When you are young and first married, you may wonder just what it will take to make that marriage last. Based on my own 40+ years with the same woman, let me give a little advice....

After you've been married a couple of weeks, tell your new wife you need a new rifle to use hunting. Explain that the elk and moose meat you bring home will save more than enough money to pay for the rifle, and the meat is healthier (lower in cholesterol) than beef too.

Buy the biggest magnum you can handle even half-way well. You will get better with the rifle over time, and the odd day spent apart will keep you from wearing too thin on each other's nerves.

Go out to practice with the rifle at least once a week.

Your wife may make the occasional cross remark about your weekends at the range, but if you try, you can pretty much put them to the side and continue on living peacefully with her.

A month or two down the road, trim the barrel back an inch and re-crown.

Start handloading, and develop loads with the slowest powders, highest velocities, and largest muzzle flash you can use without setting fire to the local range. If you ever need to use your gun for home defense of you and your sweetie, the loud boom and bright flash will be very effective in scaring off home-invaders.

At the end of the year, cut another inch from the end of the barrel and re-crown.

Keep up the shooting practice, faithfully, every week.

Hunt, as often as you legally and financially can.

Every year cut another inch from the barrel muzzle, and re-crown.

When the barrel is too short to be practical (after about 6 years) have the gun rebarreled to a bigger (larger powder capacity) cartridge.

About this same time, if you take stock of your marriage, you'll notice your wife no longer seems to make as many snippy comments as she might have once done. And she seems to really like moose-burger lasagna...

If a rebarreling isn't practical, buy a new gun, with a muzzle brake.

Join a better equipped range, one with more private (individually walled and roofed) shooting benches.

Throw away your "sissy" ear muffs. Experience has accustomed you to your rifles, not only as per recoil, but noise-wise too.

Continue shooting, but when you can, shoot twice a week or more.

Again, take time to think about your marriage. You'll note your wife is mellowing as you both age. She will have also become a better cook, and you'll be glad you have hung together over these years.

Cut off your new barrel on the same schedule, once every year, and re-crown.

As the years go by, keep buying new rifles for bigger cartridges, and keep practicing. Dilligence will make both your shooting and your marriage better.

Finally, after about 6 rifles (36 years), you will have gradually lost all your hearing.

But, it doesn't matter now. As you move into the golden years of retirement, you can reflect on many wonderful seasons of shooting and hunting, and several decades of ever more quiet, peaceful companionship from your beloved spouse. You will note that you haven't heard your wife say anything to cause a rift or regret between you two for a long time...not since back before the new 4-bore rifle arrived...the custom one with the 16" barrel....

What did you say...?

Rich

Addendum: True story. I was back in Illinois visiting my parents and sitting in the living room talking with my Father. My Mother is in the kitchen with my wife fixing a meal and trying to talk to my Father at the same time. I notice him reach up to his left ear, and then his right. Yup! He was dialing her down, and she kept raising her voice, and he was dialing her down. She finally came into the living room and told him to dial back up.