The Indoorsman

A while back the wife wanted a good, fancy exercise machine and she settled pretty quickly on a Bowflex Treadclimber. Since we save time folding clothes by draping them on all the derelict exercise equipment in the house, I wasn't so easy to sell on the idea but the more I said "whatever" the more bells and whistles she "needed" on the Treadclimber. Eventually she decided that we could probably manage to scrape by with the super deluxe platinum model with night vision, GPS, OnStar, artificial intelligence and I don't know what all.

Trying to interject some reason , I told her that if she got the top of the line model the girl on the Treadclimber commercial would personally deliver it to the house and spend all day helping me set it up. If you've seen the commercial you can follow my logic easily. You'd think that would cause a de-escalation in the spec sheet but no. She was locked on and tracking. Before I knew it, a truck pulled up and dropped off the B-2 Spirit Bomber of Treadclimbers. Two guys, I think their names were Cletus and Alton, left it in the living room. The girl from the commercial never showed. I got it put together by myself and backed it into a corner in the dining room for its maiden voyage when the wife got home.

Danged if she doesn't pull out something called "instructions" that tells how to make it do all the stuff it does. I just want to know how to keep it from killing me while I am doing whatever it is that I am supposed to do on it but this thing has all sorts of computerized trails and routes and workouts and stuff in its memory. If you tell it you want to make believe you are crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, it will make believe you are going up one side, walking the whole length and going down the other. The LCD screen that tells you your speed, heart rate, how far you've traveled and all that will even tell you when to look to the left or right for landmarks. It told her to look to the left to see Alcatraz and sure enough, the gun safe is right there across the room. That's pretty close for a machine with no eyes.

So this thing tells you how fast you are walking, how many calories you are burning and how many flights of stairs you've climbed when you are done. It even remembers who's who so it doesn't make me cross the Golden Gate Bridge when all I want to do is go for a walk in the swamp. She comes down off the Golden Gate Bridge says "get on it. Where do you want to go?" I said "set it on Still Hunt." After a 15 minute workout it said I had gone 55 yards, stepped over 3 cypress logs and eaten 2 Slim Jims. Twice it told me there was a big buck to my left but it turned out to just be the decal on the safe. It's so realistic I might just quit the hunting lease next year and hunt in the dining room from the Treadclimber. Who'd have thought that safe door would really stop a 30-06?

Little Bitty Pieces Parts

Got a small pile of stuff from the candy store - I mean - Brownell's in today. My buddy with a business account there ordered all of it and let me have it at his cost. Saved me fifty bucks. I should have ordered more. I coulda saved a hundred. Shopping math works for guys too.

I now have a handy-dandy extra power magazine spring for a 98 Mauser, an apeture sight for a Ruger #1 (told ya I ain't getttin' rid of it), an adjustable gas regulator for an M1 Garand and some other cool things. Even if you don't own the gun it goes on, stuff like that is like a seed. You start with the seed and you wake up one day and there's the whole gun. At least that's what I tell the Mrs.

There is a post on the way about the range. Its a long one and my shift key is not working right. Can't make those cartoon strip cuss words right when your #!%$!*& shif key isn't up to snuff.

How the H - E - Double - Toothpicks did we get up to 101 hits?

Blogging By Proxy

The Mad Ogre (www.madogre.com) absolutely hit it out of the park with his write up on the Ruger LCP. That's Ruger's "answer" to the Kel Tec P3At .380 pocket gun.

Mr. Ogre is upset that the Ruger is a copy of the Kel Tec and that gun writers in general are ignoring the Kel Tec and heaping praises on the Ruger as if it were the original.

I think he has some good points.

Back in the early 1990s did we see gun writers rave about S&W's Sigma pistols and forget that Glock had been around building "the same thing" for years? (I really don't know because I'm not really a plastic gun person and was even less of one then). Everybody at gun shows was talking about it. Some folks even said that you could put the slide from one brand on the frame from the other brand. They said the gun wouldn't work but the slide would fit and cycle by hand. At gun shows we even used to call them "Smocks." Nobody ever asked "why do you call them that?"

