By Max Prasac
What is the appropriate expletive-laced pronouncement for when the proverbial feces hits the fan? That’s a rhetorical question, no need to answer. But here are a few of my favorites from an extensive list of negative event experiences.
- “Dammit!” This is a good one that covers a lot of negativity from small things like: “Dammit, I left my binoculars in the truck,” to “Dammit, the gangrene has spread to my balls!” or “Dammit, they’re going to have to amputate!” Not so specific, but very universal and versatile in scope.
- “For fuck sake!” Like: “Can’t you gut that deer any faster? It’s time to eat, for fuck sake!”
- “Balls!” This one is most useful in situations like: “Balls, I just missed that buck!”
- “Oh Shit!” This is my favorite, without a doubt. When someone utters this one, you know something bad is about to happen. And on that note, let me introduce you to what I call my “Oh Shit” gun.
This is stainless steel, single-action BFR revolver with a 5½-inch barrel, chambered in an oh shit caliber (you see a pattern here?)–the .500 JRH. In essence it’s a shortened .500 S&W Magnum that’s still able to lob 400-grain bullets at meaningful velocities. I keep it stoked with Buffalo Bore’s flat-nosed copper solid Dangerous Game loads. Nothing but the best for Oh Shit!
And the point of Oh Shit is to address, with extreme counter-violence, oh shit situations in the field. I’ve had a couple of those in my time as a handgun hunter. One was on a game ranch in Texas when a friend was shooting a Watusi (African cattle) to fill a few freezers. These things are supposed to be docile, so we wrongly approached the situation like we were grocery shopping with a handgun.
At the shot the long-horned beast went down. I went in to retrieve the bovine, but when I got within a half-dozen feet of its prostrate form, it stood up and went for me. “Oh, shit!” I muttered just before drawing the soon-to-be-named handgun and dropping the reanimated beastie with two successive shots. And there you have it.
