Sunday, January 25, 2004- - -
More groovy bullets
In addition to the new Barnes Triple-Shock X-bullets I've pondered, I note in the Oct-Nov 2003 Handloader, that North Fork Technologies here in Glenrock, Wyo, also grooves the bases of their solid-copper-shanked super bullets. According to them:
"Grooves reduce both the resistance to rifling engraving and bore/surface contact area. This virtually eliminates the fouling, common to other solid sectional bullets, that can increase pressures and reduce accuracy."
In that same issue of Handloader, John Barsness writes about the new Triple-Shock X-bullets. He found that they not only increased velocity and reduced fouling, they also exhibited improved accuracy. Shooting a dozen groups, the largest he reports is 1.44". He feels that they are a distinct improvement over the original Barnes X-bullet.
Incidentally, the load-work that Barsness does with the .300 Winchester exhibits a phenomenon I've noted several times with the .300 Win. His starting load printed a 0.69" group, after which increased loads of powder gradually opened the groups. I've also found that the .300 often does best with something in the range recommended as starting loads, and that pushing it to the velocity limit often degrades accuracy slightly, while only gaining a bit of velocity.
Most other rifles will show contracting and/or expanding groups as powder is poured on (Deep Throat prefers the hottest loads I can squeeze in the case), but I've never seen any rifle other than the .300 that so consistently preferred relatively light loads (Of course, my sample size is half-a-dozen, pretty small). Light loads aren't necessarily a bad thing, as the difference in velocity will only be 150 fps or so, while the recoil and blast seems to lessen significantly. If you can't do the job with a super-premium .308 180 gr. bullet at 3200 fps it probably can't be done with something shoulder-fired.
@3:45 PM
Prosecutors reject Limbaugh deal
One of the world's larger sphincters is puckered a bit tighter now.
@9:19 AM
"Dr. Dean and Mr. Howard"?
It looks like they've finally adjusted Maureen Dowd's medication. For the better. She's funny and perceptive today.
@9:09 AM
Navel Gazing in the Silly Season
Eric Fettmann on the Media in an election year. Conventional wisdom is a rare as common sense in that arena.
@8:54 AM
"You can't redistribute wealth you don't have."
According to San Francisco's new 'conservative' democratic mayor, Gavin Newsom. Fascinating.
@8:45 AM
Dean is a hockey dad?
That may explain more than we need to know.
@8:37 AM
Ear tags and radio collars!
Let's find out where these folks go, shall we? Say… I bet that thought has never occurred to the Israelis.
@8:21 AM
Hmm?
The government can lie to you, but you can't lie to the government. Even the usually reliable lefty Ed Quillen finds that unfair.
@8:14 AM
The poor are getting poorer
Funny that the poor do so poorly in that bastion of liberalism, Bouldah, Colorado.
@7:32 AM
The coyote is at the door!
It sounds like the Cherry Creek Country Club would be a good place to hunt 'yotes, Fuz.
"We're baiting wildlife into our towns," said Jim Halfpenny, a naturalist and founder of the Human Lion Interaction Project, based in Boulder. "To me, the cutting edge of wildlife research for the coming decades is going to be the human- wildlife interface."
When you've got wildlife in yer face, it may prove difficult to find much enthusiasm for the 'human-wildlife interface'. I think that these problems are due to a combination of factors: A drought is making prey species more scarce and this is being exacerbated in some areas by loss of habitat as human populations expand into rural areas. As the DP article illustrates, a part of the problem is also that formerly urban migrants tend to look on wildlife as cute and cuddly until they get bit, or somebody comes down with plague. Then they demand that the wildlife be wiped out.
Mother Nature is a cruel old bitch, and she'll see to it that predator populations drop to fit changing circumstances in due time. Still, we don't want to lose any of these species and some human intervention may be warranted. Somehow though, I don't think feeding hotdogs (or the family cat!) to the foxes is quite the right approach.
@7:20 AM
Did Iowa punctuate Dean's equilibrium?
Today's DenverPost proclaims: "Dean must evolve to win in N.H." A curiously apt metaphor, as evolution doesn't imply 'improvement', only change to accommodate changing environment or fit some environmental niche, the sort of evolution that Darwin documented in his finches. Dean has so far exploited the 'angry left' niche, but it appears the political climate is changing with remarkable speed. It remains to be seen if Dean can adapt quickly enough, but if he does it will be an interesting example of punctuated equilibrium in action.
Note though that one of the features of punctuated equilibria is that species usually develop in a geographically limited region... like Iowa. Dean certainly failed to adapt to that niche, although he at least survived while some other species became extinct. To draw out the analogy, perhaps Dean will do better in N.H., a climate closer to his native Vermont. Or perhaps the predators in N.H. have had more opportunity to develop a taste for birds like him.
@6:49 AM
Pakistanis kill Canada's most wanted
More bad news for the matriarch of the Khadr clan. Back in November her grandson Omar was shot twice in the chest by US troops, when he engaged in a firefight, leaving him blind in one eye and lame in one arm. Before he was shot, Omar lobbed a grenade that killed Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer. Omar's injuries upset granny mightily, as poor Omar is just a kid! Now Omar is at Gitmo, where he was briefly joined by his brother, Abdul Rahman Khadr, since returned to Canada and Granny's lovin' arms.
Today we're informed that Omar and Abdul's daddy, Ahmed Said Khadr, considered perhaps Canada's most wanted man and highest ranking al-Qaida operative in Canada, was waxed by Pakistani security forces in a battle last October. They had to use DNA to ID him, suggesting that the rest will be shipped back to granny in a shoebox.
To top it off, Pakistani authorities have notified the Canadian government that Khadr's 14-year-old son, Abdullah, also wounded last fall in a gunfight with Pakistani forces that has left him paralized from the waste down, is being held by authorities in the town of Rawalpindi. Abdullah, aka Abdul Karim Khadr, is hoping for a quick transfer back to Canada, and it appears he may get it!
Liberal MP Dan McTeague, parliamentary secretary for the foreign affairs minister and assigned to watch over the fate of Canadians abroad, said every effort is being made to help Abdul Karim.
"My hope is to see this young man back with his family as soon as possible," McTeague said yesterday.
Not since Ma Barker's clan has any family had this much trouble with the feds. But then Ma didn't have a Liberal MP to help out.
@6:07 AM
Saturday, January 24, 2004- - -
'What part of wilderness don't they understand?'
Asks Jeff Johnson, one of Glenn Reynolds' correspondents, in reference to the recent lion attacks in California. This in response to the instapundit's link to an article by Karl Francis, who recommends (in the LATimes of all places) that you Walk Softly and Carry a Big Gun. Johnson's uncle's advice is particularly sound: "Always take a firearm into the woods that can bring down the biggest animal that lives there."
While this is very good advice, I'll admit that I'm a frequent violator, often wandering the woods with only a .22, despite my quest for a bigger, uglier bear gun.
@2:20 PM
Good one
On a souvenir T-shirt in Shoshoni:
Fishing trip to Boysen Reservoir... $65
Catching your first Cutthroat trout... Free
Sharing it with the bear behind you... Priceless!
@1:08 PM
Bad Czech!
Another from Dave:
MEN AND THE SUPERBOWL
A man had 50-yard line tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sits down, another man comes down and asks if anyone is sitting in the seat next to him. "No," he says, "The seat is empty."
"This is incredible," said the man. "Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in the world, and not use it?"
He says, "Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first Super Bowl we haven't been to together since we got married in 1967."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible. But couldn't you find someone else -- a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?"
The man shakes his head. "No, they're all at the funeral."
@9:21 AM
Not your brother-in-law's yak attack
John Hooper has 'em yakking at the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo. [Don't miss the photos!]
@8:25 AM
Those North Dakotans
Sounds like they blew up a bong.
@8:18 AM
It's a chicory daiquiri, Doc!
We can grow chicory in Wyoming? Do tell.
@8:02 AM
That's a new one!
After a quick google, I hereby lay claim to being the first to refer to the UN as a "Third World Country Club!" Hmm… I'd have thought that fairly obvious.
@7:48 AM
I'm with you Bubba!
William Saffire: I'm for Dean getting the nomination because it would trigger a resounding vote of confidence in President Bush.
Yes, and I enjoy watching the loony left dissolve into impotent puddles of incoherent rage.
Ps. Sigh. I'm afraid though that Peter G. Chronis has it right:
In recent years, a rancor has taken root in American politics that I find disturbing. Colorado merely reflects that. When Bill Clinton was president, many Republicans absolutely despised the man. (He wouldn't top my list of the best U.S. presidents, but I didn't hate him.) A relative was so used to fulminating against Clinton that a year after George W. Bush took office, I had to remind my kinsman that "they're gone now. It's OK."
Now, that sort of white-hot, blind hatred is directed at Bush the younger and his party. Guess there's something to that karma stuff.
As an American, I would hate to see one party become so powerful that it could act arbitrarily, without any meaningful opposition to act as a counterbalance. For a democratic form of government to truly work, there must be tension between opposing views. This serves to moderate what ultimately is done and bring a resolution that, one hopes, is more or less near the center of the spectrum.
Yep. As much as I enjoy watching the loons goon themselves, a conservative government run amok has no more appeal that a liberal government with the bit in its teeth.
As someone once not too famously quipped (I can't find the quote with google): 'Politics is the only sport for adults, you can play it with long pants on.' While I relish the sight, I do wish the loyal opposition would stop dropping theirs.
@6:43 AM
Bicoastal Disorder in the heartland!
I couldn't help noticing the curious juxtaposition of editorials in yesterday's dead tree Denver Post. They led off with Kill the easy-gun bill, a predictable screed that claims: Even thoughtful gun-rights advocates acknowledge that some people should never possess firearms. Instant background checks are designed to prevent crooks from getting guns without seriously inconveniencing law-abiding gun buyers. Amendment 22 is an excellent tool in making background checks more effective, and thus at stopping the wrong people from getting hold of such weapons.
Background checks are a mere inconvenience, remember that.
Then they question a proposal to provide housing for the homeless: 'Tent city' a can of worms. It seems the homeless themselves have proposed this, and what would they know?
But then, in a twist of logic that is bizarre even for the DenverPost, they warn us about the Transportation Security Administration's plans to conduct background checks on would-be airline passengers: Freedom under attack. Why are background checks dangerous you ask? Well, according to the DP:
We worry that these steps may create a whole that is more dangerous than the sum of its parts. Americans, who traditionally have shunned the mechanisms of totalitarian regimes, may wake up one day to find that almost everybody's "dossier" is on file.
Bluntly put, there's no guarantee that the government won't misuse the information.
By George, I think they're onto something there! I guess the difference between background checks for gun owners and background checks for airline passengers is that they hope the government will misuse one and fear they'll misuse the other.
Ps. Via the dead tree edition of today's Casper Star, Dave Workman weighs in: For years, non-gun owners have wondered why their fellow citizens who do own firearms were so offended at having to submit to a background check. After all, the reasoning went, if gun owners have nothing to hide, what's the problem? Now airline travelers and the ACLU have suddenly discovered what the problem is. Gun owners, like rape victims, feel violated. Yet, we've essentially been advised repeatedly in condescending tones, the rape is inevitable so "relax and enjoy it."
@6:24 AM
Perhaps he was playing possum?
I about drove off the road when I spotted a 'possum lying in the ditch just south of Lake Alice, near the North Platte National Wildlife Refuge. I've never seen one north of Kentucky before. I thought I might have a new one for them, but I see that good old Didelphis marsupialis is on their Mammal List. Unfortunately, it would appear that he's even more rare now. Unless...
@6:01 AM
We hates him! We hates him! We do!
It's that smirk and swagger, that cocky strut! Don't you see? It makes me take leave of my senses!
You wonder how many votes he scared off with that testosterone festival: the taunting message, the self-righteous geographic litany of support? The Philippines. Thailand. Italy. Spain. Poland. Denmark. Bulgaria. Ukraine. Romania. The Netherlands. Norway. El Salvador.
Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?
She forgot Britain, Australia, and Japan. Poodles and lackeys, yes indeed. Far better we should subordinate our national defense to the Third World Country Club that the UN has become. Yes, I can see that now.
Poor Mo, she really out-does herself, dissolving into a pool of irrational gibberish at the very sight of the Prez. But she certainly illustrates what passes for intelligent political analysis on the left these days. No need to find fault with the President's policies and results, it's his appearance and demeanor that matter after all. Better have The Mad How save a seat on that 'Crazy Train' for her.
@4:54 AM
Wednesday, January 21, 2004- - -
One from my dad
A woman was having an affair during the day while her husband was at work. One day she was in bed with her boyfriend when she heard her husband's car pull in the driveway. She yelled to the boyfriend, "Hurry! Grab your clothes and jump out the window, my husband's home early!"
The boyfriend looked out the window and said, "I can't jump out the window! It's raining like hell out there!"
She said, "If my husband catches us in here, he'll kill us both!"
So the boyfriend grabs his clothes and jumps out the window! As he began running down the street, he discovered he had run right in the middle of a town marathon, so he started running along beside the others. Being naked, with his clothes tucked under his arm, he tried to "blend in" as best he could.
One of the runners asked him, "Do you always run in the nude?"
He answered, while gasping for air, "Oh, yes, it feels so free having the air blow over your skin while you are running."
The other runner then asked the nude man, "Do you always run carrying your clothes on your arm?"
The nude man answered breathlessly, "Oh, yes, that way I can get dressed right at the end of the run and get in my car to go home!"
The runner then asked, "Do you always wear a condom when you run?"
He replied "Only if it's raining."
Bye folks, see you Saturday!
@6:23 AM
Here's a twisted tale
Bigger, more all-encompassing government paves the way to freer markets? Do tell. I guess there's just nothing they can't do if we only give them enough control...
@6:18 AM
He's not a Mad How, he's and Angry How!
Dean will temper his campaign to look less like a raving lunatic. That's nice, but I wonder how long he can keep up that act.
@6:09 AM
They'll clench their fists and stamp their tiny feet
Mike Littwin -- And then I walked into the theater. And I realized what the stakes really were. I walked through the doors and into an alternate universe.
It's one thing to talk about the red-and-blue divide in America. It's another to be surrounded by blue when the guy who won all the red states is on a giant TV screen talking about one America and the people in the seats insist there's another America altogether.
It's not anything he's done, it's that presidential smirk that drives them wild! An alternate universe indeed. Perhaps that's part of the reason the Prez has proposed a mission to Mars: A rescue mission to try to bring them back to Earth.
@6:00 AM
Holy Mordor, Batman!
Monday the paper reported a fire at the refinery. Now the headline reads Refinery explosion rocks Cheyenne! I'm afraid when something like that starts burning all you can do is stand back and watch.
Oh, and the price of gas just went up.
@5:28 AM
We're off!
Off to the wilds of outer Nebraska to scout a survey at a bird sanctuary -- lordy, I hate my job! -- I hope I have time to stop at Cabela's, I'm sure I can think of something I need there.
@5:11 AM
Sandbaggers never had it so good!
The marvels of modern technology -- and heavy equipment. At StrategyPage, here's the HESCO barrier. The only thing that could be easier would be the inflatable barriers like these from U.S. Flood Control Corp. Roll it out, pump it full of sand slurry, and voila! A fella here in Wyo was working on a similar system built up of interlocking rectangular units to build high dikes and walls quickly, but I'm afraid he's gone belly-up, with creditors picking his bones...
@5:03 AM
Tuesday, January 20, 2004- - -
Whoowee! That is one Mad How!
Via Andrew Sullivan, I've got to ask: Is this the guy you want to have a finger on our nuclear button?
Ps. Heheh. Yes, is there any way we can blame him on Canada? Vermont is pretty close... And who coined Mad How? I suppose it's obvious, and it's certainly appropriate.
PPs. Austin Bay suggests that Mad How is a variant of SARS - Scream and Rage Syndrome.
A quick google suggests that Bay and Mickey Kaus were the first to recognize this malady as distinct from the more general affliction known as Bicoastal Disorder.
@6:39 PM
Get a net
They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
To the funny farm. Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be
happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!!!
No, that wasn't Paul Krugman, but it's becoming easier to confuse him with Dr. Demento every day. Krugman is going to need a nice loong rest by the time this election season is over.
@5:31 PM
Another one bites the dust
Bill Quick has finally banned the Foresta 'bot and reclaimed his own blog, making it safe for the sane everywhere. I've got to say I admire his patience, but too much was enough.
@5:19 PM
Nice curios!
John Donovan, of the Castle Argghhh!!! Goes straight to the blogroll. This is my kind of guy, he's into curios and relics -- yep, definitely my kind of relics -- and posts a mean blog too. And say? are those a couple of cat beasts lurking on the stairs with that first bunch of relics? I think so.
@4:59 PM
Playing politics in the barn?
I bet it's not as much fun as playing doctor.
@10:54 AM
Hat in Hand?
It looks to me like the Prez sent the hands over to have a little talk with dear Kofi. And haven't we been asking for the UN's help all along? Yes, I believe we have.
@10:00 AM
Whiskey's for drinkin'
Out here it's water that causes all the fights.
@8:50 AM
I know where I'm eatin' lunch on Thursday
Heheh. I suppose it would be difficult to make a low-carb cinnamon roll though, wouldn't it?
@8:47 AM
Go Phish!
A nasty little email scam.
@8:39 AM
Polygamist Infighting?
Would that be a battle royal, or a tag team match? And more important, who makes the jello?
@8:30 AM
Gee, maybe we should try that
EDMONTON -- The Alberta government could take aim at the controversial federal gun registry from a new angle - on the basis of gun ownership being part of the province's heritage.
@8:00 AM
Oy Vey!
The New York City Transportation Department has "… no sense of Humour?"
"Oy vey" was too meshuga for the city Transportation Department. ...
The city earlier nixed a sign reading Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit! at the Verazzano Narrows Bridge for what agency spokesman Tom Cocola said was "a lack of directional information."
