What have I learned at from the internet? Well, let's see:

1. Double rifles require repair every 300-500 rounds. I never knew this. Having never owned a double rifle (but several double shotguns) and only read about them, I thought that they only needed repair when a spring broke or some such thing. I would never imagine that they are constructed such that they needed to be refit every 500 rounds or so. Now I have heard of double shotguns "shooting loose" but these were cheap guns and it hasn't happened even to my old Springfield/Stevens 20 and 16 ga. guns much less to the Parker Brothers or Ithacas.

2. So many people are incapable of expressing a complete sentence or properly using capitalization and punctuation! Sentences that run on, seemingly without end, are nearly unintelligible. These same sorts of people use obscenities as if they have the same impact in the written word as they do when uttered with the appropriate vocalizations. Simply amazing.

3. There are lots of people out there that know much more than I do about a lot of things. Ok, I didn't learn this, but the subject did receive some reinforcement.

4. There are lots of people out there that know much less than I do about nearly everything. I suppose that Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segment didn't actually teach me this. However, with proper reinforcement, I am trainable.

5. There are so many people worldwide who hunt, who own firearms, who are intelligent. I did not expect to find so many who have overcome some really intimidating regulatory limitations to manage to get out and hunt. These people really impress me. Also, they are often technically savvy and well spoken, at least with the written word, in a language other than their native language (English). How many Americans can say the same. I know that I can no longer carry on a conversation in Korean or Mandarin.

6. There seem to be lots of people going to Africa to hunt. A corollary to this is that hunting in Africa is much more a business than here in the states. That is, guiding and paying to shoot animals is much more reduced to a system than it is here with all our public lands. I wonder how long our hunting patterns will last given that hunters as a group are aging and land use is becoming more regulated.

Ok, so that is not a great number of things. At least those are all that I come to mind as I write this. I do have other shooting concerns...

One of those is finally getting all my Contender barrels zeroed and the loads for them finalized. I get new barrels but don't get them zeroed or load development done. Among the tasks I have in this area:

1. Zero the .22 Match barrel with Winchester Power Points.
2. Zero the .22 Hornet and work up a load with Lil'Gun and Hornady's 35 gr. V-Max.
3. Zero the .218 Bee and work up a load with Lil'Gun and Hornady's 35 gr. V-Max.
4. Zero the .223 with the 63 gr. Sierra bullet load.
5. Zero the new .25-35 barrel with the factory 117 gr. RN load.
6. Check out the 7-30 Waters with the lead bullet/SR 4759 load.
7. Find a load for and zero the .41 Remington Magnum barrel.
8. Re-scope and zero the .38-55 barrel with the Barnes Original bullet and LBT bullet loads.
9. Zero the .38-55 Williams Foolproof Receiver Sight with the 249 gr. Leadheads PB bullet load.

I have other things that are on my "to do" list as well:

1. Help my son-in-law reduce the coyote population on his dad's farm.
2. Ditto for the groundhogs.
3. Ditto for coyotes on my mother's place.
4. Spring turkey hunting.
5. Get ready for the season's fly fishing.
6. Finish my office so that I can work in peace.
7. Finish cleaning my basement loading area so that I can be more efficient.
8. Redo the fence along the road at my mother's and repost the property boundary.
9. Plant bois d'arc along one fence line at my mother's.
10. Set up a dozen arrows for my hunting bow and practice.