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Rifle Loony NewsVolume 4 Issue 3 November 2012

John Barsness & Eileen Clarke www.riflesandrecipes.com

What’s Up?Dogging ItEC Winter has hit with a vengeance this morning. Good for hunting, not so good for the search for a new bird dog. Somehow I thought I had time--you know, fall and winter, half a year? But with the snow, even though it’s only the third week in October as I write, it’s obvious fall is over and time is running out. We haven’t even decided on a breed yet. The big problem is we have been so atrociously bad at picking our own bird dogs, that we’re a bit gun shy. (Don’t laugh; it’s not funny. No, really.) Before I get inundated with e-mail about “How to Pick a Puppy’ I’ll tell you we know the basics: breeding counts, but so does tossing a ball at a re-triever and seeing what happens, putting a feather in front of them--or a whole wing--and standing back. We don’t al-ways look for the one who beats the others to the feather or ball, but it’s something to consider. (We’ve learned from the school of bad choices that you don’t pick the alpha female of the litter.) So, you see, we seem to know about what not to pick, it’s the what TO pick that gets tricky. We’ve done much better when we don’t do the picking at all. Take Gillis, John’s first bird dog. John was 20,married to his starter wife, and one day his mother in law showed up with two black Lab pups. “Here,” she said, “This one’s yours. The other one is for your cousin.” And that was that. John had thought about getting a bird dog, but that’s as far as it went. But Gillis turned out to be a great dog, who hunted 14 years, and didn’t suffer fools. Who was the fool, you ask? I was. I met Gillis when he was 9 years old. He was a smelly, bark dog, who tried to mount anything and everyone who knelt down or had the bad luck to be short. And started whining at ever higher pitch as soon as we hit a gravel road. One September morning, I decided to follow John and his fart hound (excuse myFrench)outintothefieldtoseeifhehadanyredeemingqualities. (Gillis, that is.) He did. We were after ruffed grouse, in a little creek bot-tom out of Missoula, and after watching him work closely, with the agility of a gymnast and diligence of an IRS agent, I was hooked. John drug out his grandmother’s JC Higgins 20gaugesidebysideforme,andIstartedfollowingGillisaround, too.

Of course, like most new bird hunters, I wasn’t a very good wing shot. In fact I was terrible. But Gillis forgave me my misses. What he didn’t forgive was my philosophy. He believed any meat was meat. (Dog brain, dog thoughts.) I believed in The Small Soul Theory: it had to be big enough to make a meal. It came to a head in his last season. We lived in central Montana by then, and had hundreds of thou-sands of acres of bird country. The populations weren’t as dense as the Midwest, and often I got tired of the slow pace and would head back home to do something useful, while John continued on. But this last year, Gillis was 14, was totally deaf, had bad hips, and couldn’t hunt very long, very often. So after an hour or so of slim pickings, I suggested that I take Gillis with me and head home. AsGillisandIheadedacrossawheatstubblefielddirectly to the truck, John headed down into the river bot-tomwillowstofindmorebirds.Wewerehalfwayacrossthewheatstubble,Gillisquartering20yards in frontofme (a hunter to his last breath), when he put up a lone dove,theverydefinitionofaSmallSoul:notenoughtofeed even one person, one meal. I didn’t even lift the gun. In front of me, Gillis tensed, His long black body, straining to hear what he could no longer hear: the shot. Hewatchedthebirdflyaway,unharmed,andlookedoverhis shoulder at me: when he saw I hadn’t even tried, he gave me the dirtiest look I’d ever seen in my life. I could almost hear two four letter words escape his lips--and it wasn’t ‘good shot’. He turned from me, scanning the horizon for John. John was several hundred yards away, about to drop down into the willows, but Gillis spotted him, and took off in an old-dog lope. “Wait,” I yelled and tried to

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catch up with him. It was useless. He couldn’t hear, and he wouldn’t stop. So I yelled for John. “Gillis is coming,” I yelled. “Wait for him,” and once they had joined up, I headed to the truck alone. Keith was next, named after that other Big Bore Boy, Elmer. Keithwas 105 pounds of chocolate Labwhoknew no barriers. He lived to please us, and to retrieve birds, making more than one totally blind retrieve. He re-trieved a goose once, that I’d actually downed while he was in his kennel box in the truck parked half a mile away. We’dgonetoAlbertatogetfirstcrackatmigratinggeese,andhe’dhuntedhardfor2days.Thatthirdmorningwe decided to give him a break, so we’d kenneled him in the truck,butparkedthetruckatanedgeofthefieldwewerehunting. Oneofthelastbirdsthatflewoverusbeforelunchflew onmy side of the blind, and I winged him. As wewatched,heflew400yardsofftoasmallpondanddisap-peared into the reeds. We decided it was a good time to quit, so John walked back to the truck and drove it the blind sowecouldpickupdecoys.Butfirstweweregoingtofindthat goose. I let Keith out and we headed toward the pond. We tried to keep him at heel, but he’dsomehowfiguredoutwhatwasup.Heloped directly to the pond, and made a circle around it, sniffing theair and theground,then making a bee-line for the reeds at one end and diving into them. The goose squirt-ed out of the reeds with Keith right behind him. And voilà. How blind is that retrieve? Of course we didn’t pick Keith. When Gillis passed away, we told Norm Strung we’d need a bird dog, and thought no more about it. A few days later, Norm called. “Sendme$300,”hesaid.Wedid.Andsoonafter Norm’s friend Tom Young drove up to Norm’shouse,andseta12-weekoldchoco-late Lab in the driveway. Ours. Then there was Dru. Yes, Keith was named after Elmer Keith. But did you know he and Lorraine had a daughter named Dru-zilla? We were feeling pretty bird dog smart about the time Keith was entering his dot-age, and decided we knew how to pick a dog. (Of course, we had to: Norm had passed away.) So we went to a breeder whose bitch and sire had had 6 very good litters. With Dru’s litter, the total was 46 great bird dogs. We tested her retrieving instincts and her birdiness, and were quite happy with our choice. (The pretty yellow Lab above is Dru. The one actually hunting--watching for incoming birds--is Keith.) We had Dru three years, trying to turn her into a bird dog. She retrieved like crazy--anything but a dead/wounded unpaid-for wild bird. She retrieved sticks, dummies, dum-mies wrapped in pheasant carcasses, chukars we bought for training, but not wild birds. She liked killing them: if a bird was in the brush still wiggling, she’d rush in and break their necks.Thenwalkaway.Thefinalhunt?Johnshotapheas-ant at our friend Tim’s place, and it fell into a fast moving

creek, stone dead. Dru made a classic leap off the 8 foot bank into the water, swam straight to the bird, sniffed it, swam360°aroundit,thencamebackempty-mouthed. Every trainer/breeder we met, we asked about her. It didn’t take long until they all started to avoid us. She had a couple of other foibles, too. She was afraid of kids. She was afraid of John if he started to open his coat or take off his hat (changing his silhouette, we de-cided, was the problem) despite having known him since she was a week old. And, no, nothing bad ever happened to her. She was just nuts. Oh, and I’ll say this as delicately asIcan:weowned160poundsofLabrador,buttherewasnever any dog poop in the back yard. (And we knew it wasn’t Elmer’s namesake.) The day I placed the ad, I googled ‘Druzilla’. We’d both thought anything related to Elmer Keith had to be good, but Druzilla wasn’t a great choice. Turns out, aside from being Elmer and Lorraine’s daughter, Druzilla is one of the evil step-sisters in Cinderella. And, worse, one of Caligula’s mistresses was also named Druzilla. We found her a good home, with no kids, and people who didn’t hunt. And then we sat back and fanta-

