Finally Technology Does Something Really Useful

I did it. I went thermal.

Big Tech is doing exactly what I said it would do several years ago. They are removing conservatives and Christians from the most powerful public forums. Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube have banned our president, and Twitter’s ignorant, fascist CEO says he is planning to go after more accounts. I see we have passed a pivotal point in the Nurembergization of America, so I believe two things: it’s time to grab anything gun-related I might want to own in the future, and this is not the time to worry about dollars and cents. Either I have plenty for retirement regardless of my firearm purchases, or what I have will be taken away, so fretting over a few thousand dollars is silly.

I ordered a thermal monocular which is small and light, plus a fabric cap to hold it for me. A lot of people buy bulletproof helmets to hold their monoculars, but I’m not planning to engage in hostilities, so I didn’t see the point in putting a bedpan on my head.

I guess I’ll digress. Plastic ballistic (“bulletproof”) helmets aren’t all that great when it comes to blocking bullets. It’s kind of interesting. The primary purpose of a soldier’s helmet is to block shrapnel, which is generally easier to deal with than bullets. When you shoot a ballistic helmet with a powerful rifle round, it will probably go through. Not that it has to go through in order to hurt you. Just about any round will shatter the plastic and deform it, possibly injuring you and making it possible for future round to drive the softened helmet itself into your skull. A bullet doesn’t have to go into your brain to kill you or put you in diapers. If it can put so much pressure on a helmet it deforms and enters the space your brain occupies, it can end your life or make it necessary for what’s left of you to go “live” in a facility.

I don’t think shrapnel will be the primary concern in the impending worldwide murder epidemic. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m just applying common sense to the limited information I have. I would think bullets and knives would be the big evils.

It looks like there are two kinds of hard helmets: ballstic helmets and bump helmets. A bump helmet is a much cheaper option, and the purpose is to protect you from things like clubs. I don’t think I need one of those. If a leftist pogrom mob is close enough to me to hit me with a club, I’ve already lost. The only way to protect yourself is to keep them at a distance.

My opinion is that a lot of people who are looking forward to civil war have unrealistic expectations for body armor and helmets.

Maybe I’m a hypocrite. I bought body armor. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it, so I bought it just to be safe. It was getting scarce, America was getting very angry, and I thought armor could be useful for home protection. If I’m willing to protect my chest, why didn’t I buy a helmet?

I think the armor was a waste of money, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to sell it if I want.

As for non-rigid caps that hold optics, here’s how they work. You mount your optic on your cap using a hinged arm and some other surprisingly expensive things. When you want to look at stuff, you swing the monocular down in front of your eye, and it turns on. The rest of the time, it’s out of your line of sight.

Thermal monoculars can be useful for a number of things. They can help you spot game which is concealed by darkness or partial concealment. They can help you track wounded game. Of course, they can also help you spot home invaders in and around your home. I don’t plan to hide behind sandbags and shoot leftist terrorists when things get bad and they come to my property, but I have to admit it would be nice to be able to spot them a long way off. It could give me time to pray, flee, write a goodbye note, set out some tofu, or whatever. It might give me a chance to drive them off with warning shots.

I want to try thermal for hunting. I want to use it to find animals to shoot. I also want to use it to find animals that are wounded, so I can finish them off.

I got advice from more-advanced gun nuts. Maybe asking was a mistake. Nothing satisfies these people. You say, “I’m thinking of getting a $3000 640 by 480 60 Hz BLMFinder Plus.” They say, “Don’t be an idiot. For just $40,000 more, you could get the Ultra-4K 2 GHz 3000-yard Hippiebuster Pro that interfaces with shoulder-fired missiles.”

There are some heavy-duty snobs in the night vision/thermal world, and more than a few of them are preparing for the specific purpose of going to war with statist lynch mobs and federal troops commanded by Biden (perhaps I repeat myself). You can’t let people like that set your standards. I want to locate hogs and squirrels PRETTY well. I don’t need to own equipment SEAL’s won’t have until next year.

I look forward to playing with this stuff.

My hobbies seem more important than ever. The end of the age is really here, and for a long time, I’ve had the firm feeling that what I do now doesn’t matter. The statists will win, God will extract his people, and that will be that. I’ll be raptured, or I’ll be killed. If I delete my blog and pretend I’ve had a leftist awakening, and if I destroy all my guns and start recycling and criticizing white people, it won’t help me, because I have a long, undeletable record of thoughtcrime, and leftists do not forgive. Kissing up to them now won’t help, and fighting them by carnal means won’t help. I don’t want to kiss up anyway. The thought is nauseating. I feel like all I can do is pray and entertain myself.

I wish I had done more things with guns and hunting back when ammunition was available and there was still some freedom left.

If Biden really assumes office, it’s going to be amazing to watch how the country transforms. He has a mandate. Conservatives hate to hear that, but it’s true. It may be a stolen mandate. I don’t know. But it’s a mandate. He has all of Congress plus the power to pack the Supreme Court. I foresee incredibly painful attacks on our rights. Curfews. Idiotic mask laws. Semiautomatic weapon confiscation. Unbearable environmental laws. A complete end to free speech. A lot of it should happen in 2021, and once Biden is removed and Harris takes over, it will be much worse. She will be the most vile tyrant we’ve ever seen, and we won’t be able to do a thing about it.

Holding onto this world is a big mistake. It’s turning into a soiled diaper. We have to stop lying to ourselves and seek shelter in God. The political fight appears to be lost forever. It’s insane to try to take the country back.

There is nowhere to go now. Persecuted Christians have always been able to flee to America. Now America appears to have fallen. It’s as though God has left the temple, the way he did before Titus destroyed it. Josephus, a Jew who did not believe in Jesus, wrote this:

Thus also before the Jews’ rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, [Nisan,] and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright day time; which lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes, as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it.

At the same festival also, a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the temple. Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner [court of the] temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night.

Now those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that the signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them.

The 9th through 11th chapters of Ezekiel seem to be a pattern for what we’re seeing. Here is some food for thought:

And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer’s inkhorn by his side;

And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.

And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:

Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary.

Sounds a lot like the rapture and tribulation, doesn’t it?

It will be nice to have some new toys. I hope I’m not on earth to see human beings use them against each other.

Rimfire is What it Is

I was planning to get out the Sweet Sixteen and go back to the squirrel wars, but today I decided it was best to do some .22 shooting. The Sweet Sixteen is a much more effective squirrel weapon, but it takes a lot of the skill out of the process. I have been having problems killing squirrels cleanly with rifles, so I felt like I should go out and check my rifles on the bench at known distances.

I belong to some gun forums, and I sought information about my problems. Naturally, people tried to tell me I couldn’t shoot,and they made up nonsense about how they never missed and never failed to get a clean kill. I figured it couldn’t hurt to practice, if only to reassure myself.

This afternoon, I moved my bench to 25 yards from my targets, and I started shooting CCI 36-grain Mini-mags. I was using my Savage A22 and Nikon Prostaff II scope.

I was not very happy with my first set of groups, and I went in the house, figuring maybe the Savage was not going to work out with squirrels. Then I thought about the ammunition and the way I had held the gun. CCI Mini-mags are very popular, but they’re not high-end ammunition. As far as I know, all .22 LR ammunition, even the pricey stuff, is less accurate than good centerfire ammunition. Maybe I’m wrong, but people on the web get bad results with expensive .22 LR ammo, including Eley, all the time. Maybe I needed to try something other than Mini-mags. Also, I had been trying to use a different technique to hold the gun, and I wondered if that had screwed things up.

I got more Mini-mags, some CCI standard velocity ammo, and some Remington Golden Bullets, and I went back out.

This time, I held the rifle in a pretty conventional way, and I was very careful to contact the trigger with the same part of my finger every time.

The results were better, but not inspiring. With the Mini-mags and standard velocity ammo, I shot somewhere under an inch, except for one crazy flyer. The Golden Bullets were very disappointing. The groups were bigger.

I’ll post a photo of the Mini-mag target.

I know the problem is with the Golden Bullets, not me, because I alternated targets. I didn’t shoot all of the groups for one brand at once and then move on. I shot two groups with each brand, switched, and shot two groups with the next brand. The Remington groups weren’t bigger because I was tired or because I wasn’t warmed up.

The groups are not bad, but they’re not making me ecstatic. The squirrels where I live are tiny, so their brains are tiny, too. You really need to be able to shoot half-inch groups in the field in order to kill squirrels quickly. I can do that from 50 feet. At 25 yards, it’s a crap shoot. I shot into something like half an inch from the bench today, most of the time, but I don’t hunt from a bench, so I should expect 25-yard shots to be less accurate in the woods.

I can continue using rifles, but I’ll have to wait for very close shots. I guess I have to decide whether I want to kill several squirrels per day or just one.

Better Than Biscuits and Mustard

What do you do when you have a small steel part you want to blue? You get out your Birchwood-Casey Super Blue and paint it up, right?

That’s what I used to do. Today I decided to try oil-bluing for the first time.

What is oil bluing? Funny you should ask. It’s an old, simple way to blue and even case-harden parts. If your part is hardenable steel, oil-bluing may harden it all the way through, because it’s basically the same thing as heating and quenching. If you harden a part that shouldn’t be hard, you’ll have to anneal it later.

I modified my friend Mike’s Marlin Model 60 stock to accept a real sling stud, not one of those stupid things that clamp to the barrel. In order to make the modification work, I had to grind a dome nut down to about 0.180″ thick. In this case, a dome nut is a little nut that goes inside a gun stock. The stud’s screw goes through it. There is very little room inside the Model 60 for a nut, so you have to make your nut smaller in order for it to fit. You also have to use a 3/8″ Forstner bit to drill out a cavity inside your stock, and it has to be deep enough for the nut to rest in it without protruding.

