a lot of practice, will be the answer; so plan (& budget for ammo) accordingly. Fortunately, I have found that practicing shooting is a lot more fun than practicing golf, so it’s not the chore you might imagine it to be.
Good luck, learn & live the 4 rules of safety, and remember to have fun.
Regarding hunting rifles - Frequently people will steer you towards more gun than you need. I’ve seen bigbox stores try to sell $2500 Weatherby Magnums to guys looking for their first deer rifle. I’ve heard more than one person that should know better say things like “.30-06 is the minimum elk cartridge”. Needlessly over powered guns aren’t much fun to shoot, and if you’re going hunting you want to practice.
Probably should befriend someone that knows about hunting in the area.
Handguns - try them out. If nothing else, at least get your grubby mitts on some in the store to see how they feel. I’ve bought guns that sounded like the coolest thing in the history of pistols, only to discover the palm swell was 3x too big. I personally can’t understand why anyone would shoot some of the more popular handguns since the 1911 is perfect in every way, but other people say the same about their Glocks (or whatever). You won’t know until you try.
As with rifles, don’t get suckered into buying too much gun. Get what’s appropriate for your intended use. Target pistols make poor self defense guns (and vice versa), for instance.
Generally when someone asks me “what kind of handgun should I get?” when they don’t have a long-term plan, they just want a gun, I reply - Get a .357 Magnum Revolver with about a 4" barrel. Ruger or S&W (depending on what you want to spend) and you can practice with the cheaper .38 Special.
No one ever takes my advice though. They always buy a semi-auto that they never shoot after the first month or two.
Practice practice practice. The best gun to buy, in all cases, is the one that you will use. The one that you enjoy shooting and makes you try to find excuses to get to the range on a drizzly Sunday.
No permits just to own the handgun or keep it in your home, but if you want to carry it concealed and loaded on your person in public, then you need to get a concealed pistol permit. http://www.handgunlaw.us
Maybe more of a GD response to this, and a hijack of sorts to boot, but…
… At under, say, 150 yards, I’ve taken several elk with a .270. But if you don’t like to or can’t hunt that close in, then I would say that the best choice is the .30-06. And past 350 yards, you probably want the flatter trajectory that a .300 Win Mag will provide.
I agree that saying the minimum, under all circumstances, in the .30-06 is pushing it. But selecting a cartridge depends on the range you anticipate needing as well as how recoil-adverse you are. Theoretically, with the right placement, you could drop an elk with .22LR. But that’s obviously absurd.
In short: .30-06 isn’t a totally crazy shorthand answer to “What should I use to hunt elk,” since it’s an excellent all-around load for most circumstances.
Prices of ammo have been really high for the last couple years due to increases in the price of metals. With shooting, as with many things, practice is the key to competency. You might want to consider buying a .22 so that you can afford to practice frequently.
I’d like to second the notion of you checking out a .357 revolver. .38 special wadcutter target loads are relatively inexpensive and have very low recoil, making for very pleasant target practice. As you gain experience, you can transition to heavier loads for self-defense or hunting. Autoloaders don’t offer that flexibility. They are set up to function with loads that fall within a particular power range, and ammunition that is outside those parameters requires some tinkering with the gun.
For your first hunting rifle, may I suggest something in the very common .308 Winchester cartridge? It is not a punishing round to fire, it is available pretty much anywhere that carries ammo, and a wide variety of firearms that use it are available. It can also be used to take the most common big game animals in North America. It’s light, maybe, for grizzly bear…but I don’t think you’ll go straight out after one of those.
If you don’t mind possibly having to visit a gun store, Gander Mountain, or Cabela’s for your ammo and you want to display some real retro style and panache, seek out a Savage Model 99 on the used market. These are some really, really cool old rifles. I have one in .300 Savage with the rotary magazine and brass cartridge counter. The minor hassle in buying .300 Savage ammo is more than offset by the tremendous coolness of hunting with such a rifle.
I don’t disagree with any of that. It’s an excellent cartridge that’s been proven effective over a century of use. But … For someone that doesn’t have years of shooting behind them, that maybe is not a big person, or just doesn’t like recoil, starting off with an -06 might discourage practice. I took my first couple of elk with a .257 Roberts. Shot placement is key to a clean kill (I feel I’d be a failure as a hunter if the animal suffers because of me), and practice is key to good shot placement.
If it’s not fun to shoot, you’re not going to practice. Even a Weatherby .30-378 isn’t going to make up for a miss.
But that’s just my opinion. The great thing about message boards is the OP can get multiple opinions to pick and choose from… “from which to pick and choose”, I mean.