While the latter sign was criticized as an anti-Italian slur, Cocola said any concern that the Oy Vey sign might offend the Jewish community was not part of the agency's decision.
@7:51 AM
Give 'em an Oscar!
If all those Hollywood actors are 'playing dumb' it's a pretty good act.
@7:38 AM
That makes a big difference!
Since the US Fish & Wildlife Service refused to buy Wyoming's plan to shoot wolves on sight, Wyoming's lawmakers are drafting a new wolf plan.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials told the Legislature's Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee last week that a hunting season could be of any duration and at any price for a license with no interference by the federal government, [Sen. Keith] Goodenough said.
So, at least in theory, they could mail a free license to everyone in the state...
@7:29 AM
More corporate welfare from the Wyoming Business Council
Oh, wait. The money will actually go to establish a Main Street Advisory Board within the Wyoming Business Council to develop a plan to operate a Main Street program. It's welfare for bureaucrats. That's okay then.
I suppose that's the difference between having a republican in the governor's office and a democrat: Less corporate welfare and more for bureaucrats. Citizens and small businesses will be forced to apply for welfare too if this keeps up.
@6:57 AM
Sigh
Speaking of tests in Iowa: With all the readily available achievement tests that are out there, such as Scholastic Testing Service and the Iowa Testing Programs, we learn that the Wyoming Department of Education plans to re-create the wheel. Again. You might almost suspect that they don't want our children tested against the rest of the nation.
@6:49 AM
Gephardt bows out
Looks like the Deep Space Nine are minus two. Perhaps all those union folks have done their income taxes too.
@6:32 AM
No link?
James Taranto: "As Glenn Reynolds would say, are these guys antiwar, or just on the other side?"
Hmm.. The good professor appears dangerously close to becoming a household name.
@6:20 AM
Big Hat, No Cattle...
Darn, a distant third? I'd have thought the Prez' backing would have done more for the Dean Campaign. Apparently, even Bush's coattails aren't that long. And in a harbinger of things to come in this Silly Season, you'll note that the WaPo has anointed Dean the 'former front-runner'. Never easier to be the front-runner than before the starting gun, I suppose.
"We have just begun to fight," said Dean. "We won't quit now or never. We want our country back." Now or Never? Whatever. Someone should send Dean a copy of Bill Jordan's excellent book "No Second Place Winner."
To steal a page from James Taranto, what would we do without strategists and historians?
This much is certain, strategists say: Dean needs to win next Tuesday in New Hampshire to revive his campaign heading into the all-important Feb. 3 stretch of seven primary contests. Recent history usually shows a candidate must win one of the first two states to have a shot at winning the Democratic nomination.
Curious isn't it, that the 'former front-runner' has been pronounced DOA at the starting gate? One would almost think that the pulp press pundits have no more clue than me and you.
@5:58 AM
Monday, January 19, 2004- - -
Don't forget the Deacons today
Capt. J.M. Heinrichs sends a link to The Castle Argghhh!. Anyone who thinks General Wesley Clark is the Prince of Darkness is probably right about other things as well, and he's absolutely right that Civil Rights legislation didn't stop the Klan. Black men with guns, like The Deacons for Defense and Justice did. As I've noted before, thugs and bully boys tend to slink away when their victims arm themselves.
Ps. Incidentally, I know for a fact that the Deacons' organization extended far beyond Louisiana.
@11:59 AM
Grrrr!
GREEN RIVER -- Four conservation groups on Jan. 9 filed an appeal of the Bureau of Land Management's approval last month of a 3-D seismic mapping project to help locate oil and gas reserves within portions of the scenic Red Desert in southwest Wyoming.
The BLM issued a Decision Record and Finding of No Significant Impact on Dec. 11 that approved the Houston-based Veritas DGL Inc.'s Hay Reservoir 3-D Geophysical Project proposed for an area northwest of Wamsutter.
The appeal will be reviewed by the Wyoming state director of the BLM.
Officials with the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and the Wyoming Wilderness Association said the BLM should have considered a lower-impact alternative in their environmental studies on the seismographic project. They were joined in the appeal by the Sierra Club and the Wyoming Outdoor Council. [Hereinafter referred to as 'the usual suspects'.]
The groups said the company's plans to employ 31-ton "thumper trucks" within the approximately 279 square mile project area would impact over 10,000 acres of proposed wilderness in the Red Lake Dunes area.
"Thumper trucks are the most heavy-handed way imaginable to do seismic exploration for oil and gas and they leave scars that last for years," Erik Molvar of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance said in a prepared statement.
"The BLM should have required buggy drills the size of pickup trucks, as is done elsewhere in the Red Desert, rather than permitting 62,000-pound thumper trucks to drive cross-country across fragile landscapes," he said. ...
Molvar said the appeal points out that the BLM never considered lower-impact technology in their alternatives to achieve the same result, such as using the combination of buggy drills and helicopters or the placing of seismic geophones by hand without using mechanized equipment. ...
Industry officials say seismic mapping operations make it easier for producers to locate formations in the region that contain natural gas and hydrocarbons, thereby reducing the potential impacts for dry holes and impacts to the environment.
[Full disclosure: Veritas is a client and I worked with them on several of the projects mentioned later.]
Sigh. 1) There's a reason they don't use buggy drills in that area: The aquifer is very shallow and it's artesian. Drill a hole and set off a load of vibra-gel. Presto! You've got a new flowing well that will be very difficult to plug. 2) No one has used 'thumper trucks' in years. As the article notes later, they'll be using buggy-mounted vibrators with huge, low inflation tires (much like the buggy drills the sagebrush huggers seem to prefer, except without the ground-disturbing drill!). They 'fan out' so that they never leave more than one set of tracks, and those tracks generally disappear in a few months at most, most are invisible in days. 3) They do use helicopters and lay their receiver lines by hand. As far as I know, no one has yet invented a mechanical juggy. 4) The reason that the BLM never considered 'lower impact technology' is because this is the lowest impact technology we've been able to devise, and it is very low impact indeed.
The key here, I think, is the talk of 'unique wilderness landscape'. Yes, it is spectacularly beautiful country, in a high, dry, deserty sort of way. Just like the rest of Wyoming. The BLM, bless their pointy little heads, generally do quite a good job of riding herd on development, if only because they get sued by the usual suspects every time an energy company threatens to sneeze in our general direction. So yes, the 'suspects' do serve a purpose in keeping the feds' toes to the fire. On the other hand, it's not a perfect world, and for the usual suspects it will never be a perfect world, at least as long as the citizens of the People's Republic of California insist on living in heated homes with electric lights. That's selfish of them, I know.
@10:54 AM
Another Red Letter Day!
That makes two in less than a week! Two years ago today I wrote my first blog post.
Eergh! Some things never change. That link to my first post only takes me to the top of the first month. That's odd, because my permalinks have been functioning quite well of late.
@9:29 AM
The Best Carry Gun
Responding to a 'heads up' email from Publicola re the Kucinich affair, Dean Speir "Formerly Famous Gunwriter" offered his two cents, and sent along a link to The Gun Zone, his very interesting web site, in which he reveals the secrets of the Big Name gun writers.
It should come as no surprise that the content of many of the gun rags is thinly disguised product puff to fill up the space between the advertising, and that much of the writing is the 'same old, same old' over and over, ad nauseum. In The Gun Zone Credo, he refers to these as "kissing your sister" articles: "Big Shootout: Revolver vs. Semi-Automatic," or "DA vs. SA," or "9mm vs. .45 ACP, Which Is Best For You?" (These were always nice and safe pieces with lotsa product mentions, and, most importantly, they never caused any advertiser anxiety.)"
Yep. And that's why, after a week of maundering on the topic I realize that I really don't have anything to add to the 'Best Carry Gun' issue, and I probably won't post what I've written. A carry gun is much too personal and too job-specific to give a definitive answer -- that's why there are so many 'product mentions' -- in the end it always boils down to "what ever turns your crank." In my case it became a long list of which guns I carry for what and the Marlin Mountie .22 came out close to the top!
Now even the best of the dead tree gun press can't afford to alienate their advertisers and they can be an exercise in reading between the lines. As Speir notes, we get a lot of weasel-worded phrases, like "acceptable combat accuracy" and "minute-of-elk" (translation: It barely stayed on the paper.) Even I, who have no advertising nor much prospect of, or interest in getting any, am a bit reluctant to tell you that 'out of the box the poodle shooter would barely hold a 3" group at 100 yards, and its 1 in 12" rifling would not stabilize the most popular 55 gr. bullets. The factory bedding was pitiful and it's awfully heavy for a .223 sporter-weight'. Why? Well because my experience with that make and model of rifle in that caliber is a sample of one. It's still a finely-made rifle and I've been most entertained, for many, many hours, getting it to shoot acceptably and figuring out what this finicky eater wanted to be fed. I enjoy doing that. I also enjoyed picking it up at a bargain basement price after its former owner(s) gave up ever making it shoot.
'Making this recalcitrant SOB shoot in the same county with me' is my favorite part of the game and I tend to lose interest in a gun pretty quickly after I've doped out its problems (bedding is the most common culprit) and worked up a couple of loads it likes. Thus, I'm always on the lookout for 'new in box' or 'like new' rifles being advertised. Somebody laid out a good chunk of change for that gun, why are they selling it so soon? Well, frequently because it won't shoot in the same county twice in a row. Incidentally, this rule doesn't apply to the big beasts, .338s, .375s, and such. There, 'it won't shoot' is more frequently an admission by its owner that he couldn't handle the recoil and blast of the mighty monster-masher. 'Will trade for .30-06' is a common refrain in these ads.
I guess that's why I push Wolfe Publishing's offerings so often, and why I particularly enjoy Ross Seyfried's articles. When he writes about his 20-year struggle to make an H&H Paradox shoot ("Holland & Holland Paradox: A reloading miracle!" Feb-Mar 2004 Handloader) or about hunting Blues with an antique scattergun, I think it's safe to assume that he doesn't expect you to dash out and buy a Paradox or Greener. (Hmm.. I'd love to have a Paradox.)
I very much enjoy Seyfried's articles on various antique and oddball guns, but they're not much of a vehicle for product placements. I think it's obvious that he writes these articles out of a love of the old guns and a love of the sport, and I can understand why there's sometimes a note of despair in his writing -- it must be tough to sell such articles. And I can't really blame the folks who write and publish the 'kissin' your sister' fluff stuff. It apparently sells magazines and it certainly sells advertising. With the costs of publishing in the dead tree world skyrocketing, selling magazines and advertising is understandably job one.
@8:40 AM
Strangely mixed messages
I've got to wonder if some sort of 'bot isn't automatically producing a good deal of the spam I receive. Today I got one from "Desiree Devine" subject "stiffen penitent." Another Via*gr*a ad? Well no, as I clicked it off to Deleted Item oblivion I flashed on the message: "No cred.it? Bad cred.it? No problem!"
@6:43 AM
Sunday, January 18, 2004- - -
How Bizarre
I've been pondering the new Barnes Triple-Shock X-bullets, but haven't tried them yet. When I first saw one illustrated it appeared to me that Barnes was trying to reduce pressures by reducing the amount of metal that had to be ingraved/displaced by the rifling, a fine idea. In fact, the Barnes web site states that the "... three-ringed bullet provides significantly greater velocities, lower pressures and less fouling, without requiring an external coating." Excellent!
But then they go on to say "The bullet delivers a triple impact-one when it first strikes game, another as the bullet begins opening, and a third devastating impact when the specially engineered cavity fully expands to deliver extra shock with maximum transferred energy." Hmm.. That pretty well buries the needle on my bullshit meter. In fact, it reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live Gillette Triple-Track spoof: 'The first blade pulls the whisker out, the second blade pulls it out further, and the third blade cuts it off'. The SNL skit concluded 'we think you'll believe anything'.
That bit of hype left me wondering what they had done to the bullet to produce this triple impact, and resolved to stick to Barnes' fine X-bullets until I could find out what the Triple-Shock was truly all about. 'Improvements' that aren't are nothing new.
Well now in the January-February 2004 Successful Hunter editor Dave Scovill tells the story. He was in on the bullet's inception, when it was called a "ringtail," and the grooves are indeed intended to reduce pressure, thus allowing higher velocity. He relates ordering a box of .338 185 gr. Triple-Shocks for a hunt here in Wyoming, and how, when they didn't have any available, Barnes made him some by cutting grooves into their blue-coated Barnes XLCs, a bullet that is identical in construction to the standard X-bullet, with the addition of the lubricant coating.
There was no talk of the advertised triple impact, and it appears that the bullet is identical in function and construction to the standard X-bullet, with the exception of the circumferencial grooves. In other words, it really should be an improvement on the original design. I feel better now! And I'll have to try some.
So where did this whole "Triple-Shock" business come from? All I can suggest is that "Triple-Shock" sounds better than "Ringtail" from a marketing perspective. I can then imagine some advertising/marketing type coming up with the triple impact bit as a final bit of embellishment, although I can't imagine why anyone would have to embellish the performance of the X-bullet.
@9:19 PM
All-time favorites
"Only One in a Lifetime: A Two-Year Quest for a Big Bull with a Hand-made Long Bow." By Ross Seyfried, the article was published in the September-October 2003 Successful Hunter, and it's now on-line. It's one seriously fine piece of writing and, in my humble opinion, it pretty well sums up what hunting is all about.
Ps. Incidentally, Seyfried has another excellent article on-line about hunting the metrosexual of the woods, the Blue grouse (the bright orange and yellow eye shadow gives them away). "Beating the Blues: Blue Grouse on the Mountain Top." His experience with Blues pretty well parallels mine. They startle hell out of you and spoil your stalk when hunting big game, and then become almost impossible to hit with a shotgun when you're hunting them.
I finally gave up on shotgunning for them and greatly increased my grouse hunting success when I started still hunting them as if they were a deer or elk. The whole game changes when you see them before they see you. At first I used my Ruger M77/22, but shooting them with a gun that will hold minute-of-Blue-grouse out to 100 yards seemed less than sporting, so I switched to a .22 handgun. Then this year I hunted them exclusively with my peep-sighted Marlin Mountie. Handgun or Mountie forces me to stalk within about 25 yards for a sure shot. Not only is that very sporting, it's darn good practice for larger game. Best of all, unlike their cousins the Sage grouse, Blues are delicious.
Oh, and Seyfried also has an excellent article on "Still Hunting: The Ultimate Secret to Hunting Success" in the January-February 2004 Successful Hunter that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that most successful technique (all I can add is 'stay in the shadows and out of the sunshine'). But you'll have to buy the magazine for that one.
@5:01 PM
Fun with politicians
Publicola outlines an amusing incident involving the anti-gun Dennis Kucinich.
@12:31 PM
"Peeing outside the box"
Sez Jay Manifold: Writing is USA Today, space journalist and author James Oberg sensibly suggested: "Instead of going to the moon or Mars, there could be a human mission to an asteroid passing near Earth."
Hey! I suggested the same thing! I would rarely characterize my ideas as 'sensible'. However, I think Oberg's is. I'd suggested going to an asteroid because a) it would be easier and, b) it's there. I hadn't really given much thought to any practical application beyond 'asteroid mining' and I have no idea whether that is at all practical.
@12:26 PM
Talk about burnin' yer candle at both ends!
Again via the InstaPundit, here's an article on paraffin and nitrous oxide rocket fuel. Whoa Baby! That oughta feed the need for speed.
[Don't miss the other links at the InstantMan's!]
@9:15 AM
That's a strange way to put it
Via the InstaPundit comes this news account of a terrorist bombing with a happy ending:
[Lt. Col. Steve] Russell said one of the two men killed was a nephew of one of Saddam's brothers, and was carrying a homemade bomb comprised of artillery shells and plastic explosives in his lap that detonated prematurely, killing him instantly and fatally wounding the driver. He would not further identify the bomber.
Killed one but only fatally wounded the other, eh? Whatever. I'm sure it couldn't have happened to a nicer couple of guys.
@8:51 AM
Money back with your winning vote!
The InstaPundit says the Bush tax cut will save them a lot of money on their taxes this year. [Me too!] And that is why Bush will probably be re-elected.
Yup. The Dems are all making various tax-cutting promises too, but I suspect that the voters will take the 'Bush in hand over two in the bird' … or something like that. We've all heard 'big tax cuts' before, but the Prez actually came through.
People won't forget this: Nobody wants families to struggle - but most aren't groaning under an outsized federal tax burden. Clark tells us that the average family of four now pays $1,500 in taxes. But he never mentions that, thanks to Bush, this family had its federal tax burden cut from $2,700 under President Bill Clinton.
@8:18 AM
Ashcroft Finds Evil Paradigm
More crude lies being passed about by the Democrats:
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,", Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. "As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.
"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."
President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."
Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."
Yea gods, that was awful, Dave.
@7:44 AM
A Darwin Award just waiting to happen
How long will it be before some dumb crook puts one of these to his ear and presses the 'call' button?
@7:06 AM
"We're working hard to put food on your family"
Gotta love the new George W. Bush talking action figure. I think I'll buy one for all the Democrats in my life.
Ps. Dave definitely gets one after forwarding this:
A tourist walks into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking around at the exotica, he notices a very life-like, life-sized bronze statue of a rat. It has no price tag, but is so striking he decides he must have it. He took it to the owner: "How much for the bronze rat?"
"Twelve dollars for the rat, one hundred dollars for the story," said the owner.
The tourist gave the man twelve dollars. "I'll just take the rat, you can keep the story."
As he walked down the street carrying his bronze rat, he noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the alleys and sewers and began following him down the street. This was disconcerting, he began walking faster. But within a couple blocks, the herd of rats behind him had grown to hundreds, and they began squealing. He began to trot toward the Bay, looking around to see that the rats now numbered in the MILLIONS, and were squealing and coming toward him faster and faster. Concerned, even scared, he ran to the edge of the Bay, and threw the bronze rat as far out into the Bay as he could.
Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the Bay after it, and were all drowned.
The man walked back to the curio shop. "Ah ha," said the owner, "I'll bet you have come back for the story?"
"No," said the man. "I came back to see if you have a bronze Republican".
@6:35 AM
He's a bundle of contradictions
Voters find Dean attractive but repulsive:
Iowa State University professor Jane Love [I wonder if she's the same Jane Love who taught at WickyWack?] said: "I'm attracted to Howard Dean because of his outspokenness, but I'm a bit troubled by his penchant for spouting off - it makes you feel good as a Democrat, but I'm not sure if it's really a good idea."
So he should be more outspoken but spout off less?
@6:25 AM
Stay tuned and see!
Can the Kindergarten Cop make Sacramento eat its vegetables? George Will thinks he may be the only one who can.
@6:15 AM
Don't tell Hannibal
"Cannibalism has never been a crime in Colorado."
@5:57 AM
Riding the range and acting strange...
DenverPost -- In the vigilante Old West, cattle barons paid bounty hunters $500 a head to cull the prairie's rustler population.
Today, lawmen can only sling bad cowboys in the pokey - and they aren't having much luck at that.
But with cattle prices spiking recently, some deputies and ranchers worry that modern rustlers will be tempted to ride the range again looking for easy prey.
Sheriff's deputies hoping to thwart them will warn ranchers to brand all their cattle and be wary of cowboys cruising dusty prairie roads.
Hey, they just want to ride and rope and hoot (hoot!).
Ps. Speaking of which, this is a hoot!
@5:31 AM
Saturday, January 17, 2004- - -
"Evil and Wrong"
Jeff Soyer weighs in on the National Instant Background Check for firearms purchases. Apparently, an amendment to the federal budget bill will require that records of background checks be destroyed in 24 hours rather than the current 90 days.
That's nice, But. Remember how eager the FBI was to troll through all those records they're not supposed to have?
According to the WaPo: "Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ashcroft's advisers stopped the FBI from comparing a list of Sept. 11-related detainees against a list of approved gun purchasers. They said that under the Brady law, the Justice Department is prohibited from using such records for law enforcement purposes. Before it was interrupted, the search had resulted in two matches, sources said at the time."
I've feared from the first that, once obtained, this data would never be destroyed. It appears I was correct. Now I haven't been a big supporter of John Ashcroft, but just think were we'd be if the decision here had been up to Janet Reno.
The entire background check system is Evil and Wrong. Despite all assurances to the contrary it appears that data on approved purchasers is being retained as a form of de facto gun registration. Thus, changing the period after which the data should be destroyed seems ineffective at best. And as Jeff points out, gun registration is the first necessary step toward confiscation. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
@10:52 AM
Emergency Powers
Hmm.. Yes, give the government special powers during emergencies and some will likely see everything as an emergency. Call it "The Law of the Hammered."
@10:34 AM
Jacko in the Royal Transportation Corps?
@9:17 AM
Now that would be a magic bus
WaPo: "Dean Hopes Bus Takes Him to Victory"
@9:08 AM
This is interesting
The IRS is auditing the Nature Conservancy:
The [Washington Post] stories also reported that the Conservancy had repeatedly bought land, added some development restrictions, then resold the properties at reduced prices to its trustees and other supporters. The buyers made cash gifts to the Conservancy roughly equal to the difference in price, thereby qualifying for substantial tax deductions.
In the wake of the stories, the Conservancy banned a range of practices, saying it would no longer lend money to insiders, sell land to trustees or drill for oil on nature preserve land. The charity is conducting a broad internal review of its management practices and says more changes are expected. ...
A specialist in nonprofit corporations who reviewed the Conservancy's tax returns described them as confounding.
"It stunned me," said the specialist, Peter Dobkin Hall, of Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. "It's not exactly what I'd call a transparent organization.
"I find that very peculiar. I couldn't find out a damn thing about them. It was a brick wall." ...
One internal audit report on a Conservancy project known as the Virginia Coast Reserve -- or VCR -- found numerous irregularities. Many financial transactions were improperly recorded, according to the March 2002 report, which is stamped "Confidential." The IRS was not told for years that the charity provided some employees with free housing and use of a car, lapses the report described as IRS violations.
Hmm.. Yes, and most of us can only dream of living in the mansions they build as 'free housing'.
Ps. Fritz Schranck has more.
PPs. Andy Freeman comments: Remind me - why do I want non-corrupt non-profits?
Most of them are "not good" in deed, so to the extent that corruption wastes money that they'd have spent doing bad, said corruption is a good thing. Moreover, I suspect that if they hadn't managed to convince others to give them money, said others would have done something bad instead with said money. (After all, said others gave said money to said non-profits.)
Good point.
The Nature Conservancy is particularly annoying to me though, as they convince people to give them not only money, but also land to 'conserve' for 'nature'. Sometimes they seem to do a fairly good job of that, but they too frequently conserve the land by building enormous, million-dollar mansions to house their on-site staff -- nice job if you can get it, I suppose -- and then conserve the rest by subdividing it, logging it, drilling oil wells on it and, according to the WaPo article I linked, by selling it at bargain basement prices in exchange for big, tax-deductible donations. They often seem to have an oddly nature-unfriendly way of conserving nature. I guess what is so annoying to me is that I believe very strongly in conserving nature, they're not making any more of it, and it's not a commodity that should be wasted.
Of course, people donate to them because they're a non-profit and it's a tax write-off. They'll be out of business if they lose their non-profit status, which could well happen if the IRS decides that they are more of a racket than a charity, and even if they don't lose non-profit status, I suspect that they're going to be forced to clean up their act significantly. This may be the first time in my life I've ever cheered on the IRS, it makes me want to wash my mouth with soap!
@8:55 AM
It does look like Wyoming!
@8:13 AM
Cool yer Jets
I never could understand why the Jets left Winnipeg. After all, the city would seem a natural for an NHL team: They don't have to make ice, it grows wild there about 10 months out of the year. (A small area of southern Manitoba, northeastern North Dakota, and northwestern Minnesota rivals central Siberia for the title of "coldest place on earth.")
@7:58 AM
Throw Wyoming to the Wolves!?
Gov Dave thinks that the Bush administration is playing politics with wolves.
CHEYENNE -- Gov. Dave Freudenthal accused the Bush administration of playing election-year politics with wolves, saying Thursday he wonders if the federal government is sincere when it says it will hand over wolf management to states. ...
"I've come to describe it as simply the whip hand of federal servitude falls one more time on the state," Freudenthal said. "And we do have a difficult decision in that the changes they are asking for are pretty substantial." ...
"The diplomatic way to say this is we're evaluating our alternatives," Freudenthal said. "I'm kind of inclined to say, 'OK, we'll fight about this.' But that may not be the best strategy. I want to hear what they have to say." ...
"It is part of the same old, same old. ... One more time, right before the legislative session, the feds announce that they don't like what we've been doing, they want some changes. ... They say 'jump' and we're supposed to say 'how high?"' ...
"I don't think it's political in the partisan sense," he said. "I believe it's political in that they as a matter of national election policy decided to, shall we say, throw Wyoming to the wolves, because they want to have environmental support and they take our support for granted."
Needless to say, this is a very controversial issue here in Wyoming and the feds aren't the only ones playing politics. Note that the Governor and Wyoming legislature are heavily involved in our wolf plan.
A companion article shows that there are various opinions on this, with some like the Gov inclined to fight, while others think that will only delay delisting and we should knuckle under: Jason Marsden, executive director of Wyoming Conservation Voters, advised, "We want the wolf delisted, and the way to get to that point is to cut a deal with the guys who hold all the cards."
Yes, the feds do seem to hold all the cards, but we have all the guns and shovels.
Unfortunately, I don't think it matters much what we in Wyoming do at this point, wolf delisting will be tied up in court for years. We have plenty of folks who want the wolves gone, while others want the ranchers gone -- both factions have lawyers and they're not afraid to use them. It's hard to see a point of compromise here.
@7:32 AM
Presidential Palm Pilot
Dave Vlcek, an old and dear (if vowel-impaired) friend and colleague, forwards a link to the Presidential Palm Helper.
@6:46 AM
It made me smile
I notice that my wife has finished off the tiny sample packet of… I think it was skin moisturizer... that had been in our bathroom cabinet, and discarded the empty pouch. That's too bad, because I got a chuckle out of it every time I saw the little exclamation "Made with Olive Virgin Oil."
@6:44 AM
Friday, January 16, 2004- - -
Insight from the Garden of Groan
Just dragged my tired butt back from the sudatory emporium, where the Sultan of Sweat gave us a good goin' over. While nursing a new head lump from the crucifixion machine, it occurred to me that the insides of tanks are painted white and everything in there seems purpose built to bash you in the head. All the machines at the health club are painted white and seem designed to bash you in the head. Coincidence? I think not.
@4:54 PM
Sauds fight for their lives
Austin Bay has posted some interesting observations on the war on terror over at StrategyPage. He puts the bottom line about where I do: We can fight the WOT in the Middle East, or in Manhattan. I know which venue I'd choose. Of course, I'd choose not to fight at all, but I don't believe that is a viable option.
@8:20 AM
Thursday, January 15, 2004- - -
Give me a break!
First, we were a nation of pussies, dominated by our mommies, now we are a bunch of wimps. Forgive me for pointing out that this all sounds like a classic case of psychological transference.
No one, nobody can make you a wimp or a pussy. If you feel emasculated you have no one to blame but yourself. Sorry. Get a grip. Dare I say, be a man?
Ps. A bunch of wussies, eh? I'm sure that quite a few Taliban, Al Qeada, and Iraqis used to think that too. Colonel Kadafi probably agreed as well.
@7:45 PM
Whoo! Whoo!
A red letter day at Coyote World Headquarters! Ten years ago today I started the consulting business that keeps us employed to this day! That also means I've been self-employed twice as long as I've ever worked for anyone else (five years in the service and five years working for the State of Wyoming). I'm not sure how I've done it, as I am undoubtedly the biggest asshole I've ever worked for.
Ps. [much later]
Where have I gone wrong? My professors and the folks who taught me my trade regularly kept me out until all hours, plying me with hard liquor, fast women, and substances you don’t want to know about. Now, at 6 pm on a most momentous evening, after a nice lunch and a few celebratory toasts, I've become the designated driver and bed tucker-iner. I'm the last one standing. And it's barely dark outside. As far as imparting the traditions of the trade I feel like a total failure. Kids nowadays.
@8:29 AM
Good Grief!
According to the Northern Wyoming Daily News [not on-line], a local man has died from an overdose of Ephedrine Plus, an over-the-counter allergy and asthma medication. Twenty-three empty bottles of the stuff were found at his work station and the coroner believes that he took an entire bottle the day he died. As a response, local stores are limiting the sale of Ephedrine Plus to two bottles per person per day.
@8:19 AM
A word from the Guru
A point that was emphasized at the NRA meeting in Washington most convincingly by Senator Larry Craig of Idaho was that we, the public, must be sure to differentiate between abuses of police power on the local level and that perpetrated at the federal level. It is no news that the federal ninja are completely out of control, and it is disturbing to see members of the law enforcement community endeavoring to close ranks defensively in the face of the wrath of "civilians." One of the unfortunate but noticeable attributes of police organizations is the "us-against-them" obsession. Since cops are in contact in large measure with the complete dregs of society, it is not hard to understand how they may come to place people into the three categories of cops, cops' families, and scum. We must all be aware of this problem and do our best to mitigate it. If it appears that fed rogues are the principal hazard the citizens face today, we must bear in mind that not all federal agents are in truth rogues, and that our local police are most unlikely to be such. I have a friend, now retired from the federal service, who simply will not accept the fact that Horiuchi deliberately killed Vicki Weaver - when he was in no danger and had no legitimate objective in mind. We are all subject to this group loyalty obsession and I notice it in myself when I am reluctant to accept criminal actions on the part of marines, but a sensible man should not be entrapped by stereotypes. If you happen to think - possibly rightly - that fighter pilots are better than other people, you must remember that this does not apply to every possible fighter pilot, only to the majority. Thus the fact that a man is a cop does not in and of itself mean that he is either good or bad. His actions must be evaluated individually. Ideally your local friendly cop should be your neighbor, whose children go to school with yours and who associates with you in your recreational freedom. This is not always possible, but it should be an aim.
Indeed. Unfortunately, we seem to be seeing fewer peace officers, whose first duty is to protect and serve their fellow citizens, and more law enforcement officers whose first duty -- by the very implication of their self-chosen title -- is to protect and serve the government. I don't think this trend is a good thing.
@7:42 AM
Deep-throating big guns
Heheh. Thanks, Capt. Heinrichs, I imagine I'm getting some interesting Google refers with that one!
It occurs to me to stress that there's nothing wrong with seating bullets below the base of the neck. As John Barsness points out in "Deep-Seated Fears" (Handloader, June 2003), many common cartridges are designed to be loaded this way and it's generally not a problem. I deep-throated Deep Throat because I could. I didn’t like compressing loads as much as I found I was, but I could have solved this problem with a drop tube, which crams more powder into a given volume, or I could have switched to a different brand of case with more capacity. But I have a Ruger #1 and a perverse inclination to do things the hard way.
Deep Throat's barrel is also so blessed rough that the bore is solidly coated with copper after half-a-dozen shots, making accuracy an iffy thing beyond that point. I'd intended to have it re-barreled and figured I had nothing to lose if I screwed it up. Now, I think I'll try fire-lapping the barrel, as I'm very pleased with the result of the throating. If nothing else, that's one funky-looking cartridge with that great, long black talon (Yes, that's what the Failsafe was originally called, before the pants-wetters got involved) sticking out the front! Or I might still have it re-barreled and chambered in .338-348 Ackley Improved, as I'm not impressed with the Ruger #1's extraction of belted cartridges. Better yet, I think I'll fire-lap Deep Throat and build another Ruger #1 in .338-348 AI.
Whatever. Please understand that I'm an incorrigible gun loony and what I do doesn't necessarily make the best sense in the real world.
@7:01 AM
Sigh
What now with Blogger? They seem to be having trouble with extended character sets, refusing to display the umlaut in 'naïve' a couple days ago (now obviously fixed), and now they dislike ellipses. Having learned to type back in the dark ages, I habitually type two spaces after a period, and that too has been giving them fits for the last few days. At any rate, if you notice superfluous question marks? inserted in? the text, it's not my fault! [I may be wrong, but I'm seldom in doubt!]
@6:06 AM
Further reading
Those who have been following the on-going discussion of big guns I've been hosting should lay hands on the January 2004 edition of Rifle, in which Brian Pearce writes "The .45-70 in Africa: Marlin 1895 in Zimbabwe," and the February 2004 edition of Handloader in which editor Dave Scovill writes "Black Powder in the Field," relating his exploits in Botswana, where he shot a Cape buffalo with a .50 Express.
I was quite surprised to read that it took seven hits with the big .50 to put that buffarilla down, using an RCBS 50-450 FN bullet cast hard and heat tempered. I'm most impressed that Scovill admits to some less than shiny shootin'. He believes that his shots were going high due to the rifle shooting away from his cross-sticks. This phenomenon is far from unknown and I, with the benefit of perfect 20 20 hindsight, have to wonder why he didn't try shooting from the sticks during the extensive load workup he pursued prior to the safari.
We all live and learn, and one thing I've learned: There's a world of difference between punching holes in paper under ideal conditions and having hair under your sights at the end of an arduous hunt. Game animals tend to be pretty unbiased, they are just as difficult to put down for gun scribes as for us mere mortals, although you'd never guess that from many folks' writing. Scovill is to be commended for his honesty.
In the January 2004 edition of Rifle, Brian Pearce relates his experiences shooting a variety of plains game with the Marlin .45-70 and Corbon's 405 gr. FMJ flat-nose penetrator load, which is essentially a jacketed version of the 405 gr. Cast Performance LBT WLNGC bullet that I use. As I would expect, the load did very well on critters up to the size of zebra. Pearce too relates his foibles on the hunt, admitting that a shot at an impala passed through the animal he was shooting at and also killed another behind the first that he hadn't seen. Oops! Good thing it was a cull hunt in Africa, game wardens around here take a dim view of people shooting more than the critter they're licensed for!
Pearce' parting shot promises a future article relating his hunt for Cape buffalo with the same rifle and load, which "... turned out to be a hair-raising experience ..." I can believe that! And I'll be eagerly looking for his continuation.
I could go on and on about Wolfe Publishing Company's three fine shooting rags: Rifle, Handloader, and Successful Hunter. The folks they've got writing for them really are the best in the business. Although the magazines obviously derive considerable income from advertising, the writers can be brutally honest, frequently panning the fad gun, load, or gadget of the week, which speaks very highly for the integrity of the whole outfit. I highly recommend them.
@5:51 AM
Patriot Act Preparedness
Ed Kemmick, of the Billings Gazette does an excellent bit of investigative reporting and finds that attitudes toward the search and seizure provisions of the Patriot Act are mixed.
Bill Cochran, director of the Parmly Billings Library, believes that FBI agents will not abuse the power given them by the act, a faith that seems strangely naïve considering he later notes that some of the public's mistrust is related to the FBI's Library Awareness Program of the 1970s and '80s, when agents seeking information on potential supporters of the Soviet Union routinely sought library records without a court order.
Naturally, Bill Mercer, the US Attorney for Montana, poo poos the idea that the act would be used for fishing expeditions or for any purpose other than to investigate terrorism.
Meanwhile, Jim Heckel, director of the Great Falls Public Library, says he believes that the act gives the government broad powers to intrude on privacy. He and other librarians across the land who are less than sanguine regarding the feds track record on privacy are shredding and deleting their records.