sized about a whole fall of big game. No bird dog training. We applied for every big game tag available. And then August 1, our friend Web Par-ton called. “I have a dog for you,” he said. “We’re going to wait till spring,” I said. “You need this dog.” “We’re going to go big game hunting. We’ve got tags....” “He’s a good boy,” Web insisted. And he was right. Gideon was a good boy. Except when he showed up his name was Byrd. The good news is that he didn’t know that was his name. (Web, a great dog trainer, doesn’t start his dogs until they’re 6 months old; ‘Byrd’ had just turned 6 months old.) We decided to name him after the tracker on a recent hunt in Namibia. A young man with quiet, diligent temperament who

hadagreatinstinctforfindingsign.Gideon.(Nickname?Squid. At 6 months, he was all legs.) I think part of our indecisiveness is that we’re waiting for a dog to appear in our driveway, à la Keith. Or in someone’s arms, à la Gillis. Our friend Dober has offered to bring back a springer from Wisconsin next time he goes, but that almost seems like too much preparatory behavior. And we’re not sure a springer is the one. Because whoever you choose to be the one to pick the dog, or however long you wait for it to just show up in someone’s arms, or in your driveway, he has to be a good dog, but he also has to speak to your heart--as in: That’s the one. And I know we’ll know him when we see him. That part we’ve always gotten right.

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Good Eats Game Care Notes

Lunch MeatEC

A variation on a duck/goose recipe that appears in my Duck & Goose Cookery book, this is an easy to make--and vary--recipe that goes with crackers, on toast, or in your pocket--as a sandwich to take hunting. These three are my current favorite variations. But all require a little cooked meat. That’s why the Game Care Notes which follow is on dry roasting game meat--which is the easiest way to get that little bit of cooked meat. The meat can be any big game animal: deer, elk, antelope, moose, caribou, even bison, if that’s what you have in the freezer. Then if you have never tried dry roasting game (or not done it successfully) check out the Game Care Notes which follow.

#1: The Traditional, Improved I’ve run into this basic recipe more than once over the years, but our friends Dee and John Stuver were the latest. This variation--and the ones that follow--are a result of my never cooking anything the same way twice. 8 ounces cooked venison1/4 cup mayonnaise1/3 cup sweet relish2tablespoonsbottledyellowmustard2teaspoonsWorcestershiresauce11/2teaspoonssalt

#2EasyTex-Mex8 ounces cooked venison1/2cupmayonnaise2tablespoonsMcCormickTacoSeasoningMix2-3teaspoonsChipotleTabascoSauce(ortotaste)

#3 Scratch Tex-Mex8 ounces cooked venison1/2yellowonion,chopped2clovesgarlic,chopped2teaspoonschilipowder1 tablespoon ground cumin1/3 cup mayonnaise2tablespoonschoppedmildchilies(canned)1/2teaspoonsalt

Preparation Chop the cooked venison into chunks, toss into a food processor and puree. Transfer to a medium sized bowl. Now toss the rest of the ingredients into the pro-cessor and puree them, too. Toss the meat back in, pro-cess a second or two until it all looks uniform in color, but not much more. Transfer to that bowl, cover and chill for several hours. Now, you can use your sandwich spread on crackers, toast and in sandwiches--including adding it to grilled cheese sandwiches.

Dry Roasting EC Generally dry roasting requires a more tender piece of meat than wet roasting--otherwise known as pot roasting. (You know: putting a cheap cut in a covered pot with bouillon and cooking it long and slow to tenderize it.) Tender meat comes from young animals--like forkorn bucks--but can also come from does and mature males of the species, with luck and proper aging. Tender is also a matter of geography: even in a mature animal, the most tender meat is high and rearward, so rump roasts, and steaks taken high on the hind quarters will always be more tender than those taken from the shoulder or front quarters. (Of course they can be tender, too. With wild meat, you take pot luck.) But since we’re going to dry roast and THEN pu-ree the meat, don’t waste that tender stuff on this. And since we’re also adding some pretty stout seasoning, you can use something you’ve been afraid to cook for compa-ny. (Don’t go crazy in that direction though, ‘cause even cumin and chili powder won’t hide a really rank buck. And while we’re on that, if it’s a gamy buck, be sure to remove all the sinew and connective tissue before cooking.) So, now you have a chunk of raw meat in front of you. Totally thawed out. Take a ruler, and stand it up behind the roast. How ‘tall’ is it? That’s what determines cooking time. (Not weight, length or even overall size.) Mostdeer roastsareabout2”high,someabitmore, some a bit less, so let’s give that as a starting point. Ina325ºFoven,a2”highroastwillbeaboutmediumrare in about an hour. (All these ‘abouts’ are a bit of a fudgefactor.Thisiswhathappensinmyoven,at3500feet above sea level. But just use a meat thermometer, and take the roast out when it reaches an internal tem-peratureof135ºF or so. A little more isn’t going to hurt anything.) And for a roasting table, Slice of the Wild has oneforboth325º,450º and roasting indirectly outdoors on your grill for roasts of all heights. Remove the roast from the roasting pan, once it’s cooled to the touch, and place in the fridge, covered with foil. Once it’s chilled for a few hours, it’s ready to puree and mix with the spread ingredients. Now you just have to decide which one.

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Cookie Corner Good Stuff

No-Cook French Silk PieMakes one 8-inch pie Okay, so it’s not a cookie, but neither man nor woman can live on cookies alone. Sometimes you need pie. (My friend cowboy poet Paul Zarzisky is on record as saying that cake is lust, but pie is love. And when you bring this pie to the table on Thanksgiving Day, I guaran-tee you’ll get the love.Ingredients1/2cupbutter(onestick)3/4 cup sugar2squaresmeltedsemi-sweetenedchocolate,cooled1 teaspoon vanilla2eggs8-inch pie shellwhipped creamPrep1.24hoursahead:Leavethebutter(yesbutternotmar-garine) out on the counter overnight so it will be soft Pur-chase a ready to use pie crust at your local grocery store. 2.3hoursahead:PlacetheHershey’schocolatesquaresinaglassbowl,andheat30secondsinthemicrowave.Give the chocolate a stir, and set it aside to cool.3. Unwrap the butter and place it in a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar. With an electric mixer, mix the butter and sugar together on medium until the butter looks a little fluffy.Addthecooledchocolatesquaresandvanillaandmix until the color is uniform. 4.Addoneeggandmixonhighfor5minutes.Dothesame with the second egg. 6.Pour thechocolatefilling into thepreparedpieshell,and set it in the refrigerator to chill for a couple of hours. 7. Slice into 8 pieces, and serve with a generous spritz of whipped cream.