Perhaps its a time-honored tradition that goes back to the Springfield 1903 and the 98 Mauser. I don't know but it does seem that Ruger has come up with a whole lot of ideas that were just brilliant over the years and its disappointing to see them taking someone else's ball and running with it. Aren't they making enough money with their other arms? Why not try to make an affordable 9mm Parabellum-chambered pocket gun that's about the same size?

What's really disappointing is the reviews. All the magazines talk about the Ruger as if its a brand new idea. They don't tell you that its the first pistol of its kind (locked breech polymer framed DAO pocket pistol in .380 etc) but they sure don't tell you that it isn't. I have seen exactly one article on the Ruger that even mentions that there is a similar pistol out there by Kel Tec. That article didn't spend a whole lot of ink on it. I don't know that the writer would have even mentioned it if he hadn't run into someone at the range that had a Kel Tec P3AT in his pocket. All I have read is how the big buzz at the Shot Show was the LCP. Sometimes its "...and when we get a sample we'll actually shoot it" and other times they have one and they shoot it. Whoopee. I've been doing that for years. Mine just says Kel Tec on it.

The whole thing reminds me a lot of the debut of the Remington 300 Ultra Mag some years back. Somehow every article found a way to mention that the big Remington cartridge was faster than the 300 Weatherby. Every article I read found a way to work the words "faster than the 300 Weatherby" into the text. It was right at a year after I first read about the 300 RUM that I ran across a gun magazine that actually published an article by someone who hadn't completely forgotten something called the 30-378 Weatherby that had been around for several years and was (and still is) faster than the Ultra. I believe that the 30-378 was also Weatherby's most popular chambering at the time so it wasn't like it was some obscure wildcat. But why mention that either. You'd almost think they were being told what to say.

I know that the ads pay the magazine's bills and the bigger the client the more leverage they have. Its hard to blame the magazines or the guys that make their livings writing the stuff that we like to read. They have to compromises to stay in business just like the rest of us. I'm not mad. I'm not dumping my Rugers. The whole thing is just disappointing. Its like they are afraid that someone will find out that there are other arms companies out there. They even put ".40 Auto" on their pistols when the cartridge is called the .40 Smith & Wesson. What are they afraid of?

Peasant Uprising

It seems to me that the feller that started the blog about reloadin' & such ought to write something down oncet in a while since its his blog, not mine. I mean it ain't like he ain't been doin' no reloadin' & shootin' & such. I know he has 'cause I was there with him and his kid and his grandkid when he was doin' some of it. The ideer was that it would be a challenge to keep up with what the other one of us was doin' but it ain't worked out thataway.

I reckon I'm gonna have to write some stuff here more often else we'll never have nuthin.

I ain't much of a blogger. I work too much and I don't have a favorite rock band guitar player to use for videos. This is a family oriented blog so I can't put in no dirty pitchers. Actually, I ain't figured out how to put in any pitchers just yet. I got piles of pitchers! I ain't been able to change the banner yet. About the only shootin' this has inspired in me is to shoot my own laptop. Since I use it to make a livin' that ain't a real good idea.

So I will pick some episode, recent or maybe not so recent and put it out there for the whole world to see. It will probably have some tie-in to the shooting sports but there's no guarantee. The appearance will continue to be plain and ugly until I have the time to figger out what the heck I'm doin.

Lets Go Hunting!

Hard to believe that its been a couple of months but the last week of hunting season I got to go on what turned out to be a pretty typical hunting trip.

I’ve known this fellow David for 18 or 20 years and he happens to own a partial interest in 1,200 acres of mostly dried up swamp in North Florida. David wants to sell his share so he talked me and Tim into going up there on a hunting trip.

David is a realtor and so is Tim. I never did figure out how I fit in the deal except that David doesn’t really know Tim that well so I was there to keep the conversation going. Naturally, work kept expanding to fill up the only day that I could go. I changed my mind back and forth for over a week planning to go and then planning not to go. I finally fell off on the Madison County side of the fence Tuesday evening.

