Experience is Not the Best Teacher

It is impossible to go hunting without learning something new. Unfortunately, sometimes the tuition comes in the form of animal suffering.

Yesterday I sat down to cull the squirrels around my house. After a while, some showed up. They were closer than usual, and I was using a rifle sighted in at 50 yards.

I have been trying to shoot squirrels in the head. The idea is to kill them humanely and to avoid ripping up the meat. I tried this on the first squirrel yesterday, and he went down, but he wasn’t dead. I figured I had the answer, because I was prepared. I had a pistol with me. I walked over to him and shot him in the head again, and he still kicked. I shot him a third time. Finally, I crushed what was left of his head with my boot.

Lesson: a squirrel’s brain is tiny, and you can shoot one in the head and not kill it. I should be shooting them in the upper body.

I don’t think most hunters care about this, because head shots are commonly used. If they are shooting squirrels in the head all the time, they’re having the same problem I had. You don’t see them on the Internet complaining about how long it takes squirrels to die, so my assumption is that they aren’t concerned about it.

A second squirrel got close to me, and I missed him. The problem was my scope. He was so close, the scope’s zero didn’t apply to him. I shot at him twice, and he ran up the tree.

Lesson: I have to get a target and shoot at various distances to find out how to adjust my point of aim when squirrels are too close.

I found blood on the tree the squirrel was standing on, so I regret not checking the rifle’s trajectory before sitting down to shoot. This is not what I set out to do.

I feel like the best thing is to go for the lungs and heart from now on, even if it ruins meat. It’s not like a fried squirrel is a treasure I can’t afford to miss out on. I can always throw them over the fence and let the crows have them.

The main goal is to thin them out around the house. Meat is just a bonus.

I don’t want to make a big deal out of how unpleasant it was to deal with these botched shots, because I’m not the one who really suffered. I’m not the victim. I caused the problem.

My experiences show how important it is to teach kids to hunt. I shot a few rabbits with my grandfather, but they died quickly, so I didn’t learn much about humane hunting. If I had had someone to show me how to do it right, I wouldn’t be learning things now in unpleasant ways.

I don’t know if he would have taught me anything, had we hunted more. Mountain people from his time were hard on animals. They saw animals as survival tools, so empathy was just an open door to feelings that made the things they had to do with animals more difficult. They kept their dogs outside in winter, and they didn’t hire veterinarians to look after livestock. My grandfather used to shoot his bird dogs in order to train them not to run after rabbits. Nonetheless, there must be a lot of dads and granddads and uncles out there who know how to hunt humanely, and kids who hunt with such people probably avoid a lot of painful mistakes.

I have some fragmenting .22 rounds on the way, and they should dispatch squirrels much more quickly. We’ll see how it goes.

We Have to Call off the Hunt! The Cocoa is Cold!

Because the state of Florida gave me the go-ahead to kill nuisance squirrels near my house (in writing!), today I went out and sat in the blind and dispensed frontier justice. I nailed three of the mangy thieves from something like 40 yards.

This is the right way to hunt! I’m 50 feet from a house with a toilet and refrigerator. I have a nice plastic Adirondack chair under me. I have a cold beverage. I’m sitting in a shady blind under shady trees. The squirrels don’t make me chase them. The present themselves for execution.

The Marlin 60 Remington sent me as a replacement for the one that shot like a musket is wonderful. It has a nicely figured stock, and it shoots great. I used a rimfire scope today, and I popped two of the squirrels in the head. The other one got it in the shoulders. My story is that he moved. You can’t prove me wrong. I killed the only witness.

The trigger is awful. I was trying to shoot today, and for a minute, I wondered if the safety was on. No, that’s just how bad the trigger is. I ordered a trigger kit from an aftermarket company. When I get it installed, this gun should be a prizewinner.

I baited the yard with Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites, which are like Cheetos, only a thousand times better. The squirrels didn’t go for them. I thought it was worth a shot.

I learned something today. You can’t hunt without learning something. I learned I really need to carry my .22 pistol when I hunt.

The third squirrel I shot did not die right away. He was scampering around, so I got up to kill him at close range. When I reached him, I remembered something important: you can’t focus on a squirrel using a rimfire scope if you’re 4 feet away. This was a bad situation. I don’t want game to suffer, and I couldn’t see to shoot this squirrel. I couldn’t use the sights because the scope blocked them. I had to wait until he held still, and then I was able to hold the gun pretty close and finish him off.

I’m sorry it happened, but I don’t feel guilty, because hunting is a good thing, and I did my best. It was a noob mistake. Next time, I’ll have the pistol.

There have been a lot of shots I wouldn’t take. I want to be sure the squirrels drop and die fast. I’m not going to take unnecessary chances on wounding them. But no one is perfect.

I ordered a holster for the pistol, and it arrived this week. Looks like a quality item. I’ll wear it next time.

When you shoot a squirrel through the head, you may think you only winged him. They kick for quite a while after they die. That surprised me.

I got to use one of my hunting knives for the first time. I used my Entrek Beaver. It was not as great as I had hoped. The knife seems like a quality item, but the factory edge doesn’t seem up to the task of slitting squirrel hide. It will do it, but you have to apply pressure and go back over cuts. I will have to see what I can do about putting a better edge on it.

I improved my squirrel-skinning technique. When you have three animals to clean, you learn more than you would if you only had one. I learned the techniques I’ve seen on Youtube won’t work on the local squirrels. The skin is too tough, and it sticks to the squirrels too hard. I wonder if the squirrels north of Florida have looser skin. When you skin a Florida squirrel, you can’t just make a cut above the anus, step on the hind feet, and yank the tail. Nothing happens. You have to make cuts down the legs, shove your thumbs under the hide, and loosen it around the thighs.

Another thing: you don’t want to gut a squirrel before you clean it, unless you have to. When you gut it, poop is likely to go everywhere, and various types of goo will coat the fur and make life difficult. You skin the squirrel first, and then you cut his head off with poultry shears. You shove the shears up the servants’ entrance and cut him all the way to the neck, and then you pull the guts out and throw them as far as possible.

Shears are even better than a cleaver for cutting away all the nasty bits in the crotch.

I plan to kill the bejeezus out of these things until I quit seeing them around the house. They’re terrible. City people think they’re cute. They’re not cute when they’re eating your fruit or ripping the insulation out of your attic. It would be lots of fun to feed them and give them names and keep track of their offspring through the years. And live in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, squirrels don’t know how to behave, so it’s breading and hot grease for the lot of them.

It’s great to learn these skills. Nothing is worse than an urban pansy who can’t do anything. And it’s terrible to live in a state of delusion about wildlife. Most people in America get their knowledge of wild animals from Pixar. You come to see animals differently when you have to fight with them all the time. Life in the country will turn a vegan into a stone-cold killer. Well. A SANE vegan.

Oxymoron?

I have to kill mice. I have to kill squirrels. I have to kill coons. I have to kill coyotes. I have to kill moles. I have to kill gophers. I may have to kill crows. I may have to kill pigs. I have to kill these things just to be considered responsible and not helpless.

Butchering warm-blooded animals is disgusting. I need to get over that. Butchering fish always made me hungry. Squirrels feel sort of like puppies, and they exude a musk which makes the whole animal smell like a huge crotch. When I cut them up, part of me wonders if what I’m doing is normal behavior. It’s irrational, but it’s hard not to feel a little bit like Hannibal Lecter. It’s healthy, though. I’m more in touch with the reality of predation. This is where all meat comes from. Animals don’t unzip big pockets in their sides and hand us steaks.

It has never bothered me to cut on raw pigs or poultry, but they always arrived cold and hairless!

I used standard velocity ammo today. The nominal speed is 1070 fps, I think. Anyway, it’s subsonic, so it’s not as loud as regular .22 ammo. I thought the neighbors might like it. I ordered some ammo which is even slower: CCI Quiet segmented ammo. These are very slow, very quiet rounds that fly apart inside squirrels and kill them fast. They’re supposed to be very accurate, although the low velocity limits the range. CCI claims you can use them without hearing protection. That would be great. We’ll see how they work. They’re twice as expensive as regular ammo, but I wouldn’t expect to use a lot of them.

If the Quiet rounds work, I will have to consider selling the air rifle. I won’t need it. It’s nice to have something that shoots 3-cent ammo, however.

I used Primos shooting sticks today. These are sticks joined at one end. You cross them and put their tips on the ground, and they form a bipod. Much more stable than a monopod. They’re also very compact when you fold them up. I like it.

I will clear the yard of squirrels, or they will reproduce so fast I will have squirrel meat all the time. Either way, I will be happy.

Government Signs Off on Squirrel Blitzkrieg

I have wonderful news. A stinking squirrel cleaned the blueberries off my blueberry plant.

Why is this great news? Here’s why:

You may shoot the following species of animals on YOUR private property as long as you check with you local law enforcement agency (Sheriff’s office or Local Police Department) to make sure its lawful to discharge a weapon in the area prior to shooting. Raccoons, Armadillo, Opossums, Most snake [sic], Foxes (during daylight hours only) Wild hogs, Coyotes, Bobcats, Skunks, Beavers, Otters, Gray Squirrels.

That squirrel just signed its death warrant. In blueberry juice.

That block quote comes from a response to a question I asked the Fish and Wildlife Commission, about nuisance animals. It has the force of law. I am now licensed to kill squirrels at will, by the government of the United Nations. Like Carl Spackler.