*If you feel adventurous, instead of a ready to use pie crust, break up a bunch of cookies (your choice) until youhave11/2cupsofcookiecrumbs.Add1/4cupofmelted butter, mix, then press into the bottom of the pie pan.Chillfor20minutes,thenpourinthefillingandchill.Depending on your taste, Graham crackers, oreo cookies, vanilla wafers or even homemade oatmeal cookies work. EC

Smith’s Edgesport: Adjustable Edge Electric Knife Sharpener If you don’t own an electric knife sharpener yet, you may be like us. John and I both know how to sharpen a knife. He does it commando style--no cheating. I am a bit angle-challenged and use a knife sharpening kit, one that sets up the angle for you. Several companies make them, including Lansky, which is the one I have, and they’re very inexpensive. But. This year I am using a Smith Edgesport electric. And I am loving it. You know we always butcher our own animals, and last Thursday we had a 6x6 elk on the kitchen table. They’re not small. And being able to just turn on a motor, run the knife through a few times and get back to work saved an enormous amount of time and energy. Now, there are other companies that make electric knife sharpeners. A few years ago I tested a meat slicer from the most popular of those companies, and found a serious safety issue, which I then mentioned to them, and they ig-nored me and it. It wasn’t an abstract, fuss budget sort of thing: the slicer was a folding portable model, and the safety lock that kept it from folding back on your hand while the wheelwasturningat6,000rpm,wasplastic.ItbrokethefirsttimeIusedit.Andtheyignoredtheissue.SoIdon’tbuy anything from that company, but I’ve kinda been hurting all over for an electric knife sharpener. Enter Edgesport. Aside from the being quick, what I love about it is that it comes with a long list of suggested knife edges not only by use and type of knife, but brand name. Why? Be-cause the Edgesport knife sharpener has a large, easily read knob on top that adjusts the angle for both the main coarse stonewheelsandthefinerwheels,simultaneously. I now have an index card taped inside my knife drawer with the blade angles of my favorite knives noted. It makes life a lot easier--a lot like the 3/4-horse power meat grinder we gave ourselves for Christmas several years ago. Now here’s a caveat: if you buy an electric grinder, and go to grind your favorite old knives, be aware that you were probably sharpening them at an angle different from what they originally had. Be patient. Read the booklet and follow directions. All will be well, soon. Now you may know volumes about types of steel, or variations in blade shape, but so do I, and for me the clinch-er is how it works in my hand: does it make butchering/meat prep easier? What I like best is sharp knives: they make cutting easier and they’re safer. I didn’t used to believe that either,untilIpaidwatchedhowadullknifehandlesthefirstcut on an onion. A sharp knife has purchase; a dull one skips and slides. Sharper is safer. Electricity makes ‘safer’ quicker. EC

www.smithsedge.com1-800-221-4156

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Rifle Loony LitRifleTrouble-ShootingandHandloading

John’s new book is ready and waiting. Softcover,321pagesb&w photos$24.50Everything from mount-ing scopes to powder, bul-lets, and brass, and how to keepyourriflehealthyinthefield. We’re already gettinggreat reviews from the guys who’ve bought it.

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter, How Expand-ing Bullets Work: “I first became suspicious about the slow-ex-panding bullet theory about a decade ago when using areproductionWinchester“highwall”single-shotriflein.30-40Krag.Iplannedtohuntdeerwiththisrifle,usingan aperture tang and gold bead front sights, so took it prairiedoggingwithsome180-grainWinchesterPower-Point handloads. This may seem weird, but one of the bestwaystopracticewithanybiggamerifleistoshootsmall varmints. My companions found this amusing—until just before noon. I’d been extending the range of my shots allmorning,andwhenaprairiedogstooduparound200yards away I aimed with the top of the bead and shot. The dog tipped over, and upon investigation we found a small hole in its chest where the bullet had entered—and a 3/4” hole in its back, where the expanded bullet ex-ited. The reason the dog didn’t come apart like those shot with.22-250’sisthebulletfromthe.30-40didn’tdisinte-grate—but it still expanded, obviously quickly. One exception to this bullet behavior is the Berg-er Hunting VLD (Very Low Drag) bullet. Some years ago a few hunters started using these thin-jacketed, soft-cored target bullets to hunt deer and other big game, and the VLD’s did not disintegrate immediately upon striking an animal. Instead they expanded a couple of inches inside, and the entrance hole looked like it was poked by a knit-ting needle. How could this be? Hunting bullets expand because their front end is weakened, sometimes with a hole (hollow-point) and sometimes by leaving the lead core exposed (soft-point). As a result the front end collapses outward (“mushrooms”) when the bullet strikes an animal.Some people claim a hollow-point bullet opens due to the cavity being forced openbyfluidorflesh.I’mnotsosureaboutthis,becausemy favorite tough test is a stack of dry newspapers, and even relatively hard hollow-points like Barnes X’s open up influid-freenewspaper. Also, I’ve tried poking the tip of a small safety pin into the hollow-point of a 168-grain 7mm VLD. The pin

simply stopped, because there’s no hole in the tip of a VLD. The jacket, however, is extremely thin, and the point of the jacket extends beyond the lead core, creating an air-pocket inside the tip. Apparently the long, sharp ogive allows a VLD to pierce the hide, plus a couple inches of tissue beyond, before the thin jacket collapses and the bullet expands violently. This has since been demonstrated thousands of times not only in test media but game animals. In fact it normally works even when the bullet impacts light bone. In a field-test of VLD’s on feral goats, I once deliber-ately shot a fair-sized billy through the shoulder with a 185-grainVLDfroma.30-06,atcloserange.Thebulletwent through the bone and, per usual, came apart in the chest cavity. The Berger VLD is among the quickest-killing deer bullets around, because it opens more slowly than standard big game bullets but disintegrates inside an ani-mal. Berger recently introduced a heavier-jacketed version,thoughnotforhunting.Insometargetriflestheoriginal, thin-jacketed version didn’t hold up, especially whenshot fromcut-rifledbarrels.So the thick-jacketedversion of the VLD is the “target” bullet, and the thin-jack-eted VLD the “hunting” bullet. Obviously this contradicts the rules of big game bullet behavior that every hunter knows. This isn’t because the hunter in question has ac-tually studied bullet behavior, but because of stuff heard roundthecampfire,readinmagazines,orseeninmovies.Among other things, he’s been told that shock is a major factor in how expanding bullets work, as in “arrows kill by hemorrhage but bullets kill by shock.” When asked to explain shock the hunter in question often becomes irate, and responds with, “Everybody knows what shock is!” Maybe, maybe not. Let’s look up shock in an unabridged descendant of Noah Webster’s dictionary. It turns out there are a bunch of shocks, including sheaves of grain, the physiological effect of an electric current, and being startled, as in “the rebuke came as a shock.” Obviously those don’t apply, since hunters don’t zap deer with110AC,slapthemwithawheat-whip,orscoldthemintothefreezer.Thedefinitionsthatcouldapplyare: 1) A sudden and violent blow or impact; collision. 2)Pathology:Acollapseof circulatory function,caused by severe injury, blood loss, or disease, and char-acterized by pallor, sweating, weak pulse and very low blood pressure. Manyhuntersbelieveinthefirstdefinition.Theythink that a bullet hits so hard that a deer is shocked into unconsciousness, like a movie bad guy being lifted off his feet by a shotgun blast. Often kinetic energy is quoted, as in“thebullethitwith2000foot-poundsofforce.”Some-times this is even turned into a ton of energy, conjuring up images of a Hollywood car wreck.’