The weatherman promised clear weather until the evening so we dressed for cold, dry weather. We rolled out of town a little before 5:00 AM and 45 minutes later we were passing Gainesville in a drizzle that followed us all the way to Madison and all the way back.

Since it was drizzling, we left most of our gear in the barn and drove around in the truck looking the place over. We stopped to do a 3 point turn down near a small sinkhole and I noticed movement about 50 yards up ahead. I couldn’t tell what the heck it was ( wet, gradient lens glasses) so I told Tim to hold on because I was looking at something. There was a tree right in front of us and Tim couldn’t see what I was looking at. He kept trying to get me to look at a dead tree that had a funny looking knot on it because he thought that might be what I was talking about. About the time I got him convinced that I wasn’t looking at a funny looking knot, whatever I was looking at stuck its big ole white tail up in the air and ran off. We wandered down to where it had been and examined the forensic evidence. No finger prints and definitely no gunshot residue but lots of nice, fresh deer tracks. I did not realize it at the time but a precedent had been set.

Back in the truck, we puttered around some more and finally wound up on a neighboring property that Tim just happened to know was for sale. Turns out that it backs up to a corner of David’s property and the two put together just might be a decent place for a few cows. By coincidence, Tim knows a cattleman that is looking for a new place to raise his cows. By another coincidence, Tim also knows of another piece of acreage that backs up to that one and makes it an even more decent place to raise even more cows. The trip was starting to make sense.

Eventually, we wound up going into the town of Madison by way of Greenville and had lunch at Oneil’s Buffet. Everybody in town goes to lunch at Oneil’s Buffet. Its that good. Since we weren’t hunting while we were at Oneil’s Buffet or checking out the old Courthouse, it stopped raining. Soon enough we found ourselves in a pawn shop where I dug up five boxes of Super X 250-3000 Savage brass from a pile of old reloading stuff. The boxes weren’t for sale but I said “I don’t want the boxes, I want the brass” so I got 100 nice “once or twice fired” Super X cases for $20.00. I’m happy.

After some more loitering downtown, we made it back to the barn. Since we were on the hunting property again, it was raining. I lasered a tree that looked like it was about 100 yards away and sho-‘nuff, it was 101 yards. I put up a target frame with a shoot-n-see target on it about a yard from the tree for a nice 100 yard “range.” I had brought a couple of Savage Model 99s and one needed to be sighted in. I loaded it up, stood in the doorway and took an offhand shot. That little old bullet got there about ¾ of an inch high and right. I can’t even see that well at 100 yards much less shoot that well so I put it back in the case. David wanders over and asks why I only fired one shot. I gave him the binoculars and said that I was done. He looks at the target and can’t believe it. 100 yards, offhand with a lever action in .358 Winchester less than an inch from point of aim. I won’t repeat his exact words (‘cause I promised Buckshot that I wouldn’t cuss if he’d let me post here) but he really thought that was special.

Yeah, I know that I should have fired a 3 or 5 shot group but here’s the deal on that. This is a Model 99 Timber Rifle. The barrel walls are almost shotgun thin. Heck, they’re darn near thinner on the outside than on the inside! It saves weight but would have heated up fast if I had fired a string of shots. That wouldn’t have told me a thing about how the rifle would perform hunting. Your first shot at game is from a cold barrel. You don’t need a second one if the first one goes where its supposed to. My first shot from a cold barrel was pretty darned close for an offhand shot so that’s where I left it. Its done the same thing the last 3 – 4 times I’ve “sighted it in” so I do have a group. It was just shot on different days in different counties in different weather. Just like hunting.

After a while, Tim and I got bored and decided to check out some wet looking lowland near the barn. I grab my backup gun, a pre-acutrigger, department store Savage 111 in .270. It will shoot a ¼” group off of sandbags. Its stock is plastic, unlike the two 99s.’ We wound up on a road that lead to a place where David said he always sees hogs. We got to the end of the road and turned down a wide trail right into a flock of turkeys.

