Getting hit on the head

[Barry]

First, an unsolicited consumer testimonial and thanks to our resident know-it-all, allodwick.

This is a page from his web site on the topic of getting hit in the head:
http://www.warfarinfo.com/head-injury.htm

Friend of mine's father was on Warfarin and died when he accidentally hit the back of his head on a wall in a restaurant.

Here's my story...
I live in the Comstock region of Nevada on an old mining claim, am constantly having to chase trespassers off, and have had more than one trespasser threaten to kick my a__, one threatened to kill me. So here's my post-op drill for dealing with trespassers:

I go out with a holstered loaded handgun and approach to within about 50 yards of the trespasser. First thing I do is announce the rules:

"I'm on medications that make it so you can kill me by hitting me. So if I think you're going to hit me, I will shoot you. Sorry, but I don't know anything about you and I've been threatened. You need to keep your distance and you need to get off this property."

Only after those ground rules are set do I deal with the person. Usually they give me some lame excuse for being there and then leave.

Never mess with a coward with a gun.

 

[Guest]

I am truly an expert. I know more and more about less and less. One day I may reach the ultimate and everything about nothing.

You could quote the Quaker who found a burglar in his house. "Friend, I would not harm thee for the world, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot."

 

[Barry]

"Friend, I would not harm thee for the world, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot."

I like that!

A somewhat rednecky fundamentalist Christian friend of mine is always armed, and contends that, "Sure, it says 'Thou shalt not kill.', but there's nothin' in there that says you can't blow a few chunks outta them."

[Brief blurb on firearms: Firearms in isolated rural areas where I live are a much different deal than firearms in the city. Most folks have firearms, and most folks are handy with them - and safe with them.]

 

[Barry]

...dagnabit if I didn't hit that coyote on a run, right on the ass with a great shot!

Oh, fine. Don't you know nobody likes a braggart?

My dog takes after her master, a bit of a coward but puts up a good front. And she knows what firearms are about, on a few occasions she's showed amazing bravery - if and only if she sees me backing her up with a gun.

Now, my rules of engagement with the coyotes is that I get to shoot them if they're within range of my home (they like to eat my cats, and without a cat I've got mice and desert rats, and with mice and desert rats I've got rattlesnakes), but no fair going out into the desert to hunt them (they're magnificant animals, and the desert just wouldn't be the same without their singing).

So one day here's my dog just raising an amazing fuss and I look outside to see her confronting an exceptionally large coyote on a rise about 20 feet from her looking down on her with a, "What are you doing? Don't you know that I kill things for a living?" look on his face. I step outside with a rifle, coyote takes off but stops about 75 yards away, turns, and give me a 3/4 profile, easy shot. Which I then missed!

Thankfully, my dog keeps secrets and hasn't told any of my friends.

Another time there was a bear (a bear in the desert? Nope, I don't get it either) trying to get into the shed we store trash in between dump runs. I run outside with a shotgun butt-naked and start cranking rounds off in the air to scare it off. This was in August. Had it been winter with snow on the ground I'd probably have a bear-skin rug. Let's hear it for community standards: The neighbor who witnessed me running around naked blasting away at the sky with a shotgun didn't see the bear, thought I was just crazy drunk, did think it was a bit odd but no big deal.

Most typically, though, I'm picking off ground squirrels with a .22 (they'll burrow under the foundation of your home, and they carry bubonic plague) and occasionally a cottontail munching in my garden finds itself being munched by me for dinner. I leave the jackrabbits alone because they stay out in the desert and I've found they're no good to eat.

A few years ago there was a mountain lion (!) that began hanging out in the area, made me pretty paranoid because they like to eat dogs and occasionally will eat people (we look like slow-running venison to them). But they're protected. I suspect that one of my neighbors shot it and appropriately kept his mouth shut about it.

I'm not really much into firearms for self-defense. Concealed-weapons permits are exceptionally easy to get here, but I don't have one - and you don't even need a permit in Nevada to carry a loaded handgun concealed in your car (but not on your person): Some people shouldn't be carrying a handgun all the time, and I'm one of them.

 

[Barry]

I'm in the Northern Nevada desert, east of Reno.

Escaped here from the People's Republic of Kalifornistan about 15 years ago. Now, this was 15 years ago, but open carry was OK in California back then. Didn't see it very often, but saw it occasionally in small rural towns. I think the larger cities had civic ordinances against it. Whether open carry in a store was OK was entirely up to the store in the absence of a civic ordinance prohibiting open carry. Don't know how it works now, times have changed in California and not for the better.

