Because Squirrels are too Fast to Club

I had some fun with the John Deere today.

I love being able to type that. I have a John Deere. I’m not in Miami. I hear English every day. Everyone is polite here. Today I took my dad to a barbecue joint, and we were waited on by an attractive young lady who was so nice, it would have been a privilege just to sit at her booth and drink water.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Miami and New York, so I suppose it’s understandable that I would forget that women can be positive factors in one’s life. They really are wonderful when they function correctly.

With all the female prizes I’ve known, when I think of women, my first thoughts are of things like whining, verbal abuse, endless manipulation, constant demands for insincere affirmations of attractiveness, the danger of having one’s house given to a person who will then use it to fornicate with the man she cheated with during one’s marriage, endless alimony, emasculation, bickering, and being seen as an annoying but necessary ATM with feet.

There are women out there who make men’s lives better instead of much, much worse. There really are. I’m pretty sure.

Anyway, I was mowing the yard, and I ran out of diesel. In my brilliance, I thought the best move was to drive toward the workshop (and the diesel can) until I got as close as possible. That turned out to be a poor strategy. It takes quite a while to get the air out of the fuel system when you run one of these things dry. On the up side, I saved myself maybe 9 seconds of arduous walking.

I got the tractor running and put it away, and then I started working on guns. On my cool new workbench.

I have been trying to get outfitted for quality squirrel extermination. I don’t want to wound them and have them sue me later. I want to be able to nail a squirrel reliably anywhere within a hundred feet. It’s not as simple as one would think.

I love scopes. Unfortunately, in order to use one at varying distances with squirrel-level accuracy, you have to know what the bullet does at every range. If you don’t, you can miss a squirrel four feet away. Figuring all this stuff out is surprisingly challenging. Then you have to add in the inherent inaccuracy of the .22 rifle and the small size of a squirrel’s kill zone.

I thought I would try a peep sight on the new Savage A22. A peep sight lies closer to the bullet’s path than a scope, so when shooting up close, it should work nearly perfectly. When shooting at longer distances, it should be nearly as accurate as a scope, with a much easier target acquisition process.

I ordered a peep sight, and then I started thinking about it. I only have two rifles a peep sight will fit: the Savage and a Marlin 60. The Savage is superior in nearly every way, and it has a dynamite Accu-trigger. It seems like it’s the prime candidate for a scope.

The peep sight I bought only works with Weaver and Picatinny mounts, and the Marlin has a dovetail. This means I need to consider a different sight. I can cobble an adaptor together, but it will raise the rear sight too high.

My current plan is to get a Tech-Sight made for the Marlin. This company makes aperture (peep) sight packages. You get the front and rear sight in one box, so you don’t have to buy the rear sight and then try to figure out which front sight you need.

This is where things stand at the moment. I now have a Nikon scope for the Savage, and I’m going to pick up some rings and install it. I already put Weaver bases on the rifle.

If this works out, I’ll have two pretty good options for killing squirrels.

I am still banned eternally at Rimfire Central, and no one ever responded to my requests for information as to the cause. I’m wondering if there is a nut over there moderating. Is it some firearm person I offended during my blogging heyday?

I dealt with some real jewels back then. I remember getting all sorts of flak on a gun forum because I said I, as a lawyer with three years of graduate education, was smart enough to read a firearm statute and understand it. There was no way to make ignorant laymen understand that this was what people paid me hundreds of dollars per hour to do, and that there had to be a reason why they were willing to cough it up.

The guys I argued with thought I was earth’s greatest egotist because I thought I could do my job. They were incensed because I said I could figure out a statute. Imagine what would happen if I told the Florida Bar I couldn’t interpret a statute! “Dear Steve: as a newly suspended attorney…”

It’s kind of astonishing that they thought they knew enough to argue with me. I don’t tell dentists they’re wrong when they tell me about my teeth.

There are a lot of insecure jerks in the firearms world. Guys, wearing tactical pants and owning guns doesn’t make you a superhero, a sniper, a SEAL or…much of anything. Lighten up and get over yourselves. Anyone who can stand in line at Walmart can have a house full of guns.

Could it be the forum poobahs are mad because I said the guy (“Arrowdodger”) who makes KAT triggers for Marlin rifles didn’t respond to my efforts to contact him? If so, they really blew it by banning me, because very few people saw my remarks there, and thousands will see them here, where they are beyond the reach of forum bans and will be on display in perpetuity. I certainly didn’t mean to disparage him or cause him any problems. I admire anyone who comes up with a product like that.

Other people have complained about being unable to reach him, and they haven’t been banned, so I suppose my ban has nothing to do with him.

I will never know. You can’t get closure when communication is impossible.

It doesn’t matter. I can live with the 3000 forums I already belong to, and besides, I can always rejoin from a different IP address. There is no way for them to track me.

I hate to lose a neat username, though.

I’ll try to get out and get scope rings tomorrow. Then comes squirrel Ragnarok. I hope.