This time Tim’s on the right and I’m on the left. A few weeks earlier, I neck-shot a turkey at 60 yards with that same rifle but today I can’t even tell for sure that I’m looking at turkeys because my glasses are wet and so are both ends of my scope. I can’t dry anything off because all my clothes are wet. Tim keeps saying “come over here, I can see them fine” (he doesn’t wear glasses and his Winchester is iron sighted) and I keep saying “I can see them, I just can’t tell what part of them I’m lookin’ at.” Turns out that, because of this big bush in front of us, he can’t see the turkeys that I’m looking at and I can’t see the ones that he’s looking at. We are looking at two different flocks maybe 100 yards apart. Didn’t we do this right before lunch with the deer at the sinkhole?

My flock finally hears or sees him (I’m writing this so it was him that they heard) and head for the tree tops. That gave me a bad case of De ja vain’t. I worked up a real strong feeling that I ain’t gonna do that again without getting mad. We walk toward the second flock and they join their bretheren in the trees. They all start moving from treetop to treetop just ahead of us. Down on the ground, we started to follow. I don’t even know why. What else do you do when its 43 degrees, pouring down rain, you didn’t bring rain gear and all you can manage to do is play Abbott and Costello every time you see game? You just keep on playing. We didn’t go far before we stumbled onto a good 3/4 acre that looked like its just been plowed under. Fresh hog rootin’s radiated in every direction as far as you wanted to walk. They lead to a water hole that was obviously the local social club.

Since we are onto good hog sign, its raining even harder (more De ja vain’t) and David calls to see where we are. That’s the only flaw with the property. Cell phones do work there. We tell him what we found and that we are headed back to the barn. When we get maybe 150 yards from the barn we can hear David, standing in the barn door, clucking away at us on his turkey call. ‘Till that moment I had never noticed how much a turkey call sounds like somebody laughing.

So its pretty much pouring by this time, still 43 degrees like its been all day, a steady wind is blowing and David says “y’all need to stand at these doors (at the front and back of the barn) ‘cause a deer or a hog is bound to cut across this field before dark.” Ok. Its David’s place. He should know. I take up a spot in the front door by the truck and Tim takes the back door. I have the 270 and Tim has his cell phone. His Winchester is a 30-30 but its in the truck. I don’t remember what caliber his phone was. Didn’t matter anyway ‘cause the phone must have jammed when the deer trotted out 40 yards in front of him. He couldn’t get that phone to shoot to save his life. He was talking to somebody back in Ocala, pacing back and forth, and didn’t see the deer until it was almost on top of him. He starts hollering “Deer, Deer, somebody get a gun!” Danged if the deer didn’t trot right on by when he started hollering. Deer are unpredictable like that. He never did get that phone to shoot. I never saw that deer so I did no better with my rifle.

Something about that prompted Tim to get his rifle back out of the truck. We switched doors because the rain was blowing in the back door pretty bad and he had had his share of it. He went to guard the lee side and it wasn’t ½ an hour before he saw 2 more deer “filtering through the pine trees.” I was soaked and groggy from hypothermia anyway so I said “I’m goin’ down there and filter after ‘em.” I found a bunch of brand new tracks 40 yards from the barn right out in the open. They led to a pile of corn (we didn’t put it out and hadn’t known it was there until that moment) and then they led off through the pines. No deer. Just tracks.

Mercifully, it got dark. We had managed to keep the deer, turkey and hogs from overrunning our position and capturing the barn so we packed up and headed home. I had spent a day in the woods instead of the office. I had my brass and my target so I was happy. All the way back David kept saying that he couldn’t remember the last time it had rained all day long. After a while, Tim remarks that he can. It was the last time that David and I went to his house to shoot doves.

Yep. Pretty much a typical hunting trip.

Weather

Another NASCAR race delayed by rain. Then they called it half way through because the rain came back.

