Though my father was an avid gun collector, he never hunted for food, instead he hunted around our neighborhood for burglars. I am not certain if he ever caught one because there were no displayed trophies in our house.

In 2005 I moved from the violent gun culture of Oakland, CA to a very different kind of gun culture in rural eastern Oregon. In my new home it is legal to own fully automatic machine guns, silencers and other such finely crafted machines. Students with concealed weapons permits carry guns on college campuses and student dorms have gun lockers. Machine gun shoots, routinely advertised in local papers, offer up the exhilarating chance to fire machine guns at exploding targets for ten dollars a clip. Many of the locals hunt for food while others simply hunt for trophies. This latter group is currently holding my interest.