David E. Petzal - The Gun Nut

Your comments are always interesting, but we seemed to hit the mother lode (not load) with my 11/10 post, “The Rifleman’s Badge of Honor.”

First, to all of you who suggested sources for deer targets, thanks and God bless. I shall pursue them.

To Jack, who asked for a Veteran’s Day post, this comes late, but I hope it strikes a chord. In 2000, when I fished on Midway Atoll, I ran into a retired Marine Lt. Col. who had spent his career as a logistics officer. It had been his job to get bullets and MREs and gasoline and water and everything else to the guys who were doing the shooting. He used to recruit Marines by saying, “If you want medals, go to the infantry. If you want to win the goddamn war, come work for me.”

For everyone who pulls a trigger there are probably 100 servicemen and women who repair gear, or man radar equipment, or work in hospitals, or process payrolls. They get no medals; they work long, hard hours; they sometimes do not have enough to work with; they are usually highly skilled and could make a lot more money as civilians but they stay in anyway. They are heroes.

About John Barsness: Don Polacek, who is president of Wolfe Publishing, says that John and the company had a disagreement about business and that their parting was non-hostile. Polacek says that he still considers John a friend. I asked Polacek why there was no mentiion of John's departure in the first issue of Rifle without his byline, and Polacek pointed out that this is a tradition with the magazine. In the past, when other greats such as John Wootters, Ken Waters, and Bob Hagel have left, there was no mention of their going, either. I think they're going to miss John a lot, but they have other talented people. I've been a subscriber since the 1970s, and will be keeping my subscription.

A blogger named Joe C. objected to my making light of scope cuts, and felt that they are a result of poor training and poor scope mounting. I beg to differ. If you work with horses for any amount of time you are going to get kicked or bitten or thrown no matter how careful you are. If you fish you are going to get hooked, no matter how careful you are. If you shoot enough you are going to get scope cuts, no matter how careful you are. I would be lying if I said otherwise.

True sportsmen are able to laugh at minor misfortunes, and every scope cut I’ve seen qualifies as a minor misfortune. Getting your teeth kicked out or getting a tarpon hook in the eye is not funny, but if you can’t smile at the lesser stuff, stay away from me. I don’t want to hunt with you.

To RJ, who has to learn to shoot right-handed. First, don’t give up on the idea of using a scope. It may be that if you give your right eye some help it can do the job. Get in touch with Decot Sport Glasses (sportglasses.com) and explain your problem. They’ve been around forever, and have seen every eye-related shooting problem there is to see. Try that first. If glasses don’t work out, I would consider a ghost ring rear sight with a big bead up front. It’s the easiest type of iron sight to use, and you can do some very respectable shooting with it.

To Carney, who asked about Susan Casey. As far as I know, Susan has put down her rifle forever. She is simply unwilling to kill. The last I heard she is doing a book on a small group of surfers who are looking to ride rogue waves in mid-ocean—the 70- to 100-footers that sink ships. I wish her all the best. It was a hell of a story, wasn’t it?

In the mid-1960s I did the photography for a book called Fired in Anger, which was about famous and infamous firearms that had figured in history. One of the chapters was on the pistols used in the Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel at Weehawken, NJ in 1804. The guns were (and are) owned by the Chase Bank in New York City, and the bank kindly gave me permission to photograph them.

They were built by a London gunsmith named Wogdon in the late 18th century, and I got to hold the pistol that killed Alexander Hamilton in my hand. It was a slightly uncanny experience; there was history, mute, but as real as it is possible for history to be.

(A brief aside: At one time, Congressmen backed up their ideas with a lot more than words. In 1856, on the floor of the Senate, Senator Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death with his walking stick after Sumner made a speech that offended him. I would like to see this type of thing encouraged; it would do wonders for the worthless bastards.)

In South Carolina last week, at gun builder Kenny Jarrett’s wonderful little museum, I had the chance to handle a sword that had been found in 1919 on the Gettysburg battlefield where it had lain since 1863. The D-guard was broken and the blade was snapped at its mid-point. It was an infantry sword, not a cavalry saber. It had belonged to an officer, probably company grade because it was a plain weapon, not ornate.

