Hunting
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Wednesday wanderings.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

To all our veterans: my sincere thanks for your service and sacrifice. Enjoy this day knowing that there are people in this country who appreciate the job you do.

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Rob R. sent me a tip that Jeff Quinn at Gunblast saw the Chiappa Rhino exhibited at the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers show in Reno. (Scroll down to just about the bottom of the page for the pics.) Looks like they're actually coming, though no pricing yet.

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George Ure over at the Independence Journal has an interesting take on government holidays:

A couple of major insights usually come from Veteran's Day. First is that I've always held that if you give someone a day off to 'observe' something, then they ought to be honor (if not legally) bound to do some observing. I don't mind the bond traders and bankers that get the day off, but if they aren't laying flowers on graves, showing up at a parade, or in some other way honoring those who have paid freedom's highest price, then WTF are they getting the day off for?

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Deer season in western Oregon ended last Friday, and I have an observation. While I don't wish to sound like Statler and Waldorf, I'm not at all impressed with the trend toward more powerful cartridges for deer hunting. I've talked to quite a number of hunters in this neck of the woods, and these days the most common caliber chosen for the task appears to be a .300 Winchester Magnum. If one ever needed a perfect illustration of the term "overkill", that would be it.

When I was coming of age, if someone said "deer rifle" that meant a .30-30. If they said "elk rifle", that meant a .30-06. My Uncle Bob, one of the best hunters I know, used a .300 Savage for everything. To find a .30-30 in the woods today is something of a rarity, a little like seeing a red plaid hunting coat: "how quaint!" I can't believe that these calibers have become any less lethal over the last few decades, but I can believe that hunters have become less skilled. Why bother with skill building when you can buy hardware to compensate, right?

-=[ Grant ]=-

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Everything has a purpose.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Even the .32ACP.

Many of you are familiar with Ed Harris, firearms engineer and ballistic experimenter. One of Ed's passions is the hunting of small game - squirrels, rabbits, etc. - and the guns that facilitate that activity.

(Before we go any further, it seems that a lot of folks today don't have any experience with serious small game hunting. There are an awful lot of people who consider it somehow inferior to the taking of large game, but they are sorely mistaken. In virtually every respect, hunting wily little creatures is just as demanding of one's hunting skills as taking a trophy elk. Fieldcraft and marksmanship are just as difficult, but since you get more than one chance per trip you can hone your skills over a larger number of animals. Because of the increased experience, a good small game hunter is almost invariably a good big game hunter, but the reverse - at least in my experience - is rarely true.)

Ed has made up a number of dedicated long guns for the task, but has recently been experimenting with purpose-built handguns to go along with them. What he and John Taylor have come up with is a modified Beretta Model 70 in .32ACP, which Ed calls "the Third Level of Bunny Gun Nirvana".

Now I've never thought much of the .32ACP cartridge except for use as a deep concealment backup gun, but Ed had other ideas. He started by fitting his Beretta with 7- and 13-inch barrels, then developed a subsonic heavy bullet loading:

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The barrels are supplied with a very interesting scope mount:

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Ed talks about the performance of the combination:

Using 94-gr. Meiser LFN .312 cast bullet and 1.7 grs. of Bullseye velocity just shy of 900 f.p.s. Very low noise, from 13 inch barrel slightly louder than H-D military with can (suppressor), no muzzle flash, the 7 inch barrel sounds like .22 match pistol with standard velocity. Indoor range groups were shot at 25 yards. Not the best range light and targets oscillate a bit, so like it's trying to head-shoot the pirate from pitching deck of a destroyer, but shows potential.

It looks to be a formidable little game-getter!

-=[ Grant ]=-

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Systems analysis and the sighting-in of firearms

Monday, October 06, 2008

This weekend was the opening of general deer season here in Oregon. I could tell it was opening weekend, because our normally deserted gravel road, which leads into the mountains, has been turned into Interstate 5 for deer hunters! The parade of all the hopeful woodsmen (and perhaps not a few woodswomen) going after Bambi made me realize I'd missed something this year: hunter's sight-in at our gun club.

You see, last January my wife and I bought a new place. When we moved we gave up our club memberships, as a) the club is now 60 miles away, and b) we can shoot all we want on our own property. I don't miss the club, but I do miss the circus-like atmosphere of sight-in days. I actually enjoyed helping out those whose shooting skills were not, shall we say, fully developed. They needed all the help they could get!

(Sight-in days at our former club is a big event. It occupies every full weekend for a solid month; it's not unusual to have several hundred guns per day go through the system, as the club is one of the few rifle ranges within easy driving distance of the Portland, OR metro area. Working at sight-in means long days and lots of activity.)

In recent years I worked sight-in alongside my friends Georges and Maurice, who got the same kick out of the event that I did. We kept a running tally of the best, worst, and most over-gunned shooters on the line. During the lulls we'd trade stories of the unusual incidents we'd had, and not all of them were with customers!

