Blood On The Gun

I've said before that I view a gun as just another tool.  At times however, I have trouble explaining away the idea of a gun having "juju".

Last year my wife went hunting with a borrowed, but essentially brand new Kimber 84M.  The gun had never killed an animal.  At the end of her hunt the gun still hadn't killed an animal. This year she had the rifle her grandfather had given her.  That gun has seen numerous animals fall in front of it.  On opening day she got her elk close enough to camp that we brought it back whole.

My father-in-law decided to give his trusty Ruger M77 in .30-06 to his son and get himself a shiny new Ruger No. 1 in 7mm Mag.  With his old gun he had been an elk killer, but it took him years of hunting hard in order to "get blood on the gun".  Now that he has, he's back to where he was before the gun change.

I've been grouse hunting a bit in the last couple of years, but it wasn't until I took my grandfather's .22 revolver up to the mountains that I had grouse literally walk up to me and beg to become dinner.

I realize that the attributed juju is likely just the human tendency to search for and assign meaning to random happenings.  We like to find patterns, even where none truly exist.  Even armed with this knowledge, I still have trouble completely explaining away the idea of juju.  Do you have guns with juju, or the more dreaded gun with none?