With Valentines day just around the corner love is going to be in the air. For some of us this is a welcome inclusion in our lives and for some of us we use every protection available to keep us away from us. For those of you with significant others- what was it that attracted you to them in the first place? Was it their truck? Was it their eyes? What it how they talked or moved? Or did they smell delicious? These are all things that are completely different for every person. Some of us ladies swoon over a guy that smells like 2 stroke exhaust whereas that smell would my mother would gag. Maybe muscles are your thing or maybe it's the salt and pepper hair that makes a man sexy to you. When you find that person that makes your heart skip a beat, has cost you a smashed mirror on your truck, dent in your back bumper and more bruises than you can count from watching them instead of where you were going- keep them! That is how you shop for firearms. It's exactly the same theory. I think I need to take home every firearm with a sexy grey laminated stock. But, like I have learned not to bring home a guy just because he smells like he just got off a skidoo, I also cannot bring home every pretty grey firearm that comes into the store. I guess technically I can but I keep telling myself I don't need to, just don't ask how many have made it there because the number isn't 0. But maybe to someone else those aren't as alluring as they are to me. A guy with a six pack (unless it's the Budweiser version) is a "nah, you keep it" to me, just like my view on a firearm with a synthetic stock. We even had a make and model that I once seriously asked another staff if he got it from the dollar store, and it's now a top seller. I watch people drool over things I don't like every single day and say how much they love them. Starting my truck when it's cold is the most loving thing I can think of but maybe others want gifts of flowers or chocolates. That goes for bolt action vs. lever action vs. semi-automatic. For me a rifle is a semi-automatic and a shot gun is a pump. I respect all of the other actions but they are just not for me. It's about what they can do, what you want them to be used for and what makes you not want to put them back on the shelf for someone else to take home. They have to be useful for the person who is buying them, but to another person those features are irrelevant and not desirable at all. Feel is also vitally important. It is human nature to like what feels good. A firearm that I like versus what a 6'+ man likes is completely different. When I hold a Weatherby Vanguard Camilla I think it is the most heavenly gift in the firearm world to women but watch a larger framed man hold it and it's just comical. As much as the industry tries to produce a one size fits all version- this simply isn't reality. When something fits- you want to use it again. Maybe at first you don't know the difference but when the day comes and you get a chance to try something that does- you know, trust me you know, and then that's all you want. That's why we sell so many Camilla's- Weatherby knows what a woman wants! True love is a balance between what it can do and how it makes you feel. It's up to you where that scale balances out. In both firearms and love you must make a choice. One option has more benefits, and another has possibly a higher/lower trade in value. There is a saying from my childhood that ends with a phrase about a "baby carriage" and with all this love in the air I caution every hunter out there of the unspoken 18-year curse: what happens in February is born in deer season. You just can't disobey the law that we don't have babies in deer season. So love as many people and firearms as you want but stay safe this month my hunting friends.