$24.50,mediarateshippingfreeintheUS.www.riflesandrecipes.com

PS: We already have a correction. In the list of com-panies mentioned in the book, the zip code for Timney

shouldbe85019.

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Rifle Loony LitThe New Berger Reloading Manual(829pages,hardcover,BergerBulletsLLC,$29)JB It’s here at last, the Berger Bullets reloading manual many handloaders have been waiting for. In

some ways it’s like most of the hardcover reloading manuals published by various bullet and powder companies. The car-tridge write-ups, for instance, are written by various people in the hunting and shooting indus-try (including several by me and one by Eileen), and there’s “The Story of Walt Berger”—how he got into hunting, benchrest shooting and making bullets, eventually resulting in today’s Berger company. That sort of mini-bio is pretty common in

manuals, but Walt’s is 76 pages long, a short book in it-self! Consequently is contains far more interesting details than most. There are also several articles about various as-pects of handloading—but the selection in the Berger manual is far more diverse and technically oriented than in most other manuals, including several by Bryan Litz, Berger’s ballistician, who’s made so many contributions totheknowledgeofrifleballisticsinthepastfewyears,includinghisownfinebook,Applied Ballistics for Long-Range Shooting. (Bryan also recently released a second book, Accuracy and Precision for Long-Range Shooting: A PracticalGuideforRifleman, which I’ll review in the next issue of RLN.) Along with the handloading articles, there are several by different authors on various target shooting disciplines, as well as hunting, including one by well-known gunsmith and hunter John Burns on “Precision Hunting,” perhaps a more politically correct term for what many call long-range hunting. I contributed a piece on various hunting techniques, and John Anderson, editor of Varmint Hunter magazines, did an essay on varmint hunt-ing. There’s something for everybody. There are also quite a few cartridges not usu-ally found in other manuals, including a number of target rounds, both wildcat and factory. Berger also produces many bullets heavier than the normal selection found inmostmanuals, specifically designed for longer-rangeshooting, so their loading data goes beyond the normal bullet-weightboundaries.Ifyouwant toshoot55-grainbullets in the .204Ruger, 115-grain bullets in the .243Winchester or 230-grain bullets in the .300WeatherbyMagnum, there’s now published loading data. We’re going to be carrying the Berger manual on www.riflesandrecipes.com, naturally, but it’s also avail-able from a number of other places, including Berger’s web site (www.bergerbullets.com) and Brownells, and the price is one of the real bargains in handloading.

Seeing Is BelievingThe Quarterly RLN Scope TestsJB The several new scopes tested this quarter in-clude a few with fancy reticles, the fanciest the electronic range-compensating reticle in the Burris Eliminator III. This is the latest in the Burris laser-scope line, with a built-in rangefinder and ballistic program that lights upanLEDonthecrosshairforrangesoutto1200yards.Iusedacoupleofthe4-16x50mmversiontoshoottargetsoutto1200yards,anditworks—asdothesimplermulti-point reticles in the Brunton and Zeiss scopes tested this quarter. However, there’s a slight downside to all reticles etched on glass, rather than made out of wire or foil as most reticles have been for decades. The plain pane of glass they’re etched on normally isn’t coated like scope lenses, resulting in a slight loss of transmitted light. The loss isn’t much, but it’s detectable even with my relatively crude and simple test, the reason some of the scopes tested this quarter don’t rate quite as high as they might have with plain wire or foil reticles. This is probably why the Swarovski Z3 tested the highest this quarter (and just as high as a previous 3-9x Z3), and the Zeiss Conquest withRapid-Z600reticletestedthelowest.TheConquestswith plain plex-type reticles tested in the past have all rated about 7, the same as the Swarovski Z3. Let’s review the brightness testing for new sub-scribers.It’sdoneatnight,onachartof10parallelblack-and-white lines, illuminated by a 100-watt light-bulb.Eachscopeisseton6xandplacedonasteadyrest,25yards from the chart. The scope is rated by the thinnest visible line, a larger number meaning a brighter scope. If the smallest visible line visible is really clear, the scope gets a + sign after the number. I’ve tested several dozen scopes over the years. So far all have rated between 5 (an uncoatedWeaverfrom the 1950’s) to 8 (a few $1000+ scopes from Le-upold, Schmidt & Bender, Swarovski and Zeiss). Most modern multi-coated variables rate between 6 and 7. The test obviously doesn’t rate color rendition, and isn’t meant to, since individual humans see color differently. Instead it’s meant as an approximate gauge of optical sharpness and brightness.

Here are this quarter’s results:

BruntonEterna3-9x40,BDCreticle6+

BurrisEliminatorIII4-16x50,X96reticle6+

Cabela’sEuro3-9x42,EXTreticle6+

New Swarovski Z3 3-9x36, Plex reticle 7

ZeissConquest3.50-10x50,Rapid-Z600reticle6

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Honest GunsTheReally-Good-DealRifleEC I don’t think there’s a set time frame for deciding what makes an honest gun. At least I hope there isn’t any,becauseasfarasI’mconcerned,myHusqvarna.243has become one. In one short year. I bought it online just before last hunting season, for$300.Asmall-ringcommercialMauseraction, ithadaesthetic issues, but we bought it a box of pre-fab ammo, took it out to the range and it shot a group small enough to kill a deer. (We were running out of time for niceties, and the vitals of a deer are the size of a cantaloupe. Just how small does the group have to be?) Given my issues with recoil headaches and that the designers of pre-fab ammo forthe.243seemtothinkitshouldbeloadedtothemax--nottomentionhowmuchslowerIstillamatfillingbulletskins--John put together some quick and dirty ‘loads that work’with100grainers.Ishota3-roundgroupatpaper,sanschrony,andwewenthunting.Ihauledthatrifleandmy box of Q&D’s out to Eastern Montana and shot a very nice whitetail buck on John Stuver’s place. You’ve read about that, way back last winter. (Vol III Issue 4) But here’s where it gets really good. Sometime last May, I decided that the Husky de-served a ‘perfect’ handload. By then it was a bit prettier than it had been in November. For Christ-mas, Johnhadfitted thegunwithanew1-inch Pachmayr Decelerator pad, and an ebony grip cap, (the originals were plas-tic, painted beige, badly) and steel-wooled the worst of the varnish drips off the wood stock. He’d also tipped the pitch a bit to fit me better, rearrang-ing the angle of the butt surface, then threw in new dies and brass and presented me with a full boxof100grainNoslerPartition bullets. Happy Holidays indeed! Two years be-fore friend and engraver Brian Gouse had fallen inlovewithmyWinchesterModel9438-55.I’dalwaysliked his engraving, so I suggested we make a trade. My 38-55forhisengraving.(My38-55isoneofthoseModel

94’s manufactured in the last few years. I think he made the trade remembering--incorrectly--that it was an an-tique, and I gave him a chance to back out, but being the stand-up guy he is, he didn’t.) Which gun was the ques-tion, and Husky in hand, I still hadn’t decided which gun. (You probably know what’s coming, but I didn’t.) In the meantime, I had everything I needed for mynew.243,but‘the’load.SoIdidaliteraturesearch,comingupwith5or6variationsofpowder,bullet andcharge to try over the next few weeks when John gave me one more (belated) Christmas present. He was watching me write down loads and said: “Jim Charmichael says you should shoot the gun before youfixit.Justincasethere’snothingwrong.” I looked at him. “You mean those quick and dirty loads might be as good as it gets?” “They’veshotwellineveryother.243I’veowned.How much time do you have to work this load up?” He knew how much time I had. Little to none. Which is when I admitted I didn’t remember what the target looked like last fall. One-inch group? Two? (Just another sign I wasn’t keeping good records.)

