reasonablenut

Check out these posts:

Head on the ARvsAK debate.

Kirk on his trials and tribulations with a single stage press.

SayUncle is looking for a sight for his 9mm AR. I will address this further as I have been fucking with AR's as well.

Shit, I almost forgot the Carnival of Garands over at Publicola. This is one of the things I wholeheartedly agree with; if you buy a battle rifle, your first one should be a Garand (unless you're left-handed.)

Tomorrow.

Been a little out of pocket over the last week. Some work stuff (smelly body stuff) and then I shot on down to Hobbs to do some quail hunting at the ass end of the season.

I don't know if I know less about birds or shotguns. For this venture, I borrowed the Old Man's Remington 870 pump.

It is a little known fact that Lea County has more oil pumps than any other county in the nation. As such, there are wide swathes of gummint land that has nothing but wells, cattle, and birds. The gentleman I was hunting with grew up in the oilfields, as his father set meters on wells. I've never known a person to have such intimate knowledge of such inscrutable landscape. Lea is flatter than shit and every direction looks the same. During the day, I told said gentleman that if he was to drop me off and take off, I wouldn't have the slightest clue in what direction to start walking.

In NM, it is widely held that Hobbs may be a Texan town, depending on which way the wind is blowing that day. The widespread harvesting of oil also gives the area a distinct odor. While there are some of the nicest people I've ever met located there, there is also a sector of the population that is completely lazy and useless. It's a bit of a hard town to describe.

I split out of Albuquerque Wednesday afternoon. It's about a 4 1/2 hour drive down there and the previous day I had been up in Red River, so I was a bit sick of the truck cab to begin with. I got into the area right when the sun was going down and almost ended up driving to Plano, Texas, because I couldn't see the goddamn signs.

We started out Thursday morning at 8:00 AM. I forget the trade-offs of rural versus urban living. My host has a 20 minute drive from his front stoop to the oilfields. We got out there around 8:30. I figured that we'd hunt until 1 or 2 in the afternoon and then head back to town. I guess that's not the way it's done. We didn't unload and pack it in until 5:00.

Quail are weird birds. I've become convinced that blue quail are some kind of supra-intelligent bird that Big Head engineered on the mother-ship. Their pretty sizable birds (slightly smaller than a light chicken.) Their defining characteristic seems to be their ability to run like all hell. From what I saw, the little shits can run faster than they can fly and, therefore, don't have to expose themselves. They just make you chase them until you're too fucking tired.

As to my performance, the first covey we found, first thing in the morning, I took the first shot and got the first kill. That was it. I crippled a couple others and my host assured me that I had dropped another one we couldn't locate, but as far as scorable shit, that first shot was about the best I was going to do.

Later in the day I took an extremely long shot (40-50 yards) and winged one. That's kind of a stupid shot to take with a shotgun, but I'm so tuned in to shooting rifles that it was almost instinctive (I haven't shot a shotgun in a decade and a half.)

Between the 2 of us, the total take was 9 birds. None of them were that ripped up, so I figure I can get 2 or 3 meals out of it.

My host had several firearms he let me try. First was his son's Remington 11-87. Thankfully, both him and his son are left-handed. The son had replaced the nice wood stock with composite so it wouldn't get fucked up in the field.


I tried this gun out and, I must say, the semi-auto is just way too easy for a dumb fuck like me to unload on stupid shots.

My host primarily shot a Browning Citori over-under. I didn't have a chance to take a crack at this one. Of the 9 birds we bagged, 3 were a result of him coming over a rise on a bunch of quail in the open and he just emptied the two barrels into the covey.



We got back to his house around 6:00 and cleaned birds for about an hour. I took him and his family out to dinner and then made it back to the hotel by 9:00, beat to shit.

Drove back on Friday and got into town around 3:30. I slept a shitload last weekend. Trying to run my fat ass after these birds just wore me out.

Season is not over til' mid February, so I might try to make down again. All in all, it was a good fucking time.

Still one of the greatest posts of all time.

CLARIFICATION: The reason I posted this link is because my brother has become addicted to black guns. He can't buy or shoot anything that isn't black.

Me and the Old Man have diagnosed "Jungle Love," i.e. "it's driving him mad, it's making him crazy."

The truly lovely thing about the bolt-assembly is that the handle will never come near the scope. In photo, the bolt handle is at it's upmost position. 

Currently a 14x Leupold with a Boone & Crockett reticle. Haven't made my mind up 'bout the scope yet 

The Browning platform, I've come to think, is truly one of the undersold brands on the market. The shit they've done with bolts, extractors, and actions per se, are head and shoulders above Win, Rem, and Rug. 

This has been a hard subject for me. Last year I brought the 30-06. and, while it was accurate, it didn't detonate shit.

This year I have a .308. That is what I mounted the hefty Leupold on.

In addition to that, I picked up a Sako LH chambered in .340 Weatherby Mag. That's well and good. I've only shot it once or twice and a completely fucked up resizing the brass. As such, I've had my reservations about the costs of this round, even if I do get my shit together with the load in the mean time.

David over at RNS has his Boomershoot rifle in. It is a Weatherby .300 Mag and is, needless to say, a gorgeous specimin of rifle. He reflects the same concerns I did about the .340, except the .340 is even more expensive. I might have been able to pull off a .300 Weatherby, but the .340 is so obscure, only Weatherby makes ammunition for it. It averages $2 a round, and if you want to load, once fired brass is a buck. Fuck that.