My friend Amanda graciously brought me a medium-sized blueberry bush, complete with berries. I planted it by the pool. The berries got bigger and bigger. Then they vanished down the unworthy gullet of a predacious rodent. Was I supposed to take that lying down? Oh no, my friend. I’m going all Walken on his behind.

The key to responding to aggression is to turn it into a blessing. That stupid squirrel didn’t realize it was dealing with a lawyer who knows how to read a statute. It thought I had to wait for squirrel season, and then it was going to hide out in the woods and laugh at me. No such luck, you vile aboreal rat. Your butt is MINE now.

It’s even better than I’m making it sound. I can shoot foxes! I just have to find a way to turn them into a nuisance. Maybe I could train them to play loud music while I’m trying to sleep.

I think you pretty much have to have chickens in order to claim foxes are a problem. Would it be unethical to buy a couple of fat, slow chickens solely for the purpose of drawing a foul? It certainly sounds like it’s worth a try.

Amanda has three boys. I wonder if they would be willing to wear chicken suits and sit in the yard. After all, it’s for science.

Okay, okay. I won’t bend the law just to shoot foxes. But the squirrels near the house are in very serious trouble. Finally, the air rifle will earn its keep.

Is it weird to put a blind on your home’s front porch? I don’t care. I am not giving the vermin the fruits of my labor.

I have a few blackberry patches. Will the squirrels eat those, too? If so, I know where to put the blinds. Oh, yes. I do.

I don’t know if I’ll accomplish anything. This area is filthy with squirrels. Maybe they’ll reproduce too fast for me to kill. That’s not so bad. Worst case scenario: I get really good at killing squirrels, and I have a good supply of free meat.

It’s a great day to be alive (for me). I can’t tell you how annoying it is to see those smug squirrels mincing around the yard all day, full of food I paid for.

I will eat my blueberries one way or the other. If I can’t have them in blueberry form, I’ll take them in the form of squirrel meat.

I am Godzilla. Squirrels are Japan. Deal with it.

Good Marksmanship Comes Easy When You Can Shoot in Your Living Room

I got back to shooting today, and I got pleasing results.

A while back, I bought a Smith & Wesson SW22 pistol for target practice. Apart from dealing with noise and recoil, there is nothing you can learn from a .45 ACP that you can’t learn from shooting cheap .22 rounds.

My first effort was not good. I think I posted a target photo here. Today things got somewhat better.

I was concerned because I was using Remington Golden Bullets, which are ridiculed all over the web. My hope was that even bad ammunition would group well at 7 yards. Today I got confirmation. I don’t know how well Golden Bullets will shoot at longer distances, because distance exposes ammunition problems, but at 7 yards, I see no reason to spend more money. It appears that if I were really shooting well, I would be keeping most rounds in an area the size of a half dollar, and until I learn otherwise, I believe that will suffice. My guess is that I could not shoot better than that right now with a perfect gun and perfect ammunition.

Here is today’s target. I shot 40 rounds at the center of it, and then I shot 10 rounds below. The first group is okay, with a few serious flyers. The second group is much better, with only one real flyer.

I felt wobbly today. The front sight seemed to dance a lot. I think that may have something to do with lifting weights not long before I shot. Anyway, I did not feel good at all, but things worked out all the same.

While I was shooting the first group, I noticed problems with my technique, and I cleaned them up to some extent. I assume this is why the second group is so much better.

Large groups are always worse than small ones, but my first 10 shots at the center of the target were not as good as the 10 shots I aimed lower down.

It appears that my shots group around points about 1/2″ high and maybe 3/8″ to the right of the point of aim. I am always reluctant to fool with pistol sights, because if you have a technique issue that consistently pulls you in a certain direction, you may end up adjusting the sights to match your bad technique instead of improving. I think I’ve shot this pistol enough to conclude that my sights need a little nudge.

This is pretty cool. I can shoot 90 seconds from my back door, there are no inexperienced maniacs around me who could shoot me at any minute, there are no rude range officers puffing their chests and generally being tactical, I can do rapid fire or anything else I want, and I don’t have to wait and do nothing while the line is safe.

Take that, Miami. In your face. Or cada or whatever. In su cada, baby!

If I start thinking the ammunition is limiting me, I’ll have to experiment and see what the gun likes better. I hope that happens, because if it does, it means I have more potential than I thought.

It would be REALLY neat to get a bucket of cheap rounds and practice shooting without the sights, like the Navy SEALS. My neighbors would hate me, I guess. I would go through a hundred rounds per session. But according to Richard Marcinko, the king of bad boy SEALS, it’s a great way to practice. If you can shoot a perp without aiming, you will be way WAY faster than the criminals you have to ventilate.

It’s a very reasonable aspiration. It works. I used to practice that kind of shooting with a CO2 pistol, but I let it go because the pistol shot to one side. You get what you pay for. Now I can do it with a real gun.

I hope I can put targets better than this one up in May. That would be neat.

Replacement Model 60 More Accurate Than Crosman BB Gun

Remington/Marlin came through for me. The gun they sent to replace my defective Marlin Model 60 arrived, and it appears to work. Bonus: the stock is nicely figured.

For those who don’t memorize every trivial detail of my life, I will provide a recap. I bought a Model 60 to kill coons at night. Florida won’t let me shoot coons at night with a light with any other caliber. When I tried the gun, it shot worse than the BB gun I had when I was 10. I’m not kidding. I had no trouble killing innocent songbirds on telephone wires with the BB gun. The Marlin wasn’t accurate enough to do that. I got groups something like 5 inches wide at 50 feet.

I took the gun back to Gander Outdoors, where I ran into their upsetting return policy: they don’t. By that I mean, they don’t accept returns. They will, however, ship a crappy new gun back to the factory for you. They mailed my .22 caliber blunderbuss to Remington, and I waited a month or so.

Why Remington? Because Remington bought Marlin. It’s a long boring story I don’t actually remember well enough to tell.

Remington called me by mistake, thinking they were calling Gander Outdoors, and I asked what was up with the gun. The lady on the line said they were sending a new one instead of fixing the one I bought. That was maybe a couple of weeks ago. I picked the new gun up last week.

Interesting legal tidbit: if a gun maker sends you a replacement gun, you have to go through a new background check. It’s really stupid, but if the serial number on the gun you take home is different from the one on the gun the factory kept, the FBI wants to hear from you. So I had to stand around for 20 minutes while the store guys did their thing. The gun hadn’t been inventoried, so I also had to wait while they fixed that.

I thought about selling the gun without shooting it. These guns have bad triggers, and a lot of people think quality control suffered when Remington took over. Then I realized no local buyer would give me a significant break on a new gun. If I say the gun hasn’t been fired, I know what the response will be: “As soon as it leaves the store, it’s USED.” I spent $170 on this thing, and people would probably try to pay me $130 locally, regardless of whether it’s new or just nearly new, so it seemed to me that I would lose little or nothing by trying it out.

Take that, bottom fishermen. Thought you were going to lowball me, did you? Ha! Go to the store and pay full price like I did.

I threw my old Bushnell rimfire scope on the gun and went out to the pasture. I was not willing to put up a rest and a table. I just wanted to see if the gun would shoot reasonably straight. I sat in the golf cart something like 22 long paces from the berm, and I shot with the gun resting on my left hand, which was resting on the steering wheel.

I am ahead of my time. Some day all military snipers will shoot from golf carts.

I used Remington Golden Bullets, which are the bullet equivalent of the battered golf balls driving ranges put in buckets. In fact, you can buy a bucket of Golden Bullets at your local gun store. A lot of people hate Golden Bullets, claiming they fail to fire and complaining that they’re dirty. But here’s a list of their redeeming features:

1. They’re cheap.

Golden Bullets failed to fire several times in the original gun, but today they worked just fine, except for one stovepipe.

I don’t know how other people zero scopes. I shoot, and then I guess how many clicks the scope knobs need, and I crank away. I end up with strings of bullet holes leading toward the center of the bullseye. That’s what I did today, and you can see it in the photo below. I shot at the center of the target, to zero the scope, and then I fired two 10-round groups to the sides. I got two big holes, which is good enough. Once I put a sling and studs on the gun, I can use a bipod and see if I can do better.

I’m starting to think I should rig the golf cart up so I can use it as a shooting bench. It’s shady and comfortable.

The gun’s trigger is beyond heinous. You pull and pull, and sometimes you wonder if the safety is still on. If you’re me, sometimes it is. If it’s not, the gun eventually fires, but because you’ve been thinking so much about the crappy trigger, you’ve forgotten about the point of aim, so your accuracy suffers.

Now that I know the barrel is okay, I know it’s safe to invest a few bucks in a better trigger.

Maybe the Model 60 is still a good gun, even after Remington.

Speaking of Remington, I took my Nylon 66 out and blasted my spinning metal target using iron sights. I hit the 4″ target 7 times out of 10, which is okay, when you factor in the knowledge that I don’t know where the rifle is sighted in. I would guess that I last adjusted the sights in about 1975. To find out where the bullets are actually going, I will need to use a paper target.

It’s a shame that gun won’t cooperate with a scope, because it’s a joy to shoot.

I still suspect I should have gotten a Ruger 10/22 instead of the Marlin. They say Rugers are less accurate, but you can improve them. I don’t know.

I think I only “need” one more rifle, and as I believe I’ve written, that’s the 6.5×55 Swedish, which is pretty similar to the 6.5 Creedmoor. It will ethically kill any creature in North America, certain large feminists excluded, and it’s super accurate and works great at long distances.

