Doc

If you have good control on what bullets are going into what gun, neck sizing can actually help control head-space. The case will be fire-formed to that individual gun which is about as good a control on headspace as you can get. Neck sizing will not disturb that "perfect-fit" condition. What I do is full-length size the cases for the first loading. Once they have been shot, I neck-size only. However, the statement was made that you intended to intermix the cases from both guns. In that case, I would suggest that you full-length size every time.

Dang! In the words of Chuck Adams, it looks like you through an ax through him ...... lol. What kind of broadhead was that? I'm amazed that he wasn't painting the woods with blood. Are we looking at the entrance or exit wound?

Ever so often we win one. I love to hear these things. However, during the last couple of evenings, I have seen ads on the TV by the ASPCA begging for financial donations. So they will probably get innocent naive donors to foot the bill of the settlement.

Nope! 2" won't do it for me either. I wonder if Honeoye lake is froze over yet?

Night before last, we hit +3 degrees. That's just to remind us all what a freakish winter last year was. Now we're getting back to reality. I don't really like it.

Thank you all for the birthday greetings. I remember when getting older was something to look forward to, like when I first got my hunting license, and when I finally was old enough to be able to drive, and when I finally got old enough to be out on my own with the freedom of a full-time paycheck. I'm not sure that I still look at being another year older quite the same way as I did when I was a youngster. Now it seems to be more of an achievement of endurance than a key to new opportunities ..... lol. Doesn't matter, I still celebrate it anyway. We just got back from the Longhorn Steakhouse where I made an absolute pig of myself eating my birthday dinner, hogging down a great steak and far more other stuff than any human being should ever be allowed to eat. So now I'm sitting here holding my stomach, and moaning, but I've got to say that they sure do make a great steak! So, I just keep chugging along just seeing how long I can keep this stuff going....lol. And it sure was good to get back after dinner and find all these birthday greetings. Thanks again to you all.

I am simply going by the state's own harvest records. I'll leave it to others to figure out the "whys" of it all. My reply was related to claims that the crossbow is a pain in the butt to use and a horrible weapon to try to hunt deer with and that it basically will never "catch on" because of all the negatives. I am simply pointing out that that is not the experience in Ohio.

Well, there is the problem with most of the laws. It seems that a lot of them contain some verbage that can be interpreted and twisted anyway that a CO or JP or anyone associated with the legal process wants to. You can look at nearly any law and find yourself with a half dozen interpretations, most of which actually make some sense. Look what happened to the "deer feeding" law .... lol. Frankly, I wouldn't even think of shooting toward any building. Is it a "used" farm structure? It's probably not up to me to determine that since I have no personal knowledge. I have no way of knowing if there is somebody in there or not. So, likely there are a lot of people in law enforcement that might use the more liberal interpretation. My personal philosophy is that I have no desire to even be hunting within 500 feet of another person's buildings no matter what category or purpose they may have ....... occupied, used or whatever.

And then from that day forward, you will be the proud owner of something that you will never dare take out of the house. I guess what I am saying is what purpose would it serve to run the risk of jail-time over something that you don't even dare shoot? I'm just trying to pull a little reality into the thread here. My thought is that if that day should ever come that the trooper is standing there asking where your gun(s) is, it is already too late. All the bold talk and activism needs to take place now before the gun laws ever get that far. Now is the time for solidarity behind organizations like the NRA, and non-stop letter-writing campaigns that put the fear of God into every politician who values their job. Because if we sit on our hands waiting for that day when the trooper is standing in our doorway, it will already be too late to really do anything about anything.

So does this mean that Google is monitoring my posts and harvesting information for marketing use? Man! that's a bit "big-brotherish".

And yet, in Ohio the crossbows out number the longbow/recurve/compound bows in their version of bow season. Somebody must like them. And most of that "take-over occurred before a lot of the more recent technological crossbow innovations took place. In other words their popularity overtook the bows popularity at a time where they were relative junk compared to what is on the market today. Just the fact that they do not require a whole lot of time dedicated to the form disciplines and it does open up the bow season to people that don't have time, patience, interest, or energy enough to master the bow, provides reason enough to think that the migration from gun and bow to crossbows will eventually be significant. I hear what you are saying, and maybe it will turn out that way. It all depends on how many gun hunters really want to get into that early season bowhunting season badly enough. And I guess there is little doubt that plenty of non-bowhunters are already casting a jealous eye toward the bow season. The good news is that it took Ohio more than 30 years to get to the stage where they are now. It apparently is not a fast transition, but it is a rather slow but sure evolution.

I have the PETA ad over there right now. I don't remember ever accessing the PETA site.

Oh, I know. Being a land owner, I do have mixed feelings about it, but I have finally come to some level of acceptance. So when my wife offered to buy me a rifle, I took advantage of the opportunity. So now, I am ready to rifle hunt for deer. All I need is for our legislative bozos to carry through with what they started about 3 times so far ..... lol.