Grinding the nut took the bluing off one side, and I wanted to replace it, even though the nut would be hidden.

I found some Kubota conventional motor oil in the workshop. I would never use this stuff because I like synthetic. I poured some in a soup bowl and put it on my kitchen counter. It’s great to be single. I took a little wire and ran it through the nut so I could use the wire to hold it. I heated the nut until it was red hot. I dropped the hot nut into the oil, and I was done.

The nut is blued, I didn’t have to buy Super Blue, and the job is finished.

Buffing it would have made it even better. I don’t want the buffer throwing hard-to-find nuts all over the workshop, however.

Incidentally, if you want to do this modification to your Model 60, here’s how you find out if your nut and screw clear the magazine tube, which will sit on top of the cavity the nut sits in. You use an ohmmeter. If the screw or nut touches the magazine, the resistance between the screw or nut and the magazine will be nearly zero. If not, it will be infinite. If it’s not infinite, make the hole deeper or grind the metal parts until you get zero.

You’re welcome.

The gun is much improved now. Mike owes me.

Today I read that a product called Nu-Blue, from Stockdoc.com, looks and protects better than the other quick bluing products. Don’t know if it’s true. Some guy tested a bunch of products.

Am I Doing it Right, Mr. Biden?

It’s a very nice day. My AR-15 upper order has been confirmed. No word on when it will get here.

Something else nice happened tomorrow. I got an alert saying a lower receiver I wanted was in stock online at a good price. I jumped on it. I also ordered a padded buttstock.

I was expecting to have to use the upper with my existing lower, because reasonably priced lowers are hard to find these days.

I went with Anderson manufacturing. This is a well-known company that supplies receivers for other businesses. People say Anderson receivers work great, although there may be prettier receivers made by boutique outfits. I have zero complaints about the mid-tier receiver on my first AR, so I don’t see a problem. The AR world is full of cork-sniffers who pay out the nose for things that don’t help.

I got the receiver for $10 less than MSRP, and in the current climate, that seems like a steal.

I also ordered a third LaRue Tactical trigger. I asked for a straight trigger. I like them better than curved ones.

The upper is from White Oak Armament. The barrel will be fluted and threaded.

The only thing that concerns me about this gun is the weight. I ordered a 22″ barrel in order to make sure I got all the velocity .204 Ruger can offer, and length means weight. Fluting will help somewhat.

I have read that some people have trouble using .204 Ruger in .223 magazines, so I have put out feelers to get recommendations in case my current magazines don’t work. I have read that a company called C-Products makes great magazines for .204 Ruger. They’re called Duramags. Supposedly, the .223 models will work fine, but they also make them specifically for .204 Ruger, so I think I’ll pick up a few. I haven’t found them in sizes beyond 10 rounds. Maybe I can also get a 20-round .223 job and see what happens. If it works, I’ll use it for .204 Ruger. If not, it will be fine for .223.

I had a crazy idea about squirrel hunting. My .22 rifles just are not accurate or powerful enough to do what I need. I want something I can use to hit a fairly distant squirrel in the head, with enough energy to put the lights out even with an off-center hit. The other day I learned that .17 HMR is not as accurate as I had thought, so that’s probably not the best choice. I read that some people hunt squirrels with .204 Ruger, and that got me thinking.

A .204 Ruger round has tons of energy, so I assume body shots would splatter squirrels and make the meat useless. But the same energy would probably be great insurance for head shots. The meat would be fine, and the squirrel would be on a little pearly wheel in squirrel heaven before it knew what was going on.

I should eventually get a 6.5 Creedmoor upper for my LR-308, not to mention a better buttstock.

I have totally gotten the message, my Democrat friends. You’re all for tolerance and love, so you definitely want me to spend more money on the things I enjoy. Thanks for understanding.

New Upper Receiver on the Way

I think I’ll continue swimming against the current. It’s a beautiful day, and I feel great. The reality you live in depends on your relationship with God, not your lockdowns, creepy vaccines, or ridiculous, ineffective masks.

Last night I did something I had been trying to talk myself out of. I bought an AR-15 upper in .204 Ruger. It has an M-Lok handguard and a 1:10 twist, which is somewhat faster than the much-criticized industry standard of 1:12. It has a fluted varmint barrel 22″ long. People say you need about 21″ to make the .204 Ruger achieve top speed, and without top speed, .204 Ruger is somewhat pointless. It’s all about speed.

I use the present tense, saying “has,” as though the upper already existed. The company that makes it says it’s shipping uppers 1-4 weeks after they’re ordered. I’m hoping I’ll be more toward the one than the 4, because .204 Ruger is unpopular. Demand should be low.

For all the blue-state whiners who may come to check my blog, take heart. The .204 Ruger cartridge is not very useful for killing human beings.

I have never been a big fan of the AR-15, but my feelings keep evolving as I learn. I still think it’s a bad choice for self-defense because of the reliability issues. But it’s turning out to be a great choice for nearly everything else.

I thought the AR-15 platform was inherently inaccurate, because everyone said so. They said they got poor results with it. Of course, most people couldn’t hit their own rear ends with a pistol. Probably less that 1% of the shooting population is worth listening to when it comes to accuracy. I have learned that the platform is actually very accurate, so that concern is gone. Gas guns like the AR-15 are harder to shoot well than bolt guns, and very few people know how to shoot them, because they don’t get training. You have to be a better shot to run an AR-15. You have to know more. Once you do, you have a semiautomatic platform that holds 30 rounds and may shoot into under 0.5 MOA, depending on your ammo and the quality of your gun.

Not only will an AR-15 shoot well; learning to make it shoot will make you a better shot, all-around. The things you do to make an AR shoot well should also be done when shooting other types of guns. This makes the AR a better choice for beginners than a bolt gun, because it teaches you more. A bolt gun is like MIG, and an AR-15 is like TIG.

There go my accuracy concerns.

What about other advantages? Here’s a big one. The AR-15 is made to hold lots of stuff. If you hunt, there is no telling what you may want to put on your gun. A light. A bulky night vision scope and illuminator. A heavy thermal scope. The stocks bolt-action rifles come with are not made for all that junk, but AR-15 furniture is.

The additional firepower is clearly a plus. Some states limit magazine capacity for certain applications, but sometimes you can have all you want. I have a Thompson Center rifle which is limited to three rounds in the box. Three! They refuse to make bigger magazines, and no other company makes them. What if I shoot a pig and wound it, and I need to finish it off? If you screw up badly enough, you could need up to 10 rounds to do the humane thing. That’s not going to happen if I’m operating a bolt and changing magazines. Another thought: some animals charge hunters. You can see hogs do it in videos. Do I really want to face an angry pig with one round gone and three remaining?

It seems to me that an AR-15 or AR-10 is a great choice for someone like me. I’m not doing benchrest shooting, so I don’t need a super expensive target rifle. I need something practical and accurate for hunting and for the type of target shooting I do. I need the option of bigger magazines. I don’t need a perfect curly maple stock. I need something that works. It all adds up to AR-15.

For self-defense, I still say it’s Eastern bloc all the way. The odds that an AR-15 will stop up when I need it are slim, but the odds that a Vz-58 or AK-47 will stop up are vanishingly small. And 7.62x39mm is just plain better for self-defense.

This is how things look to me right now. Maybe the picture will continue to change.

I was resisting getting a new upper, but I am getting old, and what good will an expensive coffin do me? BLM and Antifa nuts will just dig me up and steal the brass handles and sell them to buy crack.

On the political and religious front, there is momentous news. Parler is dead. Who didn’t see this coming? When did I start telling people conservatives and Christians would be thrown off the Internet? Maybe 2009? It has been obvious for a long, long time.

People who have no idea how things work have been high-fiving and chest-puffing about Parler and Gab, saying they’re where real conservatives will go to be safe from censorship. Well, one down and one to go.

The amazing thing is that Parler set up its tent in Jeff Bezos’ front yard and expected to thrive! They depended on Amazon Web Services for hosting! “Hello, Mr. Hitler? Is it okay if we build a synagogue on top of the Führerbunker?”

Gab is still online, and in true self-serving conservative bigwig fashion, Gab’s CEO is taking advantage of Parler’s demise by poaching members. Come on over! You’re welcome! Of COURSE you’re welcome. What business doesn’t want another business’s customers?

It reminds me of Pajamas Media. Fight the exclusionary leftist Internet cabal! Join our exclusionary right-wing Internet cabal!

That went really well, didn’t it?

I may actually join, just to watch things unfold. It can’t make things any worse for me. Sodomy is an abomination! If you reject Jesus Christ, you go hell! Caitlyn Jenner is a man! I’ve said more than enough to get me on the persecution list.

Parler may get new hosting. Doesn’t matter. It has been shaken once, and to intelligent people, that shows it can be shaken again, with permanent results. Gab may be doing better right now, but the Internet is still part of the grid. It’s enemy territory, and it will be taken away one way or the other.

Conservative-friendly platforms will only be permitted to exist if they become so full of carnal people they advance Satan’s causes.

The left is violent and stupid, so we should be violent and stupid! The left relies on social media, so we should rely on social media! It won’t work. Statists are insiders, and we’re outsiders. The rules are different for us.