This is getting almost as predictable as Al Gore and snow storms.

Kids, Savages, Getting Started & Getting Restarted

I was thinking I’d better post something before Buckshot wrote something about loading a 300 Weatherby with Bullseye and soggy dog biscuits behind a cast lead bullet and blowing his chronograph over with the muzzle blast at 20 feet. I hope I’m not too late.

I thought about explaining why I haven’t posted in months but every blog I’ve looked at the last few days is starting out “sorry for the light posting…” I ain’t sorry about it. I’d be sorry of I had posted something when I had nothing worth saying.

Here’s how I did my part to get a couple of innocent youngsters initiated into the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Well, they are home schooled and say “yes sir” and “yes mam” so maybe I didn’t initiate them. I sure did my best to slick up the slippery slope and push ‘em down as far as they wanted to slide.

While at the in-laws for the obligatory Christmas Dinner, my brother in law (the one from the Light Side of the Force) said that he wanted to go to the Hernando Sportsman's Club so his 2 oldest kids could learn to shoot. He was off work all last week and we were slow at my office so we went on Thursday. Unfortunately, because my dog took a lot longer at the Vet’s than I had anticipated, I made us run an hour late. By the time we gassed up and bought a pile of 22 LR at Wally World we wound up getting to the range at 1:30. They close at 2:00. Fortunately, they shoot in the evenings on Thursdays so we killed some time and came back at 5:00 PM to shoot. It turned out to be a good thing.

We staked out 3 benches, put out our targets and had a serious safety talk. Under close supervision, the kids started with my wife's Marlin Buckaroo. At first they tried to work the bolt gently but it was hard to close fully like that. It cocks on closing and uses a camming action. I showed them the angled edges, explained that it took a little force to get it done and suggested using the palm of the hand instead of fingertips. Once they weren’t concerned about breaking anything, they cut loose and got into working the bolt with authority. Pretty soon, the oldest was almost like a miniature sized right handed version of the left handed sniper guy in Private Ryan. Bang, clack – clack and an empty lands on my bench.

I wanted to sight in my NEF 22 Hornet but kept having trouble because we were shooting at 25 yards for the kid’s sake and it kept putting all the bullets in the same hole. Even with binoculars it was hard to tell what it was doing. The kids went nuts over that and burned through half a box of Hornets before their dad quietly asked them to go back to the 22LR because it is less expensive. (He doesn't know anything about reloading yet. To me they were just "making brass" so it was no big deal).

The day wasn’t all about the kids though. I brought a few works in progress to test drive myself. To make a very long story short, while looking for a Savage Model 99 in 250-3000 Savage, I stumbled on a Savage Model 1899 in .303 Savage at my favorite local gun shop. Its bore was dark and foreboding but showed some signs of lands and grooves in a generally spiral pattern. I must have paid too much attention to it because it followed me home before the 250-3000 was even delivered to my dealer. I wound up with both of them. The .303 Savage actually cleaned up pretty well. Grooves still dark but sharp, shiny lands. .303 Savage is a pretty obscure caliber these days so components and tools took a while to accumulate. Things eventually came together but it was a long time before I got to do anything with it. This was my first real opportunity to do any shooting with it.

There’s a little data on the .303 Savage on the internet and my Lee manual has some that is really 30-30 data reduced 10% (why its reduced is beyond me but that’s what they give you). I used regular data for a 30-30 with 170 grain bullets loaded into .303 Savage cases. Before I even tried any of those I had some 190 grain bullets made by Hawk. The .303 Savage was originally loaded with 190 grain round nose bullets and it just seemed like the thing to do. I couldn’t find any data for 190 grain jacketed bullets so I bought Quickload and let it make some suggestions. Those 30-30 data loads proved to be wimpy. There was no sensation of recoil at all. After just a couple of those I switched to the 190 grain Hawk round tips and things livened up. You could tell you were shooting a center fire rifle. Having been beaten black and blue by a 50 Beowulf moments before (another work in progress), I could feel the Savage’s crescent steel butt plate every time the rifle fired. Not painful but definitely more there than with the 30-30 data loads.