As I've mentioned before, a shiny new shredder was the first purchase our Washakie County Friends of the Library made this fiscal year. This should bother our legislators and administration more than it apparently does -- when you've lost the confidence of the little old ladies in tennis shoes you're in more trouble than you know.
@4:25 AM
Wednesday, January 14, 2004- - -
"Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up!"
Ronald Bailey gives a good account of the Endangered Species Act, but he forgets its greatest [and perhaps sole] benefit: It employs a lot of wildlife biologists.
@3:55 PM
Congratulations Chicago!
Flashbunny has a little award for you!
@3:55 PM
More esoterica on big guns
Michael Parker writes, discussing my last post point by point (I've added my current comments in brackets):
>> Assuming that the pressure of burning gas is exerted in all directions with equal force
It is. It's one of those laws of physics.
[In a static chamber that is true. However, when we pump a gas through a pipe it is also acted on by friction with the walls of the pipe, and any bend or irregularity in the pipe causes turbulence. This friction and turbulence has the effect of increasing back pressure and decreasing down-line pressure -- the pressure will be greatest nearest the point of compression and will gradually drop off away from the point of compression. We're talking the physics of hydraulics rather than that of static gases. How much this can be applied to firearms is anybody's guess though. Internal ballistics are pretty much a black science.]
>> there is considerably more total pressure on the sides of the shank than on the base of the bullet. Of course, whether the bullet shank would be squeezed down or riveted also depends on the composition of the bullet -- a bullet jacket with a thick base and thin side walls might be more susceptible to being squeezed, while riveting might be more likely to occur if the side walls are thick and the base is thin (or non-existent, as with the Failsafe).
It turns out that it doesn't matter how much is exposed -- the pressure per unit area is the same. The bullet is getting squeezed hard from all directions at the back, and isn't getting squeezed at the front. So it goes squirting in the direction of lowest pressure. If the bullet were substantially compressible, the entire rear of the bullet would be squeezed down -- it'd look like kind of like one of those lapua stepped boattails.
That's also why the jacket doesn't make a difference. Take a tubing-jacketed bullet like the Hawk bullets, with exposed rear. The soft lead in the rear is indeed being squeezed, trying to expand inside the jacket. OTOH, the exposed jacket is getting squeezed by the combustion pressure even harder, at least until it enters the barrel, at which time the jacket does indeed expand a bit until it hits the barrel which provides the pressure to resist further expansion.
[50,000+ psi should be more than enough to squeeze down the base of a normal lead-core bullet, extruding the lead core out the open front of the jacket. I don't see that happening. (Unless the jacket is open on both ends, as with the old practice of clipping the tip off military FMJs to make them hunting legal softpoints. In that case, pressure from the rear combined with friction in the barrel could extrude the core out of the jacket, and even leave the jacket in the barrel.) I had included the jacket conformation discussion for the sake of argument, but I think we both agree that nothing is happening to the base of bullets loaded deeply into the powder chamber.]
>> As you point out, I'm getting about 5.52 gr. (water) greater case capacity by seating the bullet out that quarter inch, and I did add one gr. of IMR7828 in the process -- to get the best accuracy, not specifically to maintain any particular velocity -- so it's possible that I've lost a bit of velocity.
What are the particulars? I can run it through LFAD to see how the numbers stack up.
[I'm starting with WW unfired cases, a CCI Large Rifle Magnum primer, and loading 73.0 gr. of IMR7828 pre-throating, bumping that up to 74.0 gr. in the throated rifle. Cartridge over all length was 3.441" pre-throat and 3.694" now, with Winchester Failsafes (Oops! I meant to cut the throat 0.250" deeper but wound up with it 0.253" deeper). If you need the actual case capacity I'll have to fill & weigh one.]
>> But the recoil difference is very noticeable, it feels like a hot-loaded .30-06 now, not the typical brutal whack of a .338 Win Mag. It's a puzzlement. One further thought: Turbulence causes added back-pressure and loss of down-stream pressure in a gas passing through a pipeline. I wonder if that bullet shank sticking into the powder room causes turbulence in the burning powder gases?
It might, but not for long. The bullet is going to pop loose of and into the lands pretty quickly after the primer pops.
Before you throated the barrel, is it possible that the bullets were being seated against the lands, even though they were being seated much deeper? That's a known cause of high pressure. Also, is it possible that the throat reamer also lengthened the neck area of the chamber? Or does this short-seating effect you describe also happen with the current deep throat?
[It's been a long, long time since they booted me out of the ol' engineering program, but I seem to recall that one of the problems with turbulence in a gas under compression is that, once begun, the turbulence tends to cause more turbulence -- it starts a positive feedback loop or some such. Heaven knows what's actually going on inside that case though.
Another point to ponder along this same line, artillery shells are often 'forward primed' -- a long tube extends from the primer extending the flash hole nearly to the base of the projectile. Supposedly, this increases projectile velocity while reducing pressure and gas cutting of the barrel by igniting the powder column from the front. In one of his books, Elmer Keith talks about experimenting with forward-primed cases in small arms (I think it was in a .50 BMG). Apparently, there's something more going on here than just 'equal pressure exerted in all directions'.
I use an RCBS chamber micrometer to find the appropriate seating depth and I'm very careful not to let the bullet touch the lands. I used a standard .338 throating reamer from Brownell's, so the neck should not be affected in any way. I haven't tried shooting factory-standard length rounds in the rifle since it was throated, but it occurs to me that shooting the same load with the bullet seated in and out would be a good test of whether it really is the seating depth affecting the recoil. Do you have any suggestions on how to actually measure the felt recoil? There I'm stumped.]
>> I've never fired a CZ and only handled one a couple of times, but it appeared to me that most of the roughness and stiffness in a factory-new action could be cured by polishing the guide rails and cocking cam of the bolt a bit.
That's the usual prescription. Or at least the bolt guideways and magazine follower.
@1:02 PM
That nails it
Andrew Sullivan is dead on in his analysis: For me, September 11 told us we faced a huge problem - one that would annihilate our civilization if we did not confront it. Confronting it meant engaging the Arab Musim [sic] world and finding a way to bring it into modernity. Only dangerous, time-consuming, casualty-incurring involvement would achieve this. Iraq is the very beginning, not the end game.
Sullivan believes that Howard Dean does not recognize this. I'd suggest that the majority of the left don't, they think that every step the Bush administration takes is the last, and it's time for the after-action criticism. They don't believe there is any 'next step', so of course they have no proposals for that next step. When I ask 'What would you do?' I mean what would you do next, but they respond with what they would have done, or not done, in the past. Unfortunately, not only does their foresight suck, their hindsight isn't even close to 20 20..
@6:51 AM
Wolves in Wamsucker?
At first blush this seems like a long way out in the desert, and a very long way south of Yellowstone, but the Red Desert is situated on the continental divide right off the southern end of the Wind River Range -- it's mountains and forest almost all the way. Still, it appears that we can now expect wolves anywhere in the state.
Here's another article from the Billings Gazette that outlines some of the conflict. I'm personally at a loss as to why the plan had to be filed and reviewed before this conflict over wolves as predators v. big game arose (and it was certainly no secret that Wyoming intended listing them as predators). We write management plans all the time and I would never put pen to paper until I'd consulted the feds and my client and hammered out an agreement acceptable to both. The written plan just formalizes the agreement.
I suspect that there is a good deal of politics involved in this at all levels (it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out). The Wyoming plan is meant to play to the local population, many of whom were and are opposed to wolves, period. I also suspect that the drafters of the Wyoming plan knew from the start that no matter what they came up with, and no matter whether the US Fish & Wildlife bought off on it, it would be in litigation for years, so why not make a little political hay? Besides, it's a good opportunity to twit the feds in a public forum, a popular hobby here.
@6:50 AM
Tuesday, January 13, 2004- - -
Cowboys on Mars?
Of course there should be cowboys on Mars. It looks just like Wyoming after all.
Ps. Another thought. Going back to the moon or landing on Mars would be great, but here's something that would be much easier and every bit as interesting: Why not land on an asteroid? The NEAR Shoemaker probe landed on 433 Eros, even though it was never designed to land on anything (softly anyway). Landing on an asteroid largely eliminates the problems of landing and taking off from a planet -- 433 Eros is a big asteroid yet, due to its relatively low gravity, its escape velocity is 22 miles per hour! You don't so much land as match orbits with it.
Besides, remember all those SF stories about asteroid mining? The lesser gravity would seem to make commercial exploitation of an asteroid (assuming there's anything there to exploit) much easier than a similar operation on the moon or Mars. Also, a base on an asteroid would be easier to supply and easier to use as a jumping-off point for other exploration.
@5:04 PM
Pot! Kettle! Black! Black!
The Dean and Gephardt campaigns are trading accusations of vote fraud and sleaze.
Robert Heinlein wrote about this sort of situation in the context of business rivals: If you spend all your time telling anyone who will listen that your competitor is a sleaze, and he returns the favor, you both run the risk of your listeners concluding that you are both right.
@4:17 PM
Pheasant season is over…
Dick Cheney is back from his 'undisclosed location' and hitting the campaign trail. [Hey, I don't tell anyone where my favorite hunting spots are either!]
@3:55 PM
Pundit provokes Peake's pique
It must be something they've put in the water... Today's Denver Post editorializes about strange doings in A Unique Little Town. Who would have thought that you could libel someone by telling the truth about them?
@3:35 PM
A crash course?
OTTAWA -- Sea King pilots are undergoing an intensive crash course on how to keep the aging helicopter in the air if one of its two engines conk out, says the commander of the 1st Canadian Air Division.
@3:21 PM
"This Bud's for You"
BARRIE, Ont. -- A marijuana "factory" concealed within a sprawling old brewery just steps from one of Ontario's busiest highways is proof Canada's pot problem has reached "epidemic proportions," police said yesterday.
@3:16 PM
Less silliness please
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and President Bush are meeting for the first time today, in Monterrey, Mexico.
Asked what kind of relationship he hoped to establish with Bush, a tough-talking Martin said: "I think Canadians expect their prime minister to defend their interests. We are an independent sovereign nation and we will make our own decisions."
...
Another U.S. administration official, asked what the Americans expected from the new Martin regime, was wonderfully blunt: "We would like to see less of the silliness."
Ps. At least the Bush administration has opened the Iraq rebuilding contracts to Canada. Shutting them out seemed a bit uncalled for.
@3:11 PM
Wolf delisting delayed
I never seriously thought that the US Fish & Wildlife Service would buy Wyoming's proposal to treat wolves outside the National Parks as predators to be shot on sight. Any dreams the ranchers may have harbored of wiping them out again simply aren't going to materialize. Treat them as big game and I'll certainly buy a license though, as will a lot of other folks.
@1:46 PM
More loudenboomers
Michael Parker sends a few more comments on big guns, the form is a brisk fisk:
>> The .375 is "invigorating" off the bench, eh? Last time I was that invigorated I was working up loads for a .338 Win. After a dozen rounds I was so invigorated I couldn't focus my eyes any more. Somewhere between the .338 and .375 we seem to cross the threshold between a fast, sharp jab and a big, hard push though. I don't find the recoil of the .375 nearly as objectionable as that of most .338s I've fired. It could be that the .338s tend to be chambered in standard-sized rifles while the .375 goes in the heftier 'African' rifles -- not only heavier, but also better-designed stocks to handle heavy recoil.
That's part of it, but I think the higher velocities of the .338's are what cause the problem. Even with the .375, I find that the 235gr and 270gr light-n-fast loads feel worse than the 300gr loads, even though your average recoil calculator claims the opposite.
>> Oddly enough, felt recoil from Deep Throat isn't nearly so sharp as it was prior to reaming its throat. Elmer Keith remarked on this phenomenon with the .338 Win and it was his opinion that the deeply seated bullets were 'riveting' inside the case -- bumping up past bore diameter and then being squeezed back down -- causing excessive recoil. My calculations of the relative forces acting on the bullet's base and the quarter-inch of shank exposed inside the case suggest that the shank should be squeezed down rather than the base being bumped up, but whatever the reason, seating the bullet out where it belongs does seem to reduce recoil in the .338 considerably.
Base expansion doesn't seem likely from the force diagram -- if anything I'd expect the base to be pressed to a smaller diameter. That base while inside the case is getting pressurized from both the sides and rear, and there's a lot more surface on the sides than on the rear. Once it's in the barrel, the pressure is primarily from the rear so it does tend to expand a bit, which helps maintain the seal.
Unless you've adjusted your load to compensate, then the reamed throat will reduce the pressure, lowering the MV and reducing recoil. This effect is slight, but with heavy bullets it has a noticeable effect from the bench.
>> I'd forgotten about the Load from a Disk software, thanks for reminding me. I have been using Sierra's Infinity V Suite, but find that it doesn't offer much you can't get from a loading manual, and the manual fits on my loading bench. I'm glad you think highly of Load from a Disk, I'll have to try it.
They have a demo (30-cal only) that you can play with to get a feel for it.
Only problem with LFAD is that you can't tell him which powders to use -- he picks them on his own from his database, based on which ones work well given the barrel and cartridge and bullet combo. But it's awfully fun to be able to fiddle with seating depth, or roll your own wildcat and play other what-if games.
>> I did see a Sako in 9.3x62 wander through the local gun shop a while back, but one glance at the price tag was enough for me. Very nice except for the price. Right now the CZ is probably the way to go.
The CZ's are a little rough in the finish department, but their accuracy is good. I'd love a Dakota in .375, but the CZ's are tough to beat for the price.
I'd love a Dakota in any caliber. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen if they'll maintain the same quality now that Don Allen, founder and gun maker, has died. I note that John Barsness doesn't list Dakota as a source of custom rifles in his article "To Build… Or Not To Build… A Custom Rifle" (Rifle, January 2004, pp. 54), for whatever that's worth. [Later… If I'd looked at the pictures while reading the article I'd probably have noticed that Barsness does show a picture of a Dakota Model 76. Hmm…]
I think you're right about the .375 with light v. heavy bullets. By the time you get to the 300 gr. slugs the muzzle velocity is down around 2500 fps, as opposed to a 235 gr. bullet pushing 3000 fps, as would a similar weight bullet from a .338. Pushing a 235 gr. bullet at 2900-3000 fps is bound to sting, unless you have significant weight in the gun to soak up some recoil. But a 300 gr. bullet at 2500 fps is getting into big, hard push territory, much more pleasant in my book.
I had done some calculations and found that the area of the base of a 0.338" bullet is 0.0897 sq. in., while the surface area of the shank exposed inside the powder chamber (exactly 0.250" of intrusion with a 230 gr. Failsafe seated 0.005" off the lands as Deep Throat came from the factory) is 0.2655 sq. in. Assuming that the pressure of burning gas is exerted in all directions with equal force, there is considerably more total pressure on the sides of the shank than on the base of the bullet. Of course, whether the bullet shank would be squeezed down or riveted also depends on the composition of the bullet -- a bullet jacket with a thick base and thin side walls might be more susceptible to being squeezed, while riveting might be more likely to occur if the side walls are thick and the base is thin (or non-existent, as with the Failsafe).
So much for theory: I have a pocket-full of Failsafes I've fired from Deep Throat and recovered from various media, before and after throating, and although the black oxide finish on the bullets shows every scratch put on them by the rifle's bore, I see nothing indicating that the last quarter inch of shank was differently affected in any way by firing.
As you point out, I'm getting about 5.52 gr. (water) greater case capacity by seating the bullet out that quarter inch, and I did add one gr. of IMR7828 in the process -- to get the best accuracy, not specifically to maintain any particular velocity -- so it's possible that I've lost a bit of velocity. But the recoil difference is very noticeable, it feels like a hot-loaded .30-06 now, not the typical brutal whack of a .338 Win Mag. It's a puzzlement. One further thought: Turbulence causes added back-pressure and loss of down-stream pressure in a gas passing through a pipeline. I wonder if that bullet shank sticking into the powder room causes turbulence in the burning powder gases?
I've never fired a CZ and only handled one a couple of times, but it appeared to me that most of the roughness and stiffness in a factory-new action could be cured by polishing the guide rails and cocking cam of the bolt a bit. Of course, some of the roughness and stiffness I felt was probably just gummy shipping grease and crud that a thorough cleaning would remove. All in all, I thought the CZs I've fondled were very comparable to rifles being made in Japan the US.
@1:25 PM
"What then?" Indeed
It seems that Bouldah, Colorado has a bit of a prairie dog problem.
@11:09 AM
"Smart kidnapping suspect not competent to stand trial"
She couldn't be that smart then, eh?
@11:00 AM
Oh, they wouldn't do that!
CHEYENNE -- Exxon believes legal contingency fees are driving Sublette County's continued litigation of ExxonMobil tax valuation, an attorney for the company said Monday.
"We have been litigating this case for seven years," said Pat Day. "There's been a lot of law resolved."
Sublette County, he added, is claiming that a 1989 tax settlement agreement is illegal, although that issue has been resolved six times.
"We believe this case is driven by the contingency interests of lawyers," Day said.
Exxon isn't the shiniest spoon in the drawer, but it sounds like they have a valid gripe in this case.
@10:55 AM
And now a word from someone who actually knows what she's talking about
Diane Nicholl, of Defense Training International writes regarding the F in gun safety that we in Wyoming have received from the Brady Bunch:
Hi
I just saw a posting and thought you might be interested in the following information.
I went to the Center for Disease Control web site that allows you to obtain death information by state, age and race.
I did a search for the age group of 0 to 19 years old and found there were no fatal firearms accidents recorded for Wyoming in 2001. A 12 year old white male and an 18 year old white male died as a result of a firearms accident in 2000. There were no deaths in 1999.
No information is given regarding where the accident took place, who owned the gun or who pulled the trigger.
I also did a search for homicides that used firearms and found there were no deaths listed for those between the ages of 0 and 19 years old as firearms related homicides for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001.
Sadly all nine deaths in 2001 mentioned by the Brady spokesman were suicides.