It’s wonderful, how Satan uses carnal conservatives and Christians to justify tyranny. A few benighted people executed a fleeting, minor riot in DC. A few true imbeciles put up Nazi and white supremacist content on Parler and Gab. Now we are all tarred as terrorists. It’s like gun control. A schizophrenic idiot who plays first-person-shooter games 14 hours a day shoots up a school, and the statists say it proves your pastor shouldn’t have an AR-15 to protect his 14 adopted Somali kids.

When did we decide unpleasant views justified depriving people of their platforms? That’s new.

Remember the Skokie case? A bunch of American Nazis decided to march in Skokie, Illinois, a neighborhood full of Jews. They complied with the law, just like other parade organizers. When the authorities tried to stop them, the courts stepped in. It’s legal for Nazis to parade in Jewish neighborhoods unless they break the law. In the United States, it’s legal to be a Nazi, a Communist, a jihadist, a Satanist, or a Klan member. It’s legal to write books and publish newspapers promoting your craziness. It’s legal to have TV shows and radio shows. Why, then, is it illegal for a Nazi to have a Facebook account?

Answer: because Satan needs a way to silence Christians. Holy-Spirit-led Christians are overwhelmingly conservative. Nazis and white supremacists also tend to be hold some conservative views, although Nazis are statists and closely aligned with the left in many ways. If Internet bigwigs can find enough Nazis and racists on conservative social media, and if they can mainstream censorship (which our government is not allowed to do), then they can silence lots of Christians. This will make the world seem more statist than it is, and people are unthinking herd animals. If they think everyone else is a statist, they will become statists, too.

Nazis and other nuts should be allowed on social media, and the correct response is to counteract their propaganda with truth. As people with common sense have always said, banning speech you don’t like leads to the banning of important, beneficial expression. The people who do the banning will always be corrupt, and they will always be unfair. It’s better to let people rant. Jesus was unpopular. The prophets were unpopular. If they were on social media today, they would be banned.

They’re already banned in many stores. Try getting a store clerk to say, “Merry Christmas.”

Some people say the winners write history. That’s not really true. Leftists write history, even when they lose. It’s how they shape the future.

You’re going to be censored online. Get used to the idea. No one is going to put up alternative services which will last and keep us in touch with each other. You need to hear from the Holy Spirit. He is our Internet.

Armed uprisings and new social media sites are carnal solutions, and you can’t win a supernatural war with carnality.

We’re going to lose. God is going to remove us from the world. You need to separate yourself from the provocation, which is just Satan, trying to get you to step out from under God’s protection. To sort of paraphrase the message of the old movie War Games, the only way to lose the war Satan is trying to start is not to play.

The Bible says we are supposed to be the head and not the tail. Here’s something God told me: wherever the head goes, the tail goes. Tails follow heads. That’s how animals are built. When Satan was cast out of heaven, he swept a third of the angels down with him with his tail. That means they followed him. Jesus was supposed to be their head, but they didn’t listen.

If you let Satan’s effort to tempt you to get carnal with the statists, you will be chasing his tail, and you risk ending up where he’s going. He’s a loser. Let him lose without the pleasure of your company.

Statists will torment us as much as our supernatural situations permit. Big deal. Once your body is gone, you will never see these people again. Remember what Moses said about Egypt’s army? “You will see them again no more forever.” Won’t that be nice? The statist terrorists can’t go where we’re going. They won’t be able to have parades in heaven. No more rainbow banners, naked men in body paint, or giant pavement propaganda graffitti.

It’s terrible that people will be destroyed, but it’s not as bad as going with them and continuing to be subjected to their presence.

They’ll get rid of me sooner or later, even though I pay my own hosting fees. Get ready for it. I don’t care. Not a big deal. I may as well thank everyone who has read this blog over the years, although don’t get too full of yourselves, because it’s not like you gave me a kidney. Maybe I have a year left. Maybe a few months. I can’t tell, so I thank you now.

Plus Gas Gun Progress

I am now the proud owner of a Coyote Reaper XXL infrared illuminator.

I got myself an ATN night vision scope a long time ago, and I never got around to doing much with it. The idea was to shoot coons, coyotes, and pigs at night. There are no pigs here. I didn’t know that. I don’t have any excuse for not shooting coons and coyotes.

The scope amplifies light, including infrared, and it comes with a very small IR flashlight that works okay up to maybe 30 yards. Perhaps I’m being generous. Everyone says you need a bigger illuminator to get anywhere. You can spend a gigantic amount of money on one, but I don’t see myself investing heavily in things to make a low-end $600 scope work. If the Coyote Reaper won’t do it, then it won’t get done. If I get serious, I’ll have to spend several thousand dollars on a thermal scope, and the illuminator will gather dust.

I didn’t understand how big the illuminator was when I ordered it. It’s maybe 9″ long, and I would guess it weighs as much as a Coke in an old pint bottle.

For some reason, ATN put the illuminator rail on the left side of the scope, so when you attach a big illuminator, you get a huge weight pulling down on the left side of the gun. I found a solution. You can get a picatinny adaptor for your forward sling stud. You remove your stud, install the adaptor, and attach the illuminator to it. The adaptor has a little sling stud of its own, so theoretically, you could still use your sling. With your giant flashlight in the way.

When the adaptor gets here, I will try the illuminator out.

Maybe the smart thing is to put everything on my AR-15, which is made to hold lots of hardware.

My varmint gun, which has yet to kill a varmint, is a Thompson Center bolt action in .204 Ruger. It’s very nice, but Thompson Center Fudded it up with a 3-round magazine. This means I get 4 shots per varmint encounter, tops. Thompson Center does not make a bigger magazine, and neither does anyone else. They’re also pretty jerky about selling parts to consumers, so I’m all done with them. They won’t sell me upgraded trigger parts for this gun.

It seems to me that a smart person will want a big magazine when shooting pigs or other pests. You want to be sure you kill them, and pigs have been known to charge, so it can’t hurt to have reserve ammunition to help them change their minds.

Back when I got the gun, I didn’t understand the sporting potential of the AR-15. I thought people were winking and giggling when they called it a hunting rifle. Of course, I was very wrong. If I were shopping today, I would forget all about bolt action varminting. I would buy an AR-15 in .204 Ruger.

I can remedy my mistake if parts become available. I can buy a .204 Ruger upper for my AR-15 and convert it instantly. If I place an order today, my upper receiver should arrive some time in 2035.

If I have a second upper, I can leave the night stuff on it. Then I won’t have to worry about losing the zero on my regular scope when I remove it to install the ATN.

Nothing is simple.

I’m still looking into thermal monoculars for spotting and tracking. I have already learned that thermal would be great for finding wounded squirrels.

A popular Youtuber who calls himself Tactical Rifleman recommends the FLIR Breach PTQ136. This is a very small monocular which shoots pictures and video. They say it works very well. Problem: people say FLIR has officially abandoned the civilian market. They say FLIR’s customer service was disgraceful to begin with, and they expect FLIR to stop making parts for things they have sold to civilians. So you could spend a lot on a Breach and then have it turn into a paperweight.

It looks like competitive devices made by friendlier, more competent manufacturers cost about 40% more, at least. The Tactical Rifleman hasn’t recommended any, and that makes sense, because he probably has a business relationship with FLIR.

A German outfit called Andres makes a device called the Tilos 3Z, and it’s apparently better than the Breach, and Andres actually cares about customer goodwill, but you pay for the upgrade.

I’m interested in hunting, but a lot of the people who know a lot about night vision and thermal are interested in other uses, if you get my drift, so you have to filter the advice you get. Hunting equipment can be used for home security, but it’s not really what you would choose if you were serious. Some equipment swings both ways. Some is better for one use than the other.

There are some real fanatics out there, happily spending tens of thousands of dollars on this stuff. These are the folks who will utterly demoralize leftist mobs if we have a civil war. They’ll shoot them at night, from long distances, while the mobsters are feeling safe and doing bong hits, chuckling about the social justice they plan to deliver the next day. They’ll be looking forward to posting selfies of the conservatives they’ve beaten up (and worse), in homes they’ve invaded, and suddenly rifle rounds will appear out of nowhere and change their outlook.

I’ve learned that hog hunters practice shooting on a timed signal. That’s bad news for mob thugs. If one person fires multiple rounds at you, and the first round misses, you can look for cover. If 5 people shoot at once, it’s different.

I don’t know too much about the war-preparation scene, but it looks like there will be very serious and unexpected problems for leftist aggressors. There are people out there who own large numbers of automatic weapons, including .50-caliber machine guns. There are people who own Barrett .50-caliber bolt action rifles. A rifle like that is mainly intended to kill things like cars and trucks. They’re not very accurate, but how accurate do you have to be to hit a Prius?

A business near me has a .50-caliber machine gun on display. Ready to load into a pickup and take wherever it’s needed.

Rapture me now, before it happens. I don’t want leftists shooting at me, and I don’t want conservatives abusing me because I won’t shoot at leftists.

Trump says he will not go to the inauguration. I’m trying to decide whether that’s a good move. Showing up would take more character than staying home, it would make him look less childish, and it would be a conciliatory gesture. On the other hand, conciliatory gestures don’t work well on leftists. George Bush tried to appease them over and over. Every time he offered his hand, he pulled back a stump. His opposition had zero class, and since then, they have gotten worse. A lack of grace is one of the left’s defining characteristics.

It probably doesn’t matter if Trump tries to make peace. In order for that to work, you have to be dealing with people who want peace.

