Ramworks

Post Veteran’s Day Thoughts

If you are a hunter you likely lay awake nights dreaming of monster bucks. Other times you coerce your family into watching hunting shows of others facing down antlered giants in fields you may never see. We labor over our rifles to make sure they are ready with trips to the range to check zero and practice for that few seconds we may have to take our quarry. We look for that extra edge to help us best the buck. We hope we are ready and we work to have confidence in our rifle.

The other day, after cleaning and zeroing a rifle, the realization struck me that at that very moment there are other Americans – soldiers – quite possibly wondering if their rifles are ready. Wondering if they have practiced enough. Wondering if they are prepared to face the enemy that may remain quite unknown until he is in their sights. And maybe, wondering if anyone cares what they are thinking or feeling

I’ve never been in combat. My military service during the first Gulf War was stateside, so was my rifle. My kinfolk proudly carried rifles battling Shawnee Indians and during the American Civil war. Very likely the same ones they used to hunt with. Other relatives shouldered rifles in Europe and the Pacific. My father used a rifle in Korea. I’ve heard the stories that it’s so hard to get him to tell. I have seen the scars made by the rifles of his enemies. I am proud. Good friends carried their rifles to Vietnam, I’m proud of them too.

Most Americans are far removed from the terror that shook our nation during 9/11 and the terrors our service members face every day. We forget that other Americans may have prowled the forest behind their old home place for the last time, that they will never see the glimmer in their child’s eye when they get that first gun for Christmas or get to take that child on their first hunt. We forget that some Americans will not come home alive or able to do any of those things.

This fall, if you are lucky enough to be crouched under a big oak, rifle in hand, enjoying the freedoms we have in America. Understand you are there because other Americans before you, and quite possibly at the same time are holding your rifle, are ready. They won’t know you. They may not even know anyone who hunts. But make no mistake they are there for you and every other American. For those who would take up their rifle and go but can’t and for those who could but won’t.

My rifle is a symbol of freedom. My rifle reminds me how that freedom was achieved. My rifle keeps me company as I set and watch a laurel covered ridge and serves a constant reminder that liberty and freedom are not free. No matter your political views on guns, hunting, or how we should respond to radical terrorists, there is a group of Americans with rifle in hand that are ready to pay the supreme sacrifice so you can keep on believing any which way you want. Let us pray they and their rifles are ready.