Giving Thanks

My sister and I (and our children) are, like 2-2-1/2 million living Americans, Mayflower descendants. That is, we have ?X great-grandparents who came to this country on the Mayflower. Some of our other ancestors came on the next few ships to arrive in the Plymouth colony. In other words our ancestors were religious and political refugees who risked their lives, lived in great discomfort, labored for years, separated themselves from the remainder of their families on the hope that they and their grandchildren could live with a greater degree of liberty and security than they had in the "old world". They succeeded and despite the normal life struggles our families have long enjoyed greater prosperity and liberty than they would have had or could have had just about any place else in the world. For their foresight, hope and fortitude we are extremely grateful.

Yes, it is deer season...

John A______ took me out to the Bowman Spring Farm and we sat on stand for about 3 hours in the freezing rain (literally, freezing rain) and saw no deer.  Took the .250-3000 again.  Was pretty warm but I picked the wrong book socks and my feet were cold.  Used the hot hands to warm myself after about 2½ hours. 

Rifle, U.S. M1, .30 Caliber blast deflector...

Received my copy of the Rock Island Auction catalog and seemed to be immediately drawn to lot 1535.  This is an M1 Rifle (Garand) with a unique blast deflector reportedly locally fabricated and used only in Alaska.  This is a gas-trap rifle.  A photo of the blast deflector is shown below.  Bruce Canfield's new book doesn't seem to mention it but it is possible I've overlooked that somehow.  Very interesting to me.  It would seem that it would have to be removed for operator cleaning.  The catalog copy says that only 3 are known to exist.  I've never seen or heard of one before.  Accordingly, this rifle's estimate is between $30,000 and $50,000! 

Deer hunting 2013...

The sole sign of life other than song birds and woodpeckers.

The first place I went during the muzzleloading season, mostly for nostalgiac reasons, was north of Leading Ridge Road above Todd Lake in the Dry River District of the George Washington National Forest. Dad first took me here not long after it had been clear cut when there was plenty of browse. We always saw deer even if shooting them was impossible. At the time there was only one "doe day" and you were allowed only one deer per season. Now, 40+ years later, it is once again mostly maturing hardwood or pine with little browse. This year there isn't much hard mast (acorns) either. As a result, there aren't many, if any, deer in the area. I didn't see any and I didn't see any fresh scat, tracks or any other sign that there were deer in the area.

The regular gun season is here. I took my Savage 99A .250-3000 (.250 Savage). Easy to carry and accurate, fairly flat shooting and just plain fun.

So the second day (my first day of I moved down Leading Ridge Road a bit. I hadn't planned to park where I did but there were a lot more hunters out (and many more than there have been in the last 5 years or so) so I moved down to the head of an old logging road and parked there. A slow hunt down along this road a mile or so and back through a couple of open former feed plots found no deer sign here either. All that I found along the road was coyote (?) scat just as I had found elsewhere.

Driving slowly out of the area I noticed that there were at least triple the number of camps in the area. But, that still isn't a lot of camps. Last year I counted 4 and this year there were about 12-14. In the many hours I was in the forest I never heard any gunfire. No shots means that no bucks were being seen by hunters. Yes, it is bucks only on the national forest lands, and I think this is probably a good thing. There need to be does to maintain a population. Unfortunately, there also needs to be some food. I'm just not seeing a lot of dining opportunities for the deer.

Looking down into and up the gorge from Wild Oak Trail.

Yesterday, I was back out and this time I was determined to head into the North River Gorge and see if there were any deer along the river. I parked above Camp May Flather and dropped down onto the Wild Oak Trail. At this point the trail runs about 200 feet above and along the river on the old logging railroad bed. It crosses the river on a suspension foot bridge and crosses the North River Trail and continues to Lookout Mountain. I took the NRT further up the gorge.

Several years ago we had flooding that severely impacted the trail. The USFS has finally made some repairs. I leave it to you to judge whether or not they should have run a small bulldozer all the way up the trail to clear it. Likely this was the least expensive option. A popular horse trail, there was sign that the riders have already been up the trail again. I did find some deer tracks, but they were mostly pretty small, does or yearlings. I didn't see any deer. I did see about a dozen gray squirrels which were missing from the Skidmore Fork area around Leading Ridge Road. The water level in the river is down and crossing dry footed was no problem. It was cold enough that a skim of ice was on some of the pools. All in all it was pretty nice in the gorge. Again, I heard no rifle shots although I could hear road traffic at some points along the trail. Although I didn't see any deer, the concentration of sign dramatically increased about 1 to 1-1/2 hours back. I didn't walk fast, so this is probably about 3 miles or so. That's a long way to walk just to squirrel hunt and it is a long way to drag a deer. I am not that hungry so it would have to a really nice buck for me to shoot one way back there.