There was no marking on it, so we will never know if the man who carried it was Union or Confederate. We will never know how the blade came to snap. We will never know what became of its owner—did he live or die? What part of those bloody three days did that sword see? Was it carried in Pickett’s Charge, or at the Peach Orchard, or on Little Round Top? It knows, but we never will. History, right there in the palm of your hand.

More goodies from Remington.

This is not a new knife (or a knew nife) but I gave it short shrift last year when it came out and I regret that, because it’s a very good one. It’s designation is Tango Series I Fixed (which is odd, because in milspeak, Tango refers to a terrorist). It’s what gun writer Ken Warner refers to as a “sharpened pry bar,” which means the thing is just about indestructible. There are military, civilian, and law enforcement models with a choice of drop point (shown here), sabre point, or tanto point in either 440C or N690 stainless. The handle scales are G-10, which is glass-filled epoxy that is harder than Hillary’s heart.

Blade length is 5-1/3 inches and overall is 10-1/2 inches. Sheaths are Cordura nylon, tactical, and high-speed, low drag. The blades are very heavy—just over 1/4-inch thick, as nearly as I can tell, which is pretty rare these days. I don’t see how you could damage the Tango I even with unreasonable use. In the times to come, this would seem an ideal tool for cutting into wheels of government cheese, butchering rats you have shot for food, or breaking your way into an unoccupied house to spend the night. (It beats your car.) The price is around $130.

And on a slightly more upbeat note, if you’re looking for an effective low-noise-level .22 LR round, may I recommend Remington’s new CBee 22. It fires a 33-grain bullet at 740 fps, will work flawlessly through any .22 LR rifle (although it does not pack the pork to cycle a .22 auto). Accuracy and expansion are claimed to be excellent (Remington had to invent a new kind of .22 bullet to provide the latter). A box of 100 is $5.55.

From time to time I like to write about guns that have stuck in my mind over the years, even though I saw them only briefly. This is about a Colt New Service revolver in .45 Long Colt that fell into the hands of a talented gunsmith who made it into something altogether different.

The New Service was in continual production from 1898 until 1944. It was a monstrously big revolver, and you needed a magnum-sized hand to shoot the damned thing. Over 360,000 were produced in many different barrel lengths and 11 different calibers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police adopted it, and The New York State Police carried the New Service in .45 Long Colt, in a holster supported by a Sam Brown belt. Above the revolver were two rows of the big cartridges. An old-time trooper once told me that the gun and the ammo hung right at eye level as you approached an automobile, and that it seemed to calm down excited drivers. Like most of the old Colts, they were beautifully made, inside and out.

Anyway, the troopers eventually phased out the New Service, and they could be had pretty cheaply. A very talented gunsmith friend of mine got one, and made what was known as a belly gun out of it. He chopped the barrel back to 3 inches and replaced the blade front sight with a big bead. He ground off the hammer spur and slicked up the innards for a flawless double-action pull. He cut off the front of the trigger guard so you could get at the trigger faster, and carved a pair of custom grips to fit his hand. The formerly huge, awkward revolver was now fast and sleek—or as sleek as something that big could be.

Loaded with hot handloads, it would make a believer out of anyone, and was lightning-fast out of a holster. In these effete days of 9mm automatics, it is something out of another era. If you’re thinking of getting a New Service and doing the same thing, I wish you luck. Even the plain ones, in good shape, now cost $1,000, and the scarcer models are worth a lot more. --DP

Once upon a time, the worst thing you could say to a rifleman was that his cartridge of choice was overbore. Today this would be the equivalent of calling him a Clintonista, or slapping him. Overbore meant that his 7mm Thunderf***er Magnum burned more powder than it could efficiently use, and was therefore less worthy in the great pantheon of cartridges than, say, a 7x57, or a .280, or for all I know, a 7x64. It also, by extension, meant that the person who shot a 7mm Thunderf***er magnum was unworthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, or was just a squirrelheaded son of a bitch.

There were other concerns. Huge cartridges that used gobs of powder burned out their barrels quicker, cost more to shoot, and were more difficult to shoot than non-overbore rounds. This is all quite true. But there's another side. Sometimes, you want a bullet to go much faster than a standard cartridge can manage, and the only way you can do it is by burning lots and lots of powder. It's the same in automobiles; if you want more speed, you need proportionately huge increases in horsepower.