So how about other forms of transference such as inheritance. Do they have forms for that (I'm talking long-guns now)? If I die, is there some kind of form that my wife has to fill out? I mean, all of a sudden she becomes the owner of all my guns. Does that have to be documented?

I was just there, and it worked ok for me. In fact I ran a print of it.

Ok, here's the way it worked when I got my gun at Gander Mountain. I filled out items 1 through 10 and then the clerk prompted me along for the rest of it ..... He asked, I answered, and he wrote all the crap onto the form. The answers were pretty straight forward and there was nothing unusual about any of the responses. However, I can see how someone who was buying the gun for someone else might not even get to see the bold print, and the warnings and all the explanations at the bottom. If they add anymore complexity to the process, a buyer will have to bring his lawyer along ..... lol. And that wasn't even a pistol or anything that involves registration.

They better add that in and they better not screw it up this time! I want to use my new rifle on a deer next season.

I just recently bought a .270 from that Gander Mountain store, but I cannot remember the question about who the gun was for. So I'm not sure whether it was a verbal acknowledgement or something on the form that I signed. You never know, it could have been buried in the text of the form that I signed, I can't say for sure. I guess everytime you add on another layer of red tape, it probably increases your odds of making some inadvertant illegal statement and becoming some kind of crook ..... lol. I suppose that as long as your Uncle doesn't hold up a 711 store with it, you're probably ok. But looking back at it now, you probably should have given his name as the intended owner. Who would have guessed? I never knew anything about "straw purchases" prior to this news story. I never even heard the term before.

Ok, that all sounds real good, but let's have a little reality check for a minute. Suppose the confiscation laws were backed up with a statement that simple possession of certain firearms that you currently own was going to be made illegal to own, and the penalties involved some significant jail time. Also, suppose you had made a recent purchase which these days involves a solid paper trail right to your doorstep (we talk about not wanting long-gun registration.... as far as I can tell, we already have it). So anyway, some of your guns may very well be "on the books". So when a trooper or whatever shows up in your doorway asking where that gun is that you recently bought, what exactly will your response be. Also, what good is a gun that you have to keep boarded up in your wall or buried, rusting away under your lawn? These threats of resistance all sound real good, but the better action is to simply support pro-gun organizations, and assist them in their fight against such confiscations politically and through the courts. That is a much more responsible and realistic response than implying some kind of armed resistance.

Do not use the "re-stocking" rate at Gander mountain as any kind of measure of what's available. They are notorious for poor stocking of ammunition and reloading components. I have stopped going there because of that. So, if you are seeing empty shelves, that is no surprise. They have never worried about running out of stock before. It's just the way they are doing business. Also as an FYI, I was told by the guy behind the gun counter at the Henrietta store that when their re-loading stuff (Components and equipment) is gone, they are not going to re-order any of it.

You might want to look into buying a powder trickler. Set up your powder dispenser so it is about two or three tenths under the desired charge and trickle in a few pieces of powder to bring it up to exactly what you want. It's a very accurate and kind of quick-ish way of getting every round exactly to the same charge.

Just started using Hodgdon H4350, and have been impressed with the consistancy of dispensing. But still, I dispense just under and trickle the rest. I don't want any excuses for bullets not hitting in the same hole other than my own shooting .... lol. I don't load great quantities, so I can take that extra little effort.

It is hard to imagine exactly what she knew, but one would think that she must have known he was legally ineligible to own a firearm or else she wouldn't have gone through with the straw purchase including lying on the purchase application. I would not be amazed if it is found out that she was more than just a neighbor. That is a pretty huge "favor" she did, just being neighborly and all ..... lol.

And the reason he wants "Quick Action" is so that he can immediately capitalize on the deaths of those children. He recognizes that emotion is riding high right now, and those kids supplied the opportunity to push his anti-gun agenda. He doesn't want any time to pass where people can begin to actually think about the issue. This is an issue he wants to quickly use public emotion in order to accomplish yet some more worthless gun legislation.

This sounds identical to the situation I was in a little over a month ago. My wife wanted to buy me a deer rifle for Christmas and my birthday combined. So I went on the great quest to find the perfect rifle. On the Rifle and Gun Hunting forum of this site, there is a thread entitled "The Deer Rifle" that covers this subject very nicely (10 pages). The gun that I finally settled on was the bolt-action Ruger American in .270 caliber. I have not regretted that purchase. I did get a chance to shoot my son's .270 just to ensure that the recoil was acceptable ....... almost no recoil. That probably decided the caliber choice as much as anything. The Ruger American does not have a wood stock ..... you mentioned you wanted a wooden stock. However, the accuracy is exceptional. One feature the Ruger American has that is not all that easy to find in a low-cost gun is a fully floated barrel. Judging from what I've seen in terms of accuracy, it seems to be a feature worth having. The action is real smooth, and with the free cheek-pad, cheek weld and target aquisition is excellent. If you intend to reload, I calculated the cost at $.60 per bullet which comes out to $12 per box of 20.