To be a fly on the wall

The January Guns and Ammo has an article by Jeff Cooper on the development of the Modern Technique for Pistols.

If time machines existed, one of the trips i would make is to Southern California circa 1960. I'd go to the matches where Cooper, Weaver, et. al. invented modern combat shooting.

Reminder


I do most of my blogging here.

More on the WSSMs

A little more info on the .25 WSSM.

And Chuck Hawks takes a look at the .243 WSSM.

As can be seen from these figures, from a 24" barrel the .243 WSSM offers performance with all bullet weights equal to or slightly better than the .243 Winchester, and equal to but no better than the 6mm Remington. Most of the advantage over the standard .243 Winchester is lost, however, in the short barrels actually being supplied on Browning and Winchester hunting rifles.

If you have an itch for one of the WSSMs, you should read the whole thing.

Useful Product

I've been using one of these for the last year and they really do work. When you "holster" your rifle, the rear stock is held close to your body and doesn't swing or flop around when walking/climbing. It makes it much easier to move up and down steep or rough ground where you want two hand for balancing and holding on.

I usually use mine with the daypack attachment. That has the added advantage of leaving the rifle sling with just the right amount of slack for use as a shooting aid.

The Blessing that is Google

I read this in Cooper's Commentary

There is no rule in journalism which demands that a writer must know anything about what he writes, but still we wish that editors would make some sort of effort to tidy up what their contributors set down. For example, consider this, "With a good .30 caliber Weatherby magnum, even a mediocre shot can pick a small bird off a limb at 1200 yards." Now that is really something! This is the work of a syndicated columnist whose name I will not reveal for fear of embarrassment. But really, this sort of thing is ridiculous. The author writes, ".30 caliber Weatherby magnum," is an artifact which does not exist, yet he assumes that his readers will take him seriously. This guy pretends to be a knowledgeable shooter - which gives all of us a bad name.

and immediately wondered who the smug jerk was.

Thanks to Google i know and it really is no surprise.

New Stuff

A couple of interesting things in the latest Guns and Ammo (January 2004).

1. Remington is going to produce the 6.8 Remington Special Purpose Cartridge for the military. (James Rummel discussed this a few weeks back). The round is based on the 30 Remington and functions through the M-16. specs call for a 115 BTSP at 2,800 fps.

2. Winchester is bringing out a .25 WSSM. I don't want one of them, but i expect that this means there will be a lot of 25-06s and .257 Roberts on the used racks. And i do want one of those.

3. Hornady and Ruger are bringing out the .204 Ruger based on a necked-down .222 Remington Mag. This press release says it will drive a 32 grain V-MAX bullet at 4,225 feet per second.

Smarter than the average bear

First morning of buck season (monday), hunting the same stand that came up empty in bear season, a young black bear ran by within 25 yards of where i sat. He made it through the season and now has a buffet of deer gutpiles to fatten on before denning.......

Not that i could tell

BEAR HUNTERS HAVING A PHENOMENAL SEASON

I hunted the first two days and saw nothing. Last two years someone (not me) took a bear on the tract i hunt. This year, no one saw anything. That was a bit of a surprise since there were signs and scat all over the ridge for most of the fall as well as a couple of live sightings by our neighbors.

I'm not bummed, though. It is something of a miracle that there are bears to hunt in Somerset county at all. The Game Commission has done a great job on that score. The numbers are way up and their range has expanded out of the big timber up north to cover most of the state.

Of course i agree

If I could only have one handgun to last a lifetime, it would be a .357 revolver with a four inch barrel, adjustable sights, in stainless steel.

Just one of the many fine entries over at Shooters' Carnival.

Jeff Cooper

Dillon Precision is now offering most of Jeff Cooper's books. Check here and here.

If you like the what you read in Guns and Ammo or at the website (see blogroll at left), the books are a rare treat. I often disagree with him, but he always makes me think.

Yes Indeed

Kim du Toit features the Browning A-5 as today's GGP. A good choice.

Mr du Toit writes:

The Auto-5 still belongs in every serious shooter's safe, for its heritage if for no other reason. And some day, a Sweet Sixteen will be in mine.