An example: My favorite .338 load right now is a 225-grain Barnes XXX backed by 72 grains of RelodeR 19*. This gives me 2,750 fps, which is enough for any shot inside 300 yards. If I anticipate a longer shot than that, I can go to a .338 Remington Ultra Mag, which will gulp down 93 grains of RelodeR 22*, which drives the same bullet at 3,020, making hitting at long range somewhat easier. It is, as even the dullest among you can see, a whopping increase in powder for a comparatively small increase in velocity. But there you are.

Overbore, who cares? They are very useful cartridges under some conditions, and even now, as you read this, people are making RelodeR powder and new barrels whether we want them to or not.

*These loads are safe in my guns, but they may blow you into the next world. That is your concern. I assume no liability from now until the end of recorded time.

With doom on the horizon, I've heard all manner of talk this past weekend about hoarding ammunition, components, and guns against the time that President Obama outlaws all firearmss except Joe Biden's Beretta, and food riots break out in Beverly Hills. Some perspective was provided by a friend who dotes on old and obscure rifles, and who has, over the years, acquired a ton of ammo for them. Now all of a sudden he has to move, and is faced with the task of unloading hundreds  and hundreds of rounds of .280 Ross, 6.5x54, and stuff like that. At the least he will take a financial beating, and will probably end up having to take his stash with him.

Generally, it's not a good idea to buy huge amounts of anything unless a) you get a hell of a price on it and b) you shoot it up over the years. About a decade ago, a police-supply house near me went out of business, and I bought what I thought was an absurd number of primers for very little. Now they are just about used up, and I saved a bundle by making the purchase.

I also had a chance to buy powder dirt cheap, but I didn't because you don't want a lot of powder in your house. Very often there are local ordnances on how it must be stored, and if you ever have a fire and your
insurance carrier finds that you had 75 pounds of H4831 in the broom closet they will be thrilled not to pay. I limit both the types and amount of powder I keep around to just enough and no more.

So, if you have a chance to pick up a whole bunch of good ammo, cheap, and in a common caliber that you can sell off if you have to, by all means do so. And then proceed to shoot it. That's what ammunition is for. But do leave some in reserve. When the apocalypse comes, you may be able to trade it for food.

A friend of mine booked a sheep hunt early this year, and because of the nut-busting price, he decided to leave nothing to chance. He bought a .270 WSM from rifle builder Mark Bansner, and mounted a Schmidt & Bender scope that cost as much as a Volkswagen. He jogged with a 50-pound pack and the rifle on his back, and on the gun’s stock he taped a cheat sheet that showed bullet drop in 50-yard increments out to 500 yards. Then he memorized the cheat sheet.

When the shot actually came, it was a 300-yarder, and a funny thing happened: His mind went absolutely blank. He forgot every number on the sheet, and had to read it to get his holdover. But he got the ram.

This is the great weakness inherent in all the rangefinders, range-compensating reticles, and everything else that tells you where to hold—when the moment actually comes, most people’s minds go blank. They forget how to use these electronic miracles, panic, and blaze away somewhere in the general direction of the beast.

There are two cures: One is to be born with the nervous system of a monitor lizard. The other is to do a lot of shooting—and I do mean a lot—at various long ranges. About 15 years ago I saw a young man from the Midwest take a nice Wyoming mule deer at a true 600 yards with one round. He simply flopped down in the prone position, got into his sling, and pulled the trigger. He was a member of a National Guard rifle team, and fired hundreds and hundreds of rounds every year at distances from 200 to 1,000 yards. For him this was just another day at the office.

I am indebted to Caitlin Peters and Brian McClintock of the Field & Stream staff who sent me a post that ran on the Huffington Blog. It’s called “Drill, Drill, Drill,” and was written by an essayist and playwright named Eve Ensler.  Ms. Ensler does not like anything about Governor Palin, and most particularly, she does not like the fact that Governor Palin hunts.

Here are the hunting-related excerpts from the post, along with my comments. The purpose of all this is to demonstrate that when it comes to firearms or hunting, you can say anything and people will believe it. “Drill” is all over the Internet, and has the ignorant, the hysterical, and the downright silly jumping up and down and barking at the moon.