We are in for some nasty times if Biden actually takes office. Imagine the loss of liberty, the taxation, and the environmentalist oppression. Gun rights may be damaged extremely severely, in a time when leftist mob violence is the norm. Leftists will do their absolute best to disarm us, and with two branches of government under their control, they may be able to pass some very sick laws. Biden will try to weave us into the Antichrist’s “family.” Leftists want us to be a colonial organism like the Borg. Privacy and autonomy are going to shrivel, fast. Freedom of worship will continue to be destroyed. The government will dramatically expand its role as a sponsor of persecution.

I’ve been right, right, right about this, for years. That bothers me, because the things I foresee now will be extremely unpleasant. Conservatives who don’t know God will live in humiliation and defeat, every day, unless they resist by force of arms. Then we’ll have war, and can we characterize that as success? I don’t think so.

Even when you think something big is going to happen, it’s still shocking when you see it come to pass!

Guess I should go out and shoot a few rounds. Writing blog posts is not improving my marksmanship.

MORE

Went out and shot 40 rounds of 55-grain Australian Outback ammo from the AR-15. I used my new Adaptive Tactical buttstock, which has recoil padding. I shelled out the princely sum of $25 for it, at Joe Bob’s Outfitters.

I am quite happy. My average group size was 1.5″, including all flyers except for one I made after I turned a turret the wrong way. My worst groups were 2.02″ and 2.13″.

The wind was gusty, it blew hard enough to be unpleasant, and it changed directions by at least 180 degrees while I was out there. With a very ordinary AR-15 and non-match ammo, I think I did fine. I was fiddling with the buttstock to get the length of pull right, I caught technique problems, and things still went well. The credit must belong to the gun, the people who made the ammo, and the guy who made the training videos I watched, because I made errors.

I still need to learn to use a DOPE book. I have no idea what to put in it. “It was hot today. I didn’t shoot too well. The Dairy Queen by the range doesn’t sell banana split Blizzards.”

I learned more than you would think from a quick session. I found out I was pulling the trigger with the tip of my finger, so I stopped doing that. I think that causes horizontal stringing because you have to work so hard to make the gun go off. I learned that my zero was two clicks too low. I got my new buttstock adjusted. I got better at recoil management, per the instructions I picked up from training videos.

This is not a bad gun at all. The best AR on earth might shoot what? Three eighths of an inch, in perfect weather, with ideal ammunition, clamped in a vise? I’m using a $790 gun intended for self-defense, and I don’t have match ammo or handloads. The bullet manufacturer says this bullet’s wind drift at 100 yards is about 1″ for 10 mph, I was definitely getting crosswinds higher than that, and I still shot and average group of 1.5″ at 104 yards, where 1 MOA is 1.09″. The weather people are quoting 13 mph right now.

If I can do this well on a bad day while making mistakes and learning new methods, I would hope to do a little better on a good day with more practice. Maybe this gun will average below 1 MOA without a new barrel or fancy ammo. If so, is there any point in thinking about upgrading it? I don’t know that I care much about the difference between 1″ and 3/4″. I think it would cost me hundreds of dollars to get it.

Stop Lying

I am not hunting right now, even though the weather is very nice. I spent a long time in prayer today, and I didn’t leave the bed until around 10:30, so I am falling behind on the trivial things.

I’ve been thinking about my squirrel hunting problems. Yesterday I wrote about the issues I had with killing squirrels quickly. I wrote about the liars who claim they always shoot squirrels in the head, dropping them instantly.

I looked up some things I wrote in 2018, when I had the same problems. Guess what? In that year, I shot two squirrels in the head, and they didn’t die instantly. I may have shot more than two in the head, but right now I only know of two.

I shot one squirrel in the head 4 times. The third shot didn’t close the deal. I shot another one in the head once and had to finish it with at least one more shot.

What does this tell us? The Annie Oakley head shot liars are lying about more than one thing. They’re lying about hitting squirrels in the head consistently, which is impossible with rimfire weapons at realistic squirrel distances, and they’re lying about the squirrels dying instantly.

It looks like you have to get pretty close to the brain to get the job done. A really good .22 will consistently shoot within 1″ at 50 yards, from a rest. In the field, without a rest, shooting a target you know is likely to bolt at any second, you would be doing well to keep the majority of your shots within 2″. Let’s face reality. If you want to hit squirrels in the head, say 75% of the time, you’re going to need to be within about 10 yards. Either that, or you’ll need perfect conditions and a good solid rest.

No one but me will admit this on the web. Out here, everyone bench presses 450 pounds and has black belts in tae kwon do, jiu jitsu, wing chun, aikido, and moo goo gai pan. Everyone has an IQ of 200 and sexual prowess that puts women in the emergency room. I’ll tell the truth. I’m a good shot. I’ve proven it over and over. I can’t hit a squirrel in the head reliably unless it’s pretty close. Neither can you. Stop lying. You may think you used to do it all the time, consistently, but your pride is pulling the wool over your eyes.

Memory says, “I did that.” Pride replies, “I could not have done that.” Eventually, memory yields.
–Friedrich Nietzsche

We’re not the problem. The equipment is. Put your favorite .22 in a clamp, and you will still get a fairly big cone of distribution, plus flyers. Experts have done it. You can look it up and see photos. Rimfire ammunition is just plain bad, even if it says “match” on the box.

Given that most of my shots will run 30 yards or more, thinking about head shots will generally be unrealistic for me. Add that to the fact that head shots don’t guarantee quick deaths, and you end up with a paradigm in which tactics have to change.

I also read up on my shotgun exploits. As of yesterday, I had forgotten how unreliable shotguns are. If I take my Sweet Sixteen out, my shot-squirrel count will probably multiply by 4, because I’ll be able to take shots at squirrels way up in trees and because hitting a squirrel with a shotgun is easy. Nonetheless, my past experience shows that a squirrel shot with a shotgun may not die right away.

I will have to be careful about the shots I take, and I believe it’s time to man up and accept the fact that I will cause some suffering. Most hunters don’t get too agitated about it. If they did, they would stay home.

The other day, I saw the Robertson family on the web, shooting ducks. I noticed that some of the ducks were clearly alive and awake as the dog brought them in. I saw one duck looking around on the trip to the blind. Obviously, the Robertsons know this happens, and they wring ducks’ necks a lot. They’re very experienced. They know what they’re doing. What they do must be normal and ethical. Obviously, you have to come up with a good balance between utter failure and increased suffering.

Maybe I should make an effort to be less conspicuous, so the squirrels will come closer. They can see me. I have seen them watching me. I read that squirrels can see blue and yellow. What do I wear when I hunt? Blue pants. Maybe I should switch to brown.

I don’t own a stitch of camo. Maybe I should invest.

I will keep popping squirrels. They’re pests, hunting is a very good thing, and that’s that. I just hope I can wade through the lies and come up with the best way to do it.

Squirrel Tactics Evolve With Experience

Today was a productive day of squirrel hunting education.

This was my third outing this season, and I’m already picking things up.

1. Take a chair and sit still. Don’t stalk, and don’t bother with a blind.

2. Make sure you sit in the shade, because you will be unhappy if the sun starts warming up your back and you can’t move because you don’t want to spook anything.

3. Position yourself so there are no trees close to you. If they’re too close, they cut off a lot of potential field of fire, and squirrels will mysteriously find their way into the blocked areas.

4. Take a pistol so you can shoot wounded squirrels in the head.

5. Don’t leave a dead or dying squirrel lying on the ground to attract other squirrels, and don’t shoot another squirrel before you pick it up. Go get it. Squirrels can revive and scamper into hollow logs and knotholes, never to be seen again. Then they suffer, and you don’t get your squirrels.

6. Put the sun at your back.

I am pretty sure I shot three squirrels today. I say “pretty sure” because only one came home with me. I’m starting to question a lot of things I’ve been taught.

First, I’m wondering if rifles have any place in squirrel hunting.

Based on what I’ve been seeing, it looks like you can shoot a squirrel right through the chest with a rifle and still lose it. Unless you shoot them in the head, they may stay alive long enough to cause problems. They can climb and get stuck in tree crotches, or they can hide in other places before they expire.

I saw a squirrel on a tree trunk today, maybe 15 feet up. I would guess it was 40 yards off. I popped it, and it climbed up the tree at a fairly slow pace for a squirrel. It appears that this is a sign that you’ve hit the target. When squirrels aren’t wounded, they move very quickly. Anyway, I never saw the squirrel again. I guess its dead body is still in the tree.

I shot another squirrel, and it ran around in circles and then stopped. I saw another one to my right, so I delayed going to get the first one. I nailed the second one, and it tried to climb a nearby tree as though groggy.

I got up to get the first one, and I couldn’t find it. I went to look for the second one, and I couldn’t find it, either. I never did find it. It was alive long enough to hide too well.

I resumed looking for the other one, and suddenly, it leapt up from the leaves and tried to run off. I had not shot it cleanly enough to kill it right away. It ran into a hollow tree. I had to go get a chainsaw, open up the tree, scare the squirrel out, and finish it with a pistol. It’s in the sink now, brining, minus two legs.

This is not the way I want things to go. I need to be more efficient and humane.

I have seen lots of men claim they use .22 rifles and shoot squirrels in the head. Call me skeptical. Yes, I’m sure that if you shoot at 20 squirrels, you will hit some in the head and kill them instantly. I do not believe anyone can consistently do it, unless they’re shooting from under 50 feet. It’s easy to shoot into an area the size of a squirrel’s head from 100 feet when your target is inanimate and you’re using a rest. It’s much harder when you have no rest and you’re pressed for time because the squirrel may take off. I think the men who say they’re doing it are liars. It’s that simple. I’m a good shot, and I can’t do it.