Once I have a 6.5 Swedish or Creedmoor bolt gun, my life will be complete. Until I realize I need something else.

Amusing side note: this week some friends came to see me, and they graciously agreed to move some things up from Miami for me. They were a little surprised when they found themselves hauling maybe 3000 rounds of ammunition. They wondered what the police would think. They made it, however, so I guess there is nothing to complain about. Sadly, even after all the shipments my friends and I have made, I still have a thousand or so rounds to bring up here. I have almost nothing in 7.62mmx54R.

Things are shaping up. Now I have to get the .204 Ruger and night scope working, and after that, it’s coyote-popping time. Once that happens, I will give everyone the word so they can sell their stock in Acme Products.

Scads of Scats

I needed a new gun. Do I even have to say it? I needed it for sending wounded squirrels to Happy Land, somewhere near the base of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, where they can spend eternity partying with the other bums. This is my rationale. Don’t question it.

In all seriousness, I feel bad about one of the squirrels I shot. He came down wounded, and I didn’t finish him as soon as I should have. I’ve already written about it, but I didn’t tell the whole story. At first, I thought he was kicking his last, so I didn’t think to shoot him a second time. Then I realized he was still alive, and one reason I didn’t kill him immediately is that he was scrambling around and making it hard to get at him. I also hesitated partly because I wanted his buddy to come out. I should not have done that. I don’t like thinking about it. After that, I resolved to always do the right thing as quickly as possible.

Back to frivolity. I’ve been dying to get a generation 2 Colt Woodsman. My grandfather and I used to shoot a gen 3. I have a feeling one of my relatives is sitting on it. The guns were supposed to be inventoried and offered to us so we could decide who got what, but the Woodsman disappeared. I don’t know what happened to his .357 pistols, either. Anyway, all I have is the Woodsman manual and some memories.

Maybe someone got mad because my grandmother gave my dad my grandfather’s Sweet Sixteen. That wouldn’t make sense, though. The other guns were distributed after both of my grandparents were dead, so everyone had a right to bid. The shotgun was given away while she was alive, so nobody can say they were entitled to a shot at it. People are allowed to give things away while they’re alive, without compensating other possible heirs. My dad bought my sister a house without compensating me, and I told him it was fine with me.

I thought I might get a Woodsman and carry it when hunting, but I also want a .22 for target practice, and the idea of wearing out a nice old gun on targets is a bit nauseating.

Again, do not question the rationale.

The other day I started practicing with a .45, and I did not do well, so I knew (or rationalized) that it was time to start working again. I visited Gander Outdoors, and they had the Smith & Wesson Victory .22 on sale for the deplorable price of $329, down from $369.

What? Are you kidding me? A whole pistol for $329? You think I’m not buying that? Are you smoking weed soaked in Fentanyl?

As an attorney, I feel that this constitutes entrapment. It’s like those times when I got to the register with one pint of Haagen-Dazs and the cashier told me they were selling them two for one.

Obviously, I bought it.

Ruger has a new pistol called the Mark IV, but it’s more expensive.

The Victory is an interesting pistol. Smith & Wesson noticed that gun nuts loved the AR-15 because it was modular. You buy a crummy $450 AR, and then you spend $1500 on parts to mix and match. It’s easy to install stuff on an AR. It’s a very popular game, and there was no .22 pistol out there that worked the same way. Smith & Wesson decided to create one.

Even before the gun was manufactured, they went to another company and told them they should make barrels for the Victory. The factory barrel comes off very easily, so you can rebarrel whenever you feel like it. There are also a lot of grips for the gun. There are a bunch of other parts, but I don’t know what they are.

The Victory has a target rear sight when you get it, but in the box with it, you get a Picatinny rail. You can pop the sight off, install the rail, and attach a scope. Neat.

The gun comes with nice fiber optic sights. Bright and conspicuous.

Another nice thing about the Victory is that you can strip it in a few seconds with a hex wrench and a punch. They designed it to compete with the Ruger Mark III, which is so hard to strip, many people end up taking it to a gunsmith for reassembly. Ruger supposedly fixed that with the Mark IV. Guess they knew it was time.

I like the gun a lot. I’m not crazy about the Lost in Space looks, but it’s not ugly. The trigger is great, and it has an adjustable stop. It’s heavy because of the thick barrel, but it’s not unpleasant to shoot.

I kind of wish they made a sporty barrel I could buy cheap. I don’t need a bull barrel to off squirrels. It would be nice to take the heavy barrel off and put a light one on when I’m hunting. You can get a carbon fiber barrel for it, but it’s about as expensive as the gun itself. Maybe someone will fill the need eventually.

I tried it out today. I’ll post a photo of the target.

I shot at 7 yards. When I first started, I was not knocking myself out to get accuracy. I put 30 Remington Golden Bullets in the general vicinity of the center of the target. Then I shot two 10-round groups aiming above and below the center. I used CCI Stingers for that.

The top group is the last one.

The most surprising thing I noticed was that the wind affected my accuracy. The wind was coming from behind me at a pretty good clip, and it pushed me around enough to make the sight picture move.

A lot of people say Golden Bullets are garbage. I don’t know. I figured they would have to be good enough to work at 7 yards. I guess I could rest the gun and see how they shoot.

When I shot the last two groups, I was working harder, and I noticed I was having issues due to lack of practice. I was trying to flinch sometimes, and my grip was not consistent. Toward the end, I was having trouble getting a good sight picture. The sun was fading.

I’m going to try again later this week. I suppose I should make a real effort to evaluate the ammunition so I can eliminate whichever brand is least accurate. I don’t want to improve and then find myself trying to fix problems which are actually caused by the ammunition. That would be frustrating.

It’s neat to have a practice pistol. I’m sure this will fix my accuracy problems. The lack of recoil and light trigger pull will be easy on my hands, so I won’t end up shaking after 150 rounds. I’ll be able to practice longer without having problems caused by fatigue.

In other news, I am trying to find out whether I really have a bear. I checked a bear population map on the web, and supposedly, bears are not just common but “abundant” in my part of the county. There are a bunch of poops by my goat shed, and they look way too new to be from last year when the steers were here.

Hope you like photos of bear poo.

I put my game camera by the shed, aimed at the poop area, and I emptied a quart bag of marshmallows on the ground. Someone on the web said they were great coon bait, and I figure a bear is a lot like a coon. They eat everything.

It’s illegal to hunt bears in Florida. The hippies and yankees killed the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Scientists confirmed we had plenty of bears to hunt, but the urban granola committee threw tantrums, and for some insane reason, the wildlife commission listened.

This isn’t fair. Normal people in rural areas aren’t trying to get the government to tell urbanites what to do. We’re not calling for bans on women’s underwear on men at raves. Why don’t they mind their own business?

There’s a loophole, though. If I can prove a bear is a nuisance, I can shoot him. I have to prove he’s “annoying.” I’ve figured out how to do this. I’m going to steal a satchel full of literature from a wandering Jehovah’s Witness, and after I shoot the bear, I’m going to chain him to the golf cart, drag him to the front door and plant the satchel on him. I’ll even put a little necktie on him. Then I’ll shoot some photos.

What’s more “annoying” than a visit from the JW’s on a Saturday afternoon?

If this doesn’t work, I’ll plant a banjo on him. The danger with this approach is that people may swarm my property before I skin him and shoot his dead carcass and beat it with their fists.

If all else fails, I’ll shoot him and plant a gun on him. It works for the cops.

We have a lot of bears here. I was surprised to look at the numbers. The government thinks there are almost 5000 of them in the state. Tennessee, which seems like a better place for bears to live, only has around 6000. South Carolina checks in at 1200. North Carolina and Virginia do a lot better, with 20,000 and 17,000. In North Carolina, you can shoot one bear per year.

I know what I should do. I’ll put the bear in my truck and get him drunk. Then I’ll drive him to North Carolina, roll him out, and plug him.

If I get better with the pistol, I’ll post photos. If I don’t, I’ll pretend I forgot.

Not Really

I finally did what I should have done a long time ago. I bought a tarp so I could shoot semiautos in the pasture.

A semiautomatic firearm doesn’t just eject shells. It throws them. They can land a good ways off. That’s bad when you’re shooting in grass and you want to save your brass. I’ve been putting off shooting reloads because I didn’t want to lose anything.

I don’t know why I’m worried about brass. I had this idea that I was low on brass, and then I went in the garage to look for .45 reloads. It’s time to admit it. I have an illness. I have enough brass to start a bell factory. I still hate losing it, though, especially since I shoot by myself. I used to shoot at a public range where free brass was all over the ground. Now I have to buy it.

I still lost 10% of my brass, but that’s better than 93% or whatever.

Here’s what I learned from today’s shooting session: not practicing is BAD.

I used to shoot every pistol I have well enough to put just about every shot into an area roughly the size of a half dollar at 7 yards. Today things did not go that well. Here is the first target.

Disturbing. Doubleplusungood.

I worked on remembering the things I used to do. Tightened my grip. Aimed small. Avoided jerking. Tried to get a good and consistent sight picture. Thought about follow-through.

Every target was better than the last one, and I finally ended up with this.

I am not happy, but that’s better than the first one.

I had 5 shots go through one big hole, and then I must have changed something, because I got the other hole below it. And I’m pulling everything to the left. The shooter’s “Wheel of Misfortune” says my problem is “too little trigger finger,” but I think my fingers are average-sized.

Rimshot.

