Wait till the last minute.

[mrbb]

well I live in PA, and well here its rifles, and traditions here seem to be to shoot your rfle the day or two before opening day
I belong to a hunting camp, that is surrounded by a few hundred other hunting camps, some a 100+ yrs old,
and they all do this!
NO one seems to shoot/check zero till the 1-3 days before the season, then its like a war here, , all the deer get a heads up and go into panic mode I think LOL
never understood why , but my thinking here any ways is so many don't live where they can shoot other times of yr, and most only hunt opening day and then go back to where ever they come from.
but all the deer here know whats up if you ask me! at my farm, deer will go nocturnal on the sounds alone, or they used to, now with so heavy poachingm there nocturnal about the time velvet comes off !

and I agree, since I ran a gun store, I cannot tell you how many times I sold every rifle slug gun I had in the store the NIGHT before opening day, with I am possitive no one even test fired to see where it hit
I used to sell aabout 50-100 rifles in the 2-3 days before opening day, and then by the following weeked after it opened end up buying about half of them back, never even fired!
I have installed scopes, just a bore sighted deal and had guy go right out and just hunt never shooting to check zero to!

Its crazy what some folks will do, to par take in opening day
on an even scarier note
I had a LOT of customers tell me they used to shoot at sound in the bushes too!
always scared me to hear that, and I always pointed out that that is SO Dangerous, but it never seemed to even faze them
SO I Always asked them where they hunted so to avoid them places!
having run a gun store and shooting range and giving shooting lessons
I can tell you all some insane things I seen over the yrs, that would maybe make a few guys really think about quiting hunting LOL

[blackbeard]

I wasn't meaning for this to turn into a thread slamming gun hunters, I like to gun hunt, I just like to bowhunt more. Like everything else there are good gun hunters and bad gun hunters.

[mrbb]

I wasn't bashing them either really, I agree 100% there are good and bad of all types out there
and most do try there best to be on the good side

[ghunter]

That wasn't my intent either. I will be out one or two days with a gun and some friends also. But I sighted mine in two weeks ago but that's just me and it is open sights. So I really don't have to worry about a scope being knocked off.