Something that's been under the radar for awhile is a Browning A-bolt, chambered in .300 WSM. I ignored this rifle for several months and never even posted pictures. I picked it up several months ago and started shooting it and it is a joy to behold. It is also my best load to date.

In any case, this is probably primary or secondary at Boomershoot.

As to the Sako, I will probably fuck with that after the event.

Pics are posted above, and if you are actually interested in making your rifle look good as opposed to my lazy-ass job, Head has a recommendation or two.

Let it be said that all of these additions are long past due. Updating the blogroll is one of those things I think of all the time, but never get my ass in gear to do.

Mr. Completely I've read for about six months. Instead of putting him on my roll, I just hit RNS's link to him. He is knowledgable and versatile. Unlike me, he doesn't seem to tie himself down to one kind of shooting for extended lengths of time.

Countertop I've been reading since I started reading gun blogs (over 2 years ago), nevermind when I started blogging (1 year and some change.) He probably should have been on my original blogroll.

Lastly, is Rivrdog. I hadn't started reading him until several months ago when the Old Man turned me on to him. I've been missing quite a bit.

I stopped reading after I met the man. For a guy who begs as much as he does, he seems to have plenty of money for drinks.

The Old Man has been pissed off longer than I have. As I don't read his blog anymore, he tipped me off to this Mrs. post.

Kim is entitled to his popularity and his groupies. God give me strength, I don't know how many dumbshits I ran into in Idaho, sporting NoR shirts. Well and good and more power to him.

Rivrdog sums up what I am unable to speak.

Our reserve stemmed from this post, which is the normal bleg for money.

God speed on his trip to wherever; I just want nothing to do with it.

Let me be clear from the start: I do not consider myself a film critic. This blog is about guns, mostly, and politics, secondly.

That being said, Hollywood has pissed me off badly. Several weeks ago I watched the movie Crash (the one touted to be an Oscar contender, not Cronenberg's weirdo Crash.)

This movie bases its entire plot that everyone in the entire universe reacts to situations based on race. If you enter a situation, you will react to it based on the ethnicity of people involved. Blacks hate Muslims, Muslims hate Asians, Asians hate Blacks, etc. Needless to say, white people hate everybody and react to alien hoards with fear and loathing.

The Old Man thought this was a decent film. I doth protest. His qualification was that it showed different races hating each other. I think that is counterproductive.

Several weeks ago, Morgan Freeman (who is not one of my favorite actors), summed up racism: Shut the fuck up about it and it won't be a problem. God bless the man.

Movie #2, which motivated this post, was Brothers In Arms. I finished watching this piece of shit and was astonished at what kind of defective mind could come up with this.

First up, blacks did not invent "pimp suits" before 1870, yet every black in the film is wearing one.

Secondly, the film portrays a Hispanic female as a Sheriff. Not possible in the late 19th century.

During the Civil War, there was only one battle fought in New Mexico. It was the Battle of Glorieta. It was a strategic target, not an idealogical one.

For the record, the movie depicts two black brothers, a black card-player, a Hispanic priest, and a half-breed woman (Native American and African American, utilizing the currently popular terms.)

There were no black people in NM. The ones I've met, moved down here during the 90's information/IT glut. They are highly motivated and highly educated. The idea that there was any black presence in this state after the Civil War (or War Between the States) is just ludicrous.

The Old Man definitively did not like the plastic upper handguard that came stock on the NM M1A. The new handguard came in several weeks ago and this is what it looks like with the improvements. 

The scope is a Nikon, much like what the Analog Kid is mounting on his new beauty.

Of course, this is all design and preparation for Boomershoot.

Originally we had decided on Quick-Detach mounts, as the irons are good to about 400 yard, depending on your eyesight. I scored some medium QD mounts and the scope wouldn't clear the rear apperture.

Needless to say, we foraged on and found some see-through mounts. This satisfied the Old Man, in that the irons are intact while being able to do long-distance, and I don't have to fuck with QD sighting issues or demounting and mounting at his whim.

As to the question of the heigth of the scope, I'm not sure that we need an additional cheek-weld or not. I'll figure that out when we shoot it.

This was a weekend project that actually went well, for once.

The Springfield M1A has become troublesome, but I think it is the prime contender for Boomershoot on the Old Man's side of the arsenal. 

I have been remiss in updating my blogroll, as so many people are, but Mr. Completely will definitely be on there when I get my ass in gear.

His post on, what he terms, "race gun .22's" is invaluable; especially for a newbie. I usually recommend some kind of .22 for newbies. Usually this consists of a rifle variant, so they get used to shouldering a weapon. Mr. Completely makes a very good case that if you don't know how to shoot, a match pistol won't do you much good.

I would add to this that a Model 41

will fuck up a good deal more than a Ruger Single-Six. That is simply the nature of the beast.
Semi-autos seem to confound newbies, even if they are convinced they know what they are doing. When you add in the fact that a .22 round is far more damaging than most people give it credit for and that a Model 41 trigger is about a cunt hair of pressure, it freaks you out to see a newbie pointing one at his foot.

Start newbies out on .45s. Then they understand how bad you can fuck up.

That being said, my Model 41 is one of my favorite pistols. I can bang the shit out of a flipper all afternoon with that thing. Additionally, me and the Old Man agree, if you have a shit day shooting, it's nice to break out a rimfire and hit something.

Additionally, the price of a 41 is often exaggerated. We are in the key season where assholes outspend their yearly salaries and have to sell shit to make up for what their wive's spent over Christmas. Perfect time to capitalize on the the misfortune of others.

I picked up my 41 for about $575, with little or no haggling.