Here's a fairly astonishing example:

When I was in high school I was on the school rifle team, and spent an hour a day at the school range practicing. But you weren't allowed to shoot your own weapon, and I like pistol shooting. So I'd take my .22 target pistol to school with me each day in a shoe box and put it in my locker. Wasn't a secret, nobody cared. After school I'd hitch-hike to a private range a few miles from school to practice pistol shooting. One day a cop stops because I'd stepped off the curb hitch-hiking, which is illegal. He asks me what's in the shoe box. I tell him, he checks it out, commends me on my fine taste in firearms, returns it to me and tells me to stay up on the curb when hitch-hiking.

This was in c. 1964-66 in a little town you may have heard of - Los Angeles.

I doubt that they have any on-campus rifle ranges in California high-schools anymore, and a teenager bringing pistol to high school or carrying one around in a shoe box now would probably result in the SWAT Team being called out. And I think it's illegal for minors to possess handguns now.

 

[Barry]

My congratulations on your escape!

Be careful if you go back to visit. My understanding is that they do body-cavity searches at the borders now to make sure you're not trying to smuggle in cigarettes.

LA was paradise when I was a kid back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, complete pesthole now. I still like San Francisco, though, and rural Central and Northern California is like being in an entirely different, and much nicer, state.

You'll like this one if you went to CSUN. I grew up on Nordhoff Blvd. When I was a little boy, if a car went by it wasn't unreasonable to go out to see who it might be.

 

[lance]

Oh, fine. Don't you know nobody likes a braggart?

My dog takes after her master, a bit of a coward but puts up a good front. And she knows what firearms are about, on a few occasions she's showed amazing bravery - if and only if she sees me backing her up with a gun.

Now, my rules of engagement with the coyotes is that I get to shoot them if they're within range of my home (they like to eat my cats, and without a cat I've got mice and desert rats, and with mice and desert rats I've got rattlesnakes), but no fair going out into the desert to hunt them (they're magnificant animals, and the desert just wouldn't be the same without their singing).

So one day here's my dog just raising an amazing fuss and I look outside to see her confronting an exceptionally large coyote on a rise about 20 feet from her looking down on her with a, "What are you doing? Don't you know that I kill things for a living?" look on his face. I step outside with a rifle, coyote takes off but stops about 75 yards away, turns, and give me a 3/4 profile, easy shot. Which I then missed!

Thankfully, my dog keeps secrets and hasn't told any of my friends.

Another time there was a bear (a bear in the desert? Nope, I don't get it either) trying to get into the shed we store trash in between dump runs. I run outside with a shotgun butt-naked and start cranking rounds off in the air to scare it off. This was in August. Had it been winter with snow on the ground I'd probably have a bear-skin rug. Let's hear it for community standards: The neighbor who witnessed me running around naked blasting away at the sky with a shotgun didn't see the bear, thought I was just crazy drunk, did think it was a bit odd but no big deal.

Most typically, though, I'm picking off ground squirrels with a .22 (they'll burrow under the foundation of your home, and they carry bubonic plague) and occasionally a cottontail munching in my garden finds itself being munched by me for dinner. I leave the jackrabbits alone because they stay out in the desert and I've found they're no good to eat.

A few years ago there was a mountain lion (!) that began hanging out in the area, made me pretty paranoid because they like to eat dogs and occasionally will eat people (we look like slow-running venison to them). But they're protected. I suspect that one of my neighbors shot it and appropriately kept his mouth shut about it.

I'm not really much into firearms for self-defense. Concealed-weapons permits are exceptionally easy to get here, but I don't have one - and you don't even need a permit in Nevada to carry a loaded handgun concealed in your car (but not on your person): Some people shouldn't be carrying a handgun all the time, and I'm one of them.

Seems there is a marketing opportunity in your area for Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs. They were developed in their native Africa for protecting the farm steads from predation by the cats (lions and leopards), they work in a pack and put the run on anything in their territory and bring it to bay. They don't kill or attack and are agile enough to escape injury to themselves. The slow ones were eliminated from the gene pool early on.

They are also used for moving big game (elephant) from one location to another in Kruger National Park. Every park warden has at least one. Occasionally the mountain lions are reparted to have attacked humans when out hiking in the wild places. Too bad they didn't have a Ridge or two with them to run the cat off and save the mountain lion from being killed.

Cheers.

 

[Barry]

Seems there is a marketing opportunity in your area for Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs...

Most popular breed around here is Rottweilers.

Rhodesians are great dogs, although my favorite breed is "free to a good home".

Dog I have now is some sort of mongrelized smallish sheepherding dog, probably 40 pounds, has very strong protective and territorial instincts and I've learned to be careful about saying "Get 'em!" because she actually will.

My previous dog was a mongrelized Laborador Retriever who - I kid you not - on more than one occasion while sleeping at the threshold of the front door would open one eye to see who the complete stranger was who was stepping over him to come into the house and then go back to sleep. He slept through the bear incident! BTW, the vet thought he had Rhodesian in him, 'cause he had the ridgeback. He was the best dog that has ever lived - and also the worst watch-dog that has ever lived.