If a guy shoots at 50 squirrels and hits two in the head, he will probably forget about the 48 he missed or wounded and tell everyone how easy head shots are.

Today I saw a guy claim he hunted squirrels with a 1911, which could be trusted to put shots into something like 2″ at 75 feet. No one on earth has ever been able to shoot a typical 1911 that well, offhand. I doubt it’s possible for professional marksmen to do it from rests. People will say anything when they know no one can check.

So what’s the answer? I can think of some possibilities.

1. Use a shotgun. This is what my grandfather told me to do. He said that when you shoot a squirrel with a .22, it may fall into a crotch and stay there. He said a shotgun would knock it down. There is more to it, though. It’s pretty hard to miss a squirrel with a shotgun, and they usually kill right away. Also, I would be able to take many more shots, because shotgun pellets won’t travel long distances and injure my neighbors. With a .22, I can only shoot when I’m absolutely sure the bullets can’t leave my property.

2. Wait for shots under 50 feet and make sure I get head shots. This would pretty much kill the whole effort. I would be lucky to get two squirrels a week.

3. Use segmented bullets that fall apart and wound squirrels worse. This may be a good idea, but I would have to check to see how accurate they are. I happen to have some.

4. Use my .17 HMR. With V-Max bullets, it will tear a squirrel up a lot worse than a .22, so wounded squirrels would be less of a problem. The down side is that the meat would be messed up.

It’s amazing how much BS you can pick up from hunters. I’ve been told it’s not necessary to hit squirrels in order to kill them. People say they “bark” squirrels. The idea is that you shoot the tree next to a squirrel, and the stuff the bullet knocks loose from the tree knocks the squirrel out. I’ve shot near squirrels, and I’ve shot clean through them, hitting the bark on the way out. I have never seen a squirrel get “barked.” Maybe it’s a fable hunters like to tell as a joke, like the one about snipe hunting.

I hate to resort to a shotgun. It makes killing squirrels more like shoveling snow than hunting. It’s barely a sport. But if it reduces suffering, maybe I should consider it.

Today I tried a surefire, easy, super-quick method of squirrel cleaning I saw on Youtube. You cut above the squirrel’s anus, through the tail. You slit the skin a little bit to either side of the anus. Then you put your boot on the squirrel’s tail and yank on the hind feet. Supposedly, the squirrel will slide out of the top half of its skin. The hide will tear conveniently, and you’ll be left with a dead squirrel wearing fur pants which are easy to pull off.

It didn’t work for me at all. The hair came off the tail long before the hide even thought about coming off the squirrel. The tail kept sliding out from under my heel, even on concrete. The squirrel I cleaned today was pretty big. Maybe his hide was unusually tough. Anyway, the method doesn’t impress me.

I can’t find my commercial chicken shears. I need them to cut critters up the belly and sever their sternums. I had to use Home Depot scissors today, and it wasn’t efficient.

My problems with lost squirrels make a thermal monocular look like a good idea. One of their purposes is to locate wounded prey.

Things will get better, and I’ll do a nicer job in the future. In the meantime, it’s wonderful to get out there and feel like part of nature. Men who don’t hunt are incomplete. I’m glad I was raised with a good attitude toward it. I’m glad my mother didn’t turn me into a snowflake who is so feminized, he puts spiders on paper plates and transfers them outside instead of stepping on them the way a man should. Self-righteous sissies who are ignorant about wildlife management are multiplying like mold in America. It will be very sad when Americans have to stop teaching their kids to hunt.

I’m glad I took up hunting squirrels. I had hoped to shoot hogs and deer on my farm, and it’s disappointing that they don’t come here, but squirrel hunting is very worthwhile. Any idiot can hit a deer. Hitting a squirrel is much harder. Most deer are killed at distances under 100 yards, and a deer is about a dozen times as wide as a squirrel, so hitting a squirrel at 25 feet is like shooting a deer 100 yards off. Also, squirrels move a lot, and they don’t stand conveniently on the ground. They’re also harder to spot, and rimfire rifles are less accurate than good deer guns. I think what I’m doing takes a lot more skill than using a 1-MOA gun to shoot a motionless animal the size of a pony.

If only they had more meat on them. A squirrel thigh the size of a deer’s would make a magnificent feast.

What do I Really Want?

It’s a beautiful day. Overcast and threatening to rain. It’s beautiful because I’m on my own farm, far from Miami, closer to God than ever, considering going outside to shoot squirrels.

I just made buckwheat pancakes with dark maple syrup. Wonderful. If you don’t feel loved after a plate full of buckwheat pancakes and a big mug of ginger tea with half and half, you don’t have both oars in the water.

Oddly, while I’m enjoying the sensation, I’m thinking about weapons.

The rapture has not come. I am still here. The Antichrist’s left-wing troops are still moving toward pogrom-style persecution involving bringing mob violence to the suburbs and farms. I need to be prepared.

What’s the answer? Do nothing and accept martyrdom when the enraged millennials arrive? That’s not a crazy option. I don’t like the idea of killing unsaved people, even if the alternative is being killed. Another option is to be armed as well as I reasonably can. If I do that, I can respond with a show of strength, or with violence, if needed. If God shows me the better way is to sit on the porch and wait to have my throat cut, I can still do that even if I’m armed.

I’ve thought about night vision and thermal optics. If you can fight in the dark, you can literally massacre overconfident nighttime home invaders. Yesterday I wrote about ordering an infrared illuminator for a night vision scope which I already own. The purpose of the illuminator and scope is to help me shoot things like coons and coyotes. Maybe pigs. But anything that will help you shoot an animal at night will also help you defend yourself from nocturnal murder gangs.

I keep researching the alternatives. It looks like night equipment for hunters is not necessarily the same as night equipment for the defense of life and property.

There are two kinds of nighttime optics. Night vision and thermal. A night vision optic uses infrared light, which is always present, to give you a picture a lot like a black and white TV. My understanding is that night vision optics come in two flavors: relatively inexpensive jobs that rely on illuminators, and pricey units that don’t need them.

The step in price between the two types is pretty big. I bought my night vision scope, which works okay, for about $600 in 2017 or 2018. A military-style night vision monocular will run about $3500. Why? Because it works much better.

Defensive shooters generally don’t use night vision scopes. They put monoculars on their helmets. The monoculars are mounted so they can swing down for use or up out of the way. Instead of using your scope to show you what’s happening, you use your monocular to look through your scope. Instead of an IR illuminator, you use an IR laser. It lights up the bad guy, you see it through your monocular and scope, and you plug him. He has no idea what’s happening, because he can’t see the laser beam.

I believe this is right. Not positive.

Finding the bad guy (so you can use your scope to shoot him) is different, if I have my facts right. A defensive shooter would want a second monocular next to the first one, with thermal circuitry. You locate bad guys with thermal, which is easier, because they light up like hot pokers, and then you use night vision to take them down.

This is all very different from what I am currently contemplating. I expect to be able to use my night vision scope and illuminator, coupled with a thermal monocular for scanning. Compared to a rig with two monoculars, I believe my equipment would be harder to use in a defensive situation. I would be able to use night vision for shooting, but a scope isn’t as good as a monocular for looking around to see what’s happening near you.

What if they show up during the day?

In the daytime, a thermal monocular would still be helpful because it lights up human beings. The night vision scope works in daylight, so it would be useful, too. I would not need night vision to see what was happening around me, so I would not need a monocular for that. I don’t think a night vision monocular would be useful during the day. It wouldn’t show me anything I couldn’t see by other means.

Actually, it would let me use an IR laser, but it still seems like a bad idea.

I feel like I should get a thermal monocular no matter what. If I want to hunt critters when it’s dark, or I want to be able to spot them more easily during the day, a quality thermal monocular is the way to go. Sadly, they are not cheap. The $500 ones are fine for watching your dog run around in your backyard, but you have to blow a lot more to get something that works well enough to trust for defensive use.

Would I ever get a night vision monocular? I guess it depends on how bad things get. I can’t say $3500 is a high price for safety, but I’ve already taken pretty substantial measures.

I really like hunting and shooting, but that doesn’t mean I want to live in a world where I need to use my equipment and skills on human beings. I know people who live in total harmony and brotherhood right now. They’ve already left the earth. How hard should I work to delay my arrival in their company?

In all likelihood, I will never get a serious night vision monocular. I don’t think I value this life enough to make the expenditure and aggravation worth it.

Rodents Win the Day

In case anyone is wondering, smoked squirrel is pretty good.

I went out today for another day of rodent eradication. I didn’t want to deal with open sights, so I took my Savage A22 with a Nikon Prostaff II Rimfire.

I also decided to take my squirrel call. It’s from a company calle Primos. It’s a rubber bulb and a tube with a reed. You squeeze it, and it makes noises that are supposed to sound like squirrels.

The folding backpack chair has turned out to be a good tool, so I took it with me and set it in a likely place. After maybe 15 minutes, I decided to try the call. I made a number of noises that I intended to sound like the examples I had heard on the web. I got no response at all, Truthfully, I think the call is a joke. It’s supposed to say, “I’m a squirrel! I’m a squirrel! I’m eating tasty nuts!” I think it really says, “I’m a gullible hunter! I like fried squirrel brains!”

I didn’t see a single squirrel in that area. I did hear an owl, however. It set up behind me and hooted like crazy. Then some other type of bird of prey swooped in with a critter dangling from its beak and perched between me and the trees I was watching. I couldn’t see it well enough to identify it. The bird, I mean.

Here is my genius guess: squirrels aren’t anxious to come out and play while owls are screaming nearby and other birds are tearing up freshly killed mice or rats.