I’m pretty sure my rifle problems are different from my pistol problems, which makes you wonder if the Wheel of Misfortune is really the Big Giant Wheel of BS.

It could be that I’m just bad at getting a correctly aligned pistol sight picture.

Oh, man. I just realized I was focusing on the target, not the front sight. I can’t believe I did that. Rifles (and lack of practice) did that to me. When you shoot through a scope, the target is beautiful and sharp, and so is the reticle, so you naturally focus on the target.

I was using free Hornady hollow points that came with my loading press. I don’t know if they’re any good for self defense, and I don’t really care, because the odds that I will ever use a 1911 to protect myself are pretty low. They’re heavy, the bullets are slow, and the capacity is low. Even a compact Glock holds a lot more.

I know saying things like that makes 1911-lovers squeal. Hey, I have issues with Glocks, too. They look like little L-shaped cardboard boxes. But comparing a 1911 to a Glock–in a firefight–is like comparing a 1965 Corvette convertible to a new Porsche 911.

I know. I know. I would rather have the Corvette, too. The 911 is really just Hitler’s People’s Car with some body refinements and a better engine. But you wouldn’t want to race a 911 in an old Corvette.

Ordinarily, one would shoot cheap 100% lead bullets for practice, and I have a lot of those, but I truly don’t see any purpose in conserving Hornady hollow points. They won’t expand in a burglar, and I wouldn’t use them for that purpose to begin with, unless he attacked me during target practice.

I still feel funny about it.

I had forgotten how filthy the powder was. I think it’s Unique. Anyway, it’s so dirty the fingers on my right hand turned grey. I may actually have to clean a firearm; a practice I frown upon.

Is it nice shooting my own reloads in my backyard in a super-red county, into my own berm, while listening to Christian music on bluetooth headphones? You could say that.

Perhaps I should get a .22 pistol for practice. I need one anyway for hunting. It would allow me to shoot cheaply, and the path to excellence is practice.

The Ruger Mark IV looks very good, but it’s very expensive compared to the other gun I like: the S&W something or other. The Smith is light. It practically falls apart for cleaning. It comes with cute fiber optic sights. Not bad.

I want a Colt Woodsman, but I don’t like the idea of wearing one out on targets. A Woodsman is a classy gun. Too nice to ruin with Remington Golden Bullets.

You know how these questions tend to resolve themselves. “Which one should I get? Why not both?”

I’ve been looking at gun prices, and I realize I should have bought more weapons in the past. They keep going up in value. I probably should have gotten a Swedish Mauser when they were cheap, to learn how to use iron sights on a high-powered rifle without going broke. I keep seeing things I wanted to buy at $250 or $375, selling for $450 or $600.

It’s funny; you see a gun that used to sell for $150, selling for $200, and you feel like it’s too late to get one. Then a year later it’s $300, and it’s still a bargain.

I wonder which cheap-in-2018 gun I should be buying right now. Maybe the Smith. It’s extremely cheap, and it’s hard to see why. Under $400.

I plan to get the kinks out of my shooting, now that I have no excuse not to. I may need a bigger tarp. Whatever it takes. There is no way to explain away a failure to practice when you live on a gun range.

Tomorrow I may take the .204 Ruger out again. I got all 57 batteries charged up, and I believe I can cure my too-high-bipod problem with my shooting rest. I have a funny feeling that gun is going to be very, very accurate with factory ammunition, and when that ammunition is gone, I can reload it, and then I’ll have the best ammunition possible. All I need is a fat coyote that doesn’t move much.

I feel like apologizing to the world for letting my pistol skills deteriorate, but I think I can redeem myself.

New Rifle off to Promising Start

It finally happened. I shot my .204 Ruger today.

Getting this thing ready to fly was much harder than I thought it would be.

First problem: the scope I bought (ATN X-Sight II 5-20x) eats batteries fast. You might get 2.5 hours out of 4 really good AA batteries, but people have reported much shorter times. Realistically, you need the ATN external battery to run it. This is an extra hundred bucks, and you have to fit it to your buttstock.

Second: the ATN scope will not fit separate Weaver bases. You need a Picatinny rail. I had to pay $44 for one, and then I had to install it.

Third: you have to make sure you have the latest firmware for the scope. The scope is equipped with wifi, so you just put it next to your PC and upload ATN’s newest file. HAHAHAHAHA. That was a joke. In reality, you have to get a micro SD card (the scope has no memory without one), load the firmware into it, move it to the scope, turn the scope on, and make the scope update itself. The problem with this is that you may not have a micro SD card reader on your computer. I had to use a phone. Don’t make me describe the process.

Why can’t you upload video via the same wifi that allows you to download from the scope? Good question.

Fourth: the rifle was very tight when I got it. It was hard to turn the bolt lever down after racking it. That told me something was not completely normal. Today when I put a round in the chamber, the bolt refused to close.

I didn’t know what was going on. I wondered if the ammunition I bought had some peculiarity to it. People say Fiocchi brass is very good, though.

I took the bolt out. In order to do that, I had to take the battery pack off the buttstock. I looked the bolt over and couldn’t find anything wrong. Not that I would have recognized a problem had I seen it.

I didn’t want to force it, so I took the golf cart back to the house and got a cleaning rod. I figured I would knock the round out of the chamber and make sure nothing was stuck in there. That’s when I learned that my cleaning rod was over 0.204″ in diameter. It wouldn’t go in.

I bounced the rifle on its butt, and the round came out. I kept fiddling with it, and I finally found I could close the bolt if I gave it a good hard shove.

By the time I got the gun working, the scope had been on for quite some time.

I started shooting, and the rig was not comfortable. The ATN scope has a big eye relief problem. You need to mount it very close to your face. I put it as far back as I could, and I still had to lean forward. I was straining to get close enough, and strain makes you shake. Not good for accuracy.

I set up maybe 75 feet from the berm, so I wouldn’t shoot over it and kill anyone while zeroing the scope. I got it working, and then I moved back to something over 50 yards. I put the scope on 20x to see how it looked.

The video was not that great. It was hazy. Not like a real 20x scope. I have a 14x Burriss, and it gives me razor-sharp images. The ATN was so fuzzy I was not able to see all of the holes the bullets made. I knew it wouldn’t be as sharp as a glass scope, so I can’t complain.

I zeroed it as well as I could and started shooting at a clean target to see how well it shot. Here is the result.

After that, the screen went black. No juice. I shot a grand total of 12 rounds today, and only three were real shots. The rest were spent on adjusting the scope.

The group you see is not very good for 50 yards. The two shots that are almost touching are fine, but the flyer is pretty bad. I think it’s the result of having to wrestle with the gun.

The rifle’s trigger is wonderful, although I plan to see about reducing the tension. There is no creep. There is no grit. There is no staging. You pull, and it goes off. I am also happy about the recoil. It’s not nonexistent, like .17 HMR and .22 recoil, but it’s not going to be fatiguing or leave bruises. I didn’t find out whether it permits me to see shots land. I was too preoccupied with other matters.

The mechanics of the gun loosened up, so now it’s possible to chamber rounds and cock the gun without wondering if I’m breaking something or crushing a cartridge.

The eye relief is probably impossible to fix without some sort of custom rail. I need to figure out a way to get a decent cheek weld. I also need to start shooting from the other end of the pasture, because it’s hard to aim low with my table and chair at the west end. The pasture rises toward the west, so if I put my table to the east of the berm, I should have a trajectory that’s more level, so I won’t have to keep lifting up on the gun’s butt when I shoot.

It’s time to get a rear bag for the gun. I don’t want to use one when I hunt, but for sighting the scope in, I need it.

Will I be able to get coyotes? I don’t know. They’re out there. I may have to train them before I kill them, so they’ll lose their fear and show up where I want them to, but I think I can get them.

Tonight I saw what looked like a herd of pigs in a pasture a mile away. I realized I’m the only person in Florida who doesn’t have wild pigs and is jealous of those who do. Everyone else wants them to go away. If they came here, I’d be tickled pink.

I didn’t get a good look at them, but they were roundish black and white animals of assorted sizes, standing in a pasture. I haven’t seen goats that looked like that, and they were too small to be cattle. Also, they were in an area where I have never seen cattle. I believe it’s a horse farm.

My feeling about the scope is that it will work fine at night at relatively short ranges, but that a traditional scope would be infinitely preferable during the day, except on occasions when recording video of shots is important. Okay, not important. Desirable. Fun.

It would be hellacious on pigs in the pasture. I think I might want a semiauto for that, however. When you shoot pigs, you want volume. Kill as many as possible so they don’t replace themselves fast.

I love my neighbors more than ever. I was out there shooting, and I kept thinking about the lady who started asking me questions when I was hunting squirrels. Was I making anyone mad? Was I going to have another confrontation? Then I heard someone else shooting close by. Rapid fire, and then what sounded like a bump stock. Fast, but not as fast as full auto. I was thrilled to death. They kept doing it after I came inside.

She needs to desensitize her horses. I read about it on a horse forum. Some granola-based life form started complaining about people shooting near her babies, expecting sympathy and legal advice, and all the other horse people told her off good. They said she should be shooting on her own property to prepare her horses for gunfire and thunderclaps! Evidently the lady who lives near me is not a responsible or knowledgeable horse person. I’m not the problem. It’s all her.

I’m not a bump stock fan. I think it’s stupid and counterproductive to provoke liberals by trying to get around the law, especially given that you can fire a gun about 5 times per second without a bump stock. But it was nice that someone made it very clear that I’m small potatoes in the local noise pollution scene.