Yes indeed. And carefully stored right now in my safe is an A-5, a Sweet Sixteen no less. It's a shooter, not a collector, but its there.

Nature and Myth

Gregg Easterbrook makes a good point about forest management and our perceptions of nature:

Why is Southern California burning? Because it's supposed to, as far as nature is concerned, at least.
Before people began interfering with forests in the arid Western United States by "managing" them--and research shows that indigenous Americans were engaged in significant forest management long before Europeans arrived--a natural cycle of forest fire and regrowth was standard.
***
When men and women settled the American West in large numbers in the nineteenth century, they began fighting wildfires. One result was that forests became denser, because the periodic minor conflagrations that occurred naturally in the West, removing brush and tinder ("fuel," to foresters) stopped occurring. When Lewis and Clark and others of the period arrived at West Coast forests in the nineteenth century, they described open woodlands through which anyone could easily stroll. Today, most forest areas of the West are so thick you can't go off-trail without a machete. Periodic small fires no longer take out underbrush and "understory," the medium-sized vegetation that dies, dries, and provides fuel to heat trees to the temperature at which they burn. Stopping periodic small Western forest fires allows fuel to accumulate, increasing the chance of an eventual fierce, uncontrollable fire that heats trees to the flame point across a large area. Stopping periodic small fires, and thus allowing the woods to grow dense, also means the condition people think of today as "natural" for Western forests--thick growth and lots of very old trees--is in most cases artificial.

A little known but important fact about the western ecosystem is that the abundance of wildlife observed by Lewis and Clark was an anomaly. Prior to Columbus, the Native-Americans held animals numbers in check through hunting. But when European diseases wiped out most of the indigenous peoples, game numbers exploded.

Losing sight of the purpose

Sometimes i wonder about rifle designers. It seems that they often lost track of how the final product will be used and create something that is neither fish nor fowl.

Case in point: Remington with their Model Seven and their Short-Action Ultra Magnum family of cartridges.

When i went to buy a compact rifle i intended to get a Model 7 in 260 Remington. I switched to the Ruger 77 Compact for two reasons. The Ruger was over a hundred bucks cheaper at retail. But the more critical factor was that the Ruger was shorter by almost four inches. The Model 7 in 260 has a 20" barrel. The Ruger is a fraction over 16". If it was worth getting a new rifle to lose four inches in OAL compared to my 30-06, then saving eight inches made a lot more sense.

One of the reasons Remington came out with the 7mm and .300 RSAUM was that the Winchester Short Magnums would not work in the Model 7. Have to put the short mag in your short rifle, i guess, even if that means inventing a new cartridge.

The only problem is that even a short magnum needs a longer barrel to really out-perform a standard cartridge. So Remington put a 22" barrel on the Model 7 Magnum. Which means the compact rifle isn't very compact anymore.

Furthermore, the short magnums still kick. The recoil of the 7mm RSAUM is only 5% less than a 30-06 (comparing 140 gr. 7MM @ 3150 to 165 gr. .308@ 2930). The 260 Remington, in contrast, kicks 30% less. So the Model 7 Magnum ends up being a hard-kicking gun only marginally shorter than a Model 700 in .280 Remington.

Recoil is a problem in the Model Seven because many people buy it as a youth gun. It is a great one in 7mm-08 or .260 Remington. But in a magnum it punishes women and kids more than would a full-sized 7mm Mauser.


Adult men don't get a pass either. Because the Ruger Compact and Remington Model Seven have shorter stocks, it is easy to creep up on the scope when shooting. With the recoil of a magnum, you will eventually get smacked by the scope because you got too close.

Why I Like Revolvers

Pharmacist Shoots at Armed Robber

The bullet missed its target, but scared the robber. Police say the man fled on foot.

"The gun jammed after the first shot, you know, or we could have popped off ten rounds," Hadley said with a touch of regret.


This isn't the first time their store has been robbed.

But come on.... if i ran a business that was a robbery magnet, i would make time to clean my weapon and i would make absolutely sure my ammo feeds flawlessly.