Yes, there was some sign...

One benefit to the use of the dozer to clear the trail was that for most of its length the soft earth has been turned up and takes impressions of whatever passes over it very well. That means that if deer are using the trail then it will be pretty obvious. One of two things is happening, either there aren't many deer or they aren't using the trail much.

One thing about these old trails is that you get to see some of the old time ways of doing things. Check out the last two pictures. One is of the rock crib constructed to carry the old railway bed and the other is a cistern used to collect spring water for the railway workers and loggers.

Rock "crib" built to fill a gap in the railroad bed. 

Cistern built to collect spring water.  Somebody has popped the lid.  Note the "drinking" basin on the front.

The greatest speech ever?

One of them at least and here every day for you to read and, hopefully, understand.  The Gettysburg Address

Out and about...

Went out yesterday, up and down some mountains. It is "muzzleloader" aka "blackpowder" season here, bucks only where I was. However, it wasn't likely that I'd see a deer of any kind. No hard mast, no browse, no water, no scrapes, no rubs, no tracks. Nothing but small birds and red headed woodpeckers. Not even any of the resident crows. No longer a clear-cut as it was 40+ years ago. However, something has been through there.

How it goes...

Scouting

John A______ and I went out to scout a place he has permission to hunt on the property of Bill B_____ out Middlebrook way. Very neat place and with that huge spring in front of the house one can easily see why this place attracted settlers. The water is, by the way, just the right temperature and taste for drinking. John and I had a good drink after our scout. We didn't see deer but we saw lots of sign and as Bill says, they are eating their fill in the corn fields. John is hoping for a good deer here.

John recently had an aortic aneurism and now has a bad valve that they will be replacing in December. He needs somebody to go hunt with him and he now has two of us lined up.

Halloween is a bust

We live on a main thoroughfare. When we moved here about 27 years ago we looked forward to Halloween and got ready for the rush. Not one person came to the door. In all the years we've lived here not one person has come to our door on Halloween. We had some "vandalism" this year. I put out the trash for Friday morning pickup and somebody had pushed over one of the trash cans.

Notes from the gun shop...

I put in another day at the shop to cover for Wayne F_________ so that he could care for his mother. It seemed like a fairly busy day and I actually sold a Thompson Center Impact muzzleloader.

This seems to be a good gun and I imagine that this is produced for about as low a price point as a quality gun can be made. Not my cup of tea but if you need a tool to take advantage of the muzzleloading season then this will do. No, I don't own one.

We had some .22 LR today and still had 3 boxes of CCI .22 WRM. Got some .30-30 in as well as some Unique, Red Dot, and other Alliant powders. Maybe 25 pounds of powder all together. That's not much.

Colt Concealed Carry Officer's Model .45 ACP

John M. Browning designed the Model 1911 pistol, our nation's service pistol for many years. Some thought it could be improved by making it lighter, hence the Commander with aluminum alloy frame and 3/4" shorter barrel and then shorter yet as the Officer's Model with 3-1/2" barrel. However, many noticed that the angles necessary to function the smaller Officer's Model resulted in decreased reliability. Also, while the shorter butt contributed to greater concealability, the shorter barrel was more a hindrance to accuracy than it was benefit in any other way. The idea of installing a Commander length slide assembly to an Officers' model frame was executed and the lords of the gun rags called it good. So Colt made some in 1998. Apparently, it was not a model that inspired enough buyers to lay out the cash. There is still a demand though and it is being met by the Gunsite model at $1395 (last I checked) plus tax plus shipping plus transfer fees or about $1460-1500 out the door and by the custom gunsmiths.

One of those smiths is Jim Garthwaite. I have read articles about him and/or his guns, indeed I've read all the articles shown on his website. He was the Pistolsmith of the Year in 2004. Mr. Garthwaite does work on 1911 and Browning High Power pistols. He also has been doing classes in which the participants build their own guns.

My friend, Rob Leahy of Simply Rugged Holsters, told me about a Garthwaite CCO at Bucky O'Neill's Guns in Prescott, AZ. Although rob said he'd get photos the work load at his shop was too great but he assured me that I'd like the gun. Knowing Rob, I took the leap of faith and called Dave at Bucky's to order the gun sight unseen. I am all into the gun for less than the price of the Gunsite CCO, which is simply a production gun. Further, the few of his guns I have seen for sale have been asking $2500 or more.