John rolled his eyes. “We could go chronograph the rest of your stash. See where the group is.” “That’s right. We didn’t chronograph it last fall ei-ther.” “I have to chronograph a few loads today. Why don’t we go to the range. You can shootthe.243whileIchro-

ny my loads. And if it looks good, we’ll chrony yours.” So we packed up the rifles, loads, theOehler chrony, and the rest of the gear and headed to the range. While John set up his targets at 30 and 100yards for the rifles hewas going to test, and

the chrony in front of his bench, Isetupmytargetat100yards.Then we sat down. I took two shots, and found only one in the scope. My heart sank. What was Jim Carmichael’s advice on this? John heard my displeasure, and came over to look through the scope. Despite having worn

glassessincehewas10yearsold,heoftenseesthingssharper in scopes and binos than I do. “I think that’s a good group,” he said. I looked

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again. “They’re touching,” he said. And so they were. “That’s good enough to chronograph,” John said laughing. Once we had the chrony set up in front of my muz-zle, I shot two more. This time I recognized it: “Holy moly, batman. They’re touching again!” “No kidding?!” I moved over so John could check it out in the spotting scope. “So, go home, have some lunch, load a bunch of .243shells?”Johnsuggested. “Toss my notes on ‘better’ loads? Oh, and just for the record, what did it chronograph?” “2900fps.” “So. Accurate. Flat shooting. Classic. Even pretty, if you’re into hammers. I might call Brian.” “This one? It’s not going to be a cheap gun any-more.” “It deserves it.”

I gave Brian one suggestion: I wanted deer tracks running down the barrel. (If you’ll remember, I’d already asked John to chisel a deer track in the butt stock, to mark #99. If not, there’s a photo of it in Volume III Issue 4) Oh, and I wanted my initials, in a fancy script, somewhere. Then I shipped off the Husky, and waited. It came back in time for antelope season, and once again, it shot well at paper (Brian warned me he’d taken the scope off) and shot well at my antelope doe. She went down barely a yard away from where she’d been standing when I shot. (John says it was 30feet,but,again,I’mnotkeepinggoodrecords.) There’s a line in Raymond Chandler about ‘even on such short acquaintenance.” He was talking about a young woman to whom “thinking would always be a bother.” But I would use the phrase to praise my inexpensive little internet Husky. When I retire, I’d like to be one of those mythical hunterswithonebiggamerifle,onevarmintrifle,oneshot-gun and a handgun. A neat, compact little arsenal. I could evenshortenthelistwithmyHusky:justonerifle,butitisan honest one, even on such short acquaintance.

PS If you want to check out more of Brian’s engraving, you can either go a Montana gun show--he’s always in the Great Falls and Bozeman shows. If that’s too far to travel, check out his web site. www.nemont.net/~bpgouse There might even be some photos of his bird dogs.

A fellow Rifle Loony from Schenectady, NY is having 2nd Amendment issues with the NY state police. He needs a lawyer but has been told there are no lawyers in NY who are 2nd Amendment friendly. If you know such a lawyer, or have contacts who can help, email eileen@riflesandrecipes.com and I’ll put the two of you in contact.

Banana BreadYou might remember that I mentioned having problems with the banana bread (from Volume II Issue 4) The top was burned and the center, wet/unbaked--as much as 30% unbaked. Since then I’ve made it twice going as high as 2 1/2 cups flower, using an 8x8 pan and oven temp of 350.This combo has worked well, don’t know why it works that way for me (two oven thermometers show my oven to be +/- 5d) but I, and others who have tried it, really enjoy the results,so I’ll just accept it and not worry too much about the minor details. Dennis K.

Etcetera

What’s Next? OurnextissuewillbeoutFebruary2013.Bythen you’ll all have been to our facebook page, www.facebook.com/DeepCreekPress and tried the extra recipes or responded to the gun gak we post there. (It also gets posted under the Archive This tab on our web site, eventually, if you don’t do Facebook. You can also stop by www.scopeshieldalaska.com. Scope shield is carrying Eileen’s game cookbooks now. By the way, they also make a nifty neoprene scope cover that protects your scope from snow and rain, but pops off when you need to take a shot. (Best of both worlds.) By February, I hope to be well into my latest--the sausage book and will share a recipe or two in that issue.Plus,Iboughtanotherrifleofftheinternet--a22-250--thatIneedtogetupandrunning.Ifwehavea‘normal’ winter I’ll be able to do some load testing, and maybe even get to take a coyote or two with it while their coats are prime. In the meantime, let us know what’s on your minds: eileen@riflesandrecipes.comorclick on the ‘contact us’ tab, onwww.riflesandrecipes.comandyoure-mailwillcomestraight to us. EC

Are You Ready for Christmas?Here are two little bits of good news. Because we empathize (we aren’t ready for Christmas either),we’re offering free priority shipping on all orders of 3 or more books (shipped to the same address). Heck, three or more items--yes,RifleLoonyHats,too. Plus,forthefirsttime, Upland Game Bird Cookeryisonly$20.AbeautifulbookundertheChristmas tree, and it’s useful, too. For all those who love to hunt birds but may not have enough recipes to keep them happy--or just need a primer forcareandcutting:97recipes,32colorpag-es,40pagesofhow-towithb&wphotos,

www.riflesandrecipes.com

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Back to the Old Reliable: Recent ‘Field Tests” of the Nosler Partition--JB The first so-called premium expanding bullet Iever used was the Nosler Partition, and with excellent reason: No other premium bullets were readily available inthemid-1970’s.SupposedlyabondedbulletcalledtheBitterroot, made by a guy in Idaho, could be found now and then, but none appeared on the shelves of any Mon-tana sporting goods stores, so Nosler Partitions it was. That era was the tail end of Partitions made by lathe-turning the jackets. You could actually see the min-iscule machine marks made on the jackets--or at least nearsighted people could, by looking over the tops of their glasses. The ob-vious giveaway was the “relief groove” around the the bullet, designed to reduce increased pressures from the solid wall in the jacket. The first Partitions I pur-chased were 130-grain .270 spitzersand 200-grain .308 semi-spitzers, foruseinmy.270WinchesterRemington700 and sporterized 1903 Springfield.30-06. The common wisdom at thetime (and even today, among some re-loaders) said Partitions weren’t all that accurate, but both rifles shot threeroundsintoaninchat100yards.Thisisn’t considered all that great today, wheneveryfactorydeerriflesuppos-edly groups into ½” all day long. Back then, however, an inch was considered prettygood,especiallysincethe.270hada4xscopeand the .30-06a3x,and their owner didn’t know nearly as much about making accurate ammo as he does today. ThefirstNosleredanimalwasabuckdeer,shotatabout350yardsonthehighplainsofeasternMontanawiththe.270.DespitewarningsaboutPartitions being too tough to expand for deer, the bullet took the buck’s heart apart just like one of the Horna-dysorSierrasI’duseduntil then.The200-grain.30-06worked really well in the mountains of western Montana, taking deer neatly with minimal meat loss, and penetrat-ing so deeply on elk I never recovered one, even on an-gling shots. Soon afterward Nosler started making the jack-ets by impact-extrusion. The new bullets were shinier anddidn’thaveareliefgroove—andthe200-grain.308turned into a real spitzer. These new Partitions worked just as well on game and, if anything, were more accu-rate. Bytheearly1980’sIwasloading100-grainParti-tionsatabout3200fpsintheRemington722.257Rob-erts inherited from my grandmother. These grouped well