I found the following information at the CDC web site.
For the age group 0 to 19 years old there were the following suicides using firearms:
In 1999, 2 white males 11
2 white males 15
2 white males 16
1 native american 16
3 white males 18
1 white female 18
In 2000, 1 white male aged 16 and 1 white male aged 19.
In 2001, 1 white male 13
1 white male 15
1 asian/pac islander male 15
1 white male 16
1 white male 17
1 white female 17
2 white males 18
1 white male 19
We are not provided with information on where the deaths occurred, who owned the gun and how it was obtained. We also are not told if any adults were charged with a crime in connection with these suicides.
Diane Nicholl
These teen suicides are certainly tragic, but I don't see how any amount of gun safety training will solve the problem. Nor will background checks at gun shows, or more laws 'keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people'. This leads me to suspect that the Bradys are concerned with keeping us safe from guns, rather than safe with guns -- that 'gun safety', as they use the term, is just gun control by a different name.
@10:21 AM
Rifles and Recipes!
If you enjoy reading the works of John Barsness and Eileen Clarke, check out their web site, www.riflesandrecipes.com. I've got to read The Queen of the Legal Tender Saloon: "A story of lost dreams and a found home, with a little sex, drugs and rock and roll (cowboy style) thrown in." Sounds fascinating, although it's surely nothing I would relate to.
Ps. I just ordered a copy of Queen of the Legal Tender and a copy of The Hunter's Book of the Elk.
@9:07 AM
Oooh, I wants it!
Check out the wood and engraving on this baby! From Turnbull Restorations, it's a Winchester 1886 Deluxe 45-70, with 22" barrel, deluxe pistol grip, H-pattern checkering, 3X wood, and case colored action, lever, hammer, butt plate & forend cap. The engraving by Lee Griffith is absolutely stunning! And it's only $19,995.
Even if I was outrageously wealthy I couldn't be trusted with something like that -- I'd have to shoot it. I would be compelled by my own inner demons to take it hunting, even though I know I'd cry at each and every scratch I put on it. It's a good thing I'm a poor boy and immune from such agony.
Mmmm… I like this one too: A reproduction of Patton's Colt single action. Or perhaps you would prefer a copy of Teddy Roosevelt's hog leg. It's pretty, but the gold plating is a bit garish for my tastes. I guess some just go for baroque.
Ps. Now this is more my speed: A .45-90, built on a US Repeating Arms light weight rifle, starting at $1275. For about twice that they'll build the same rifle in .50 Express or .50 Alaskan.
@8:24 AM
Monday, January 12, 2004- - -
I'll second that!
The InstaPundit says the NY Times should hire Megan McArdle as a columnist.
@9:04 PM
Okay, more big guns
Heheh. I write a lengthy political screed, a topic I admittedly know nothing about (except what ticks me off, of course), and the readers respond 'yeah, yeah, but about that .45-70...'
Michael Parker writes: re powder computers. You might want try "Load from a Disk", an interior ballistics simulator for PC's -- you feed him case dimensions (or capacity), barrel length, bullet, seating depth etc, and he cranks out loads for several well-matched powders. Thus far, his predicted velocities have matched my chronograph better than the load books do. He's got a pretty comprehensive bullet and case database, so you don't have to do everything yourself. I think the website is www.loadfromadisk.com, but google would know more. [It's www.loadammo.com, Google comes through again!]
Re 9.3x62 -- It has the advantage of having commercially available ammo (S&B, Norma), but the Hawk cartridges in 416 or 375 might be a better option if you're gonna rebarrel an existing action -- the taper on the 9.3x62 is different (magazine needs to be reworked or it *will* jam), and it has a slightly larger diameter than the standard mauser/30-06 case. While frequently compared to the 35 Whelen, its substantially more powerful, and if you can seat the bullets out a bit you can come within a hair of the .375. Most european manufacturers chamber this round, but except for CZ they're all pretty pricey.
It is chambered in lighter rifles, but the downside is it's gonna kick like a mother, whereas the .375 in a 9-lb rifle is actually quite fun at the range. Invigorating even.
The .375 is "invigorating" off the bench, eh? Last time I was that invigorated I was working up loads for a .338 Win. After a dozen rounds I was so invigorated I couldn't focus my eyes any more. Somewhere between the .338 and .375 we seem to cross the threshold between a fast, sharp jab and a big, hard push though. I don't find the recoil of the .375 nearly as objectionable as that of most .338s I've fired. It could be that the .338s tend to be chambered in standard-sized rifles while the .375 goes in the heftier 'African' rifles -- not only heavier, but also better-designed stocks to handle heavy recoil.
Oddly enough, felt recoil from Deep Throat isn't nearly so sharp as it was prior to reaming its throat. Elmer Keith remarked on this phenomenon with the .338 Win and it was his opinion that the deeply seated bullets were 'riveting' inside the case -- bumping up past bore diameter and then being squeezed back down -- causing excessive recoil. My calculations of the relative forces acting on the bullet's base and the quarter-inch of shank exposed inside the case suggest that the shank should be squeezed down rather than the base being bumped up, but whatever the reason, seating the bullet out where it belongs does seem to reduce recoil in the .338 considerably.
I'd forgotten about the Load from a Disk software, thanks for reminding me. I have been using Sierra's Infinity V Suite, but find that it doesn't offer much you can't get from a loading manual, and the manual fits on my loading bench. I'm glad you think highly of Load from a Disk, I'll have to try it.
I did see a Sako in 9.3x62 wander through the local gun shop a while back, but one glance at the price tag was enough for me. Very nice except for the price. Right now the CZ is probably the way to go.
And Peter Gookins writes: If I may be permitted a few comments and some questions.....on the rifle caliber choice, I've had a Marlin 1895 for quite some time, which used to demonstrate its effectiveness on Virginia whitetails with some frequency. I used the Speer 400 grain soft points, a whole lot of Dupont 3031, and trusted it completely to 150 yards. In the pine woods of Tidewater Virginia, however, 75 yards was a long shot, so I took to carrying a scattergun for quail and the .44 revolver as an anti-Bambi device. I have no doubt the 46 caliber Speer bullet, while damn effective on deer, would not be suitable for bear, as it expands too quickly. I would be curious to learn if anyone has had good success in the lower 48 with Jim West's .50 Alaskan. Heard anything on it?
As for bigger-bore bolt rifles, I'm somewhat enamored of the ballistics of the 8 MM Rem Mag, although never shot one. They're rare, and it seems that if one is willing to tote the iron around, a 98K in 8RM would be a fair choice. Here in Florida anything above .38 Special is overkill for what passes for deer, so I have no need for an 8, other than the usual desire for something more powerful and different. I would think, though, that the 8 RM would be quite suitable for elk, but the 340 Weatherby seems the much more popular choice. What is it that I don't understand about the 8 RM?
I've long pondered Wild West Guns' Alaskan Co-pilot and Alaskan Guide guns. I like the take-down feature, and the scout scope doesn't interfere with handling as much as a receiver-mounted scope would on these leverguns. Also, his .457 Wild West Magnum is essentially what I'm looking for, a modern-day .45-90.
I do notice that West sells the .45-70 a bit short in his cartridge comparison, showing a 405 gr. bullet at 1330 fps from a .45-70. For comparison, Barnes latest manual lists their 400 gr. FNSP at 1800+ fps from an 1895 Marlin. Oddly enough, Barnes lists loads that push this same 400 gr. FNSP at only 1750 fps out of a .450 Marlin (go figure). The .50 Alaskan looks like another interesting way to squeeze more power out an abbreviated levergun, although I've never heard of anyone around here using one.
The price on West's creations are a bit steep though, starting at $1800+, and I wonder just how far I'd feel comfortable pushing the old 1895 design. I've been firing a 405 gr. LBT WLNGC from Cast Performance over 41.0 gr. of H4198, the load recommended by Cast Performance for that bullet in "modern rifles". I should be getting around 1700 fps.
Pondering the loading manuals I see some loads of H4198 that sneak up on 44 gr. with a 405 gr. cast bullet, but I'm a little leery of cranking up the power in these guns, as pressure signs aren't likely to show up until the maximum design pressure of the rifle is considerably exceeded. I rather suspect that West is pushing the envelope a bit farther than I would care to with his .457 and .50 calibers. These are rounds the handloader should probably approach with extreme caution. Still, for someone who doesn't handload and wants a gun they'll be packing a lot more than they'll be shooting, I think West's creations have great promise.
The Kodiak bullets West loads in his creations have received very high marks from several of the gun pundits, and they would be worth looking at for anyone who wants a premium controlled-expansion bullet for big, thin-skinned critters. Phil Shoemaker found that the 400 gr. Kodiak penetrated very well and opened up to about .80", very nice performance. Incidentally, here is Shoemaker's article "Beauty and the Beast", in praise of the .458 Winchester as a short-range stopper. His "ole ugly", a short-barreled .458 with a low-powered scope, is just about what I have in mind as a big bore brush gun. My reasons for going to a bolt-action are to give me a stronger action, safer for the reloader who doesn't have the capability to measure chamber pressures, and to give me a rifle with a bit longer range, that doesn't look quite so tarted up as a levergun with a scope in place. In a .458 Win, Barnes lists their 400 gr. XFB at 2300+ fps with a variety of powders, which pretty well leaves West's .457, 350 gr. bullet at 2200 fps, in the dust. And the .458 does this with spitzer bullets.
Unfortunately, Ross Seyfried's answering article "In defiance of the .458 Winchester" (Rifle, January-February 2004, pp.12) isn't on line, as he lays out all the arguments for 'anything but a .458'. Both arguments have their merits. However, Seyfried is talking predominantly about *hunting* rifles, while Shoemaker is talking strictly *stopping* rifles. I'll grant you that the .458 has it's problems (chiefly lack of case capacity, as noted by Michael Parker in a previous post) with maximum loads and there are undoubtedly far better guns for really big African game. Likewise, even with starting loads the .458 is way over the top for elk. But when I hear Big Wahb "woof" behind me as I'm astraddle of a blowdown log down in a dog hair-thick patch of lodgepoles, I suspect I'll be mighty glad for something in .45 caliber throwing a 400+ gr. bullet. My only complaint with the .45-70 Guide Gun in this respect is that the occasional 250 yard shot does present itself, and it's difficult for me to get much long range precision with a hunting-style peep sight.
I really don't know why the 8mm Rem Mag isn't more popular. According to Barnes manual, it throws a 220 gr. XFB at around 2750 fps, about the same velocity that the .338 Win. gives with a 225 gr. bullet.? The 8mm 220 gr. WFB has a slightly better sectional density (.301) as opposed to the 225 gr. .338 XFB (.281) and slightly lower ballistic coefficient (.462 to the .338's .482). Oddly enough, the .338 Win is slightly more efficient, using slightly less of any given powder. The .338 can also use somewhat heavier bullets, although these will clear the wimps from the room pretty quickly. For all practical purposes the two rounds are about identical. The biggest down-side to the 8mm is its 2.85" case length, as opposed to the .338 Win's 2.50" case -- the couple of guys I know who use the 8mm have rifles chambered in long Weatherby actions -- and the relative lack of good premium bullets. There I'll argue that if Barnes makes an X-bullet in the caliber we shouldn't complain about a lack of good bullets, and magnum-length actions don't add that much to a rifle's over all length or bolt stroke. I think an 8mm Rem Mag would be an excellent choice for elk/moose/bear.
@1:08 PM
Sunday, January 11, 2004- - -
Okay, I'm faux scandalized
The folks who are surprised by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's revelation that we had contingency plans for a post-Saddam Iraq prior to September 11th, would probably be surprised to learn that at one time we also had contingency plans for the nuclear annihilation of the Soviet Union. However, to think otherwise would be profoundly naive. Oddly enough though, we never put our plans for Soviet annihilation into practice, nor did we invade Iraq until after September 11th.
According to the WaPo article: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said the revelation underscores the continuing importance of examining "the true circumstances of the Bush administration's push for war." Now I'm not surprised that an ankle-biter like Howard Dean would want to continue to savage this ball of rags [see "The Wolves and the Troika" below]. It might gain him a few political points. I can see why O'Neill is spouting this stuff, he was fired by the Bush administration and he has a 'tell-all' book to sell. But I find this sort of faux scandal rather unhelpful as a debate issue in the War on Terror.
On the other hand, Paul Johnson, of the CalgarySun, provides a forward-looking prescription for victory in the War on Terror: We in the west should be strong and resolute. We should start launching commando-style raids against terrorist camps and we should assassinate our enemies' leaders. And in order to remain strong, we should enforce a puritanical social order at home that has no room for rap or hip-hop. Pornography and the drug culture must be stamped out. Etc., etc.
Okay. I agree that we must remain resolute, and raiding terrorist camps and killing their leaders is a great idea (I thought we were already doing that), but I fail to see how a dose of neo-Puritanism will help. However much I disagree with Johnson on some points of his prescription though, at least he offers a proposal for action, rather than a bucket of stale recrimination.
@9:38 AM
The Wolves and the Troika: A Parable for Our Time.
I got together with some friends yesterday, including my favorite raving commie and professional journalist, Duane Groshart, long-time sports writer and columnist for the Northern Wyoming Daily News, and all around good guy. Naturally we got into the whole 'Gore should have won and Bush lied and the administration has side-tracked the war on terror to beat up on Saddam and…' argument. It was inevitable. It is also becoming profoundly frustrating.
Imagine for a moment one of those old Russian sleighs being pulled by a couple of reindeer through the forest late at night when they are set upon by a pack of wolves. Thinking quickly, the family bundled in the troika smears some rags with a chunk of meat, ties the rags in a tight ball, and throws it to the wolves. Smelling the meat, the wolves proceed to fight over the bundle of rags while the troika gets away. Perhaps a couple of wolves continue to chase them, but far fewer than before…
Okay. The Bush administration is the troika. The democrats are the wolves. The bundle of rags is history, past events. As long as the dems continue to be distracted by historical arguments over who should have won the 2000 election, whether we should have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, did Saddam have WMDs and would he have used them or given them to terrorists, and did Bush lie about it, and all the other issues that are now fodder for historians, they fight over the bundle of rags. The number of wolves who still pursue -- the loyal opposition who are looking to the future, asking 'what next?' and proposing viable alternatives -- dwindles.
Looked at from another perspective, it seems that the dems want to quibble over tactical details while overlooking the greater strategic issues. When the Prez told us that the WOT was going to be long and hard I think he was telling the truth as he sees it -- many of those opposed to the Bush administration don't seem to grasp the implications of that. As so many in the blogosphere have argued, invading Afghanistan was only the first engagement in the WOT, invading Iraq was not a side-trip, it was the second engagement in the WOT. What is the next step? Where do we go from here? To my mind, that is worth debating.
Whether Gore should be president, whether Bush lied about the threat posed by Iraq's WMDs, whether we should have waited for the UN inspections to work, all that is fighting over a bundle of rags. Historians will still be arguing about those things 100 years from now. Tear open the bundle of rags and you might get a taste of meat -- if there is any inside -- you might score a few political points. But you will have little effect on the course of events.
I am profoundly tired of arguing about history. Yet, when I ask 'If you don't like what Bush is doing, where do you suggest that we go next?' all I get is 'Umm.. Well.. A.. But we wouldn't be in this boat if Gore had won!' Actually when asked 'Where would we be if Gore had won?', Duane responded "Oh, about where we are right now, except with a democrat as president." I think he's right. And I think this illustrates the trivial nature of such arguments.
We are caught up in events that will profoundly change the world for better or ill. We face a Billion Islamic people, some non-trivial number of whom are of the 'Death to the Infidel' variety. What do we do about that? What can we do about that? Should we do anything? I think these are the issues worth debating. Duane seems to think that pointing out such things is being condescending, because of course everyone is aware of the problem. Well fine. The wolves are aware that the troika is getting away too.
Do you want to do something about terrorism, or do you want to score a few political points? Do you want to keep up with the troika of world events, or fight over a bundle of historical and political rags? Yes, putting it that way is probably condescending as hell. But if you don't mind, I'll be chasing the troika, you can have the bundle of rags.
@6:48 AM
Saturday, January 10, 2004- - -
But was he registered to vote?
Those liberals. They've been known to register the occasional minor, dead person, or illegal, but courting a dead dog? It appears they're even worse in Canada.
Ps. Capt. J.M. Heinrichs responds: We blame it on importing Chicago politics when we acquired pizza.
Let's see, you import Chicago politics and export Canadian cold fronts. Considering the temperature outside today, I'd say we're about even. Ain't NAFTA grand?
@9:54 AM
What a surprise
The Brady Bunch have given Wyoming an F in gun safety:
Nine children and teenagers died from gunfire in Wyoming in 2001, the most recent year for which data are available, according to John Shanks of San Antonio, regional director for the Brady Campaign.
"That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you compare population, that firearm death rate is 52 percent higher than the national average," he said.
That may be 52% higher than the national average, but a sample of nine is still statistically insignificant. Also note that this is apparently deaths from all causes, not just accidents caused by poor safety practices.
Guernsey resident Mark Spongin, president of the Wyoming State Shooting Association, disagrees.
"An F from the Brady Campaign, we consider that a very satisfactory grade," he said. "What they would grade an F, we would grade an A. States that have As - like Massachusetts, New York and California - those essentially don't have Second Amendment rights."
Hehe. Yes, if you're drawing criticism from the Brady Bunch you must be doing something right.
@8:41 AM
Ride it, Cowboy!
Dang! Worked this up and almost forgot to post it! I've been getting incredible mileage out of the Big Gun issue and the comments continue to roll in. I wish I could dream up a topic like this every week. Hmm.. I think I'll do "What makes the ideal carry gun" next, that ought to draw some comment.
Craig Henry writes in response to my last comments: Well, I really can't justify owning a .348 (mine is a Browning reproduction). But I just had an itch to own one. I like the uniqueness of the whole thing. Not to mention the smoothness of the action and fit and finish.
