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This is a very reasonable question about a very complex joke. The first part, about the duck hunter losing his rifle and walking up to the cat house was the beginning of a very old joke, just a setup for the more hip one to come. It's true to the original joke through the "Who sent you?" part. Then you have to think 1950s-60s hipsterisms. "You send me," "That sends me," etc., meant somethng got the person off, that something was very extremely cool, hip, cutting edge. "In the '40s it was Judy Canova [a very attractive but bizarre comic actress] and Victor Mature [a then very sexy leading man who never really did too much in the way of important movies til later]." "In the '50s..." two of the most hip figures, people this guy might have got off on, were Christine Jorgensen (first sex change operation) and James Dean (you DO know who James Dean was, I'm sure). "In the '60s it was Smith & Wesson." By the 1960s violent activism was the most edgy, hip thing happening and it marked a wild swing away from celebrities to politics, Black Panthers, "The Ballot or the bullet," etc.

So it's a very complex, difficult joke to catch unless one happened to be alive and aware during all 3 decades. It is funny as hell and extremely pointed, though, once it's clarified. Hope this helps.