Now I have to take all my batteries out and recharge them. As soon as I can, I’ll get back out there and shoot.

Rail Installed

I’m sitting here doing my gun thing.

My Picatinny rail arrived, and I stuck it on the new rifle. I attached the night scope to it. It looks fine, but the eye relief is a bit excessive. I expect to have to lean forward a bit to shoot. It’s not good to have tension anywhere in your body when you shoot, but I believe this is the best I’ll be able to do without some kind of custom rail or adaptor.

The word “Picatinny” is capitalized. A place called the Picatinny Arsenal was important to its adoption. The arsenal is in New Jersey. Things could be worse. It could have been the Piscataway rail. New Jersey place names are awful. They sound like diseases that make you vomit.

I’ve been thinking about my long-range options. I can’t believe how lucky blessed I am to have this property. I should be able to shoot 400 yards with no problems at all. I could go longer if I had another berm.

“But why not go to a range? You live in gun country. There must be long-distance ranges all around you.”

No.

This is why I count myself even more blessed than I used to.

I assumed there would be all sorts of shooting options up here, because northern Florida is about as red as Wyoming. I have discovered that this is not the case. I can only find three outdoor ranges in this county, and they’re pretty sad. The options in Miami are actually better.

One is a private club that only goes to 100 yards, and it has 150-member cap. There’s a waiting list. You can’t join until someone dies.

Which probably happens a lot. I think I have the only car in the county without a handicapped permit and a mobility scooter rack.

I might have to wait as long as a week.

There’s another private club which has lanes up to 50 yards long. That’s all you get. What good is that? I’ve seen people shoot pistols that far.

The final option is the public range operated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. “Operated” is a very loose way of describing it. It’s unsupervised.

How would you like to go to an unsupervised gun range? No range officers. No one using a P.A. system to tell people the line is hot. No one to shout at idiots walking around with their rifles pointed at other visitors. You just get out of your pickup and start blasting. Presumably, there is no prohibition on drinking beer.

Cherry on the sundae: the limit is 100 yards.

I’ll resummarize my own situation: 400 yards. Berm. No other shooters. Handguns allowed. Rifles allowed. Hours unrestricted.

It’s phenomenal.

Someone recommended I try a Project Appleseed event. I know little about Project Appleseed, but it’s an organization that claims to teach marksmanship. I get the feeling there is some paranoia associated with it. I don’t mean my healthy Christian paranoia, which contemplates the necessity of shooting hordes of entitlement junkies who will one day descend on rural America but does not contemplate shooting federal agents. When I read up on Project Appleseed, a little voice in the back of my head whispers “Ruby Ridge.” But even if they’re extreme, they are probably people I can get along with, and they might be able to help me shoot better.

I read that they teach history at the events and talk about taking back America.

There will be an event less than 40 miles from here this month. I might give it a shot. It’s hard to get away from my dad for a two-day event that involves a hotel stay, but if it’s less than an hour away, I should be able to make the commute from my house and return here at night.

I’m very glad God put me on an unusual property where I can shoot pretty freely. When I’m even farther in the sticks, on a larger property with some hills, I’ll be unrestrained. I’ll shoot a howitzer if I want.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally try the .204 Ruger. Should be a blast. Then eventually I’ll get to work on the .308 and a 6.5 Swedish.

Nothing is Ever Simple

I have had my new rifle for several days, and I still can’t shoot it.

I guess I should say I have two new rifles I can’t shoot. In March, I got a Ruger Model 60, which turned out to be a Remington Model 60, and I got groups as big as your hand from 50 feet away. I had to have Gander Outdoors send it back to the factory. The people at the factory kept calling me, which is how I found out the gun was a Remington. My caller ID said “Remington.” Gander Outdoors put the wrong phone number in the paperwork, so when Remington tried to call Gander Outdoors, they got me instead.

After all the wonderful things blundering Obama did for the firearms industry, you would think gun makers would be rolling in dough, but they are not. At least, some aren’t. Remington filed for bankruptcy recently, which made me wonder if I would ever see my gun again. Smith & Wesson is also going Tango Uniform.

Guess who made my other new gun? Smith & Wesson. It says “Thompson Center” on the box, but when it arrived, somehow or other I learned that it was actually made by S&W. I’m entitled to a $75 rebate because of a promotion they’re doing, so naturally, I wonder if I’ll ever see that. I thought I was getting a neat rifle for $375, but it may be more like $450.

My head is spinning, and if you haven’t clicked away yet, yours must be, too. I’ll clarify. I bought two guns a month apart. Both were made by companies which are going bankrupt. Both carry brand names which are different from the actual makers.

Any company that couldn’t sell guns and make money between 2008 and 2016 needs a change of management. Selling guns during that time was about as hard as selling liquor the day Prohibition ended.

I’m learning things as I go. My understanding is that the old Marlin guns were made by Marlin, in a succession of factories belonging to the Marlin company. Then Remington bought them, and they moved production to Remington plants. People, predictably, like the older Marlin guns better. They look for guns with “JM” stamped on them. I don’t know what JM means (maybe John Marlin), but people like it. I assume it indicates guns made in real Marlin factories.

I don’t know how Smith & Wesson ended up owning Thompson Center. I don’t care. I know I don’t like conglomerates buying up small companies. It always seems to lead to the same end: extinguished brand names, consolidated (therefore inferior) R&D and design, and fewer choices for consumers. Remember Oldsmobile? Remember Pontiac?

I think what when conglomerates take over small companies, inevitably, some genius stands up in a meeting and says, “EUREKA! We can cut costs by cutting back to one line of products!” Like this wasn’t obvious at the start.

The T/C (gun slang for Thompson Center) I bought is a Venture rifle in .204 Ruger. I have a night scope. I have a special huge battery. I have rows of pretty cartridges. What I don’t have is a mount for the scope.

T/C doesn’t use a single scope mount that runs from one end of the action to the other. It uses two little mounts about 3″ apart. My night scope has a small base not much longer than the distance between the mounts. You can imagine the temptation. “I’ll just put it between the mounts. It will grab a little bit of each one, and I’ll be fine.”

I’m not doing that. I’ve matured.

I had to blow $44 on a new mount, and it won’t arrive until tomorrow. If everything lines up absolutely perfectly, the earliest I can reasonably hope to shoot this thing is Saturday.

The gun seems very nice. I’m not in love with the cheap synthetic stock, but it will work fine, and I got it on purpose because I figured I would want to get a better stock later.

T/C rifles have a fun feature. If you take the bolt out of one, you will find a tiny black hex screw above the trigger. You can adjust the trigger pull with it. Loosen it to reduce the tension. Guess how you increase it. Go on. Guess.

I cleaned the gun for the first time today. You have to clean new guns. I have plenty of guns, yet I did not know this until recently. People told me the Marlin might be shooting badly because I didn’t clean it before I used it.

I don’t want to talk crazy, but some people would assume a new product would be ready to use right out of the box. It has always worked for me.

I could not clean the Venture until today because I didn’t have a Boresnake or any other type of cleaning implement for it. I was afraid to buy stuff until the gun arrived in one piece. I got a Boresnake with two-day shipping from Wal-Mart, and the price was excellent. Cheaper than Amazon Prime.

Today I ran the Boresnake through the Venture after shooting Break Free CLP into it, and guess what came out. LINT. A wad of lint. What on earth are they doing at the factory? I don’t know what ill effects a wad of lint would have on a rifle barrel, but I’ll bet it’s a bad thing to push out with a 4000-fps round.

I wiped the barrel and other metal parts of the gun with a paper towel with CLP on it, and when I looked at the towel, it looked rusty. I’m not too happy about that. Is that normal? I realize gun bluing is a form of iron oxide, and it would not surprise me to learn that there is typically a bit of rust in there with it, but rust is not what you want to see when you wipe down a new gun.

I guess it could be something like cosmoline, but if I recall correctly, a tiny film of cosmoline would not be dark enough to stain a towel. Hope I’m wrong about that.

Tomorrow I hope to install the scope, and then we’ll see if I was stupid to buy it.

The scope is insanely heavy. I’m considering putting a magnet on it to see if the case and tube are steel. I believe it weighs three pounds. The battery is heavy, too, but it mounts on the buttstock, so it’s not out there pulling the front of the gun down.

I assume a heavy scope like this is not intended for hunters who walk. It must be for shooting prone or from a bench. My hope is to use it from a blind.

The scope is a toy. I admit that. It should work quite well, but a real night scope would cost eight times as much and use thermal technology. I’m not going to blow that kind of money at this stage, and I am willing to toss away a few hundred bucks on something I may put away for good in two years. I feel that it’s better to use a cheap scope at night for a short time than to waste a couple of years doing no night hunting at all.

I’d love to have thermal stuff. Imagine walking in the woods and being able to see animals that are partly obscured and likely to be missed with IR night vision. I would think that the glow from a possum or a coon would light up the reticle and give him away. The IR scope I got won’t do that. It’s like looking at black and white TV. It will show you Barney Fife if he’s standing in front of you, but it won’t light up the heat from his rear end if most of him is hiding successfully behind a tree.

I’m just guessing at what thermal scopes do, since I don’t have one.

The Venture has a very sweet trigger, and I want it as light as possible without worrying about the gun going off when the wind blows. I worked on it tonight. I put a hex wrench in the adjusting screw and tried to loosen it, and it would not budge. I was afraid I was going to bend the wrench or strip the screw.