Technically, since PA now has an elk season, the .348 does qualify as usable.... if I draw one of the handful of tags given out this year. But it really was just a flight of fancy--- it makes a nice brush rifle for whitetail and bear, but a 35 remington would work just as well back here.
I've thought about the 416-348. But I can't bring myself to mess with the barrel on this one. And I wonder about the tubular magazine/flat point bullet problem. It kind of negates the advantage of the .416 in some ways. And the 250 grain Barnes .348 bullets stacks up pretty good on SD compared to many 45/70 and .444 Marlin loads.
If practicality were the bottom line, I'd load some 165 gr. Barnes X or Failsafes in my '06 and sell every other rifle I own. Nor can I claim to be matching the rifle to the quarry, as I've got several rifles I've never hunted with or fired at a game animal -- I'll get around to using them some day. I'm just fascinated by weapons of all kinds, they've always been a man's proudest possessions. I've decided that the only real excuse I need to buy another gun is sufficient wherewithal.
I've been quite impressed by Browning's Winchester reproductions. I have one of their M92s in .44 magnum that is very nice. I can't blame you a bit for not wanting to mess with your .348. If you're interested in a "big medicine" rifle, have you considered one of the Winchester M1895 .405 reproductions? If I can get over gagging at the tang safety I might try a repro M1895, although for no explicable reason I've always wanted one in .30-06. Always wondered what happened to the half a gazillion originals made in 7.62x54R, which would also be an interesting rifle to try.
I think you're right that the .416-348 isn't well suited to a levergun. It would be interesting in a single-shot though. Regardless of the type of rifle, I would think that finding .416 bullets that would function at the reduced velocity of the .416-348 would be the greatest difficulty. And really, if a single-shot .416 is the goal, I'd choose the old .500-416 Flanged.
Craig Henry responds: I agree completely. My '06 purchased in 1978 really covers nearly everything i will ever need a rifle for and my .223 NEF singleshot covers the rest of my hunting needs. But there is just so many other fine rifles out there.
In re 1895: When i started investigating .416 wildcats, my final goal was to have it in an 1895. I don't need big medicine for bears, but as a TR fan, i just thought having one in the gun safe would be cool. Plus, as Barsness would say, every rifle looney eventually wants (needs?) a custom rifle.
I actually saw an 1895 Win in 7.62x54R at a gun show about 18 months ago. Pretty beat up and carrying a collector-sized price tag, but still, not the usual thing you see on the racks around here.
For a custom 40 caliber in an M1895, something like the .411 Hawk or the old .400 Whelen would be very interesting, and relatively easy to do starting with an '06-chambered M1895. At least I wouldn't think you would have to modify the magazine (much?). Paging through the various loading manuals and bullet catalogs it looks like most of the .416 bullets available are designed for .416 Rem/Rigby velocities. However, after some pondering of recommended loads, it appears that the .416 Remington shouldn't be as dependent on a long barrel as I would have thought. The powders recommended are in the H4895/IMR 4064 range, the sort I'd choose for my 22"-barreled '06. None of the loads recommended by Barnes use IMR 7828, which gives the highest velocities I've gotten from a .338, but only with a long barrel to burn all that slow powder. I wish I had one of those old Powley powder computers, it would help understand the relationship between case capacity, bullet weight & diameter, and barrel length that we're talking about.
I've also read up some on the 9.3x62 and I've got to try one of those!!
Andy Freeman writes with an interesting idea: If I hit the lotto, I'm going to track down a gunsmith that I talked to several years ago. He makes custom M1 Garands.
Lots of people make custom M1 Garands, so why am I tracking him down?
He makes them in .375H&H. No, not .375 Winchester or somesuch, .375H&H.
I do have to convince him to do one thing different - he insists on trophy stocks. I want something more practical. (Maybe that doesn't make much sense, but I'm the customer.)
Whew! That would be quite the custom job. The greater length and girth of the .375 H&H would seem to demand a wider *and* longer action, suggesting that it would be easier to mill a new receiver than to convert an existing M1. En bloc clips would have to be custom-made as well. It sounds perfectly doable, but more than a bit spendy. A quick google indicates that there is no .375 H&H autoloader on the market, so you'd certainly be the first on your block to have one, and I demand pictures!
And just about the time I figured this topic had been beaten to death -- at least for now -- Capt. Heinrichs offers this parting shot:
>>"I still think that deep-throating a .338 Win is a great idea, but if I do it again I'll use a magnum-length bolt-action."
It's a good thing I was well brought up, and might not immediately leap to concussions, because that sentence could really lead me astray. Or it makes a good addition to your title bar …
Don't think that the multiple innuendos that can be drawn from calling one of my favorite rifles "Deep Throat" didn't occur to me. It certainly plays on the 'gun as penis substitute/enhancement' thing. I suppose it could be taken to imply a modern form of sword-swallowing (and we won't even get into 'sword-swallowing' as a euphemism). There's the political connection -- Watergate and all that... That's a triple entendre right there. Oh, and don't forget the movie, that makes it about 3½ entendres ;^)
I suppose "Specializing in deep-throating big guns" might make a good addition to my title bar, but I'm reasonably certain that some folks would draw the wrong conclusion from that.
Obviously, I wasn't so well brought up. The lower the form of humor the more I enjoy it!
@8:00 AM
Kitties gone bad
I was eavesdropping on a couple of guys at the health club yesterday when one said he didn't see much sign of deer or elk around his place anymore, only lions. I can't say I've seen that much lion sign myself, but I certainly noted an absence of mule deer and elk this past season.
I think the situation has been very well explained in an excellent article by John Barsness ("Mule Deer: Past & Future," Successful Hunter, Sept/Oct 2003, pp. 62). [Incidentally, when laymen, journalists, and popular authors start discussing paleontology, archaeology, and/or history it usually brings a few groans, but Barsness does an excellent job -- obviously very well researched.] Essentially deer, like most all wildlife, go through cycles of population 'boom and bust'. When ungulate populations are high they support a lot of predators and predator populations boom, then ungulate populations go bust and predators starve. And, of course, starving predators will eat whatever they can find, including your poodle and the occasional stray bicyclist [link may require log-in, try laexaminer, laexaminer].
For whatever reasons, deer and elk populations have declined precipitously here in Wyoming, and judging from recent events, I'd guess prey populations have dropped in California as well. The SF Chronicle cites 'experts' who say the recent mountain lion attacks are due to development encroaching on their habitat, but this would seem rather ahistorical -- Californians have been encroaching on lion habitat for 150 years, why is it just now that the lions are biting back? I'd suggest that this is the Law of the Hammer in action: If identifying and protecting critical habitat is the order of the day, every wildlife problem will be viewed as a need for more habitat protection. Certainly loss of habitat is a big problem, but I don't think that is the prime cause of these attacks.
I predict that we'll see more run-ins between humans and lions for the next year or two and then the lion population will drop, deer and elk populations will come back -- if this bloody drought breaks -- and the cycle will begin again.
@7:17 AM
Friday, January 09, 2004- - -
Matt Welch has made the best New Year's resolutions.
Ps. And he says he's got new glasses even funkier than the old! (see the comments).
PPs. The "Mississippi Burning" look, eh? Something like these Barry Goldwater specials perhaps?
PPPs. It looks like Jeff Bezos has the same taste in specs.
@6:48 AM
Thursday, January 08, 2004- - -
You're right, that is strange
I finally checked out MoDo's latest, after reading a dozen different pundits' comment that it was pretty wacky.
No kidding. I'd suggest that it was early on-set Alzheimer's, except it's not that early in Ms. Dowd's case. And just what was the old L word? Liverwurst? There is no L leading off any of the seven famously forbidden words. Perhaps it was 'loopy', a term I'm sure she's familiar with.
@4:29 PM
The bear minimum
More on big guns and really big guns! Guns are my second favorite topic after all, right after talking about myself, eh Dave?
Michael Parker writes: I was looking at the same issue, and went with the 375 H&H. Partly because I handload, and that's the biggest caliber with reasonable bullet selection, including spitzers and boattails. It's a ballistic twin to the 30-06 -- given bullets is equal sectional density (150/235, 180/270, 200/300), it will throw them at the same velocity as the 30-06. The 375 (and 458, 416, 404, etc) are all surprisingly good deer guns if you can handle the recoil -- they drop them on the spot, and destroy surprisingly little meat -- somewhere between a 30-30 and 30-06. This is because the velocities are low enough that they don't turn the meat into jelly, and the bullets don't blow up (or even expand much, depending on what you're using). They just carve a 1-1.5" hole through the animal. Unlike the 45-70, though, these big guns do work by hydroshock as well, they just don't overdo it like the zippier small-caliber guns.
Your idea about the 458WM is a good one -- I seriously considered that route, since it can use (relatively) cheap 45-70 bullets, and can be loaded down to 45-70 velocities (350gr@~2200fps). It's pretty weak on the high end though -- it just doesn't have enough case capacity, so most serious loads are highly compressed -- this has become a disturbing failure mode in Africa, as the compressed powder charge turns into solid brick after a year or two. The 458WM chamber can be finish-reamed to the 458 Lott (2.85" case instead of 2.5" case) if you are using a full magnum action, and CZ is making this a standard chambering in 2004. Only real problem is bullet selection, since 45-70 slugs aren't designed for 2500-2800fps impacts, and the african bullets can be a bit pricey.
Also, magnum actions aren't intrinsically heavy, being only 3/10" longer than a normal action, it's more the massive stocks and crossbolts and fairly heavy barrels that do it -- there's never been a real push for a lighter howitzer :-) But if it's balanced well, and with a reasonable barrel length it's not really a problem. My 375 weighs about 9 lbs, has a 24" barrel (CZ claims 25, but it's 24.2, same as the old WWII-era K98K). It's no lightweight, but it doesn't really feel its weight -- it's the most instinctive rifle I've got. It's also one of the most popular guns among african Professional Hunters, so the weight and length issues aren't as big as you might think.
Yes, the .375 is always a good choice, I know several folks who use them on elk every year. However, Barnes makes excellent bullets in about every conceivable American or European caliber, who could ask for anything more? Umm… well okay, I've probably got a dozen different brands and weights of 30 caliber bullets in the loading room, it's that variety of components that makes reloading fun and eternally interesting. Honestly though, I find that when the guns start to bite at both ends working up loads becomes somewhat less entertaining. I've only worked up one load ever for old Deep Throat: 74 gr. Of IMR 7828 puts 230 gr. .338 Failsafes into an inch at 100 yards, traveling about 2900 fps from my 26" barrel. That oughta do the job.
I dreamed up Deep Throat with the intent of using Winchester Failsafes exclusively. I did try a few other powders, but none gave me the velocity I wanted without extremely compressed loads -- this seems to be a problem with most all the Winchester belted magnums, you run out of powder room before you start to see signs of pressure. With SAAMI-standard .338 Winchesters, I was crunching some of those powders so hard I wondered if I was affecting their burn rate. This was a good part of the reason that I cut the throat of my Ruger #1 to allow Failsafes to be seated flush with the base of the neck -- hence 'Deep Throat'. Of course, you can only do this with a single-shot, or magnum-length bolt-action, the resulting rounds are too long to fit in a standard length action and won't chamber in a SAAMI-standard .338 Win. Does cutting a ¼-inch deeper throat in a standard .338 Win make it a wildcat? Hmm… The case is unmodified and I can still shoot factory .338 Win ammo in a pinch (Why would I want to do that?), but rounds tailored for Deep Throat will not chamber in a standard .338 Win.
Seating the bullet out where it belongs gains me about 10 gr. of powder capacity in the .338. My 74 gr. of 7828 is no longer being crushed. Unfortunately, the extractor of the Ruger #1 isn't the best with belted cartridges and I'm forced to stick to loads where the casing will virtually drop out of the chamber after firing. I still think that deep-throating a .338 Win is a great idea, but if I do it again I'll use a magnum-length bolt-action. But I digress.
Michael Parker is absolutely right about using .45-70 bullets in a .458. Jacketed lead-core bullets designed for the .45-70's 1600-1800 fps will likely come apart at 2500-2800 fps (or even at 2300 fps, which is more realistic for the .458 throwing 450-500 gr. bullets). That's a good way to become bear food. It's best to stick to bullets designed for the velocity of the cartridge you're loading. I'm contemplating using the Barnes 400 or 450 gr. X bullets though and I know they won't come apart. They are a trifle spendy, at about $17 for 20 from Midway, but how many bears, or elk, do you get to shoot? Hornady also makes an excellent 500 gr. soft-point that's only $24 for 50, much better for plinking should you be so insane inclined.
And Michael Parker isn't the only one who likes the CZ, Craig Henry, proprietor of the excellent Lead and Gold and Boone Country blogs writes: Your discussion of stopping power has been very interesting. Personally, I think you've made the best case for a .416 elk rifle that I've read.... but then, I've been looking for an excuse to get a .416 for several years......
Realistically, have you considered the 9.3x62mm? I think this CZ is a sweet little number.
Oh yes, the CZs look like dandy rifles, although I've never fired one. They're a bit rough out of the box, but polishing the guide rails and cocking mechanism should handle that. I like their all-steel construction and I don't mind the European-style stock. And I bet Craig has never noticed that they make a Safari Magnum, chambered in .300 Win, .375 H&H, .458 Win, and .416 Rigby. It's probably the best buy in a magnum-length Mauser action.
I too have been looking for an excuse to buy a .416, but it's so hard to decide between the Remington and Rigby rounds... I guess I'll just have to get one of each ;-) What I'm looking for in the .458 though is a round that works (relatively) well in a short barrel. After the first morning of the season the elk here are deep in the thickest tangles they can find, and I found the Guide Gun to be *much* handier than my old .338. Quite a bit lighter too. Unfortunately, the .416s need a relatively long barrel for best efficiency, so I'd be trading one long gun for another. I suppose it could be argued that the .458, .416, .375, and .338 are all a bit of overkill for elk (and they're way over the top for deer, but hey, you can't kill 'em too dead), but I'm also concerned that I'll come nose to nose with Little Wahb's big brother. Little Wahb was a 700# cattle-killing grizzly they shot up by Meeteetse a couple of years ago, not far from where I often hunt. Ross Seyfried is right, best shoot those monsters at 200 yards with a .340. But I think Phil Shoemaker is also right, at nose to nose range in a tangle of blowdown a .458 starts looking like the bear minimum.
I'd dearly love to try a 9.3x62 or a .338-06, or a .350 Whelan. None should need a 26" barrel, nor should the recoil make you weep after a few shots at the bench -- and frankly, I'm not convinced that you gain that much in going from the .338-06 to the .338 Win or .340 Weatherby, except for more recoil. Hmm.. I suppose the same could be said for going from the .45-70 to .458, but I'm not really looking for full .458 power, but rather for a short-barreled bolt gun that can mount a scope (I find scopes on leverguns offend my sense of aesthetics). Actually, I think my next project in a .34 caliber will be a .338-348 Ackley Improved in a Ruger #1. I'll cut the throat so a 230 gr. Failsafe seats flush with the base of the neck and have something that looks like a .256 Mannlicher on steroids. Almost as much powder room as the .338 Win, but in a rimmed cartridge for reliable extraction (I'm not much impressed by the extractors Ruger uses for belted cartridges in the Ruger #1). Compared to Deep Throat, I'd lose a bit of power but gain reliability.
Craig Henry responds: I think what you really want is a 416 wildcat like the 416-284. You could even get it chambered in a lever like the Win 95 and use pointed bullets.
No, wait a minute, that's me. I just think that with all the new calibers (.204 Ruger?) someone should come out with a .416 round designed for American use. Well, really I want an update of TR's big medicine that uses all the .416 bullets now available.
But, I really do see your point. a 350-500 grain bullet with good sectional density is more reassuring in bear country than a high-speed .338. Have you checked out the Hawk Cartridges? They look impressive and specifically mention use in levers like the BLR.
I keep trying to come up with a reason to pickup a CZ in 9.3x62.... I'm a sucker for that full-length stock and 20 inch barrel. But I have a Browning in .348 which is as heavy a rifle as I am ever going to need on this side of the Mississippi.
Whoa Nellie! What are you hunting back there in that requires .348 power? Although the last time I saw a .348 used it took a small muley doe -- and it worked really well.
Back when, Townsend Whelan and P.O. Ackley based a lot of wildcats on the rimmed .348 case, and you can step all the way up to the .450 Alaskan, a .45-348 Improved! Among the Ackley Improved rounds is one you might be particularly interested in, the .416-348. You could even re-barrel the Browning .348, but better you should trade it to me for a CZ in 9.3x62, I've been searching for a Browning or Winchester .348 for years. I'm only half serious, if I had a .348 I would hang onto it very tightly and I probably wouldn't monkey with the barrel.
The only problem I can see with a .416-348 Ackley Improved would be finding bullets. I'm sure that most would be much too heavily jacketed to open up at .348 levergun velocities, and flat-point .416s would be even tougher to find. However, I would think that swaging flat-point bullets for a .416 levergun would be pretty simple -- use a heavy copper jacket and pure lead core and you've essentially got a Barnes Original -- and better yet, it gives you an excuse to start swaging bullets!
Finally, Fuz writes: We should let any passenger who wants, to board with a nice sharp serrated folding knife, and several boxes of gallon Ziplocs.
Anybody foolish enough to try to take a plane like the last time will be disemboweled just to make sure no bombs were secreted in his body.
No, I'm not kidding.
***
When's the best time and place to try to take a Wyoming coyote?
Will a 14" Contender in 5,56 with 2-to-6 power do it, or should I tune up the 6,5 Swede?
Or scope an AR15?
Shoot Coyotes? Pardon Me! … Oh wait, I guess I've shot a few (dozen) of them myself. There's coyotes everywhere, but I hear that Park County, Wyoming is offering a $20 bounty -- and you'd have to go through Washakie County to get to Park County. I just happen to have a 6mm and a coyote call… But that's an awfully long haul to hunt coyotes.