One particularly busy day I had a run-in with one of the folks who served as Assistant Chief Range Officer for the event. I was helping a middle-aged fellow who'd arrived toting a .30-06 of unremarkable (though completely serviceable) pedigree. He showed me his gun, his ammo, and sat down at the bench. The club provided sandbags and front rests for the guns, but this fellow didn't want to use them. "My zero is different if I shoot from a bench than from my hands, so I'd just like to rest my elbows on the table." That was fine with me; this fellow had obviously been around the block more than once and thus knew what he was doing. (His target would later prove my analysis to be correct.)

He had just fired his second round when the aforementioned RO came rushing up. "He needs to use the rest", he sputtered. "He'll never know if he's properly zeroed shooting from his hands!" I told him that the customer knew his own needs, and that I admired the fellow for obviously knowing more than the average schmuck who came through the door.

This annoyed the RO to no end; he wanted to argue with me, insisting that I was a complete fool for letting the customer do this. I simply smiled, waved him away, and went back to my job.

The RO in question, like many, was confused about the reason we sight in a firearm. The goal of sight-in is to get all parts of the weapon system - the gun, ammo, sights, and shooter - in alignment so that the bullets land where desired. If we take away - isolate - any part of that system, we have removed a functioning part that will affect the outcome. The outcome is what we're testing! We're not testing the scope (which is what this RO was convinced we were doing), or the ammo, but the results that they - together with the shooter - produce. We have to test all parts of the system in concert, so that we can see if the goal is being met.

Let's say that we were to test the system using sandbags and a bench. There are very few rifles made that will have the same zero point no matter how the gun is suspended; the points at which the suspension occurs, the amount of pressure on the suspension points, the direction of that pressure, and even the resulting direction of recoil will all change when the gun is taken off the bench and shot from a field position. All of those will change the landing point of the bullet, sometimes dramatically.

Now consider the shooter's input. The head position from a bench is different than it is from standing (or even sitting or kneeling, and especially from prone.) The shooter's eye will not be in the same place relative to the sights or scope; the cheek weld point will be different; the shoulder will be further forward or backward, depending on the physique of the shooter. The shooting hand will shift position slightly, leading to a different grip pressure and direction of pull on the trigger. Think any of those might affect the outcome of the shot? You bet they will - all of 'em.

Change enough of those inputs, and you'll end up with a system that won't shoot to the same point of aim under the expected conditions. We need to check the system's alignment (gauged by the impact point of the bullet) under the conditions in which it will be used. For hunting, that means "not from a bench rest."

An extreme example of this can be found simply by looking at G. David Tubb's rifle. For those who don't know, he shoots with the rifle held at an angle, which is very different than what we were all taught to do! That doesn't matter, though, because he's set his sights to hit correctly with that unorthodox hold. Imagine we "isolated" his rifle; put it on a bench, cradled it level in sandbags, and proceeded to "zero" the gun. Guess what? It wouldn't hit the correct point, because it wouldn't be held in the position in which Tubb shoots the thing. Given his modest success at highpower competition (!), I'd say he knows what he's doing!

One day I was visiting one of the very best handgun trainers I know. I picked up her gun and was surprised to see her sights drifted quite a ways to the right. I thought that odd, but she pointed out that they were that way because that's where they had to be to allow her to hit where she wants the gun to hit. Given that she can regularly clean the clocks of just about any male shooter - some of them state and regional champions - at will, I'd say her system is working perfectly. That's all that matters!

Are there times when we want isolation? Certainly - when we're testing specific parts of the system. Comparing one load to another, for example, demands an isolated gun; we don't care exactly where the rounds hit, because we're interested in the differences between two inputs of the same type. In order to see those differences, we have to eliminate all other variables that might obscure them.

Sighting in, on the other hand, is all about the whole system. To align the system, we need all of its parts to be working as they normally do. The fellow on the line that day understood the concept; the RO didn't.

There is no substitute for thinking about what you're doing, and why you're doing it.

-=[ Grant ]=-

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FRIDAY DOUBLE FEATURE: An interesting thought about hunting

Friday, July 18, 2008

I don't know why, but today's other feature about the vegan strip club seemed the perfect lead-in for this!

As I've mentioned, I'm not a "hunter" in the sense that most people use the term. Trophies do not interest me; I've never had my picture taken with a kill, and don't foresee the day when I would. For me, hunting is about eating. (I subscribe to the school of thought that claims "vegetarian" to be an old Native American word for "lousy hunter.")

At the same time, I'm also a bit of a health nut. I eat organic food whenever possible, not because I believe in any leftist/communist causes but because I care about my health. I'm uncertain about the long-term effects of the processed chemicals that we put in our bodies, and do whatever I can to reduce or eliminate them. Thus, the organic food - including delicious meat - in my diet.

(As an aside, it's always interesting when my wife and I go shopping in the local healthy food emporiums. Everyone in those havens of collectivism dresses in the trendy eco-friendly fashions of the minute. My wife and I, to put it delicately, do not. I'll admit that we do tend to stick out a bit amongst that crowd, but we would no matter what we wore.

Just by looking one could tell that we're not like the sheeple that populate those places, and it's as much about attitude as anything. One time she whispered in my ear "do you realize there are only two guns anywhere near this place, and we've got both of them?" I replied "I wonder how many of these people would faint if they found out!" We then chuckled softly yet maniacally as we went about our shopping.)