I Googled around and read that another Venture owner had had the same problem. He found out his gun had shipped with the trigger eased all the way, so the screw could not be loosened any more. After reading that, I tried tightening my screw, and it popped loose. You would think that meant the screw had come to me loosened all the way, but when I was done, the wrench had moved about 30 degrees from its original position, so presumably, I loosened the screw a twelfth of a full turn.

My understanding is that the trigger spring can be cut if I don’t like the minimal tension setting. I won’t try that until I shoot it, and I’ll definitely order a spare spring first.

Once I get the gun working, I’ll have to get .204 dies, powder, primers, bullets, and whatever other stuff rifle reloading requires. I’ve never reloaded a rifle round. I’ll have 200 cases once I shoot all my ammo. I think that will be enough for a while.

If I ever get really serious about shooting at night, I’ll take a stiff drink and buy a real thermal scope. I shouldn’t feel too bad about it. No one feels bad about spending 20 grand on a bass boat, and bass fishing is truly stupid and pointless.

I’ve figured out what my next gun will be, and it’s a shocker. It will be 6.5x55mm Swedish.

Probably.

I kept going back and forth between 6.5 Creedmoor and its near-twin, .260 Remington, and then I learned that 6.5 Swedish does what they do. It has been around for ages. People use it on everything up to mooses. Europeans kill the crap out of large game with it.

People write about the Creedmoor and .260 Remington as though they were amazing ballistics breakthroughs. If I understand things correctly (place your bets), that’s codswallop. They are amazing short-action ballistics breakthroughs. A short-action round has a short cartridge that will run well in a semiauto like an AR-10.

The 6.5 Swedish is a longer cartridge that does what the Creedmoor and .260 will and offers a ton of reloading options. The only drawback I know of is that you have to use a bolt gun. Which, hello, is what hunters use. And they’re not as expensive as AR guns. More money for glass.

I have read that one of the big advantages of the short-action rounds is that commercial match-grade ammunition is easily had, but if you reload, what do you care about that?

Maybe I’m wrong about all of this, but it sounds good. Less-expensive guns. Reloading options out the wazoo. Great accuracy. Long range. Versatility that will fill every hole that currently exists in my rifle inventory. It sounds perfect.

The scope mount for the Venture can’t come soon enough. Once that happens, I will have to get serious and try to shoot a stinking coyote. If I pull it off, you will hear about it here.

Eat up, Little Buddies

I set up my game camera again and left it in place for two days. The result? No bears. No coyotes. Just the usual coons, plus a third fox.

I am eat up with foxes.

How can I tell it’s not one of the other two foxes I filmed? Easy. This is a small fox with a red tail. The first fox was the same size, more or less, but it had a dark tail. The second fox was much bigger.

Again, I decry the disgraceful policies of a benighted government bureaucracy that won’t let me shoot him. Three foxes! This isn’t a normal population of helpful predators living in balance with their environment. This is a PACK. A deadly fox PACK. Waiting to ambush some…some HELPLESS OLD LADY. And nibble the tennis balls on the feet of her walker. Ruthlessly.

Why does our government want to kill helpless old ladies?

I hunted foxes once. My grandfather found a literal foxhole–they exist–in a pasture, and he dumped me near it with a .22. He told me to kill whatever came out. It never occurred to me to ask him whether he actually knew anything about foxes. I wasted an afternoon and came home with nothing except fresh grass stains.

I had a similar bad experience with a groundhog hole he located. He said there was definitely a groundhog in it because there was fresh dirt in the mouth of the hole. For all I know, he dug the hole as a gag and kicked dirt in it to fool me.

Our coons seem to be quite fat. I don’t know why that is. I am forced to speculate that some snowflake has been making pancakes for them.

Gluten-free.

Coons are horrible. They kill poultry. They throw trash all over the place. They poop in swimming pools. Nonetheless, there are misguided people who think coons are cute, and they have been known to feed them.

This is like feeding a rat, only a thousand times worse.

It makes me wonder: if I blast the coons and they stop showing up for handouts, will I have to deal with angry hippies coming to my gate and forcing me to get out the 200-foot hose?

In the videos, the coons appear to waddle. They’re probably full of Ho-Hos and crunchberries. Liberal stoner forage.

The other day I found out there are confused people who feed coyotes. A lady told me some foreigner rented a house near her and started feeding the “dogs” that showed up in the yard. They would wait for him to come out with a bowl of food. Someone had to tell him they weren’t dogs.

Naturally, this gave me an idea. Bag of dog chow. Dog dish in yard. Hunting blind in yard. Me in blind.

It might get me some easy coyote hides, and if that didn’t work, at least I might manage to harvest a neighbor’s poodle.

I don’t think anyone is feeding the coyotes. Intentionally. They look like kind of strung-out. Like Faces of Meth coyotes.

Speaking of addicts, my squirrel feeders have come online. One of them has, anyway. I put one on a tree in the front yard, so I can shoot from a rocking chair. The other is out back, across a small pasture. That will allow me to use the air rifle and scope while maintaining crucial proximity to the refrigerator and microwave.

The one out front has been attacked. The squirrels are trying to chew up the clear plastic window that holds the food in. They’re so stupid they haven’t found the one behind he house. I never gave them much credit for brains, though, even though squirrel brains are a delicacy. Which I have no plans to try.

When I saw that the squirrels had tried to break the feeder and eat everything at once, naturally, I thought of Democrats.

Self-explanatory.

SLDM. Squirrel Lives Don’t Matter.

My plan is to get the squirrels fat and stupid. Then the reckoning.

If size doesn’t mean anything, this must be one of the world’s premier squirrel hunting grounds. Nearly every tree here produces acorns. It’s like me living in a forest of trees that produce pizza. If I had made a real effort to kill squirrels this year, instead of goofing off until the season was nearly over, I could have lived on the miserable things. When I walk outside, sometimes I’ll see four of them running around like they own the place.

This fall it will be different. I will have the blind, and I will have given up on rifles. It’s going to rain startled rodents.

I’ve done nothing about turkeys since I tried and failed to find their roosting places. I don’t think they’re here. I could get a call and see what happens.

My night scope should be here tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be able to dispatch some coyotes at last. I’m not sure what to do with them. I want to use my hunting knives, but I don’t think the pelts would be very good. Florida is hot, and animals here look mangy. I guess I’ll skin some if I can, just to build skill.

Someone said I should order a scalpel handle and a bunch of #22 blades. Right after I bought three nice knives. I suppose he’s right, but dang.

I haven’t shot the .204 Ruger yet. Waiting for the scope. Once I get it, I’ll figure out how well it works at various distances, and then I’ll try to use it to hunt.

I have to learn what I can here. Then when I move to a bigger piece of land in an area where there is more game, I’ll be in a better position to get it done.

Time to go to the store. I plan to get marshmallows while I’m there.

They say coons like those.

Heh heh.

Squiddly Diddim Bop Em Diddim Plop

I have been resting today. Earlier I had a supernatural experience, and I have already written about it. Since it happened, I’ve felt much better, but I’ve also felt drained.

I finally got up and did something relatively useful. I walked to my game camera and took it down. Yesterday I put it up near a place where animals cut under my fence.

There were several videos in the camera, not including the one of me taking it down or videos that don’t show any animal life. The first two were the usual coons, but I also got a coyote and a fox.

The interesting thing to me is that these predators showed up during the day. I thought coyotes were nocturnal, but one crossed my fence between 1 and 2 p.m. I’ll post a capture.

The fox showed up at around 8:30 this morning. I had put some stuff down to attract animals, and it appears that it was gone before he arrived. He nosed around looking for it.

I’ll post a shot of the fox I filmed earlier this month. As you can see, it’s a different fox. It’s younger, and its coloring is more brilliant. It’s much smaller than today’s fox. So it looks like I have at least two foxes here, and our backward government will not let me shoot either one of them!

What do they want? Do they want foxes overrunning the place? Do they want them crowding me off the recliner and fighting over the remote?

Don’t tell me tyranny doesn’t exist.

Today’s fox seems nearly as big as today’s coyote. The coyote seems small, although I’m not equipped to judge. Maybe it’s young.

Their behaviors are different. The fox seems carefree. It’s intent on finding food. The coyote seems worried. He raises his head over and over and sniffs the air, like he knows there is a guy on a recliner, thinking of coyote pelts.

It’s as if they know the hunting laws. Coyotes are legal 24/7/365. Foxes are sacred. You can’t hunt them at all. No wonder the fox is relaxed.

The coyote video is encouraging because it shows I don’t have to be up at 4 a.m. to shoot one of these guys. It’s discouraging because the coyote is already nervous even before my arrival. I think he’ll be as wary as Donald Trump speaking at a Sierra Club dinner. Of weeds and mold and whatever it is they eat.

I’m disappointed that I haven’t filmed a bear. That would be neat. People keep expressing doubt that we have a bear, but you know what they say. Poop don’t lie.

I found some exciting new poop today. Poop is my new hobby. You could call me a poop watcher. I don’t know what it is. It’s not a coon. I don’t think it’s a bear. It’s not a bobcat or a coyote. It doesn’t look like fox poop. It’s sort of like very small, more or less rectangular cow manure.

Scanning the numerous helpful poop sites on the web, I have to conclude that it must be a bear after all. Maybe it’s a very small bear. Maybe it’s a big one that eats too much cheese.

You’re supposed to call poop “scat.” Seems pretentious. Looks like plain old poop to me. Scat is poop with a college degree.