Hunting for fur (worth a bit more than $20 right now), it's best to go in January or February when the fur is prime. Back in college I made a good deal of spending money that way. If you're not interested in the bounty or the fur, any time and anywhere works. Most any rancher in Wyoming would be happy to let you shoot all the coyotes you want, and there's plenty on public land too.
Either .223 should work just fine, although I find it awfully hard on my ears with that 14" barrel, even with plugs and muffs. A 6.5mm works too, but is a bit more than you really need, as is my 6mm. A scope-sighted AR-15 would make a dandy coyote gun, as you're not going to get two chances to shoot one standing still.
As for terrorists on aircraft, I've always leaned toward defenestration -- less messy and it gives them a few minutes to repent their foolishness. Too bad more aircraft don't have those DB Cooper rear doors.
@10:13 AM
News from the Stryker Brigade
Capt. J.M. Heinrichs forwards a link to news out of Iraq -- the Strykers have seen their first action. Two Strykers were hit by roadside bombs. One lost its left front wheel and hub, with the crew surviving unhurt. The other also suffered only minor damage from the blast, but unfortunately the blast started an engine fire that spread to their ammo. Still, only the driver was slightly injured.
The photo of the destroyed Stryker shows its anti-RPG 'hoop skirt'. It looks a bit goofy, but I bet it works just fine, and unlike appliqué armor, it's light. No word yet on how many TV channels they get with it though...
@6:50 AM
Canadian American Strategic Review
Capt. Heinrichs forwards a link to the Index of Land Forces equipment, which outlines -- yes -- the equipment used by Canadian Land Forces. Very, very interesting. Also check out the CASR home page, for a good deal of discussion on the Canadian military.
Scroll down for CASR's response to Jane's Defence Weekly's assessment of the Canadian Forces as the worst-managed in the Western World. Considering the capabilities of some of our southern neighbors, I'd say that's a bit of a stretch, although it appears they desperately need some new gear. You'll note that the Index of Land Forces equipment lists the M72 LAW as an anti-armor weapon. I did try one of these on an old Sherman and it did indeed burn a hole in the side of the turret as advertised. If there'd been a crew inside I'm sure they would have been terribly miffed. However, it's looping trajectory, 300 meter maximum range, and extremely stiff trigger mechanism make it difficult to hit anything at any range -- you'd better know the exact range and the target better sit still for the interminable time it takes for the rocket to get there.
@6:30 AM
What part of 'No'…
Today's totally unscientific but never-the-less terribly interesting CalgarySun on-line poll asks: "Do you think Paul Martin will make the gun registry more acceptable to westerners?" 83.3% just say 'No'.
@6:07 AM
Tuesday, January 06, 2004- - -
Yet more guns!
Every once in awhile I post something that gets a great response from all six of my regular readers, and I certainly outdid myself with my blather on big guns v. little guns. I posted some comments yesterday and here are a few more:
The Fusilier Pundit writes to tell me I'm full of it (but you already knew that!):
You nailed Cooper's opinion of the 3-round burst. It's a step backward. "If you need automatic fire, you tend to need a lot of it."
BTW, Mozambique is double-tap to center of mass, assess, find that the goblin is still standing, then third round to head. "Two to the center, one to the head---that's the way we make 'em dead"
I think the FN CAL is the first carbine to offer a 3-round burst as standard, in addition to full auto.
Aarrggghh! You're right. What I described should probably be called 'the Mozambique for dummies' -- I've never managed to perfect a true 'two shots with one sight picture' double tap. Inside 7 yards the second shot *usually* lands on target somewhere between throat and groin, but if it hits near center of mass it's purely accidental. If I slow down enough to place the second shot center of mass I'm really firing two aimed shots. I practice a few double taps whenever I break out the .45, but having no faith in my ability with that technique, when I practice the Mozambique I practice firing one to center of mass, instantly followed by one to the head [actually, I practice firing one to the body, one to the head, one to the body, one to the head, etc., varying between single and multiple targets, until I run dry]. Crude, but hopefully effective.
Frankly, I've always wondered about the 'assess, find the goblin still standing' bit -- using the Mozambique as a 'failure to stop' drill. It's my feeling that this can introduce a moment of hesitation and indecision at a point in the process where all hesitation should be behind us. Back when I got my CCW [I just *had* to look, it's dated August 16, 1977 *sob*] Sheriff Lutz gave me one piece of advice: "If you ever have to shoot someone, keep shooting until they fall down." That defers the 'should I keep shooting?' decision to a more advantageous point in the process.
Come to think of it, I suppose this is what offended me about the little film clip of the air marshals as much as anything. It showed one sequence where the marshal runs up to the target and pumps half-a-dozen rounds into center of mass at point blank range. It appears that he's following the 'shoot until the target goes down' doctrine, which is fine, but forgetting about body armor, which is not good considering who they're training to deal with. What's that marshal going to do after he's pumped an entire magazine into the creep's trauma plate? Reload and do it again if he lives that long? I'm really trying to give those guys the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure the little clip that was aired was selected by the film crew as the most exciting footage, not that showing the best or most practiced techniques. But I'm hard-pressed to come up with a scenario where pumping half-a-dozen rounds rapid fire, center of mass of a single target would ever be the preferred technique. A couple of readers have suggested that these 'hose 'em down' drills are designed to compensate for under-powered weapons, but isn't some variation of the Mozambique even more appropriate with smaller calibers? Who knows? Perhaps they deliberately aired that segment so they can start watching for shifty characters trying to board planes with Denver phone books and duct tape…
Capt. J.M. Heinrichs writes with some comments and a couple of excellent links [be sure to check out the links, it's a great on-line resource!]:
The German rifle mentioned [yesterday] is the G11 here. Also the Russian Abakan rifle which is really, really neat (Blow-Back Shifted Pulse).
As for the burst selector, we avoided it when choosing the C7 because the Colt implementation was rather less than good engineering: whereas other designs would reset when the trigger is released, the M16 version would reset only after the third round. Thus if the rifleman held the trigger for two rounds only, then his next burst would be 'singular'. We Canucks are taught how to fire bursts; having learned about bursts with the SMG/Sterling, I had difficulties firing long (3-4 Trace) burst on the GPMG.
As several readers have pointed out, this whole burst fire selector business seems a bad idea. Trained troops shouldn't need it, and I see the occasional place for longer bursts. Particularly at night on a defensive perimeter, or in an ambush, or anywhere with established fields of fire, I can see having everyone empty a magazine into their sector on command. Although with night vision becoming ubiquitous I suppose there's less call for firing blind, I'd think it's still handy for suppressing fire.
Funny you should mention your difficulties with the SMG to GPMG switch, I had a devil of a time getting used to firing nice long bursts with the cuppola-mounted M85 and once you had one of those miserable old things firing you didn't want to stop -- it might not start again!
And Andy Freeman sends a brief fisking:
> Experience proved that it was best to knock the enemy clear out of his saddle with one shot.
Although being knocked out of the saddle yourself isn't such a good idea, and if you're knocking the other guy out of his saddle, there's a good chance that you've unhorsed yourself.
Both firing and being hit are momentum-conserving collisions and the former is necessarily greater than the latter.
> Those old British .577s must have impacted with a most satisfying whop!
Doesn't every cartridge greater than 0.50 get special treatment under NFA?
I think we can assume that 'knock him clear out of the saddle' is a bit of hyperbole, no handgun I know of has that kind of power or, as you point out, it could well knock you down to fire it (although we have to figure the weight of the gun in there somewhere)... Say, I wonder if you can get a Thompson Encore in .458 Win? That *would* knock you down when you fired it and, of course, that's not just 'too big' it's way too big. *I love it!*
Yes, some firearms over .50 caliber are restricted as 'destructive devices' or some such. I'm not really sure what that's all about, as shotguns aren't regulated this way, even the rifled guns designed solely to fire slugs. Also, how does the Thompson Contender with .410 shotgun barrel escape the 'sawed-off shotgun' provisions of the NFA? Awhile back Ross Seyfried wrote about Hamilton Bowen recreating the old .577 on a Ruger Redhawk frame, and that gun had to be specially registered in some fashion. However, the original .577s were created circa 1900, before the NFA was passed, and in Britain, so not subject to US law regardless (and I think they're exempt as 'relics' here in the US if they were made before 1898, or some such). They're pretty much an historical curiosity now, but they illustrate just how far you can go with the bigger, slower bullet concept. And that the idea of the 'tactical slug' load -- a reduced recoil 12 ga. -- isn't new at all.
Speaking of historic relics, I received a flyer awhile ago offering to sell an original mountain howitzer, along with ammo. Supposedly, this was perfectly legal because it was made before 1898 and classed as a relic! Unfortunately, the price was about what we paid for our house and I couldn't talk my wife into a new mortgage... And to think I could have been the first one on my block with my very own breech-loading cannon. If it were brass I could have named it 'Heinlein' -- remember the old story about the County's cannon polisher who became disgruntled, bought his own cannon, and went into business for himself?
Thus ends the more interesting emails for today. Do check out the world.guns.ru site and the links Capt. Heinrichs has provided, it's a great resource. I'd stumbled across gun.ru, a similar Russian language "web-caét", but didn't know the info was available in English (Well, sort of, and their English is far better than my Russian, so I shouldn't criticize.).
Ps. Apparently, blogger, or my browser, doesn't render Cyrillic characters worth a darn. Thought you'd be interested in a bit of trivia: "web site" in Russian is pronounced "web site". Imagine that.
@11:52 AM
Monday, January 05, 2004- - -
Do they teach English at that prestigious, non-accredited university?
Once in a while a spam is just too funny:
Hello,
Some facts you may find usefull:
1. Employers prefers people with college degree.
2. People with college degree generally earn more then people with only high school education.
You may improve your income and your life, with increasing your earning power from a diploma within days from a prestigious non-accredited university based on life experience.
Thanks, but I are all readdy a colegge grajewate.
@2:58 PM
More on the big bullet/little bullet issue…
Douglas Chandler writes:
The Gibbs Rifle Company has a .45-70 bolt action rifle built on the British Enfield action. Scroll down to the last rifle.
I wouldn't want to shoot it without adding a recoil pad, but it might be more accurate than a lever action.
I wonder why rifles in the .35 caliber range never got more popular?. I've got a buddy who has a .358 Winchester in a Browning Lever Action ( the one with the box magazine). He swears by it for knocking down deer. Then there was some .358 Magnums made for short and standard bolt actions but eh?
Hmm… Yes, with a 21-inch barrel and over-all length of 40 inches, put a low-powered scope on it and Gibbs' Summit Frontier .45-70 Carbine is pretty close to what I've got in mind. Ordinarily I'd be a bit worried about the big-rimmed .45-70 functioning in a bolt gun, but the Enfield was designed to handle the rimmed .303 British, although my trusty caliper tells me that the .303 has a rim 0.525" in diameter, a bit smaller than the .45-70's 0.600" rim. How this affects feeding reliability I don't know. Also, while I haven't had a lot of experience with Enfields, those I have handled have been remarkably slick and I'm not surprised that some claim the Enfield is the fastest-handling of all bolt-actions. At $365, the price is right, too.
All the gun pundits assure me that the Model 1895 Marlin is a very strong rifle, and I'm sure the Enfield is at least it's equal. Either one should easily handle any sane .45-70 load, and a heavily-loaded .45-70 certainly has sufficient power to handle any game animal in North America. With a low-powered scope either rifle should give sufficient accuracy to make the occasional 250-yard shot, so in a sane world I'd put a scope on the Marlin or grab one of Gibbs' Enfields, put a scope on it, and be happy. But let's remember that I'm contemplating making a big bore brush gun out of a .458 Winchester -- sanity isn't really a consideration.
I too have wondered why the .35 caliber rounds aren't more popular. I've been on the lookout for a .350 Remington or .358 Winchester for a long while, but with the exception of Remington's recently introduced Model 673, there haven't been any new rifles chambered in these calibers in quite awhile and they're mighty scarce. I would dearly love to find a good Model 88 Winchester in .358, but it seems my chances of winning the New York lottery are better.
Mike at the Feces Flinging Monkey writes:
Light-fast? Heavy-slow? Here's another point of view to consider...
Jeff Cooper makes the point that all practical, defensive handguns are underpowered. Sure, some might be better than others, but they are all too weak to be as decisive as we'd like.
Furthermore, a human body is quite non-uniform; change the shot placement by two inches in any direction, and more often than not you'll turn a disabling shot into a non-disabling shot, or vice-versa.
Cooper suggests a .45, but he also suggests a double-tap - two quick shots, every time, instead of one. Unless you have a really unusual situation at hand, with many opponents and little ammo, a double-tap should be the default, he says.
Properly executed, it's little slower than a single shot, it doubles the chances of a 'good' hit, and, of course, it doubles the damage to the target.
>From this point of view, the skymarshals are probably using good tactics, especially since they are almost certainly using cartridges of minimal power to begin with.
The problem, of course, is that you need to spend significant time and money to train people to this level, and you need to work hard to get there. This is not a good solution for the entire US Army, although it might well be a good way to train the specialists.
As I recall, there is a modern German military rifle - using caseless ammunition - than employed a special mechanism for firing three-round bursts. The three shots would be *very* close together, and all three would be clear of the barrel before the shooter felt the recoil impulse from the first shot. As a result, all three shots would stay within a couple of MOA. Maybe we need a similar mechanism for a defensive pistol?
I agree that the double tap, or better yet the 'Mozambique stroke' -- one shot to center mass instantly followed by a shot to the head -- is probably the best tactic for the highly trained, and we would hope that our air marshals are highly trained. But from what I saw, these guys weren't practicing a double tap, they were practicing emptying magazines in rapid fire, and it is specifically that tactic I'm opposed to. It's too reminiscent of another tactic the Colonel warns against, the 'spray and pray'. In theory at least, we fight as we train, but we also expect the finer points of our training to break down a bit under stress. My fear is that in a real crisis the bad guy won't be a stationary paper target, he'll be ducking and dodging, and these guys' accuracy will go out the window but they'll still empty their magazine trying to tag a moving target. The result wouldn't be pretty in an aircraft full of passengers.
On the other hand, I've got to wonder at those folks who oppose putting air marshals aboard for fear they might accidentally shoot a few passengers or damage the aircraft. It seems to me that they're overlooking the alternative: shooting down the aircraft with a surface to air, or air to air missile. That might hurt a few passengers too.
Finally, to be fair to the air marshals, I rather suspect that FoxNews chose the most dramatic footage to air, that being the footage with the most flying lead. It's entirely possible that the marshals spend most of their time practicing precision shooting, double taps, the Mozambique stroke and such. I certainly hope that's the case.
The new M16A2 comes equipped with a 3-shot burst mechanism rather than full-auto fire, so we don't have to wait for exotic caseless ammo to try the concept. It's my understanding that the burst fire mechanism of the M16A2 is mostly intended to control the natural inclination to spray and pray. It forces the troops to fire controlled bursts rather than simply emptying a magazine with each trigger pull. I'll bet the good Colonel would sniff and observe that the burst mechanism is a mechanical solution to a discipline problem, as controlled 3 to 5-round bursts have been the doctrine for full-auto fire since the M16 was introduced.
A weapon that fires at such a high cyclic rate that the third round is out the barrel before the weapon starts to recoil is a great concept, but I wonder if it's possible, particularly in a handgun. With a few exceptions, semi-auto handguns are operated by recoil -- recoil unlocks the slide from the barrel and drives it to the rear, then the recoil spring forces the slide forward, picking up a round from the magazine and chambering it. All the recoil of the first shot occurs before the second round is chambered. Either recoil would have to be very light, or the cyclic rate would have to be very high, or both, to avoid disturbing the aim for a 3-shot burst. There are at least a couple of ways to get around this though.
First, contemplate the lowly 12 gauge. With standard double-ought buck it fires a 9-shot burst with each pull of the trigger and all nine shots are out the barrel before recoil disturbs your aim. Put an extended magazine on a 12 gauge autoloader and you've got far more firepower than with any 9mm sub gun. A shotgun probably isn't an option where air marshals are concerned, but it works great if you don't need concealment.
Second, it's not so much recoil that disturbs the aim, it's barrel flip. By fitting a compensator that's matched to the ammo being fired the racegun boys pretty much neutralize barrel flip, allowing very fast, accurate semi-auto fire. I see no reason why the same concept wouldn't work with a full-auto handgun. Converting a semi-auto to full would be relatively simple. In an ideal world there would be no point in equipping any such beast with a burst fire mechanism because you wouldn't issue such things to anyone without the discipline to fire controlled bursts. Thus, in the real world a burst mechanism should probably be mandatory.
@2:44 PM
Sunday, January 04, 2004- - -
Ya Bums!
According to the Billings Gazette, two Montana State Troopers shot a bigfoot in southwestern Montana! I can't believe they didn't call me before they sold the story to the Weekly World News.
@11:25 AM
What action would you recommend?
Some interesting coverage on the Endangered Species Act, pro and con, from the Star Tribune.
We're hearing more calls for a strengthened ESA and more 'action' from ESA advocates:
Supporters of the Endangered Species Act say the law has been the difference between existence and extinction of many plants and animals, but that more needs to be done to ensure permanent recovery of imperiled species.
Calls for increased commitment to the act comes on its 30th anniversary --- celebrated Dec. 28 --- as the Bush administration is considering moves to make significant changes to the law.
Jeff Kessler of Biodiversity Associates in Laramie said the ESA has prevented scores of species in Wyoming from going extinct. He cited the Colorado butterfly plant, the black-footed ferret and Kendall Warm Springs dace -- a fish found in a thermal pond near Pinedale -- as ESA success stories.