“Sarah Palin believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle.”

There’s nothing wrong with believing in guns.  To quote from the film Conspiracy, “I have become mistrustful of words, but a gun means what it says.”  The sinister significance of the Austrian rifle is lost on me. I’ve never thought that Austrian rifles were any more evil than rifles from any other country. Maybe Ms. Ensler is not crazy about carved oakleaves  and fish-scale checkering in stocks, on which Austrians dote.

“I dreamed last night that she [Sarah Palin] was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starving Polar Bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one or touched one….Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.”

Dear Ms. Ensler: Polar bears are not white; they are pale yellow. If you ever touch one, you will probably never touch anything else. I like polar bears but I don’t need them. I need $15,000 to buy the Pete Norene .416 Rigby at Cabela’s. Oh yes; “ polar bears” is not capitalized, but “Arctic” is.

“She has shot 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.”

It’s quite possible that Sarah Palin has shot 40 caribou over a period of years. Her family may qualify for a subsistence-hunting license, which would make it both legal and common. But as for dropping them all at once, field-dressing and transporting 40 caribou at one fell swoop would  require a brigade of the Alaska National Guard.

I tried calling the Alaska Fish & Game for some insight, hoping I would get a game warden who would assure me that Ms. Palin had always obeyed the law, and if she hadn’t, she would have been imprisoned and beaten to death, and her family hunted down and killed, just as with any citizen who transgressed.
What I got was transferred from the main switchboard to the Commissioner’s Office, and when I explained what I wanted, I was switched to McCain-Palin Election Headquarters, where a functionary took my message and said someone would call be back. No one did.

About the wolves: Shooting wolves from airplanes has been going on in Alaska since at least the 1950s, and probably before that. If you don’t keep the wolves hammered down, you are not going to have many caribou, or moose, or wild sheep, and doing it by plane is the most efficient method.

However, if Governor Palin had shot hundreds of wolves from a plane she would not have been a mayor, or a hockey mom, or a governor, or a beauty queen, or anything else. She would have been up in that plane with a gun, and nowhere else. One does not simply go up and put the power to a dozen wolves in an afternoon. I think we can put this part of Eve Ensler’s essay down as arrant horse s**t or, in this case, arrant wolf s**t.

But then, this is the Internet, so why worry?

Whenever I’m lucky enough to get back to Africa, I make a point of asking professional hunters who shoots good, who shoots bad, and why. The reason is that these guys get to see more shots fired at game in a single season than most North American guides do in ten, and are likely to know what they’re talking about.
      
This time, I caught a withering blast from a PH with 20 years’ experience.
      
“Americans are the worst shots,” he said. “You guys love your benchrests. You spend a fortune to come out here with me and you never practice offhand, off kneeling, or with shooting sticks. You’re afraid of your rifles and you never even check to see that they’ll cycle properly.”

“What are the major flaws in shooting technique that you see?”, I asked.

“You look around your scopes when you try to aim, and you yank the trigger.”

On another occasion, I asked another PH what he thought and he agreed with the above, but he added: “On the other hand, a good American rifle shot is better than anyone else.”

My hearing gave out years ago, but my eyesight held on much longer. However, as the years progressed, I found it harder and harder to focus a scope, and when looking at a red-dot sight, I saw two dots instead of one. (If there had been three dots I simply could have aimed with the middle one.) For a while I could squint and get the dot into focus, but then even that didn’t work, so there it was: Get prescription glasses for shooting.

The way you do this is as follows: Take either your scope sight or red-dot sight to the eye doctor to show him what you have to deal with. Do not attach a firearm to the sight or you will have lots worse problems than your vision. He will give you a prescription. Then you need to have your interpupillary distance measured. My eye doctor doesn’t take this measurement (or do windows) so I got it from the guy who fits me for reading glasses.

You next go to the Decot Company website (sportglasses.com) and look at the styles and colors they offer. (If the name Decot is not familiar, they are probably the oldest and largest supplier of shooting glasses in the business.) Tell them what you want and give them your prescription. I got my glasses in about a week and they have made an incredible difference. Everything is in focus. I see one dot instead of two. I even shoot better than I did.

Now, if only someone would invent a hearing aid that actually works.