David E. Petzal - The Gun Nut

Back in the early 1970s, I was pals (still am) with a gunwriter who has since become enormously wealthy and famous, and who has considerably ability as a gunsmith. (I can’t mention his name because he writes for one of our competitors, and to reveal who he is would be sedition, or treason, or something). I offered to trade him a pair of Leitz binoculars for a .280 rifle that he would build on a left-hand Remington 700 action.

The project took 4 years as I recall, and I received the rifle in October 1976, on the very day that President Gerald R. Ford forced Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz to resign for telling a non-p.c. joke where reporters could hear it. So the rifle has been called the Earl Butz Commemorative ever since.

The rifle has a 22-inch barrel that was cut-rifled by Bill Atkinson, and in its original form it was a hefty tube indeed. The stock is a near-perfect copy of those turned out by the great custom riflemaker Al Biesen, and is carved from English walnut that is undistinguished in color and figure but as hard as flint.

As it came to me, the .280 weighed 9 pounds with a scope, which is way too much, so I took it to Griffin & Howe and had the barrel turned down and the stock hollowed out. That took off over a pound, and put the weight right where I wanted it.

From the day I got it until the mid-1980s, this was my main big-game rifle. I used both 140-grain Nosler Solid-Base 140-grain bullets for deer and the old-style 160-grain Partitions for elk. I used it so much that it’s been reblued at least twice and the stock refinished three times.

It’s been retired for some years, superceded by synthetic-stocked guns, but it’s still ready to go, and as fine a working rifle as you’d want.

From "The 50 Worst Guns of All Time"
Does anyone remember the old Marlin Goose gun with a 36" barrel? Mother of God what a block. It swings like a school bus and weighs about as much as a blue whale. I retired mine to a back corner in the basement where it can rust away for all eternity.

Posted by: Benjamin Kimm | May 17, 2006 at 12:51 PM

From "The 50 Worst Guns of All Time"
There's nothing worse than a rifle that promises exceptional accuracy and looks like a million bucks, yet is manufactured with such sublime sloppiness that it misfires about 15% of the time.

This rifle has defied all warranty work, laughed at the efforts of 4 different gunsmiths, and could have easily inspired a firearms "lemon law."

This rifle so bad that selling it would be like spreading a disease. And it's the real reason why God, in His infinite mercy, created the hacksaw.

We're talking about my cursed Remington 541-T.

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the house of Big Green!

Posted by: El-Wazir | May 17, 2006 at 11:30 AM

From "The Guns I Own: The Springfield SOCOM 16"
Great toy...if the mission is just marketing...with a nostalgic eye toward affluent plinkers.

The truth is, the M-14s which continue to have real-world relevance "over there" – because of the reach and lethality of their 7.62 round – all have the original-length, longer barrels.

And here's something else to consider:

With its short, stubby barrel, this new M1A features dramatically increased muzzle blast, which is magnified even MORE by that ear-splitting muzzle brake.

Of course, I realize all of this is probably falling on deaf ears...

Posted by: El-Wazir | May 15, 2006 at 01:19 PM

From "The Real Deal, Part 1: The Story of Finn Aagaard"
… Finn wrote as he lived, simply. He was a professional, above all, and his writing reflected this. He never over-romanticized the chase, or the buffalo charge. If he got out of a scrape, he simply told it as it was. His prose was short and sparse but it was full of nutriment. Come to think about it, wasn't that quality one of the things we liked about Old Jack O'Connor?

I miss the old guy. I miss the old guys.

Posted by: O Garcia | May 15, 2006 at 10:42 PM

Russ Carpenter was a gunsmith who lived in Plattekill, New York and had a shop there for 30-plus years. He taught me what made guns tick, and got me started big-game hunting. One of the rifles I own was made by Russ for himself in the early 1950s, and he used it until he finally stopped hunting whitetails 50 years later.

It’s a .30/06 Springfield Model 1903 A3 that’s been converted to a Mannlicher-stocked sporter. About the only metal work Russ did was to chop the barrel from 24 inches to 20. He kept the double-stage military trigger and the original greenish-gray Parkerized finish. The stock is reddish-colored black walnut with a steel cap at the muzzle and a tiny compass inletted into the comb. For a scope he chose a Bear Cub (a very early Redfield) 4X with a plain medium crosshair reticle in the old, horrible, but reliable Weaver mounts.