"What hasn't worked so well is getting them recovered to larger areas they used to inhabit," Kessler said. "Putting a species on the list does not protect it and recover it. Taking action is what protects and recovers species."
Let's examine the ramifications of recovering species to their original territories for a moment. Take the Black-footed ferret for example. I can't imagine anyone wanting the ferrets to go extinct, but in order for them to recover their lost territory, first the black-tailed prairie dog would have to re-colonize vast areas of Kansas and Nebraska -- areas that supply a lot of the world's food. Oddly, while some folks see this as a bug, others appear to see it as a feature. Go figure.
Incidentally, I noted on our recent travels that the Black-tailed prairie dogs have mysteriously disappeared from the Interstate rights-of-way in Colorado. Perhaps they have experienced one of their occasional die-offs (there have been cases of plague reported in the PDs in CO), but I've got to wonder whether the CDOT has had a hand in their demise despite their being considered an endangered species by the state of Colorado -- they had to be causing serious damage to the roadbed.
Update: The InstaPundit and Juan Non-Volokh weigh in on the ESA. Non-Volokh makes the good point that the EPA ban on DDT, rather than the ESA, is responsible for the recovery of the bald eagle and brown pelican -- I'd add the peregrine falcon, golden eagle, kestrels, owls, and all the other raptorous birds to that list -- and that species like the manatee and black-footed ferret can hardly be considered ESA successes when they continue to teeter on the brink. He's absolutely right: Species such as the manatee, ferret, and California condor are unlikely ever to be fully recovered in the wild.
The InstaPundit really cuts to the heart of the matter: Much of the activity being pursued by the proponents of the ESA seems such nonsense as wildlife protection -- demanding that the many millions of white-tailed prairie dogs in Wyoming be managed as a threatened/endangered species is a good example -- that one must suspect ulterior motives. Do the PD people really think that the prairie dog is threatened with extinction? Or is it that the entire state of Wyoming could be designated critical PD habitat and virtually any development could be halted, or at least considerably hampered, as a result?
When you point out to ESA proponents that listing the white-tailed prairie dog will do far more to harm industry than it will to help the PDs, the eager nod and little light in their eyes speak volumes. And I think that's why the Bush administration's decision to stop designating critical habitats brings such wails of dismay.
@10:51 AM
'Knock him clear out of the saddle…'
Being without internet access, and hanging out in hospitals, I've been desperate for reading material, to the point of glancing through the Features pages of the newspapers, where you find all those stimulating articles on grooming and the 'secret' lives of the stars. So, of course, I've read and re-read about every article in the various gun rags.
Currently, it seems there's a recurrence of the old controversy between the 'big, heavy bullet' people and the 'light, fast, expanding bullet' people, possibly sparked by the re-discovery in Iraq that non-expanding .38 calibers still won't stop goblins. Returning to the internet fold, I note that Donald Sensing is making this same point (although I'd argue that a non-expanding .357 mag is little more effective than a 9mm FMJ) [Sensing's blog appears to be down at the moment and I don't have a direct link to his post, sorry].
I think Wiley Clapp said it most colorfully in the 2004 Guns & Ammo Annual, ("Still Keeping the Peace", pp. 68): "It's a lesson we seem to relearn with every generation, but the Civil War cavalrymen found out that they needed a revolver of significant power. When the other guy was closing on you with a razor-sharp saber in his hand, you didn't need a gun that required several well-placed hits to get the job done. Experience proved that it was best to knock the enemy clear out of his saddle with one shot. …"
Incidentally, I've also been watching a lot of TV news. Have you seen the video of the air marshals training in mock-up aircraft, where they race through the cabin emptying their handguns and re-loading in various rapid-fire drills? It's my understanding (and I'm no expert on this) that an aircraft's cabin isn't that air-tight. A few small-caliber holes through the skin won't cause decompression of the cabin. And even if it did that's what those oxygen masks are for, right? However, the average passenger aircraft is full of passengers and there are various delicate electronics and avionics that don't survive gunfire well. If there ever was a place to practice precision shooting -- 'one shot, one kill' -- it's in an aircraft in mid-air. But, I suppose that wouldn't make very dramatic news footage…
The big bullet v. little bullet argument carries beyond the realm of handguns into big game rifles as well (And small game rifles. Clair Rees mentions the "classic Jack O'Connor/Elmer Keith standoff" in an article comparing the big bullet of the .22 WMR to the little bullet in the .17 HMR: ".17 HMR Versus .22 WMR"Rifle, January 2004 ). Back in the July 2003 issue of Rifle magazine, Phil Shoemaker extolled the virtues of the .458 Winchester Magnum as a stopper for big bears and pointed out that the majority of African guides carry one ("Beauty and the Beast: A serious look at a serious rifle", pp. 38). Shoemaker is obviously enamored of the Beast, his Alaska license plates read "458WIN". He just about had me convinced that a short-barreled.458 would be a worthwhile upgrade to the .45-70 Govt., bettering the heaviest .45-70 loads with the added strength, safety, and accuracy of a bolt-action.
Topped with a 1-4x scope and with a short barrel, such a rifle it would be nearly as handy in the thick timber as my Guide Gun. But now, Ross Seyfried, being uncharacteristically caustic, writes 'don't do it' in the January 2004 issue of Rifle ("In Defiance of the .458 Winchester", pp 12). He maintains that the .458 is a poor choice both for the big bears and for African game, having too much recoil to handle with precision, but not enough power for the African biggies.
So what's a poor boy to do? The recoil of my 6.5-pound Guide Gun, loaded as heavily as a I care to load it, is certainly stout, but it's easily controllable. It's light and easy to carry all day and it's fast handling and very easy to use in the brush. The heavily loaded .45-70 has more than enough power for any game animal in the western hemisphere, and certainly plenty for the elk I want to introduce to my freezer. But it lacks in precision accuracy. It's difficult to 'hold over' with a post and peep sight arrangement, so shots are limited to 100 yards or a bit more. Also, the lever-action isn't a top choice where accuracy matters, and shots can present themselves at ranges all the way out to too, too far in the area I hunt.
With all this in mind, I'd been hunting the wily wapiti with Deep Throat, my wildcat Ruger #1 .338. It packs about all the power I can shoot with precision, but it's a bit unwieldy in the brush and needless to say, the quick follow-up shot isn't very quick. Now ordinarily, I wouldn't worry too much about speed shooting, but Leigh Creek Canyon is 600 feet deep and chock-full of tangled blow-down timber. Let an elk run off down in there and even if he only goes a couple hundred yards before he falls you're going to be a hurting unit by the time you pack him out. Been there, done that.
So. I want a gun with at least the power of the .45-70 or .338; I don't want it to just kill elk, I want it to slap them down right now. As nearly as possible, I want it as handy and quick in the brush as a Guide Gun, but I want the accuracy to take 300-yard shots with the precision of the .338. And, as much as I like the Ruger #1, I want a repeater for this duty. That's not asking for too much, is it? It is asking a lot though. Elk are big and tough, even a well-paced hit with a powerful rifle can't be guaranteed to drop one in his tracks every time.
It occurs to me that my problem is in many ways analogous to the problem of finding a reliable man-stopping handgun that Donald Sensing and his commenters are discussing. And it goes to the heart of the controversy between Seyfried and Shoemaker. We're looking at many of the same considerations whether we want a reliable stopper for man or beast, and many of the same trade-offs apply: The gun must have significant power -- we don't want to nibble them to death, we want to knock our targets out of the saddle with one well-placed hit. Opposed to this, the gun must be easy to handle and the recoil must be manageable -- a light hit beats a loud miss every time. I think it's this trade-off between knock-down power and controllability that causes all the controversy.
I see the air marshals whaling away, practicing placing half-a-dozen rapid-fire center hits on each target, and all I can say is 'get a bigger gun, Bubba' (and you know they aren't using FMJs). On the other hand, I've spent a good deal of time on the range introducing troops to the 1911 and, as negligible as the recoil seems to me, it's frequently too much for the novice to handle. Nor will 30 rounds of practice twice a year ever elevate anyone beyond novice status, it only re-enforces their fear of the beast.
The problem is simplified somewhat in the case of military handguns for general issue. I'm afraid that they will be restricted to non-expanding bullets for the foreseeable future, so we can forget the whole realm of small caliber rounds. Whether it's a 9mm or .357 Sig autoloader, or .357 revolver, it's still a non-expanding .38-caliber bullet. At any sane handgun velocity they didn't stop goblins 100 years ago. They still don't. When restricted to non-expanding bullets at handgun velocities, about all you've got to play with is bullet diameter and, to a lesser extent, bullet shape. Increasing bullet weight and/or velocity for a given bore size only results in deeper penetration, which doesn't help much beyond a certain point.
Thus, the .45 ACP will rule, at least until they come up with a .50 ACP. As the .45 ACP is probably at (and sometimes above) the upper limit of manageable recoil with it's 230 gr. bullet at about 850 fps, it's about optimum, although I am tempted to argue for a .50 ACP: I believe a larger-diameter, heavier weight bullet would be more effective, even at the necessarily lower velocity. Those old British .577s must have impacted with a most satisfying whop!
Unfortunately, it seems likely that the US military will be stuck with the 9mm for standard issue for the foreseeable future, with the .45 ACP for special purposes and as an often-allowed personal sidearm. This leaves only one thing that the military can do to increase the effectiveness of their handguns: Change the bullet shape. The good Colonel has long advocated a flat-point FMJ in the .45 ACP and that flat meplat does improve the effectiveness of the non-expanding bullet, carving a much larger permanent wound channel and reducing the tendency of the bullet to glance off hard objects. This would have the further advantage of requiring no change to the existing issue weapons. At it's somewhat higher velocity, the 9mm would benefit even more from the addition of a flat point -- at least the bullet would create a permanent wound cavity.
I'll leave the argument of which is better, 1911, Glock, Sig, Beretta, or whatever, for another day, although I will note that much of the argument against the double-action semi-autos stems from the archaic trigger design of the Beretta, Sig, and other 'crunch & tickers', which require a relatively long, heavy trigger stroke for the first shot and then change to a shorter, lighter single-action pull. Compare either of these to a modern Glock or Para-Ordinance LDA, which have delightfully short, light, consistent trigger strokes. Combine a long trigger stroke with an enormous grip containing a high-capacity magazine filled with little round-nosed bullets and you have the worst of all possible worlds and a pretty good description of the Beretta M9. On the other hand, as much as it pains me to say it, there are probably better, safer, more modern designs than the 1911 for issue to troops with limited training and affinity for handguns. All that said, I'll keep my custom Series 70 Colt.
The problem becomes more difficult when faced with the almost unlimited choices available in big game rifles, but the basic considerations remain the same. The root of the argument between Seyfried and Shoemaker seems to stem from the trade-offs each makes. Seyfried says you don't need a .458 to hunt bears; something giving greater range and more precision is better. But here, he's arguing past Shoemaker to a large extent, as Shoemaker is writing specifically about what makes the best last-ditch, close-range monster-stopper for a guide, not what makes the best hunting rifle. On one hand, I've got to agree with Seyfried: precision trumps power every time. A well-placed .308 will kill much faster than a poorly placed .458. On the other hand, given well-placed hits with good bullets, the bigger gun will win every time. The real argument comes down to 'How big is too big?' and 'What constitutes Big?'
As I've discussed, in military handguns, I think 'big' is largely a matter of bore diameter and I'll happily trade a smaller, faster bullet in favor of a bigger, slower one, right up to the point where the handgun required becomes too large and cumbersome to be easily handled and holstered (no Desert Eagles need apply). At self-defense handgun ranges the rainbow trajectory of a big slow bullet doesn't really matter. However, it's not so easy a decision with hunting rifles using expanding bullets. Especially now with the great Winchester Failsafes, Barnes X-bullets, and other controlled expansion super-premium bullets, it's easier for a smaller bullet at higher velocity to compete with a bigger bullet at lower velocity. It's certainly easier to make hits at unknown ranges with a flatter-shooting rifle, although a heavier, longer-for-caliber bullet with a high ballistic coefficient is generally flatter shooting at long range than a lighter, higher velocity bullet of the same caliber. The old Elmer Keith/Jack O'Connor big, slow bullet v. small, fast bullet controversy rages on.
Given modern technology in bullets and propellants I think that the choice is becoming more a matter of personal preference all the time. Keith had a good point that light, fast small-caliber bullets tended to blow up and fail to penetrate, or fail to open and over-penetrate, bend and deflect, glance off bones, and fail in all manner of other unpredictable ways. On the other hand, a big bore bullet is 'pre-expanded', it's already as big across as the small bore after it expands -- if it expands properly. The big bore bullet generally has greater weight and higher sectional density, penetrating well at long ranges and without great speed. The small bore can over-expand and fail to penetrate due to loss of sectional density. Properly constructed big bore bullets were very reliable in Keith's day and they remain so.
But that was 50 years ago -- with the help of modern technology, the small bore has largely closed the gap. Controlled expansion bullets don't blow up. I've picked up whole Failsafes and Barnes Xs at the foot of a sandstone face used as an impromptu target. Even these retained 90% or better of their original weight. Yet they seem to open easily even on small game -- tough to say as you don't recover bullets from game. Animals hit with them tend to tip over on the spot. They are Awsome!
One thing is certain, however. In weights normal for their calibers, a big fast bullet beats a little fast bullet. A .30-06 and a .338 Win Mag produce about the same velocity, but a 230 gr. .338 delivers a considerably bigger blow than a 165 gr. '06. At both ends.
There's the rub. At some point, greater bullet weight and/or velocity creates intolerable recoil. Try to tame the recoil with a muzzle break and you can create intolerable blast. At some point you've got to give away velocity if you continue to increase bullet weight/diameter, or give away weight as you increase velocity, or give away precision as you begin to gorilla-grip the rifle and grit your teeth. This becomes a very personal thing.
Seyfried argues that the .458 is too big for hunting bears -- it has too much recoil for precise shooting -- and he extols the greater precision and range of the .340 Weatherby and .375 H&H. Deep Throat falls only a 100 fps or so shy of the .340 and is indeed beautifully accurate and powerful. But, like the .340, its 26" barrel is necessary to burn the handful of slow-burning IMR 7828 it takes to achieve high velocity. A magnum-length action is required. And suddenly you've got a long rifle that's totally unwieldy in the brush -- where all the elk are. Being a Ruger #1, Deep Throat is a good deal shorter and handier than most .34s, but there are some times when a single-shot is probably not a good idea. Hunting in big bear country is one of those times, and grizzly ranges are expanding. There are also the retrieval problems I've discussed, which make a second anchoring shot desirable on occasion.
For all those reasons, I carried a .45-70 Guide Gun last fall. It trades Deep Throat's 230 gr. Failsafe for a heat-treated 405 gr. Wide Long-nosed LBT. It trades velocity for greater bullet weight. Because the heat-treated LBT does not expand, its weight will drive it very deeply while the flat nose creates a big permanent wound channel. It's really hard to say which is more effective. The .338 has longer range, but the Guide Gun is lighter, shorter, faster handling, and much faster for the second shot. But -- there's always a but, isn't there? -- loaded hot as I care to load it, the .45-70 isn't beginning to approach the level of recoil I tolerate in Deep Throat. I could drive this bullet faster in a stronger rifle. Or throw an even heavier bullet. Or take advantage of the beautiful 400 gr. Barnes X bullet. A stronger rifle pretty much means a bolt-action, and the closest bolt-action equivalent of the lever-action's .45-70 Govt. cartridge is the .458 Winchester Magnum.
I'll grant you I may not load the .458 up to its maximum, I do want to retain precision. By trading velocity for a bigger, heavier bullet, the necessity for a long barrel is alleviated and a short-barreled bolt gun can be made that's not much longer than the Guide Gun. By accepting less than maximum loads the weight of the gun can also be kept down a bit. I'm not looking for an elephant gun, only my personal maximum brush gun, that will function in a pinch at longer range. So with all due respect to Ross Seyfried, I believe I might try a .458. Don't think of it as an elephant gun, think of it as a belted .45-90.
Of course, there are other options for short, fast-handling brush guns with significant power that are capable of the occasional longer shot. The Remington 600/660/673 in .350 Rem Mag comes to mind. I could put a scope on the Guide Gun (bite your tongue!), or bob a few inches off the barrel of Deep Throat (bite your tongue twice), or I could get a grip, put a nice 2-7x scope on the Featherweight '06, load some Failsafes or Barnes Xs, and go hunting. But I'm intrigued by the 'How big is too big?' question. Seyfried is probably right there, with a .458 I just might find out.
@7:48 AM
Friday, January 02, 2004- - -
Shades of Animal Farm
All hunters are created equal, but some will now be more equal in the eyes of the Wyoming Game and Fish Dept. Want to increase your chances of drawing an out-of-state license? Just pay an extra fee and you won't have to take your chances with the peons.
It seems to me that the whole object of a license lottery is to allocate a scarce resource fairly. But then I'm not a money-grubbing bureaucrat.
@6:10 AM
"50,000 watts out of Mexico…
Listen to the Border Radio!" Somehow, I don't think the Blasters had the NRA in mind when they performed that little ditty. How ironic that the NRA might find itself exercising its free speech rights from the safety of Mexico.
@5:54 AM
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We finally dragged our tired butts back into wonderful Worlando this afternoon, completing our 5000-mile death march around the Rocky Mountains. Hospitals and howling winds have been the rule of the day for too long and we're mighty glad to be home.
We did have some interesting moments. Leaving Colorado on our way to Arizona we found ourselves running south in front of a storm, and finally took shelter in Artesia, NM, where the Wellhead Restaurant and Brew Pub serves an exceptional barley beverage and burger. Despite the press of family obligations we simply could not come that close to Carlsbad Caverns without taking a day to visit -- it is spectacular. My wife fell for the 'adopt a bat' program and she's named hers 'Louisville Slugger' -- Louie for short.
@5:42 AM
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