I don’t want to think of poop when I listen to Ella Fitzgerald.

I have never seen deer poop here, and I’ve only seen a couple of things that looked like they could be turkey poop. When we bought the property, I made a big mistake. I had it surveyed. I had it inspected. I had a title search done. I did not do a poop inventory.

Live and learn.

I heard a bird of prey call while I was walking in and I saw what must have been a big hawk. It was sitting in the top of a hickory tree. It was huge. We have little hawky-looking birds here the size of crows, but this one would have fed three people.

When I got to the house, two sparrow sort of things were flapping around in the garage. They could not find the giant open door, so I opened the other one, increasing their odds of escape by 100%. They made it.

I have started putting seed in our feeder, partly to attract birds to amuse my dad (who turned out not to be interested in them), and partly to attract squirrels and get them fat and stupid for squirrel season. I’ve seen some strange birds going after the seed. I saw some that were tiny and bright yellow. I think that’s what I saw in the garage today.

It has occurred to me that I could go out and look at birds. But the only good optics I have are attached to rifles. I don’t know if I want to have a game warden spot me aiming a .308 at an eagle. There is probably a law against it, even if you take the bolt out of the gun. Wardens have heard a lot of clever excuses. “I’m just carrying my friend’s rifle.” “I’m just sitting in a covered deer blind with a Ma Deuce because it’s hot out.” As a result, the laws prevent you from doing just about anything that resembles hunting, unless you do it to animals in season. You can probably get fined for saying “BOO” to the wrong animal.

I think I’m forbidden to even walk within a certain distance of a tortoise hole. Like I know where they are.

I like the game camera. I should have bought a better one, but this one is fun. Maybe I’ll eventually see something other than a crow, coon, coyote, or fox. If I do, I will certainly let you know.

More Data for my Soros/DHS File

I did exactly what anyone who knows me would expect me to do. I ordered a bolt-action rifle in .204 Ruger, and I’m also getting a night scope. I am becoming a full-tilt-boogie deplorable.

This is the kind of hardware that makes Hillary supporters wet the bed. The only thing worse than a deplorable who can shoot you from 20 feet away in broad daylight is one who can shoot you from 400 yards away at night with very little chance of being caught.

I often wonder what liberals think about modern shooting technology. In truth, I doubt they know about it. Their knowledge of guns is like my knowledge of gay porn or the vocal stylings of Barbra Streisand. I don’t know much about it because I don’t want to be exposed to it.

Liberals say things like “shotgun rifle” and “assault weapon” as though they made sense. They think AR-15’s are automatic weapons; they say it all the time. Most of them probably have no idea America is full of Republicans with thermal night scopes, wireless IR game cameras, and rifles with suppressors. They’re probably only dimly aware that some people make their own ammunition, or that a lot of us can make our own guns if we have to.

I’ve been watching Youtubes of people using thermal and IR night scopes. It would make Hillary faint and fall into her van all over again. Americans would make the most dangerous guerrillas on earth. The Second Amendment WORKS. God help anyone who comes after us. Not that he would.

We can take unsuspecting agents of tyranny out from very long distances, day or night. We can conceal ourselves visually and thermally. We can do all sorts of stuff. And there are so many of us, if the government turned against us, they wouldn’t have enough personnel or hardware to deal with us.

People say the government could overpower us with its machinery and weaponry, but they only have enough of that stuff to fight what? A million people at a time, tops? And they’re trained to fight helpful people who show up together in big clumps, wearing uniforms. They don’t do so well against multiple isolated attackers who resemble friendlies, spread out over wide areas, attacking at random times. Look how the Viet Cong frustrated them.

They would be in real trouble if they went up against, say, 100 million internal enemies who know all their secrets. And many cops and soldiers would turn and fight on our side. Many would fight the government from within.

Liberals are terrified of semi-automatic rifles, but if things got crazy, I think armed civilians would do more damage with hunting guns, which liberals pretend to like. Guerrillas don’t engage head-on. They use surprise. They attack from cover and disappear. Doesn’t that sound like hunting?

If a nut was mad at me, I would much rather have him kick in the front door and try to get me with an AR-15 than shoot me from under a bush a quarter-mile away.

Maybe Uncle Sam could win another civil war, but I think he would suffer very badly if he tried.

It’s interesting to think about. Personally, I can’t imagine taking part in armed resistance, because I think it’s carnal. But it’s nice to learn new skills. I’ll say something else. When the leftist-controlled government finally comes after Christians, it will be better to hand the local kapo your rifle and surrender from a position of power than to turn yourself in because you can’t fight back. Anybody can surrender from a position of weakness. If God calls on us to refrain from violence and submit to execution, the godless will benefit more if they see that we had a choice.

Jesus wasn’t captured. He sent Judas for the high priest, and he waited.

I wanted something to shoot animals in the area above squirrels and below deer. I wanted low recoil so I could see hits through a scope. I wanted super-duper accuracy. I think I got it. The .204 Ruger looks like a wonderful gap-filler between .17 HMR and .308 Winchester.

The night scope was not cheap, but I had a credit card point gift card I hadn’t found a use for, so I emptied it. I used to use my own credit card points to buy tools, but that’s harder to do these days. Now that I’m on a farm with my dad, a lot of the tooly things I buy are charged to him. It’s important for me to avoid spending my own money because of the death tax. If I’m using a tool around his farm, it makes no sense for me to pay for it.

If things work out, I should be able to try everything out this weekend. I can’t wait. I think after this I can stop buying guns for at least 6 months.

Except maybe a .22 pistol.

Which barely counts.

I better go out and take the game camera down. I bought rechargeable batteries for it, so now I’m using it again. With regular batteries, it would have gone through about 20 AA’s a week.

Wish me luck. I’m hoping to find out which bear has been pooping here.

I am so Predictable

I had an interesting shooting experience yesterday.

I set three targets up in the pasture, drove the golf cart about 100 yards off, set up my table, popped out the bipod legs on my .17 HMR, put it on the table, and noticed that it had no magazine.

I’ve had the .17 HMR for something like 10 years. I don’t recall for sure. During that time, there have been many occasions when I noticed that the box magazine, which projects downward from the gun, was hard to seat positively. Somehow, after mashing it in place dozens of times, I did not put two and two together and say, “I’ll bet this thing could drop out easily.”

Well, now it has dropped out. I drove around the pasture and various other areas where I had used the rifle, and then I gave up, packed up, and went home.

I have a new gripe. Savage rifles only come with one magazine. Glocks come with two. S&W pistols come with two. Savage…one.

Prayer did not help. I checked websites to see which local store would have the magazine, and I ended up calling Gander Outdoors. They had the magazine. I was in business. I drove and got it.

The standard magazine holds 5 rounds, which is fine as far as I’m concerned. I can’t think of any reason why I would need to shoot more than that at one time. And it’s nice for target shooting. I like to shoot 5 rounds and take a break to think. With the Savage, you fill the magazine over and over, and you don’t have to count.

I also ordered a spare magazine. They sell 10-round jobs online for the same price as the 5-round magazine I bought locally, so I figured…what the hell. Can’t hurt. Now, in order to ruin my next outing, I’ll have to lose two magazines instead of one. That is somewhat less likely.

I like going to Gander Outdoors because a) guns, and b) I get to interact with Ocala people without my dad present. My dad lives in a black cloud of resentment and determined rebellion other people can smell, so even though I love him, I have to limit my exposure, especially when other people are involved. People who meet me when I’m with my dad and then get to know me later say I’m not at all like they thought.

The cashier pronounced my first name right. I was thrilled. In Miami, Cubans call me “Steffen,” and when I correct them, they argue with me! Okay, sure. I’m middle-aged, and until today, I didn’t know what my name was. Thank you. Gracias.

It’s not just Cubans. “Stephen” is a Biblical name, and people don’t read the Bible any more, so many people are familiar with it. The pronunciation problem happens mostly with Latins and, for some reason, blacks.

I would not be surprised if a lot of black people who love church don’t read the Bible. Black churches are really just community centers. Black people love church, whether or not they care about God. He’s sort of a side dish.

White people hate church, so when you see us there, it’s usually about God.

The lady at the register said she named her son “Steven,” with a “V,” because she was afraid people would get it wrong, even up here. I told her that when people pronounce it wrong, they’re admitting they don’t read the Bible, and they don’t even know it.

She has waited on me before. I can tell she’s a Christian. I don’t have to ask. Christians–and I don’t mean worldly people who go to mass on the way to the casino–radiate warmth other Christians can detect.

It’s great to be around people I have things in common with. Latin culture is selfish, abrasive, angry, loud, and packed with arrogance. Some Latin countries are not like that, but they haven’t made a big contribution to the population of South Florida. Living in Miami was like being dragged through thorn bushes all day. Every person I dealt with inflicted a fresh scratch.

Last week, I realized people here were healing me. The kindness and patience are filling in the Miami scratches as time passes. That’s exciting. I don’t want to feel sore and battered for the rest of my life.

I like not being provoked all the time.

I rarely talked to strangers in Miami. I didn’t like repeating myself over and over or using pathetic hand gestures to communicate, and I also didn’t like rude, condescending treatment. Here I surprise myself by blurting things out to people I don’t know.

Some day I might conceivably become friendly.

My mother always told me I had been a very warm, friendly, extroverted baby. She said I reached out to people and tried to get them to pick me up. I got sick and nearly died when I was about 8 months old. She thought that was what changed me. It wasn’t. My family changed me.

It would be weird to be like that again; to be friendly, I mean. I would not know myself.