If there is such a thing as a typical 1950s working gun, this is it. There were still tons of military rifles that could be had very cheaply then, and the numbers of Mauser 98s, Enfields, and Springfield 03s that ended up being chopped and channeled (that's a 50s hotrodding term) into sporters is huge.

I have no idea how many deer Russ killed with this rifle. He did most of his hunting in the Adirondacks where there aren’t a hell of a lot of deer, but on the other hand he was a very good hunter. I’ll never use it because it’s right-handed, but I can take it out of the safe now and then and remember the man who built it.

Quick: Name an organization that is even more inept, ineffectual, and hopelessly corrupt than Congress. That’s right, it’s the United Nations, and later this month it will convene to consider its Report on the Implementation of the United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons. And now I must quote from The Shooting Wire, whence this info came:

“That UN Programme, if ratified, would give the UN control over all weapons production, distribution, and ownership globally. That control would put the United Nations in charge of all weapons, including those of law enforcement, setting strict limits on the types—and quantities of weapons police departments could own.”

Now if this is a joke, and I’m not getting it, I apologize, but the Shooting Wire seems to be in earnest.  Can you imagine U.N. enforcers in their little sky-blue berets marching into an LAPD armory and demanding all the really neat stuff that the LAPD uses to kill people who cross it? They’d be clubbed to death in the street. Or New York? “Make it worth my while, pal,” the NYPD armorer would say.

If Secretary General Annan would like to bring a little law and order to the world, he could start with his own delegates, eighty-three percent of which are scofflaws, and collectively owe their host city $18 million in parking fines.

Personally, I’ve always thought that the UN headquarters would make an excellent highrise apartment building, and failing that, it could simply be cleared away for a parking lot. We need parking space in New York City.

Editor's Note: click here to read The Real Deal: The Story of Finn Aagaard, Part I

Finn, like a number of Professional Hunters I’ve known, had an ironclad code of ethics, and point number one was that you didn’t shoot anything for fun (prairie dogs were the one exception). Once, when we were hunting together in Texas, we came across a tank (that’s catchbasin in Yankee) that was swarming with monster snapping turtles. I remarked that it might be fun to shoot a few, since I loathe them, and he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

On that same trip his truck broke down, and we had to cut the hunt short and limp home without my getting what I was after. He refused to take any money for the hunt—not even gas money. To his way of thinking, he had not fulfilled his part of the bargain, and he was not entitled to anything.

Finn kept a scrapbook on his rifles, which I’ve never seen anyone else do. Everything that was ever done to those guns was in that book. Loads, scopes mounted, hunts, trigger work, anything. It was fascinating reading, and I wish someone would publish it.

He was deafer than I am, and whenever we ended up on a trip together, he always was glad to see me. “Now I’m not the only deaf old bastard here,” he’d say.

I hope that wherever he is, the game is plentiful, the country is good for walking, and he has a Mauser-actioned rifle with a low-power scope in an old and unfashionable caliber.

Editor's Note: Some of the best stuff written on this blog comes from those who post comments at the end of Dave's entries. These are three from last week's posts. Click on the headline above each comment to post your own opinion.

On Where are the Women
"I come from an outdoors family where my mothers and sisters have hunted and/or shoot as well! My fiance hunts and goes to the range with me. Her children are interested in hunting as well. I am a VERY lucky man to have a lady in life that enjoys the shooting (as well as fishing) sports!
Nothing turns me off, and scares me more, than men who think women shouldn't hunt or fish. This behavior has done more to contribute to the decline of hunting and fishing in today's society than alienating women from the grand wonderful heritage of hunting and fishing."
Posted by: Eric | May 10, 2006 at 08:13 PM

On The Colt Model 1911
"I have heard this before, about the 1911 NOT being a sporting gun, and it has not been especially true in my book. I have enjoyed using it on armadillos, snakes, jackrabbits, and once scared the wits out of a running coyote at 200 yards--witnessed. I believe that we have consigned the old workhorse to a retirement home, and forgot that he has a lot of mule in him, and when he arrives, he has a lot of kick in him . . ."
Posted by: Thos. Fowler | May 10, 2006 at 10:21 PM