underaninch,andwhensighted-in3”highat100yardsweredead-onat300yardsandaboutafootlowat400.Iusedthisrifleandloadthroughoutthelate1980’swhenguidingpronghornanddeerhunters,wheretheflattra-jectory and deep penetration often came in handy. Once one of the zippy little Partitions hit a pronghorn in the righthipat300yardsandkilledhiminstantly,thebulletending up perfectly expanded in the left shoulder. During the same period Eileen took a number of biggameanimalswith150-grainPartitionsfromher.270,includinga5x6muledeer,aspikeelkandamedium-sizedbull moose. All died quickly with a single shot through

the lungs, as have a number of big game animals I’ve seen takensincewiththe150-grain.270Partition,includingmoredeer and elk and such tough African game animals as gemsbok and blue wildebeest. Ialsousedthe200-grainspitzer in my .30-06 on abunch of deer and elk, and even one doe pronghorn, due to an ammo mix-up. It didn’t prove too tough even on an animalweighing100pounds.That’s always been one of the virtues of the Partition: The front core is very soft lead, so expands easily even at lower velocities on smaller game, while the rear end holds to-gether to penetrate deeply. In the mid-1980’s abunch of new big game bul-lets started to appear. Before then my writing career mostly involved fishing and hunting

stories,butby1990moreandmoreeditorswantedmygun stuff--and they wanted to hear about the new bullets. By2000Iwasgoingonasmanycullhuntsaspossibleinorder to test new bullets on actual game, though I also tested bullets in various kinds of media. From 2000 to 2010 only 17%ofmy big gameanimals were shot with Nosler Partitions. The others were taken with Barnes X’s (including the original version, Tri-ple Shocks and Tipped Triple Shocks), Berger VLD’s, Hor-nady Interbonds, Norma Oryxes, North Forks, Nosler Ac-cuBonds and E-Tips, Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Bondeds, Speer Grand Slams and Fusions, Trophy Bondeds (both “tipped” and non-tipped), Winchester XP3’s and probably some others since forgotten. Mixed in were conventional big game bullets, including Hornady Interlocks, Reming-ton Core-Lokts, Sierra GameKings and ProHunters, and Winchester Power Points. The animals ranged in weight from100poundsto1500pounds,andtherangesoutto500yards.

Down the Barrel

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By the end of this decade of experimentation I’d realized several things. First, just about any bullet will kill what’s loosely known as big game neatly if the bullet hits the right place. There were remarkably few failures, and none due to a bullet breaking up and not penetrat-ing. A few bullets did fail to open as much as they should have, allowing animals to travel quite a ways before fall-ing. That’s better than not penetrating the vitals, but still not much fun when the animal goes a long way on a thin blood trail. Second, while it can help to choose a bullet ap-propriate to the size of game, there’s a lot more overlap than bullet fanatics believe. I took 500-pound animalsneatly with bullets considered far too frail for the job, and 100-poundanimalswithbulletsconsideredtoughenoughfor Cape buffalo. Third,allthebulletsshotsufficientlyaccuratelytokill even the smallest big gameoutto400+yards.Now, a quarter-mile isn’t considered really long range these days, one reason for the obses-sion over ½” groups, but 99.9%ofbiggameisstillkilledunder500yards. Third, the ex-panding bullet giving the most reliable all-around performance during all those years of big game hunting and experiment-ing was the Nosler Parti-tion. It provided quick kills and plenty of pen-etration on elk, moose, bison, eland, and Cape and water buffalo. I’ve never seen a Partition fail to ex-pand like some hollow-points, and they don’t have plastic tips that can break or fall off. A few years ago I averaged all the 3-shot groups firedat100yardswithNoslerPartitionsinmyrifles,andthe result was 1.01 inches. That is all the groups, notjust thepet loadsofvariousrifles. Ifsomebody fails tokillabiggameanimalatanyrangeoutto500yardswith1-inch accuracy, it’s the fault of the shooter, not the bullet. As a result of this overload of information, in 2011 Istarted using more Nosler Partitions again. The animals rangedfromaround150pounds(impalaandwhitetails)to a 1200-pound Cape buffalo, and the bullets from a140-grain6.5mmtoa400-grain.416,andonlyonewasrecovered. I mention this because these days many hunt-ers believe that without an exit hole the animal isn’t really dead. The lone recovered Partition was a 286-grainfroma9.3x62.Itbroketheshoulderjointonabigbluewildebeestatabout200yards,endingupunderthehideat the rear of the rib cage. The wildebeest did stumble a few yards, but was down before I could get another round in the chamber—and I am damn quick at reloading, even withaboltrifle.

So far in 2012 I’ve only usedNosler Partitions,firstthe115-grainfromaCabela’sModel70Lightweightin .257Robertsona javelinaandpighunton theKingRanch in South Texas. The ammo was my handloads with 45.0grainsofH4350,acombinationthat’sshotverywellinhalfadozen.257’s,themuzzlevelocityrangingfrom2900-3000fpsdependingonbarrellength.Duetosomescopeproblemsontheriflesofmycompanions,the.257ended up also being used by a couple of the other guys, and resulted in several one-shot kills. The most spectacular was on the biggest boar hogtaken,weighingaround150-160pounds.Pigsaren’tas tough as some people believe, but bigger pigs can go awayswhenlung-shot.Iputa115Partitionbehindtheshoulderatalittleover100yards,andtheboardroppedright there and, aside from a little ground-wiggling, never moved. I’ve seen similar results on a bunch of animals

over the years, the reason this load is probably my fa-voriteforthe.257. The next hunt was for pronghorn in Montana. Ei-leen got a big doe at just un-der 250 yardswith a single100-grainPartition fromherHusqvarna .243Winchester,the same loadand rifle sheused on a big whitetail buck last year. The doe went 30feet and piled up. I then took a buck at around 200yardswitha120-grainParti-tion from my New Ultra Light Arms .257 Weatherby, andhe went two feet straight down. Two weeks later I went

onaguidedelkhuntlessthan100milesfromhomeasthe guest of Weatherby and Swarovski. Three other guys went on the hunt, Tim Frampton of Weatherby, Rob Lan-cellotti of Swarovski, and the well-known writer Terry Wieland.NaturallywewereallusingWeatherbyriflesandSwarovski scopes, but by pure coincidence we also all used Nosler Partitions. Thehunt tookplaceona ranchofover26,000acres in southwestern Montana, managed for the last few years by Adventures Outfitting (www.adventuresoutfit-ting.com).They’vedoneagreatjob,andthefirstmorn-ing I took a bull in a sagebrush park over a mile long, one of at least three dozen branch-antlered bulls feeding in various parts of the park. Thebigproblemwasnotfindingelk,butgettingin range due to so many elk eyes and noses. Rob Lancel-lotti and I and guide Tim Beardsley tied the horses in the timber half a mile below the park (which he, naturally enough, refers to as Elk Park), then hunted our way up-ward on foot, eventually working our way into the middle by moving from one clump of conifers to another. Ihadfirstchoice,andpassedonacoupleof500-yardshotsbeforespottingthreebullsfeedingabout250yards away, only the tops of their backs visible over a low