I asked someone at Gander Outdoors about a .204 Ruger. They don’t sell or order them, so I think I’ll go with Bud’s. Daddy needs this gun. Bad. Yes he does.

Well, since I wrote the last paragraph, I have done splurged. This will shock no one.

I was going to get a .204 Ruger made by Savage, because Savage is great. But I learned something interesting. The .204 Ruger rifle has a problem reminiscent of the 10mm ammunition mess.

The 10mm round was intended to be a raging beast, but because some early 10mm pistols were inferior crap which didn’t hold up to the 10mm’s power, most ammunition makers neutered their offerings. This is a great reason not to buy a 10mm pistol unless you can make ammunition. To get acceptable velocities, you will have to spend $50 per box.

In a sort of similar failure, most makers of .204 Ruger rifles use a 1:12 twist in their barrels. This is fine for smaller rounds, but most people find they get poor accuracy with 40-grain bullets, which are desirable for certain things. The very thought of buying a .204 Ruger that isn’t accurate is appalling. A lot of people complain about the twist rate.

One manufacturer–Thompson/Center–bucked the trend and designed a .204 with a 1:11 twist. People say it works fine with 40-grain bullets. And it’s guaranteed to shoot 1 MOA at 100 yards.

You can buy a new barrel for a Savage, with a faster twist. But what’s the point? Part of the fun of buying a Savage is outshooting people who have expensive guns. When you blow $300 on a new barrel, you’ve moved up to a whole new bracket, and you still have Savage’s little crude touches, to remind you where you came from.

T/C’s popular .204 is the Venture. It comes in a Predator model. For an extra hundred bucks or so, you get a thin, slick layer of camo paint which wears off easily. I was not able to see any virtue in this option. The stock isn’t that great, and you can get a better one from Boyd’s. If you do that, then what do you have? A camo barrel and a stock that doesn’t match. And you paid for a stock you don’t use. And then the camo paint wears off the barrel, and things are even worse.

Here’s something else. While I was in my usual coma, someone legalized rifle suppressors in Florida. To put a suppressor on a rifle, you have to have the end of the rifle threaded. Imagine what that will do to your little painted twigs and leaves. I need a suppressor. It will make my rifle safer and more annoying to liberals. Plus, it’s cool.

T/C makes a Venture model without the “Predator” BS. It’s exactly the same, but it’s black, and it’s a lot cheaper. And right now, Smith & Wesson, which is apparently also Thompson/Center, will give you an insane $75 rebate. So you can get a killer centerfire varmint gun for something like $375.

Are you kidding? I HAVE to buy that. It’s coercion. I have no free will any more. It’s like they tied me up and threatened me with an icepick or a stack of Justin Bieber CD’s. “Buy the rifle or spend ten hours listening to Canada’s favorite moppet!”

I may be wrong about all this, but sooner or later you have to make up your mind and buy something, so I did.

Now I have to think about reloading. Brass is super expensive for this rifle, compared to .223 crap that comes from the floors of gun ranges, so I think the best bet is to start out with factory ammo and save the cases.

I have never reloaded a rifle round. Have to get that figured out. I can’t let the press fill the cartridges, because it’s not that accurate. I’ll have to measure each charge by hand. And all the other stuff about rifle rounds, like trimming or whatever, will have to be dealt with. I don’t know much about those things.

If I get this working and get good at long-distance shooting, I’ll be a very dangerous person to my enemies. They won’t be able to get near me if I see them coming.

Of course, they could still sneak in and kill me rather easily. Hmm. Dang.

Also, I don’t have any enemies. None who are that serious, anyway. The only people who really hate me are more likely to pee on my car than try to murder me. Perhaps that will change when anti-Christian persecution gets heavy, but by that time, I’ll probably be ready to go. “Beheading? Sure. Let me sharpen your sword for you.”

The squirrels want me dead, but they’re not organized. And they’re easy to buy off with peanuts and sunflower seeds. They have no souls.

I have good daytime optics for the .204, but I am severely tempted to go ahead and get night vision. I’m looking into it. The scopes I am willing to spring for are not good enough for real distance, but then I suppose it would be weird to shoot at long range at night. Wouldn’t you think 100 yards would be more than adequate? Just guessing.

I better go outside and see if I can pop off a few rounds before I lose my new magazine. Thanks for listening.

More Guns = Better Life

I need another rifle. This is obvious. I wonder why I bothered to type it. It’s one of the fundamental assumptions of life. I always need another rifle.

I did very well shooting my .17 HMR at 100 yards. Hooray. The problem with that is that the .17 HMR does very poorly in the wind. It’s also a little weak. If I shoot a .17 HMR in a 10-mph wind, the point of impact will be several inches away from the point of aim, and I will have to guess at the size of the error. When you’re trying to shoot something like a coon or a coyote with a small bullet, you want to be accurate so you kill the animal instead of putting a hole through its ear or neutering it.

I looked at the .17 WSM, or Winchester Super Magnum. This is the exact same thing as a .17 HMR, with a bigger case and more power. As far as I can tell, it’s superior to the .17 HMR in every way it can be. More speed means less wind drift, and it’s more powerful when it hits the animal. It’s also nearly as cheap to shoot!

Still, it’s a really small bullet. It will blow around quite a bit compared to bigger bullets.

I would like my next gun to be a low-recoil machine that will kill anything up to the size of a coyote. I want the recoil to be low enough to allow me to watch the bullets hit through the scope. I also want decent range. I want something relatively cheap to shoot, too.

People are recommending the .223 (the most common AR15 round) and the .204 Ruger.

The .223 is a giant .22. It has a big case sort of like a 7.62x39mm, so it goes considerably faster than a .22 LR, and the bullets can be longer and heavier. It does not have much recoil, but my understanding is that I would be lucky to be able to see hits through a scope.

The .204 Ruger is a relatively new caliber. It goes like crazy. You can get over 4000 fps out of it. The high speed makes it more destructive at long ranges, and the trajectory is pretty flat because it’s not in the air long. I think. The .204 is extremely accurate, like the .17 HMR, and you can kill stuff at up to 400 yards, if you can shoot.

I tried to get info on the web, and it was very hard.

Here’s one problem you will have when you go to forums and ask about calibers: people who can’t shoot will chime in. They’ll say this or that gun is a “tack driver.” Then in a later forum post, they’ll say it was shooting 3″ groups at 100 yards. To them, this is accuracy. To me, it’s 2.25″ of fail.

People also lie about how well they shoot. A guy will shot two hundred rounds through a gun, and most shots will be widely dispersed. At some point, he’ll shoot three consecutive rounds into a 1/2″ area. Then he’ll tell everyone he and his gun shoot 0.5 MOA, which is total crap.

To me, “0.5 MOA” means MOST of your shots will be within a 1/2″ circle. If you hang out of an upstairs window and empty a bag of marbles onto your driveway, some will land in the same place, but it doesn’t mean you were accurate.

People are out there saying the .223 is deadly accurate, but they may be lying or limited by low standards.

People also argue about basic facts which ought to be settled by now. Depending on whom you ask, either the .204 or the .223 is much less affected than the other by wind. And the people making the claims won’t waffle. They’ll say it with authority. Obviously, half of them are wrong.

It sort of looks like the .204 is actually better in the wind. I have read that if you use reasonably heavy bullets, you will do better than the .223. Supposedly, the .223 does better when the .204 is limited by its ammunition.

Is this correct? Search me.

I think the scope thing will be the determining factor. No one is going to go out with me at night and watch me shoot coyotes or coons. No one will be around to tell me whether I hit anything. I would like to know whether I’m succeeding, without taking the golf cart all over the farm in the dark to look for a dead coon.

I don’t want to buy a compromise gun, because when you buy a compromise gun, you end up buying at least one more gun later to make up for it.

If I got a .223, I would probably end up wanting a .17 WSM and a .243 or .22-250 to replace it.

Once nice thing about the .204 Ruger is that you can get a super-accurate version relatively cheap. Of course, the source is Savage. Strange company. Cheap guns that outshoot expensive guns. For about $500, I can get a .204 Ruger bolt action what will get the job done. No one around here carries it, so I guess I would order from Bud’s.

After that, I would need 200 rounds of Hornady V-Max to start my brass collection. The brass for .204 Ruger is expensive. I would have to get dies, too.

Sooner or later I will move north, to a bigger piece of land where I can shoot better game at longer distances. I think the .17 HMR with FMJ and the .204 Ruger will cover a lot of the bases. You can shoot squirrels and rabbits with .17 HRM FMJ (I am told, anyway) without destroying the meat, and the .204 Ruger will kill anything between rabbit and deer. Up north there would also be groundhogs and foxes. I would still need a legitimate deer rifle, however, and maybe I should make sure it was also appropriate for deer and bears.

I could always use my K31 rifle for deer. Not sure whether ammunition is available.

Anyway, this is where things sit at the moment.

I’ve been trying to find turkeys here, and I haven’t seen anything. I guess they don’t like my farm. I’ve read that you’re supposed to plant clover and chicory to attract deer and turkeys. I haven’t tried a call yet.

I believe it’s time to splurge on a night scope. I love this farm, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a great place to shoot edible game in the daytime, so I feel I should gear up for the animals it does have to offer.

Scope first, or new rifle first? Hard to say. If I have the scope, I can use it on the .17 HMR right now. I forget whether I’m allowed to shoot coons with it at night, on private land without a light. I have to check.

I look forward to moving past squirrels.