On My Deal With the Anti-Gun Mayors
"I agree that most of the rationale behind gun control laws amounts to knee-jerk reactionary political band aid solutions to complex social problems. But as a resident of the greater Chicago area, I am also aware of the horrific price of gun violence on a nearly daily basis. In the past few weeks, two 14-year-old girls were shot dead in their homes by random gang gunfire. Not aimed at them of course, but victims of stray bullets. As a responsible gun owner I don’t want to have my rights curbed by these terrible events. But as a father, I don’t want some random round to hit my child."
Posted by: Bill | May 06, 2006 at 01:27 AM

I guess this was inevitable, and I’d like to thank the fellow blogger who suggested it. Here are the rules:

1. No profanity.
2. Only one nomination.
3. It has to be a gun that you had personal experience with, not something you heard about.
4. Keep your comments brief.

Go to it.

Editor's Note: Each week until he runs out of guns, Dave will be writing about each of the different firearms in his collection here on The Gun Nut. This is the first.

When I reported for basic training in 1963, the Army was just phasing out of the M-1 (Garand) and into the M-14, which was an improved Garand.  The M-14 lasted only 4 years as a general-issue infantry rifle before it was supplanted by the M-16. However, it continues to see specialized use with the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Its range, penetrating power and reliability are superior to those of the M-16, and there are still places where these qualities are highly useful. New ones--called M1As--are made by Springfield Armory of Genesco, IL., at very high prices.

Springfield’s most recent M1A wrinkle  is an evil-looking firearm called the SOCOM 16. SOCOM stands for “special operations commander,” and the 16 refers to the fact that this rifle--actually, a carbine--has a barrel that’s just over 16 inches long, which is the shortest length rifle barrel you can own without the ATF coming to have a talk with you.

It’s heavy (9 pounds plus), all black (courtesy of a fiberglass stock) and evil-looking. It is a rifle of no redeeming social value, and it’s a ball to shoot. There’s almost no recoil, courtesy of the gun’s weight, a recoil suppressor that keeps the muzzle from jumping, and the fact that the 7.62mm NATO cartridge for which its chambered doesn’t kick much anyway.

All I have to do is lay hold of this anti-social little powerhouse and I’m once again a 22-year-old Private E-2 squad leader, shivering my ass off on the cinder track in front of the World War II-era barracks that housed November Company, 4th Tng Rgt., Ft. Dix, NJ. Believe me, you can buy lots of fun for $1,700.

One of the most impressive people ever to take up this odd profession was born in Kenya of Norwegian parents and emigrated to the United States when Kenya outlawed big-game hunting in 1977. His name was Finn Aagaard, and in a world filled with shuck and jive, he was the genuine article.

Finn, who died in 2000,  valued simplicity, and did not see the need for new equipment simply because it was new. He favored cartridges such as the 7x57, .30/06, and .375 H&H with which he had tons of experience during his decades as a Professional Hunter.

He loved to walk. Although he was far from a young man when I hunted with him, he didn’t take the easy way. If you wanted to hunt with him, you got out of the truck and walked—seriously. He used to take an evening walk, just for the pleasure of being alone with his thoughts.

He valued silence. Nearly 20 years ago, he and I were part of a seminar given by Kenny Jarrett, and the morning it broke up, he and I sat on Kenny’s back porch, Finn writing in his journal, me not interrupting. After maybe an hour of complete silence, he simply got in his pickup and began the drive from South Carolina to his home in Texas. Never said good-bye.

One of the articles of faith in the shooting industry is that the future of the gunpowder sports will be influenced by women; that for the first time, we’re going to see a real, meaningful influx of female hunters and shooters.

If you go to the SHOT Show, you now see as many women as men, but I don't know if they are they showing up in serious numbers at ranges and in hunting camps.

What do you see happening? If they aren’t coming into shooting and hunting, why not?

And if there are any women reading this blog, I’d appreciate it if you would step forward now and be counted.