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knoll. Icrawledabout100yards to thecrestof theknoll,resting the 7mm Weatherby Magnum on my daypack. Since Ididn’tcareaboutantlersize,Idecidedtotakethefirstbullthat turned more-or-less broadside. In a few seconds the bullontherightturned,andthe160-grainPartitionlandedjust behind the shoulder. The bull’s legs buckled and he al-most went down, then started walking slowly, quartering away, dropping to a second quick shot in the rear of the ribs. He may have even been going down at the second shot, since the bullet landed a little higher than aimed. He turned out to be the biggest of the three bulls, a good 6x6. We spent the rest of the day getting my bull out, then spent the evening on a ridge glassing another part of the ranch, seeing several bulls. The next morning we left Elk Park for Terry and Tim and their guide, Mike Myer, and hunted the western end of the ranch. We spotted one good bull moving through a small park, and attempted to still-hunt it in the timber, but ended up spooking it. That evening we went back to the same spot and glassed some more, again seeing a few legal bulls, all too far away to make a stalk that evening. Less than half an hour beforetheendofshootinglightIwalkedabout15feettothe left to get a different angle on the creekbottom below us,ontheoffchanceoffindingawhitetailbuck,sinceRoband I also had deer tags. Instead three 6-point bulls were moving out of a willowpatchabout600yardsaway, feedingon thegreencreekbottom grass. I stayed up top, keeping an eye on the bulls, while Tim and Rob stalked downhill, following a line of firandsprucetrees,eventuallyclosingthedistancetowhatlaterprovedtobe365yards. Robwas shooting aVanguardSub-MOA in .30-06with Federal ammo loadedwith 180-grain Partitions. He’susedthe.30-06alongtimeandknowsthetrajectorywell.After the shot I heard the thump of a solid hit, and the three bulls ran behind a stand of big quaking aspens. From up top I could see down through the trees as the lead bull faltered then fell, one dark leg angled in the air. The two other bulls spooked as he fell, giving Rob and Tim a clue some-thing had happened, but until I called down the hill that Rob’s bull was down they didn’t know for sure. The bullet had landed 1/3 of the way up the body in the crease of the shoul-der, and the bull ran 45yardsbeforefalling.We found the expanded Partition under the hide of the far shoulder. At about the same time Terry, Tim and Mike were up in the timber above Elk Park, Terry lying prone and aim-ing at another 6-point bull. At the shot the bull dropped, then struggled to its feet as Terry shot again. Apparently the

second shot arrived after the bull fell again, permanently, as we only found evidence of one hit, just under the spine throughthetopofthelungs.The150-grainPartitionwenton through. The next day Tim Frampton and Mike Meyer hunted the same area, not getting a shot in the morning. That eve-ning, however, they sneaked up on a 6-point bull and Tim shotoffhandat50yardswithhis.257WeatherbyMagnum,placinga120-grainNoslerPartitionbehindtheshoulder.Thebull headed downhill as Tim shot again, missing, then ran head-on intoafir treeabouta foot indiameter,obviouslydead on its feet. Tim had asked me before the hunt if the .257Weatherby was enough for elk. He wasn’t really worried, as several other Weatherby folks had used it very successfully, butnowhehadsomepersonalexperience.Oh,andthe120Partition exited. Except for Rob we all shot Weatherby factory ammo. The 160-grain ammo I used grouped into around¾”at100yards,andfromthe24”barreloftheULWchro-nographed justabout theadvertised3200 fps,oneof thefastest160-grain factory loadsofany7mmmagnum.ThefirstgroupTerryfiredwithhis.270Weatherbymeasured¼”,thesmallest3-shotgrouphe’severfiredwithanybiggamerifle.Subsequentgroupsweren’tquitesosmall,butstillwellunder an inch. We did make a weak joke of the fact that the longest shot (and also the only strictly one-shot kill) was made by Rob with an antique cartridge, but all the cartridges workedfine—andwouldhaveat365yards,orevenfurther. Right now it’s week since my bull died. Eileen and I butcheredhimyesterdayandshefoundthesecond160-grainPartitionintherightshoulder,retainingatypical65%ofitsoriginal weight. I don’t know what Rob’s bullet weighed, and don’t really care, having recovered a pile of Partitions that retainedanywherefrom55%to95%oftheirweight,fromanimals were all quickly dead. EileenandIhavetakenover100biggameanimals

of27speciesonthree continents with Nosler Par-titions. On aver-age Partitions might not kill quite as quickly as more lightly-constructed bul-lets, and they might not pen-etrate quite as deeply as some others, but Parti-tions are still the best compro-mise between quick killing and penetration I’ve

yet seen. The deer rut just started here in Montana, and IhopetomakesomemorePartitionfieldtests inthetwoweeksleftoftherifleseason.

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The Back BurnerThe Second CenturyEC

Yes, for all those who are wondering, I did take my100thanimal--anantelopedoe.AndIturnedoveranew leaf, as well as a new century. As you know, I set up a handloading bench of my own--in the basement--a couple of years ago. Not a lot has been loaded on the bench, partly because I’ve been a bit unhappy with the lack of detail in my record keeping. I just had to toss a bunch of powder, having left it in the powder measure so long that I couldn’t remember what the heck it was. I’ve also been remiss in keeping track of how many times my brasshasbeenfired.Boththingsthatareimportant,butalso things that cost me money. But I hadn’t realized how remiss I’d been at keep-ing track until our friend Courtney shared his list with us. Courtney lives in Georgia, so coming to Montana in late September was not only a bird hunting adventure but a break from the heat. We were sitting around one evening, having gorged ourselves at our newly opened Jimmy John’s res-taurant--we didn’t realize it was that special until Court-ney pointed out that it was one of his favorite restaurants in Atlanta--along with something called Varsity. From Varsity, itwasashorthop to5 favoriteall timemeals,3 best hunts, all-time best hunting partner, but when I mentioned my landmark 99, Courtney got really excited. Seems he had a List. “AsofAugust,2012,”hesaid,“Ihad103critters,21species,2continents,4countries,8states,28guns,18calibers,22bullettypes.” Hmm. It didn’t bother me that he had four more critters. It was the rest of it. Once again, I found I was not keeping very detailed records. So I started counting. Very quickly, I had to go upstairs and grab John’s hand-loading notes. He’s been keeping them since he was a teen, and if I need to know if the sun was shining when I killed Bambi’s uncle in 1986, he just turns a page and there it is. Good notes. So John was having to leaf through HIS records tofilloutmydetails.WhileIthoughtIwasdoingquiteenough ‘listing’ with my 99 and 98 (the number of ani-mals I’d shot versus the ones that have tasted delicious), 8 game cookbooks, 976 recipes, and 4 geese I need to cook--soon--I had missed a few things. Twenty minutes later, we had a partial, which grew to a few more countries, states and bullet types afteralittlemorereminiscing:asofOctober1,2012,Ihad99critters,22species,4continents,6countries,9states,22guns,10calibers,1gaugeand15bullettypes.(Thegaugewasawhitetaildoetakenwitha12gauge