HT: Res Ipsa Loquitur

Soon to be orphaned?

The 260 Remington came out around 1998. So it is not a good sign that ammo makers are cutting back on their offerings in this calibre. I just checked Cheaper than Dirt and they listed only four options from just two makers.

There used to be a Speer Nitrex offering that is gone now. And Remington has dropped their 125 grain Partition load.

A Perfect Day

IMHO any day spent hunting is a good day. But looking at this picture and reading his entry makes me think that Weck Up To Thees! may have had a perfect day.

Handloading Primer

Publicola has a new post up at Shooters' Carnival called Handloading for Beginners. If you have thought about getting started rolling your own, read it. He packs in plenty of information.

As he points out, handloading doesn't actually save you money-- it just lets you shoot more for the same money. It's also a great hobby. Especially in the winter when nothing is in season. A couple hours at the reloading bench beats staring at the January repeats on TV.

Fool

A grizzly end for man who liked to tell bears 'I love you'

A bear-lover who would creep up to grizzlies in the wild chanting "I love you" to prove that they posed no danger has been killed by them.

What remained of Timothy Treadwell, 46 - author, filmmaker and celebrity for his unorthodox views on the animals - was recovered from the Katmai National Park in Alaska this week. His bear attacker had buried part of him in a so-called food cache.

Bear Kills Bear Expert, Companion in Alaska

Treadwell was known for his confidence around bears. He often touched them, and gave them names. Once he was filmed crawling along the ground singing as he approached a sow and two cubs.

Over the years, Park Service officials, biologists and others expressed concern about his safety and the message he was sending.

"At best he's misguided," Deb Liggett, superintendent at Katmai, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2001. "At worst he's dangerous. If Timothy models unsafe behavior, that ultimately puts bears and other visitors at risk."

Wildlife author killed, eaten by bears he loved

Treadwell's films of close-up encounters with giant bears brought him a bounty of national media attention. The fearless former drug addict from Malibu, Calif. -- who routinely eased up close to bears to chant "I love you'' in a high-pitched, sing-song voice -- was the subject of a show on the Discovery Channel and a report on "Dateline NBC." Blond, good-looking and charismatic, he appeared for interviews on David Letterman's show and "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" to talk about his bears. He even gave them names: Booble, Aunt Melissa, Mr. Chocolate, Freckles and Molly, among others.

A self-proclaimed eco-warrior, he attracted something of a cult following too. Chuck Bartlebaugh of "Be Bear Aware,'' a national bear awareness campaign, called Treadwell one of the leaders of a group of people engaged in "a trend to promote getting close to bears to show they were not dangerous.

"He kept insisting that he wanted to show that bears in thick brush aren't dangerous. The last two people killed (by bears) in Glacier National Park went off the trail into the brush. They said their goal was to find a grizzly bear so they could 'do a Timothy.' We have a trail of dead people and dead bears because of this trend that says, 'Let's show it's not dangerous.' ''

Shooters' Carnival

Two really good posts are up: both by Publicola: proper use of a rifle sling and the economics of handloading.

Big bore guys are never satisfied

Lt. Eben Swift in the Journal of the United States Cavalry Association, circa 1887:

"There are no fiercer fighters on earth than these Afghans, Zulus, and Arabs, who, armed with hand weapons entirely, were able to run over well-disciplined troops armed with breech-loading rifles. The officers were earnest in declaring that toy pistols would not do for such service; that there must be no doubt of the ability of the weapon to drop an adversary in his tracks. Many would not trust the caliber .45 and favored the double-barreled pistol caliber .577 and the four-barreled pistol caliber .476 on account of their stopping power."


In 1879 a British Major Edin Baker wrote:

"I saw Captain H. of the Bengal Cavalry, empty five shots from his revolver into the back of a Ghazi, who was running amuck through camp, at less than five yards range, without stopping him....I consider the service revolver should throw a heavy ball of .5 inch to .55 inch diameter.

The revolver they are critiquing is the British blackpowder .455 with its 250 grain lead bullet.

Both quotes from A. C. Gould, Modern American Pistols and Revolvers, 1888.