Just to lighten the mood !
The Story of the 2 hunters and the 2 Bears.
The 2 (British) hunters are of different ages and experiences. The older hunter (Mr Hood) is experienced but has poor eyesight, the younger hunter (Mr P O Wales) has good eyesight but isn't an experienced shot.
So the 2 hunters come across 2 two Grizzlies of which one is a full blown adult male (lets call him Bismarck) and a small adolescent (lets call him Prince E).
Now Mr PO Wales manages to get a few shots off at the larger grizzly whilst the big ole bear is concentrating on Mr Hood - who somehow manages to mistake the smaller, less threatening bear, to big ole boy due to ageing eyesight and glasses.
By the time poor old Mr Hood has realised his mistake big ole Bismarck bear has managed to swipe old Mr Hood across the carotids and he promptly exsanguinates and drops to the floor stone dead.
Well poor old Mr PO Wales is somewhat shaken.
He's now on his own.
Facing 2 bears.
This wasn't part of the plan.
Big ole Bismarck turns on Mr PO Wales ,swipes left and right at him, catching right across the face and a few more blows to the torso.The smaller bear (Prince E) is snapping at his heel.
Poor old Mr PO Wales is somewhat stunned!
He's firing off shots left right and centre, furiously reloading shot after shot.
Sometimes he drops a cartridge, sometimes he doesn't cock the weapon properly.
He decides enough is enough and turns to run.
As the young buck tries to fire off again the one of the barrels of his double barrelled shotgun jams so he give up trying to fire on the move and legs it. Seeing as the bears don't follow he keeps track of the two from a distance and calls for help.
At the hospital after a check up it turns out that Mr PO Wales's facial injury wasn't as bad as he first thought, and whilst he had a few deep lacerations they were superficial and non life threatening (though one found in his groin had potential).
Of course an inquest is performed and because the offending Bear Bismarck was later tracked down and killed, the inquest was able (by identifying bullets) to see that Mr PO Wales had indeed managed to get 2 good shots causing Big ole Bismarck to limp and bleed ,and one that shaved a patch of hair off his midriff.
When the investigators went back to the scene they could see that Mr Hood had let of 5 or 6 rounds and hit nothing and that Mr PO Wales after Mr Hood had snuffed it ,had done nothing else but rearrange the foliage over a wide area.
Mr PO Wales statistically had fired off a huge number of rounds it was discovered.
However, most ended up in tree trunks, the soil and in bushes.
Whilst it was acknowledged that he had managed to fire off a lot of cartridges, it was observed that he had only hit ole Bismarck when Bismarck was focused on finishing off poor old Mr Hood. And he had missed some shots due loading error and a barrel jam.
Many years later when this tale was re-examined there were two schools of thought.
One camp thought that Mr PO Wales managed to let off a level of fire that was equal to ole Bismarcks performance because he managed to fire off "X" amount off shells in a short time frame and that Mr PO Wales was yellow and should have faced off that big ole grizzly in the best traditions of self sacrifice.
It was a big, dangerous bear and there were many a picnicker traversing the forest.
The second camp thought that Mr PO Wales didn't actually perform that well in comparison to the Grizzlies. Yes,he had fired many a cartridge, but he had only hit when the bear was busy with Mr Hood and hit nothing but Mother Nature after it.
They didn't think that Mr PO Wales was a particularly experienced hunter (though he showed promise) and had suffered a few jams whilst firing due to loading errors. They also thought that Mr PO Wales was wise to have extricated himself from the situation and to continue to track from a distance.
So the question is who was more effective ?
Mr PO Wales who managed to get a couple of shots that caused Bismarck grizzly a limp and some blood loss?
Or Bismarck grizzly who in the same time period managed to get in enough blows to kill Mr Hood and give Mr PO Wales a bit of a pasting?
Best wishes to all
HMSVF