Hunting Lions can be hazardous to your Health!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: Oh my gosh! Don't make me laugh so hard that I start spewing tea all over the place! I can't read this thread anymore because my stomach is going to rip apart from laughing!

A 16" rifle is easier to manuaver than a 30" sword is a small enviro, and a hell of a lot more effective. I remember reading aco**** of Samurai in close quarters such as this and their difficulty in attacking in confined quarters like that.

By the way, sign up and help out the US Military since according to you, we should re-outfit all our Marines doing house to house in Iraq since they would be way more effective with a sword instead of a bullet. Maybe let them change out their rifle for a bow too, no? Crap! We can take down all those insurgents this way and they won't know what hit em! And that is considering you are not using a handgun!!!

Anyway, want to know the outcome of rifles in the woods vs bow and arrows? Go ask your local Native American. I'm sure he can set your record straight, regardless how he outnumbered the white man when the battles were waged! I think Custard is the only idiot to lose to them, and that was purely by his stupid arrogance.

Lets put it this way, one rifles bullet = way more damage than an arrow that peirces straight, especially the way a 5.56 explodes when hitting flesh from a 14.5" barrel (min length for the phenominon to occur) or longer (Why do they even bother making 12" M4's? Might as well have a .22). It is easier to train and fire a rifle. Firing more than one shot is near instant. Someone with a rifle can hide as easily as someone with a bow. Need I go on? Quit watching too many Rambo movies.

-S

Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten! Träum du nur.

the original starting point for this discussion was a setting of hunters with hunting rifles, and that very much is what I refer to. You may assume that a hunting rifle in a house is superior a weapon, but I know it better. Have you ever handled a sword yourself? I have, a Katana. It is not as light as Samurai-movies gives the impression, it requrires quite some strength to move it fast and precise. That'S why I said "gunner and sword fighter of equal strength". A hunting rifles weights how much? I don't know, but I am sure it is more than just one kilogram, that is a mass that needs to be swung. If you hold it ready at your shoulder, you need to move your whole body to aim and to swing it - a sword is faster, believe me, a short sword even more so. And that you assume that narrow space is necessarily an obstacle for a sword only shows that you do not know much about technical sword fighting technique. a Katana primarily is used to hack - not to slice and not to stab. But using it to stab and to slice (not preferred, it wears the sharp side of the blade) is possible, and training should and could focus on that. It is not the preferred scenario, but it is possible to use a Katana in narrow space (although a shorter Wakizashi would be the better choice - but that sword was not meant as a fighting weapon). The blade is led closer to your body then, almost in full body contact, and with focussing on the tip as the lethal part of it, not so much the broad blade. Well, I can't explain that in a few words, i would need to demonstrate it. however, believe me, that such an opponent would be more faster and agile in movement and body control than you with your hunting gun.

The US military is not interested in adopting swords, believe me. Because learnign to use it should be measured in decades. I started with that when I was 12, and that already is considered to be very late. Do you have special units of any kind willing to spend 15 or 20 years in training before they reach combat-ready-status? and why should they, when they have no need for that? House-to-house in Iraq is not done versus Iraqis with swords. You also don't hunt lions in Iraq. Or hunters.

That is what I meant with "educating", August. Going into a store, buying a pistol or rifle, and spend two hours in the woods with somebody explaining to you where the trigger is and where the bullet is coming from is easy. It mujst not affect your character. It does not tech you discipline, self-regulation, control. It may need some practice to hit anything at useful ranges, but you must not spend a liftime with that. That'S why firarms became popular in acnient times, as you poijnt out. It does not need so much training. It is the easier, the cheaper, the less worthful way. Do you think I learned all this stuff to become a fighter? It was a tool for my teacher, to change me. and it has. Going for airpistols are rifle shooting never would have acchieved that - for it wouldn't have demanded so much. For hunting purposes, and even military purposes, you must not change your life, your attitude, your will, your mind. But if you want to make use of bows or swords in a serious meaning, you need to do invest a whole lot of yourself, of your time, of your life. It chnages you, and it will become part of your life. It requires disicipline of an degree that rifle-shooting does not (as long as you do not go to the Olympics, or spoecialised military: snipers or whatever, and here the intention is a fully destructive one). You need to train more, and harder, and more diverse, than you need to lean how to operate a pistol for self-defense. the first year of my sword training was - muscle traning exclusively, five days a week, additonally to meditation and the beginning of Wing Tsun. The first two years of my training with the bow was mental training exclusively - my muscles alone were not and still are not strong enough to use that bow to any useful effect beyond 30m. In short words: pistol shooting and rifle shooting, and sword fighting and archery of the kind I mean simply do not compare. It is art versus industrial mass output (of killing effect, in this case). for the first you need to adopt all your life. For the latter you need to push a button. It's like smoking a cigarette while rushing down the stairs to get the bus, compared to having a "gemütliche" session with your tobacco pipe where you spend ten minutes alone or more just to get the pipe ready - a ritual that you even enjoy.

I already have admitted that the gunner is depending on having the weapon already at ready and fixed on the target. In that scenario, as August describes, the sword cannot win by it's own effort, only when the gun makes a mistake. but when the gun has no target in sight, needs to search in high grass, or a narrow house, the story is a complete different one. And as August says, the individual competence of the fighter with his choosen wepaon is a factor, but I exclusively talked about a competent one.

what it comes down to is this: in open savannah and high gras, with a bunch of sunday hunters having stupid heads under their caps, a competent archer using silence and camouflage very probably will outclass them and kill them from ranges of up to 100m. and if they manage to approach his location where he lies in ambush and the archer also being competent in sword fighting, they again have very bad chances. Tactics and camouflage and stealth are very powerful weapons. Individual competence with a weapon is a key variable, of course.

An Subman, if you ever come with an M16 (do you hunt lions with an M16...?) to me and I have a sword and you step through the door at armslength - I for example could easily doom your weapon to inefficiency by stepping towards you so that you have no more room left to manouveur your M16 - while I can still use my sword to full effect If I emrbace and kiss you, how do you point an M16 at me, then? I also don't believe you that you swing a rifle as quickly by a 90° as I hack or stab with a sword from any position and even backwards when going for you serious and in anger. You would gain in movement speed by using a small pistol, for example. But such a small and agile weapon again is something different.

If the scanrio is different, and comes to military grounds, of course I wouldn't not limit myself to bows and swords, and would use mor emodern weapons as well. Which does not mean that I would rule out my ancient relics in all imaginable situations.