slug gun, which I’m hunting with again this fall, hoping to findanothervolunteer inmy localslug/arrow/buckshot/traditional handgun only area just north of our house. It gets pounded, but it’s sooo close. My ‘slug gun’ is John’s oldRemington870.) So what’s missing? Antarctica, for one. And the lure of penguins is nothing like elk or wildebeest. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been to my favorite continents: there were the goats in New Zealand, which I think of every time I pick up the Berger manual; the big fat muley bucks in Canada, fallow deer in the home of three of my grand-parents (Ireland), and ostrich hunting in Africa with Keith Gradwell. (We hunted on his great-grandparent’s home-stead, begun in 1836.) I could be tempted to hunt in Australia but, like Africa, I couldn’t bring home the meat, and for me it’s always been about the meat. It’s why a few years ago, I decided I needed to bump off a forkhorn. I had started my hunting career years ago with a couple of fawns--easy to fool, but not a lot of meat. (Of course to quote Spencer Tracy, “What there was was ‘cherce’” For those not from Brooklyn he said ‘choice.’ In the next couple of years I shot several nice 4x4’s,ahandfulof3x3’sandmorethanone5x5.Butforsome reason I’d never taken a forkhorn of either mule deer or whitetail persuasion. (Notice I knew all about that list.) While most kids take a forkhorn as a rite of passage animal, it took me three decades to trick one into the freezer. John thought it was pretty funny that I chose to hunt forkhorns, and knowing me, also knew if Mr. Big showed up I would not have hesitated to put the forkhorn quest off for another year. But I was lucky, and what I wished for--and only what I wished for--showed upthelastweekoftherifleseason,inthemidstofmanyother hunters, and he walked in front of me. Add that one to the list. So far it seems there will be another year, and another one hundred--knock on wood. It makes me won-der where that next bunch will take me. Right now, I’m thinking there will be no more new species or countries, but hopefully I’ll add a few more states, provinces and hunting companions. I’m also making a resolution to keep track of more details,thoughIhavetoadmitit’sbeen2weekssinceIshotnumber100,andIhaveyettomakeanynotes.Sohere goes. It was warm, sunny, and windy. (Sounds like EasternMontana365daysayear--atleastthesunnyandwindy part.) We had started out before dawn, looking forabigbuckoutfitterandfriendJohnStuverhadbeenseeing all summer. By the time the sun came up we were

~13~

glassing into a long valley with a sprinkling of white ante-lope butts. But no big buck. We spent the morning driving along the edges and fence lines of pastures glassing the long valleys, but as the morning got later, the wind got worse. Antelope don’t survive this country because they’re dummies, and we knew that this wind was only going to make them nestle into some cozy little corner--out of the wind and impossible to glass. We’d have to stumble into them, turning a corner and somehow getting a shot off before they disappeared. All God’s creatures, except for us, looking for the lee side of anything solid to keep out of the weather. The forecast was for even more wind the next day,60mphgusts.Andrain,notagoodcombinationforgumbo country. As we topped out of one big valley and eased up to a locked gate, the rain started in earnest. Big pelting drops whipping the rabbit brush ruthlessly. It was barely9:30inthemorning,butthiswouldputtheendtohunting. Of course, since worse weather was coming, it would be the end of all antelope hunting for this trip. We decided to get off the gumbo, and back to paved roads, where we could then make a decision, but about halfway back to pavement, the rain stopped. We took a look around. The rabbit brush was again upright, tilted, but upright. The question was; Is this a trend, or a momentarily lull? We decided to hope for the best, and work our way out to paved roads, but more slowly than before. We hadn’t gone far, when we spotted a doe and fawnantelope.Theywere300yardsoff,andnotentirelyspooked by our appearance, so without stopping to look at them more closely, we drove on behind a big gumbo knob out of their sight line. We sat a minute, expecting to see the doe and fawn racing off in the distance, but they didn’t show up. Maybe they were still there, maybe we hadn’t spooked them. Within minutes, Johnny B. and I had grabbed rifles and shells, binos and shooting sticks and startedwalkingupthegumboknob.Itrosegraduallyforthefirstcouple of hundred yards, then took a steep turn skyward. Better than a slow slope: at least when we got to the top, we’d be able to hide behind a sage brush or pile of rocks. We crawled the last several yards, watching for prickly pear cactus, and at the last, John held back. I squirmed in behind a little rock pile, and peeked over. Where the doe and fawn had been, now there were two antelope bucks neither one very big. But one of them was very alert: hewas staring right atme, littlemore than 100yards away. I closed my eyes, and held my breath for a moment. Nope, he was still there, and still staring at me. I slid down the slope a bit, dipping my head below the crest. “Two bucks,” I told John. “Where’s the doe?” “Don’t know. One buck had me cold. I couldn’t move.” We sat quiet for a few minutes, then I leaned out sideways to the edge of the gumbo, looking to see if the antelope had escaped that way. Nothing there. With luck, they were still on the other side of the knob, now

feeling secure, and grazing away. I crept back up to the rock pile and peered over. Not grazing, not there. But not that far away. The bucks hadmoved off 70 or 80yards, the does farther. I slid my binos up, and glassed the bucks. Too small for glory, so I moved the binos over tothedoeandfawn.Definitelyinrange,butagoodrestwould be a help. “Give me my pack,” I whispered to John. As he handed it up to me, he sidled up and ranged the antelope bucks. “No,”IwhisperedasIslidtherifleuponmypack.“Range the doe.” Ihadherinmycrosshairsjustashesaid,“242yards. Just hold right on.” So the last thing I thought, as I settled the cross-hairsonthechestofmy100thanimal,thelastthoughtas I reached--potentially reached--my century mark was ‘Howfitting.Buttherangefinderisoffayard.’ So the new century begins with a new category and maybe only one entry ever will make it into the cat-egory:critterwith.243at243yards. Johnny’s actually being cooperative on this. Nor-mally, he would argue for the ‘correct’ yardage. Because part of being a good list person is being accurate, and part of being accurate is being in a position to correct people who don’t keep good lists. It’s a fault I’ll have to share with Courtney and John. I’m tired of throwing away powder, and loading shells who’s history is just a bit vague. After all, now that I’ve hit the century mark I must be a grizzled vet-eran, which means I should be more responsible. Here I thought it was just going to be cool and exciting, but it will be responsible, money saving (remember all the powder in the measurer?) and satisfying. And maybe the next hundred will be written down good and proper. And maybe not. Maybe not writing it down makes the mem-ory more vivid, more alive.

Number 100, turned out to be the same species as number 1, an antelope. That’s the gumbo knob in the background from where we spotted and shot her, and the .243 Husqvarna rifle (with my ini-tials engraved in the trigger guard) that I shot her with. Note the cheat sheet on the butt stock. It says, 100 yards (2.5 inches high), 200 (1.5” high), 250 (3” low) 300 (5” low), 350 (11” low), 400 (19” low.).