1on1: Game hunter, team owner Richard Childress (cont'd)

Q: Do you collect some guns just for show?

Childress: I'm a gun collector and have been for several years. I've got a nice collection of guns -- old antiques, some really neat stuff. I've had a lot of custom guns built. I probably hunt with one rifle. The rest of 'em I just like to go shoot at the range. I may pick up two or three different guns and say, 'I'm gonna shoot these today.' That's what I like to do.

“

If we lose our Second Amendment, we lose our rights to bear arms and protect our families. If we're not able to own our own guns, the next thing that will happen is that we'll lose our freedom. We can't allow that to happen in our country.

”

-- RICHARD CHILDRESS

Q: How often do you do that?

Childress: If I get to do it once a month, I'm lucky. I'm just so busy in the business. The racing world keeps us pretty busy. But now with the ranches I have in Montana, I have some guns there and every time I go there I'm able to do some shooting.

Q: How big are those ranches?

Childress: One's [more than] 20,000 acres and the other is about 800.

Q: What do you hunt there?

Childress: Birds. We've got bird-hunting permits. Mule deer. And some elk.

Q: So do you have a favorite gun?

Childress: I have a 300-ultra mag that is my favorite choice for hunting. And I do my big-game hunting -- elephants and buffalo and all that stuff -- with a 416. Then I've got my trusty 12-gauges that I use for duck hunting and turkey hunting and stuff like that.

Q: Do you have a favorite gun in your collection that's just for show?

Childress: Probably one of my best is a shotgun that was serial No. 001 that was made for Col. Pancost who was Buffalo Bill's manager. He was one of the riders in the Buffalo Bill show and it was given to him. ... That's probably my favorite collectible gun.

Q: Do you have a favorite hunting story?

Childress: I enjoy doing conservation work and I enjoy working with the youth. I've had so many great adventures in the outdoors that it's hard to pick one single hunting story that stands out. I've been from to Kyrgyzstan to Mongolia to Russia to New Zealand. I've been to Africa probably nine times now, and I'm going back in 2010. Most of these hunts you have to book out three or four years in advance, two or three years at least on the real good ones, because of the permits that you have to have and because they only take so many people.

Q: So when someone's giving you a hard time about being in Mongolia while a race is going on, they just don't understand, do they?

Childress: And if the race schedule changes, you've just got to go hunting. I used to never leave [the races] to go hunting, but in '85 or '86 I went on my first big-game hunt up in British Columbia -- and it was quite an adventure. I got hooked on it then. I've been able to get North American Grand Slam. I've been able to get the Big Five and the Dangerous Seven in Africa. The 29 North American animals.

Q: For us hunting novices, what makes up the Dangerous Seven in Africa?

Childress: Lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, rhino, hippo and crocodile.

Q: Which of those was the hardest for you to get?

Childress: Probably the lion -- because of the caliber of the lion I wanted to get. I probably could have shot a lion the first time out, but I went back five times before I picked out the one I wanted.

Q: What were you looking for in your trophy lion?

Childress: A big, black-maned lion. An old, old one. I looked at a lot of lions over the time before I found the one I really wanted.

Q: What do you enjoy so much about hunting?

Childress: Just being outdoors and getting away and being yourself. I've got two grandsons who love the outdoors. I love being with them and watching them. They've been hunting since they were 7 or 8 years old. As long as you teach them safety, they're fine. Those two young men know so much about safety now that they can teach grown men about it. You need to be well taught about how to handle guns and respect guns.

If we don't protect our rights to have guns, the only ones who have 'em will be the outlaws. And we can't have that. That's one of the key things about the NRA.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.