Well, it took a bit longer than expected. While they received my money, and FFL, in a timely manner, shipment was somehow delayed a bit and I didn't receive the gun until this week. Today was the first day I had time to shoot and photograph it.

As you can tell from the photo this gun is literally a Colt Commander slide (1991A1) on a Colt Officers' Lightweight frame. The front sight is dovetailed and a Heinie rear sight has been installed. The top of the slide was stippled and the rear of the slide was checkered. Also checkered was the steel (stainless I presume) main spring housing and the front strap. I'm personally pleased that the front of the trigger guard was not checkered. The trigger is like that on my Officers' Lightweight ACP but the feel is different. The gun has a National Match bushing. I haven't had it apart yet so I haven't looked at who made what component.

When you look at the first target you can see that I lost a couple of rounds due to the trigger. That should go away with practice. I really like the sights. Even with my currently compromised vision (cataracts) and bifocals I could see the sights well enough to be effective.

You'll note the vertical stringing and "lost" rounds outside the "group". That trigger is pretty light and crisp which I'm obviously not accustomed to! Then the stringing I think is due to the slight difficulty I had in shooting the gun quickly. Recoil seems to be snappier in this than in the Officers' Lightweight, I think because the gun is just about as light but the bullets are getting more velocity out of the longer barrel. That's just my perception. Recoil is not at all physically bothersome in that it is not at all painful. In comparison I think that a S&W M13 shooting full on 125 gr. .357 Magnum loads with the factory stocks can be painful.

The ammunition used was a mix of ball (Winchester white box) and Federal Hydrashocks. Nary a slip twixt mag and chamber or chamber and ground with any of it or any magazine (Wilson, Chip McCormick and Colt factory). I'll check 230 gr. Golden Sabers next.

Links:
- Massad Ayoob: The Colt Concealed Carry Officers and its niche-mates
- How About the CCOs by Wiley Clapp

Notes from the gun shop...

We had a pretty interesting day today. In some ways it was surprising because with blackpowder season around the corner you'd expect that we'd be selling more muzzle-loading guns and supplies. We did do 8 transfers. Also, because Vic didn't work I had to do a couple of repairs.

One was removing a case from a Remington 700 bolt. Not difficult, just levered it right out from under the extractor. The problem was excessive pressure. The case was a Remington (.270 Winchester) and the primer pocket was expanded to almost twice its normal diameter. The owner claimed it was all old ammo from the same box and no reloads. The primers were not consistent with factory ammo, some cases were Federal and the owner looked a bit squirrely. Whatever.

The next case was a messed up Star 9mm pistol in which a cartridge had been jammed backwards into the chamber. The man had gotten the slide assembly off the pistol but was lost after that. I got the case out and then had to re-assemble the gun and show him how it is done. Oh, yeah, I've gone big time.

Still short of powder, .22 rimfire, FMJ ammo for 9mm, .40S&W and .45 ACP or any sort of practice ammo for the .38 Special.

Squirrel hunting

They don't call it hunting for nothing.  I hunted, near Elkhorn Lake, but I only saw one squirrel and he/she vamoosed up a big pine ASAP after he/she saw me.  All fine with me though.  I had a pleasant walk.  Didn't dress for it, just wore my blue jeans and regular shoes, which are kinda like moccasins, and a light jacket.  Boy has that area grown up.  Clear cut back in the late 1960s, the pines were about head high when I was in my teens.  There were squirrels, grouse, turkeys and deer at that time and I saw them all.  Now it is pretty much a mature forest and there's not so much food to attract any of that game.  There are some crows in the area as well as small birds which feed on small plant seeds or insects.  Doesn't seem to be a lot of hard mast this year but that might be a local thing.  It is supposed to rain again tonight and tomorrow so I'll decide whether or not to go out, someplace else, tomorrow.

Carried my 1956 manufactured Marlin 39A Mountie and some old CIL Cascade .22 LR ammo.  Feeling pretty retro, as usual. 

Notes from the gun shop...

Lots of neat guns have come in to the shop during the past 2 weeks. Smith and Wessons, Colts, some good quality rifles and some really good glass as well. We were very busy. Hunting season is here and the firearms season for deer is just around the corner.

Notes from the gun shop...

Walked in to discover a number of neat pistols had come into the shop from an estate.  Many Smith and Wessons, a Kimber and a couple of Ruger single-actions.  It was a pretty busy day.  However, not much of an improvement in the availability of ammunition.  We did have some .30-30 which is apparently very difficult to find in Augusta county.  VERY little .22 LR.  We only had 7 boxes when I left the shop.  Other than that there wasn't much of note.