In using the 190 grain data from Quickload and had loaded up a few in 1/2 grain steps (3 cartridges per step with the charge weight and powder type written in magic marker on each case) starting at 10% below what it said should be maximum right on up to the max. It was either that or fire 3 rounds and drive an hour and a half back home, load 3 more rounds and drive back to see how they shot. I have bullet pullers so taking the unused ones apart is no big deal.

By the time we got them set up and going, there wasn't enough light for my chronograph to work. I also had it set up way too close. Sometimes it read my muzzle blast or the flash from the AR10 next to us but never the bullet. When they turned on the fluorescent lights over the benches it read them. Whatever. I haven’t chronographed anything in 10+ years so a few more days won’t hurt (much).

I never did get near the maximum because the primers started to get flatter than I wanted for a low pressure round like the 303Sav. I switched to the 250-3000. I had loaded 75 grain and 90 grain Barnes X bullets (the old kind, not the TSX) with data out of the Barnes manual. I considered it a little suspect because my (new Winchester) cases wouldn't even hold the book's maximum charge when filled to the case mouth. The most they would hold with a 75 grain bullet seated was 2 grains below the book's maximum load. I loaded several rounds in increments of ½ a grain from the starting load up to 2 grains below their max. (since that’s as close as would fit in the case with a bullet seated). Again, I stopped shooting well short of the hottest load due to pressure signs. I reckon that’s why they say to start low and work up.

On Saturday, I dug out the empties to compare pressure signs. I know that you can’t tell anything with any degree of accuracy from flattened primers or case head expansion but if your starting load isn’t flattened or the case head overly expanded with one load and one with 2 more grains of powder is, you CAN tell a couple of things. You can tell that the second load is hotter than the first one and you can tell that you shouldn’t be shooting the hotter load. You can’t tell how hot it is but you can tell that its too hot.

Again, the 250-3000 ammo was loaded with data right out of Barnes’ manual. Just for fun, I plugged their max load with H 414 and the 75 grain X bullet into Quickload. One of the things it does is predict pressure. It predicted over 65,500 psi. Is that number accurate? Who knows? I don’t have any way of measuring pressure (yet). It does tend to agree with the primers and the case heads on the hotter of the loads that I fired so if its not accurate to the last pound psi, its still accurate as far as telling me not to put that much H 414 in a 250-3000 Savage case again. That kind of pressure might be OK in a 25 WSSM or a 257 Weatherby but not in a 50 year old Savage Model 99.

I also wanted to swap scopes because the one on the 250-3000 was canted and I just didn’t like it all that much. The guy that I bought the rifle from claimed to have hunted with the gun often but I no longer believe that. I think he stuck a crummy, used old scope on it when he sold it. I put a nice, new Leupold 4x scope on it the day after we went to the range. The rifle has a Buehler mount on it. Its similar to a Redfield in that it has the two opposing screws at the rear of the base that can be used as windage adjustments. The rear screws were not even tight. Sure. I always leave the back end of my scope wagging around the receiver when I go to hunt. Gives the deer a better chance to escape. Rather sporting of me, don’t you think?

So I don't have any chronograph readings to report (yet) but the rifles told me everything else I expected of them. I've never been able to approach a max book load with the X bullets in my 25-06 and the 250-3000 behaved the same way. Nothing earth shaking there. My main concern with the 250-3000 was bullet stabilization in my rifle’s slow twist barrel. All the bullet holes in the target were nice and round so we did confirm that we don't have to worry about that. I wasn't trying to shoot a decent group with either rifle. I was just trying to get the bullets over the chronograph and was using the target as a general aiming point. No grouping info either but who cares? I didn’t shoot the chronograph, I found out what I needed to know and we all had a blast. While I wasn’t looking, the kids and their dad went through more than 350 rounds of .22 LR. What could be wrong with that?

More on the various Savage rifles later.