I moved farther in, and in my next spot, I saw a couple of squirrels and watched them for a very long time. If I had had a shotgun, they would be in the fridge right now, but they didn’t present safe .22 shots. I came home with nothing, except some old Nehi and Heinz ketchup bottles I found.

The day was not a total loss. I got to hunt, I learned more about what not to do, and I smoked the squirrel I shot yesterday. I brined it all night with baking soda, and today I put a little rub on it and threw it in the smoker with some St. Louis ribs. The ribs are still going, but I ate the squirrel.

The verdict? Lots of potential. The flavor was really excellent. It was dry, though, so I think it needs to be greased at least twice while it smokes, and it should be sealed in foil after an hour or so to keep the steam in. It also seems to need a lot more salt than pork.

Smoking will work, and it’s less aggravation than frying. I have a new go-to squirrel method.

I like hunting from a chair, but I think it would be worth it to get one that swivels. Squirrels can’t be counted on to pop up in front of you, and if one appears to the rear or far to one side, a stationary chair is a problem. I would need to find one that swivels quietly, though. And it would have to be light.

A wheelchair would be perfect. The big wheels would work in my woods, and I could turn it in place.

I live in an area where used wheelchairs probably sell for 10 bucks.

I plan to get in as many hunting days as possible while the season is open. I may put one of my squirrel feeders in the woods. There is no point in playing fair.

In other news, I have a big infrared illuminator on the way. This is an infrared flashlight you can attach to a scope or rifle. The purpose is to allow me to use my night vision scope. It came with an illuminator, but everyone says the stock illuminator is useless.

If I can get the scope and illuminator to work reasonably well, it may be time to bite the bullet and get a very expensive thermal monocular. This would allow me to sit outside at night, scan for coons and coyotes, and blow them to varmint perdition. The thermal monocular would also be good for security, assuming I’m still here on earth when angry statists start prancing into the well-armed meat grinder that is rural America. It’s a bizarre yet highly likely future scenario. If it happens, they will show up armed with laser pointers, pink hats, loud music, and bottles of their own drug-test-failing urine. A few may have cheap AR-15’s they don’t really know how to use. They would be met with $7000 thermal scopes and .338 Lapua. Then, of course, there would be the dogs.

Out west, they would be in really serious trouble. Because of the geography, a lot of westerners who don’t think of themselves as snipers, militia nuts, or precision shooters routinely take game from hundreds of yards away. This is normal out there, so hitting a fat elementary school teacher armed with a Kel-Tec full of .380 FMJ, while he’s 200 yards away, at your gate, still getting out of his mom’s Prius, would not be challenging.

I hate coons and coyotes, for obvious reasons. I don’t hate bobcats, but I probably should. I should also hate armadillos, because they dig dangerous holes. My farm isn’t the ideal location for a deer or turkey hunter, but there are still lots of things you can pop at night with specialized equipment, and in doing so, you would prepare yourself well for the day when Soros-sponsored buses full of goons show up to pick on what they think are soft targets.

Here’s to the day when all of God’s children have been removed to a place where everyone bathes in love and lives in harmony. Hope I get there before the entitlement posses start patrolling.

Rodent is Back on the Menu

I have had a somewhat frustrating day, trying to get my hunting game together. I can’t say it was without rewards, though.

First off, I tried to find a wildlife management area (WMA) near me where I could shoot hogs. A WMA is a piece of public land where they let you hunt. I have never seen a hog on my property, and I have accepted the fact that I will not be able to shoot them here, so it’s time to use public land or quit.

There is a big national forest near me, appropriately named the Ocala National Forest. The city of Ocala is in Marion County, but the national forest extends into other counties. I read that the Lake George and Lake Delancy WMA’s, in the national forest, were good places to look for hogs. I also read that a WMA called the Green Swamp was full of hogs.

I got lost trying to figure out the rules. When you shoot at home, you don’t even need a license for hogs. In a WMA, you need a license, a WMA permit, and maybe a quota permit.

I wasn’t sure about the rules, so I put some inquiries out on the web and tried to look for way to get to these WMA’s so I could walk around and see what they were like. Even that was a pain. You can find the WMA’s on the map, but information about access roads is almost entirely absent.

I did the intelligent thing. I went out back and shot squirrels.

My dad died in 2019, and I really didn’t feel like killing anything that year and during 2020, but now I am raring to go. Today I took my Marlin 60 tried my luck.

The Marlin 60 has a peep sight. I chose it for that reason. My other .22 rifles have buckhorn sights or scopes. A scope makes it hard to provide a coup de grace to a squirrel lying on the ground in front of you. Buckhorn sights work, but I like peep sights better.

Of course, I saw two squirrels near the house before I got to the pasture. They’re always around when you don’t want them. Then I made a circuit of my woods plot and saw nearly nothing.

I decided to play it smart. I took a backpack chair into the woods, sat down, and waited for the squirrels to come to me. They do that. They’re stupid.

Before too long, a squirrel climbed down a tree and posed for me, facing me head-on, around 40 feet away. I blasted him. He fell into the leaves and thrashed around. I figured he was done for, so I waited for him to stop moving so I could shoot him again. Before I knew it, he had righted himself and inserted himself in a hole in a hollow log. That was the last I saw of him.

I didn’t want him to suffer, but there was no way to get him out of the log, so I had to move on.

I plopped down in another area, and while I watched a squirrel wander around in a tree a little ways off, I heard barking. A squirrel was in the tree I was sitting next to, giving me a lecture. This is something they like to do. They cling to trees and yell at you, thinking they’re safe and failing to understand how firearms work. I waited until he was around 15 feet above me, and I fired. He acted dazed. Then he moved to the other side of the tree and disappeared.

I couldn’t believe it. Clearly, I was mistaken about the point of impact of my peep sight.

While I was in the woods, I fired a few rounds to clear that up.

I moved to a new place, and after maybe 45 minutes, a new lecturer appeared on a tree around 50 feet away. She barked and twitched her tail. She was really giving me a piece of her mind. I sat and stared at her for a very long time, waiting for her to move down the tree. She moved onto the base of a branch instead. I got up, moved closer, aimed (making allowances for the peep sight), and fired. She ran straight up the tree.

I thought it was time to quit. I could not believe I had missed. Then I saw something fall.

The squirrel fell at the base of the tree, and I shot it in the head to make sure it was done.

Now, instead of three squirrels in the fridge, I have only one.

I know I said I planned to start leaving squirrels to rot, but I have a smoker now, and I have a feeling it will turn squirrels into viable eating. I put the squirrel in a bag of baking soda brine and put it in the fridge to soak.

Cleaning the squirrel was gross, as always, and difficult. I have a policy of never using my carry knives to cut tape, and of course, I violate it all the time. When you cut tape with a knife, adhesive sticks to the blade and makes it hard to cut anything with it. And when you try to remove the glue, you usually leave some behind without realizing it, so it doesn’t work. I had to use a cleaver and a filet knife.

Cleaning warm-blooded animals is something I have to get used to. I have hacked many a fish up, and it never bothered me at all. I have cut up lots of dead, refrigerated pigs. It’s different when the guts are hot, just like yours.

If I had had a shotgun today, it would have rained squirrels. Hunting from the backpack chair is the way to go. Because I like rifles, I had to give up shots that could have sent bullets off my farm.

I think I’m going to put my Bug Buster scope on the Marlin. I thought the peep sight was a great move, but it didn’t work out well today. Maybe I’m too old to use iron sights on squirrels.

A Bug Buster is a cheapish UTG scope made for air guns. They call it a Bug Buster because it will focus at very short ranges. When you’re shooting animals that are stupid enough to come as close as 30 feet, you don’t want a scope that has a minimum focus distance of 50 yards. I should be able to hammer squirrels much more easily with the Bug Buster.

I’m still planning to do a guided hunt. I may start with hogs. I wanted to use my .204 Ruger, and I did not want to be just another trigger-happy AR-15 hunter, but it’s starting to look like the AR is the way to go. It holds 30 rounds, whereas the .204 holds 3. Hogs move a lot, I have never shot one, and it’s probably smart to take an accurate gun that will let me do follow-up shots.

I hope to get out to a WMA over the next few days.

AR-15 Exits the Penalty Box

I had a pretty decent shooting session today.

First off, I tried out my new Labradar. This is a radar-based chronograph. When I took my precision rifle course, they told me there were only two accurate chronographs: Magnetospeed and Labradar. I didn’t want a Magnetospeed because they require you to hang a sensor off your barrel, so I spent almost four times as much on a Labradar.

It’s a little weird. It’s an orange box with a small LED screen. You put it on a tripod and aim it so the short sides of the box are parallel to your shooting lane, and then you shoot. If it works, the sound of your gun sets it off. It will measure the speed of your projectile at various points on its way to the target.

Labradar doesn’t include a tripod, an external battery, a case, or a memory card. You need all those things to make it work and protect it. I shoved my chronograph in an old laptop case, and it fit fine. My cheap Amazon tripod holds it up well enough. I already had external batteries because I have a scope that eats internal batteries. Now I just need a card. Without one, you can’t save tons of data, and I believe it’s also impossible to move the small amount of data you have to another device.

I got it working after wasting a few shots. I decided to use my AR-15. I was firing Australian Outback 55-grain varmint ammo, which is supposedly extremely similar to Hornady Urban TAP law enforcement ammo, except that it’s better because it’s temperature-stabilized. The Australian military makes it.