Very interesting! My father, a former FBI Agent, taught me three rules of gun safety, which were taught to him at FBI training school back in 1951:
All guns are loaded.
Be sure of your target.
Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to destroy.
Reading Crafter_Man’s post, I thought what could possibly augment these three rules? So I googled Jeff Cooper’s rules and discover “Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.”
A very good rule indeed, but one I have never heard as canon. How long has that been around?
These are sweet rifles. My Dad has one in .250 Savage, which is a little on the light side (and sometimes hard to find), but still big enough for white tail deer. If you get one, I’d go with either the .243 (shoots flatter) or .308 (better for bigger game). Both those rounds are much easier to find than .250 or .300 Savage.
You could go to a hunting shop and ask them where the next hunters safety course will be. I took it when I was 12 years old (I’m now 32) and I still haven’t forgotten the things I learned from that class. It was a GREAT CLASS !! They really teach you some very safe ways to walk with the gun, how to use and clean it, how to point it…basically everything about the gun and how to use (and not use it) it while hunting.
Now… There has been some very good info on here, and I’ve been doing research online, but I must impress on some of you that I have NO. N-O. experience with anything fire-arms related. I know what caliber is from just some general background knowledge… other than that I’m completely and utterly lost. Flat shooters? .30-06, thirty odd six? I’m guessing I think I heard it in a movie? I went to the local gun shop just to poke around… and also plan on going to the shooting range this coming weekend with a police officer buddy of mine.
So keep the great info coming! Are there any online “this is everything to know about guns” tutorial videos or just a general background about pistol design and engineering types of videos my searches have come up nil.
thirty ought six (=.30-06) is a .30 caliber round developed in 1906. You’ll find that names for ammunition get confusing quickly, but in general they’re either named by caliber of the bullet and original designer of the shell (e.g. .243 Winchester, .300 Savage), or caliber in mm x length of shell in mm (e.g. 7.62 x 39.)
A flat shooter means just what it sounds like - the bullet travels in a straight line over a longer period of time. Note that caliber is not always proportional to power. Relatively low powered shells like the .250 Savage will drop faster than The higher powered .243 winchester. Over short distances, it’s not much of an issue, and practice will show you how much you need to elevate the rifle to make up for the drop.
Seconded or thirded or whatever on the hunter’s safety course. Is one available in your area?
Whew, where to start? I’ve been shooting for over 30 years and I don’t consider myself an expert. There is just too much to learn.
If you really have essentially no firearms knowledge, then you could do worse than finding some classes in the area. Even if you don’t want to carry, a safety class of the type required by Maine to carry concealed might be the most affordable and easiest to find. NRA classes can sometimes be expensive but they are worth it. But a buddy that’ll help you is priceless.
If you’re not going to be there long it probably wouldn’t be worth it to join a local shooting club, but look for one wherever you end up.
And let me revise my earlier recommendation. If you’ve never shot before, skip the .357 for now and look at a .22 revolver. Ruger Single Six, for example. You can learn the basics of handgun usage for a fraction of the price and with minimal recoil and noise.
But find out what classes are available near you, start here.
I’ve never been hunting, but I’m experienced with firearms to suggest that using the firearm safely is only half the battle. I can use firearms safely, for example, but have no idea how to actually hunt. I’m guessing there’s more to it than just tramping through the woods until you find a suitable target. You should see some of the hunting catalogues the hourly guys bring to work. The Cabela catalogue is a hard bound high quality book with hundreds and hundreds of pages of hunting gear, of which only a few are dedicated to firearms!
That’s for darn sure. The folks that joke about poor dumb wapiti being gunned down by the most intelligent species on earth, armed with technologically advanced weapon systems that can hit a dollar at a quarter mile, have never tried to find one of the monsters.
I can’t put a specific date on it, but when I first underwent NRA Safety Training as part of a Youth Rifle Team in 1981, there it was.
I don’t know if it was “Col. Cooper’s 4th Rule” at that point, but the “keep the booger hook off the bang switch*” until ready to shoot was drilled into us.
*Thanks, Bobo.
Another thing to think about vis a vis a hangun is what you are going to use it for. A lot of people I know go out and buy handguns for home defense, which is sort of silly. There are far better options for home defense, going from good locks to an alarm to a dog to a safe room to a shotgun to a semiauto carbine. I think a lot of the people that want a handgun for home defense really just want a handgun to play with (which is fine) and use the defense thing to justify it.
Of course, if an intruder is able and willing to take out your dog with drugged steak, cirumvent your alarm system, and breach the door of your safe room, your gun might not be very effective either, so it might be best to hire professionals
