DETROIT — Guns aren't unlike the people in our lives. Who would you trust more: someone you see two or three times a year, or someone proven to be reliable day in and day out?

You can see that relationship illustrated at this time of year at any public shooting range. The people whose guns are a routine part of their lives shoot a lot better than people who let most of a year pass and pick up their guns only a couple of days before the opening of the firearms deer season.

If you're one of the latter, you have time to rectify things. A box of 20 shells for most rifles costs about the same or less than the food you'll eat on the first day of deer camp, and shotgun slugs don't cost much more. So there's no excuse for not running a box through your deer rifle or shotgun before the season opener.

Shooting regularly will give you a lot more confidence in the gun, and confidence translates to better accuracy. And that will mean more dead deer rather than disappearing bucks that give you the whitetail finger.

If you're shooting a rifle, pick one brand of cartridge, get it sighted in and stick with it. I've found that most rifles shoot one or two cartridges more accurately than others, but the difference is usually quite small.

However, shotguns, especially smoothbores, can show as much as a six-inch variation in accuracy at 100 yards with different slugs. So it would be smart to run maybe three types of slugs through the shotgun and stay with whichever works best.

Let's address something that for most men is as painful to discuss as intimate relationships, medical problems involving the reproductive organs or wallpaper selections for a new kitchen. I'm talking, of course, about flinching, and whether you really should be shooting a gun of the caliber you've used for 20 years.

You won't lose any machismo if you admit that you find the recoil of a 7mm magnum or a .30-06 so unpleasant that it affects your accuracy. You will not lose points toward induction into the Men's Hall of Fame if you switch to a .243 or .257 Roberts.

In fact, the increased accuracy you'll achieve by making the switch might get you that 10-point buck that scores 163 and will have all of your friends green with envy. Now that's worth big-time points toward the Hall.