I was pretty happy with my results for 5 shots. Figures are in feet per second:

2879
2877
2884
2895
2877

Average: 2882.4

Standard deviation: 6.8

Spread: 18

I had had problems with this gun. I got a 4-14x MRAD scope for it, hoping to do some fairly accurate shooting. I tried to shoot groups in August, and I shot one tiny group followed by a mess. I thought the scope had come loose, so I put the gun away. Then I forgot about it until the world went crazy and BLMtifa terrorists made it clear that widespread violence was coming to America. I got a red dot and removed the MRAD scope.

Today when I put the MRAD scope back on, the zero was history. Took me a number of shots just to find the paper.

I was anxious to try the scope again, because I had obtained some new information about “gas guns,” which means gas-operated semiauto guns like the AR-15. Most moderately knowledgeable shooters believe gas guns are inherently less accurate than bolt actions. I was even told this when I took my shooting course. I recently joined a forum for accurate shooters, and they have instructional videos you can pay to watch. I found some video information about gas guns. It turns out they’re not inaccurate. They’re just harder to shoot than bolt actions. If you can shoot a bolt action well, you may still shoot gas guns badly. If you shoot gas guns well, you will also shoot bolt actions well, because it’s easier.

Bolt-action shooters who shoot gas guns poorly hate to hear this. They don’t want to think they’re the problem.

Basically, there are things you can do wrong without hurting your bolt-action groups, which will expose your lack of knowledge every time you shoot a gas gun.

Today I put the information to work, and I got good results. I shot 6 groups at 104 yards, and 3 were sub-MOA (under 1.12″). Two others were sub-MOA plus one flyer, and one was a mess. I think the bad group was caused by the pain the buttstock was giving me. It was not made for prone shooting, and it was really digging a hole in me. It started to mess up my concentration.

I will post the targets. Some of what you see is just me trying to find the paper while I adjusted the scope. It doesn’t count.

All the stuff halfway up that target is me, messing with the scope. It’s not a group.

Here, you can see 1 sub-MOA group, plus two nearly sub-MOA groups, but for solitary flyers. Then the fourth group blows up. While I was pressing the trigger, I was thinking, “That thing is going to bite me in the shoulder again, in exactly the same place.”

If sort of looks like this is a sub-MOA gun, hobbled by an inexperience shooter with a sore shoulder. I don’t have a lot of time behind AR’s, and most of the time I do have was wasted because I was using poor technique I had learned from people who were not up to speed on AR shooting. I also have a stiff trigger. If I practice more, replace my buttstock, and either master or replace the trigger, I should be able to shoot sub-MOA fairly consistently with this gun.

That’s very nice, because it makes it a very useful gun. I can use it to improve my shooting, not just for semiautos, but for everything. If I can shoot this gun well, I’ll be better when I shoot bolt guns. I can also use it to hunt anything smaller than a deer. It would be a killer hog gun.

I hope I’m right.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people claim AR-15’s are not even 1-MOA guns. Like it’s the gospel truth and cannot be questioned. My gun cost only $790, it doesn’t have a match barrel, it doesn’t have an Atlas bipod, it has a relatively inexpensive scope, it has a fighting trigger and buttstock, I don’t own match .223 ammo, and it sure looks like it will shoot sub-MOA at 100 yards.

Speaking of hogs, I saw a depressing video about them the other day. Some old guy on Youtube specializes in shooting them with a .22. They drop dead. No running. No follow-up shots.

Why is this depressing? Because part of the fun of hog hunting is putting together an amazing gun that takes down “hard-to-kill” hogs. People believe hogs are much tougher than they are. There is even a myth that you can’t shoot a hog through the callused skin on its shoulder. People think it stops bullets. Apparently, they think this because they shoot hogs in the shoulder, in the wrong place, and the hogs run off. The shooters assume the bullets got stuck.

One of my favorite Youtubers uses high-powered rifles to shoot pigs. Some of his hunts are pretty gross. He blew a sow’s front leg off. He shoots very well, but sometimes his pigs take a number of rounds to go down. It seems unnecessarily cruel. The .22 guy’s experience shows that the other guy is doing it wrong. It appears that you have to place your shots carefully. Either that, or don’t shoot.

I saw an interesting video about shot placement. A man who shoots hogs for a living says you shoot them between the ear and shoulder. Here is his theory: pigs move a lot, so you are likely to miss the exact area you shoot at. If you shoot between the ear and shoulder, and your shot misses toward the front, you hit the pig in the brain. If you miss toward the back, you destroy the shoulder joints. If you hit where you aim, you destroy the spine. All this assumes you’re using a fairly powerful gun that produces a lot of hydrostatic shock and tissue damage.

I’m glad the AR-15 is working out, because my .17 HMR turned out to be a huge disappointment. It’s just not consistently accurate.

Next, I hope to get the .204 Ruger working. Then I want to go on a paid hog hunt. I’ll have to decide which gun to use. The .204 is neat, but it only holds 4 rounds, including the one in the pipe. The AR is common and less interesting, but I can put anywhere from 10 to 30 rounds in it, and that might be fairer to the hogs.

I’m surprised how accurate the AR turned out to be. Maybe it’s not hybris to talk about prairie dogs.

Shooting Arcana Continue to Befuddle

Every time I hear an abysmally ignorant leftist ask why anyone needs more than one gun, I feel like asking, “Why do you need more than one piece of silverware?” Guns are really complicated. Different guns are good for different things. You wouldn’t eat soup with a fork, and you wouldn’t cut steak with a teaspoon.

The more I learn about guns and shooting, the less I feel like I know.

Today I learned some new stuff about .17 Hornady Magnum Remington, the queen of rimfires. I say “queen,” because .17 Winchester Super Magnum is the new king.

You would think all guns would have similar cleaning requirements. Generally, they shoot lead or copper-covered projectiles, using smokeless powder. You would think they would all need the same kind of cleaning, and that every gun would need cleaning at about the same intervals. Of course, none of that is true.

I have learned that .17 HMR barrels have a peculiar problem: powder residue accumulates around the bores at the muzzle ends in kind of a star pattern. It’s very hard, it’s irregularly shaped, and of course, it degrades accuracy.

A well-made muzzle is very important to good accuracy. The muzzle is the last thing a bullet sees on the way out of a gun, and if there’s a burr on the muzzle, it can send a bullet off in the wrong direction. Strangely, many guns have carelessly made muzzles. Others have muzzles that are recessed in various ways to protect them from damage.

I have generally cleaned my .17 HMR with a Bore Snake, which is a rope sort of a thing with metal bristles embedded in it. Bore Snakes are very, very handy. They’re also fast. When used for an appropriate job, a Bore Snake will get a great deal of the crud out of a barrel in one or two passes. A while back, I learned about jags, and I started using them. A jag is a cylindrical brass plug with indentations machined into it. It would be pretty hard to describe without using a picture. You wrap a cloth patch around your jag, and you shove it through the barrel using a rod. The fit is tight, and it cleans well.

I have noticed that my rifle seems to lose accuracy after a couple of dozen shots, so I asked for help. Someone told me about the muzzle issue. I looked at my muzzle, and it had an irregular ring of hard crust on it. I was aghast. It looked like the muzzle was ruined. I attacked it with Bore Tech Eliminator, Q-Tips, and my fingernails. I got it off. I used a jag and patches to finish up.

I looked for more information, and here is what I learned: the .17 HMR produces a lot of powder residue but not much copper fouling. If it turns out this is wrong, sorry, but it’s always hard to pin down the truth when it comes to guns. The powder residue is what you have to worry about. If you can take care of that, the copper shouldn’t be a big problem.

I also learned that Tipton “universal” bore guides are not universal.

A bore guide is a device which funnels your cleaning rod and attachment into the chamber of your gun without allowing anything to scrape the barrel. You clean from the chamber, not the muzzle, so you don’t screw the muzzle up. I bought a “universal” bore guide, and today I learned that it won’t fit a Savage 93R or any other .17 HMR rifle.

A company called Possum Hollow makes Delrin bore guides for rimfire rifles. You can also get a bore guide from some guy with an Italian name. I didn’t bother with him even though people recommend his product. You have to call him on the phone and send him a check. No; it’s 2020. We don’t do that any more. I ordered a Possum Hollow guide, and my plan is to clean my rifle as soon as I notice the groups opening up. I’m hoping to prove that the powder crust is what causes me to have inaccurate strings of shots. If I can prove it, I can come up with a maximum number of shots to take between cleanings, and I’ll be the Grand Poobah of .17 HMR marksmanship.

It may not be necessary to clean the entire gun. It may well be that cleaning the muzzle will make all the difference.

If you’re wondering why .17 HMR has a problem .22 Magnum or .17 Hornet doesn’t, I don’t have a clue. Guns are weird.

In other news, I finally got a rangefinder. I probably spent too much. I opted for a Leica which interfaces with my Kestrel ballistic calculator. I think the connectivity is probably an overrated asset, but I didn’t want to buy cheap and then find out I had blown it. The Leica will tell the Kestrel how far away targets are, what the inclination is, and so on, and the Kestrel will tell me how many MRAD’s to hold over.

I found out it’s 100 yards to my mailbox. That’s not me guessing. That’s science.

I had to buy that silly bore guide for the Savage, so I decided to do something I’ve been wanting to do. I ordered a real chronograph. I have a Competition Electronics Prochrono DLX, and it’s great for pistol reloading, but if you want to be a precision rifle shooter, you need a Magnaspeed or a Labradar. Magnaspeeds are not expensive, but you have to clamp a doodad on your muzzle, and I didn’t want any part of that. Labradars sit beside you on tripods, and they tell you all sorts of things. You don’t have to put them downrange where you will eventually shoot them. Very nice.