Forgive the digression.

As it happens, one of the most organic sources of protein available is wild game. Meat which has been harvested from animals in the wild not only tastes great, but is great for you. I won't bore you with the numerous studies which show various kinds of game having more good things and less bad things than factory-raised protein, but the facts are clear: wild meat is good for you.

It is odd, therefore, that some of the most vocal anti-hunting shills in the world wear their organic diets as badges of honor while denouncing some of the cleanest, purest foods available. It seems to me that if one is truly concerned about eating a healthy diet, one must of necessity either grow, or hunt, one's own meat. Hunting is the proactive approach to maintaining a healthy lifestyle when one does not have the real estate on which to raise their own.

(Of course, I don't want to get a trend started, else there wouldn't be any of that delicious and nutritious game left for me!)

-=[ Grant ]=-
A proud member of PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals
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FRIDAY SURPRISE: It's metaphysics time!

Friday, November 16, 2007
When I was in college, it was fashionable amongst a certain segment of the student population to walk around carrying a copy of the New York Review Of Books. The aim, of course, was to appear worldly and sophisticated to people who recognized the title, but didn't themselves read it.

The great secret was that very few of the people carrying the NYROB around, treating it as an icon of sophistication, ever actually read the thing either!

Many people buy copies of Musashi and Sun-Tzu which they never read, but which certainly look good on their bookshelves and serve to create a certain image. It helps, of course, when people quote common passages from Art of War or Book of Five RIngs without ever having read them in their actual context.

So it is with Meditations on Hunting by Jose Ortega y Gasset. It has been called "the most quoted work in sporting literature", but it appears that no one has ever actually read the thing!

Allow me to digress for a moment. My own hunting experiences are relatively few compared to many who read this blog. Though my father hunted, and I accompanied him at times, it was always a subsistence kind of affair: he hunted because we needed the meat. He would go out, get his deer (or elk), and that would be the end of it. He never took pictures of his kills nor kept trophies; hunting was a means to an end (to eat) rather than an end in itself.

As an adult, I wrestle with this. I don't need to hunt, meat being readily available otherwise, and so have chosen not to (save for necessary agricultural activities, such as pest and predator control, which aren't really hunting.) Despite this self-defined comfort, there has always been a gnawing at the back of my mind: what am I missing? Did my father derive anything other than protein from his hunts; was there something more profound at work? (That my father always hunted solo, eschewing the elk camp and its beer-fueled antics, left me suspecting that there might be.)

I wanted clarity on the subject, and thought that Ortega might be able to provide it. Color me surprised when I could find no one, even seasoned and experienced hunters of my acquaintance, who owned a copy. Our library system, which spans the largest city in Oregon to the most backwood hamlet, did not list it in their holdings. How odd! Such an important work, well known and oft-mentioned, yet no one seemed to have actually encountered it.

So, when the Second Edition of the Wescott translation of Meditations recently came out, I availed myself of free shipping on Amazon and ordered it. Finally I would get to see what all the fuss was about!

The book springs from Ortega's contention that life comes to us (or we to it) essentially empty, and it derives whatever meaning it has from the choices that we make relative to each situation in which we find ourselves. To Ortega, life really exists at the boundary of man and his surroundings, those surroundings to include our own thoughts and feelings. Hunting is such an interaction, and creates meaning by virtue of what it requires of the hunter.

The chase, the stalk, and yes the kill, all have great importance to the experience; missing any one negates the hunt's meaning. Ortega contends that the tension created by the sequence is an essential part of the experience, and without the unease created by the death of the animal that sequence becomes a farce, devoid of any meaning. This is the genesis of his most famous quote: "one does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted." Do not, though, assume that quote to be a substitute for the book - there is far more contained in that simple statement than is readily apparent, for it only hints at Ortega's complete philosophy.

(Like the poseurs I mentioned at the top, walking around with the NYROB poking out of their pocket, the passage is often intoned by those who have never read it in context. Having now digested his whole treatment of the subject, the statement by itself seems a caricature.)

It's important to understand that Meditations isn't about hunting as much as it is about man's relationship to the hunt. Remember that Ortega was a philosopher by training and occupation, holding a doctorate in the subject and chairing departments at Spanish universities. Thus, he's not a hunter who waxes a bit philosophic, but a serious philosopher who looks at the act of the hunt and reconciles it with his overall point of view.

As philosophers go, Ortega is surprisingly readable. Make no mistake, though - if you hated studying philosophy in school, Meditations may not be your cup of tea. It isn't about shooting deer, but about allowing the mind to learn more about itself. It requires introspection, an ability to deal in concepts rather than kinesthetics, and thus may turn off some people. However, his work is illuminating enough - even for the average person - to make it worth the effort.

I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Meditations on Hunting and take whatever length of time you need to digest what Ortega wrote. I think that you'll come away with a better understanding of yourself, and a clearer picture of why you choose - or not, as the case may be - to hunt.

-=[ Grant ]=-

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