My understanding is that Labradar sticks it to you on batteries. They tell you to use AA’s, when they know their unit will run about 35 seconds on a fresh batch. They sell big USB batteries to fix this problem. Luckily for me, I already have big USB batteries. Labradar also sells tripods, but I think the tripods I already have will work fine. Labradar doesn’t include a padded case with their chronograph, which is amazing, because it’s expensive. I have a padded laptop case I don’t need, and I have high hopes for it.

My rangefinder and Kestrel have been introduced to each other, so I need to get to a real gun range and do some shooting. Either that, or I should move my new portable shooting bench back to 300 yards on my own land.

I have a feeling all of my .17 HMR troubles were caused by powder fouling. I never knew the problem existed, so I did nothing to compensate. It’s a very little-known problem, so my guess is that 98% of .17 HMR shooters–the ones who claim you can’t get consistent accuracy–have crusty muzzles and don’t know it.

There is a guy in England who posts Youtube videos in which he uses .17 HMR to kill rabbits from over 200 yards. If he shoots as well as he seems to, the rest of us must be doing it wrong. It can’t be the ammunition. You can’t make your own .17 HMR, and supposedly, all of it comes from Winchester and CCI regardless of what the labels say. It’s not the ammunition, and there is no reason to think his rifle should shoot straighter than the ones people use here in the US.

I’ll post one of his videos. Maybe I’ve posted other ones.

I should get out and shoot tomorrow. Hope my powder theory is right.

Generosity Should be Rewarded

I want to send out a prayer request for a reader.

A while back, I put up a blog post about two young friends I called Diamond and Silk. They came to visit me on the farm, and I taught them how to shoot pistols. I wrote about the problems they had, finding ammunition.

Longtime Reader XC put up a comment offering to send them cartridges. He said he didn’t want to see women go about unarmed, and he had some .380 he was not going to use.

I put him in contact with Silk, and they worked out a shipment. Then nothing happened.

Eventually, the ammo showed up, and XC provided an explanation. He was delayed by a heart attack. In spite of a grave health issue, he still lived up to a promise he made to two strangers.

He sent 400 rounds, which he could have sold for about $300 on Gunbroker.

Anyway, I am asking people to pray for his health and a continually improving relationship with God.

Rodents Fall Victim to Improved Technology

Today, I tried out my new shooting bench, and I also did some rimfire research. I tested two rifles in my pasture.

As covered earlier this week, I built myself a massive square shooting bench. I welded it together from 2″-square steel tubing, and I put two-by-sixes across the top. It has two wheels so I can move it around.

Yesterday, I moved it to the pasture. I would have done it sooner, but I needed to have forks on my front end loader, and they had been removed so I could move dirt. My forks are held on by chains with big turnbuckles, and I learned that some bubba in the past had ruined one of them. I had to fix it before I could put my forks back on.

A turnbuckle is a tube with internal threads on each end. One set of threads is left-handed, and the other is right-handed. You screw threaded parts into each end, and these parts are attached to cables or chains. When you turn your cylinder, the threaded parts move into it, and you tighten your chain or cable.

Some master engineer had apparently used Vise Grips to hold onto a couple of my turnbuckles in order to get a grip so he could turn them. This compressed the tubes slightly. When you compress a threaded tube, you make it very hard to screw things into it.

I had to buy a 1″ tap and fix one of my turnbuckles. The other one isn’t all that bad. I put the turnbuckle in a vise, used a breaker bar to get the stuck part out of it, ran the tap through it, greased the daylights out of everything, and reassembled it. About 99% of tractor owners would have been lost, but because of my hobbies, I knew what to do, and I had all the tools I needed except for the tap.

I intended to fix this a year ago, but I forgot. I ordered and paid for a tap, and it never arrived. I didn’t check on it, so I’m out five bucks.

Anyway, I attached the forks to the tractor, put moving blankets on them, and lifted the bench. Moving it was no problem. I scuffed the paint while backing the tractor out, because I dropped the forks and forgot about the lower crossmembers in the bench, but I can fix the scuffing in two seconds, literally.

I put the bench by my shooting platform, 100 yards from my target area. Today I was shooting rimfire, and I wanted to see what the guns would do at 50. I lifted one end of the bench and rolled it forward. No problem. It was not light, but I was able to balance it on the wheels so I didn’t bear the weight.

I used a Home Depot folding chair. It was okay, but I need a higher chair or a board to put under the chair’s feet. I need to be down low, and the chair’s feet sink in the ground.

The bench was excellent. Like shooting from a boulder. It was also spacious. Lots of room for junk.

I shot my newish Savage A22 and my friend Mike’s old Marlin Model 60. I have a Nikon Prostaff II scope, and he has a Tasco which looks like it came from a drugstore. The Nikon is pretty nice for a low-end scope. Both guns are semiautomatic.

I wanted to try these guns on a rest, because I have been thinking about trying “precision rimfire.” I use quotation marks because I’m not sure “precision” .22 LR exists, for people who are not willing to rob banks in order to finance their shooting.

I have a Ruger Precision Rifle which will shoot 0.5 MOA, no problem, consistently. I saw that Ruger had come out with a Ruger Precision Rimfire rifle. The purpose is to give people a practice gun to shoot at shorter ranges, with cheaper ammo. I got all excited. Most .22 rifles won’t beat 2 MOA at 100 yards. In fact, 2 MOA would be much better than average. I figured if Ruger was willing to put “Precision” in the rifle’s name, it ought to shoot sub-MOA.

I watched some videos, and boy, where they disappointing. The reviewers who made the videos squealed like little girls. They were thrilled with the accuracy. And how accurate were the rifles? Maybe 1.5 MOA, at 50 yards.

I figured I could do that with a cheap semiauto, so I wondered why anyone would pay a lot more money for a “precision” .22. What were the reviewers excited about? Were they just bad shots?

I went to a sharpshooting forum and asked questions. I learned some things.

There is one well-known brand of .22 rifle that will shoot sub-MOA, and you can expect to spend close to $3000 for one. This is what the forum guys said, anyway. I was also told I would have to test the boxes of ammunition I bought. So I would be spending maybe 30 cents per round for post-coronavirus ammunition, testing boxes, and throwing out the ones that didn’t pass. Basically, I would end up paying 6.5mm Creedmoor prices, or more, to shoot a .22. Actually, I would pay more, because the rifle would cost over twice as much.

If I can shoot 0.5 MOA at 500 yards, why would I pay the same money to shoot 1 MOA at 50 yards? It seemed like a stupid idea, so I dropped it.

The company that makes the accurate .22 rifles is called Vudoo. After giving up on precision rimfire, I read that Anschutz and Lithgow (an Australian company) made cheaper rifles that would do nearly as well. You can get a Lithgow rifle for about a thousand dollars, which is not totally out of the question. This renewed my interest in accurate .22 rifles. I decided to find out what the rifles I already possessed would do.

Today I got out my dwindling bucket of Remington Golden Bullets and a box of CCI Mini-mags. I refused to use expensive ammunition, because it would make the test pointless.

With Golden Bullets, the Model 60, its 20-pound trigger, and its claw-machine scope annoyed me by outshooting the Savage. It shot around 2.5 MOA, and the Savage did slightly worse.

I wouldn’t wish the Marlin’s trigger on a mass shooter. It’s like lifting weights. At one point, the pull was so heavy I thought I had the safety on, so I checked. Nonetheless, it was accurate when I concentrated. The Savage has a very nice Accutrigger, but I had it adjusted too low, so it was tricky. You don’t want a rifle to go off before you’re ready.

I kept shooting, and I moved to Mini-mags. Both guns liked them better. What I found was that these guns, with this ammunition, in my hands, would shoot 1 MOA 5-shot groups, or similar groups that were ruined by one flyer. My best guess, which is only a guess, is that both guns will shoot 1 MOA most of the time at 50 yards, if I fix the triggers and practice a little.

That’s not bad. If I can shoot 0.5″ groups at 50 yards for a few cents a round, it’s worth it to do it regularly. All practice is good, and cheap practice is better.

I can’t be sure of my conclusions yet. I was not completely consistent. The trigger issues may explain that. A really good marksman who was used to these guns could work around bad triggers, but I was not able to make them behave 100% of the time.

I’m wondering if I can improve my accuracy by working on the Savage. I can’t hack up Mike’s rifle, but the Savage is all mine.

I’ve read that one reason the Vudoo shoots so well is that it has special magazines that make sure bullets don’t get damaged on the way to the chamber. Cheap .22 rifles don’t have features like that. My Savage has a crisp chamfer on the lower side of the chamber mouth. If a bullet hits the upper edge wrong, it may to get scraped, and this could cause it to fly crooked.

I’m wondering if I can put a smooth radius on that edge and make my shots more consistent. I looked it up, and I read that other people have already thought of this. They do it to pistols and some centerfire guns. I’m thinking about trying it. If I ruin my barrel, it’s not a big deal. Savage barrels can be replaced with simple tools.

If I can turn this gun into a 1-MOA rifle, maybe I should put better glass on it. I have an MRAD 4-14x scope which is gathering dust. It would make it easy to spot my own shots. It might work for hunting, too, since small animals suitable for rimfire hunting go well with high magnification.

I doubt this gun will ever break 2 MOA at 100 yards, but if it will get to 2 MOA, it will still be pretty great for a .22.

I feel like I should see what I can do with this gun before looking at other options.

The bench is great. The rifles and ammo are better than expected. I expect to do better with a little gunsmithing and practice. That sums it up.

If not, there is always Lithgow.