airedale

For the record I use steel shot where I have to, because my shotguns were purchased before the late eighties and not proofed for steel I had to incur the extra expense of purchasing another shotgun so I could hunt waterfowl. I have also loaded some copper bullets and tried them out but in my case they did not perform as well as I would have liked accuracy wise when compared to conventional bullets. I am not a rich person but I have a taste for double shotguns, it took awhile but over many years I scraped and saved enough money to get myself several. Because I can not use steel shot in them it costs me a small fortune to obtain non toxic ammo so I can use them for certain types of hunting. It raises my hackles when the holier than thou tell me "tough crap", retire those guns and buy yourself something you can use. easy to say when you are not the one left holding the bag for several grand in shotguns! I have no problem switching to and hunting with non toxic shot in my doubles, I would just like to see a more concerted effort by the ammo manufactures to produce non toxic shells at a reasonable price for the hunters with shotguns from the late eighties and back. Al

There is no dispute about the harmful effects of lead on human health, the dispute is how much lead is being consumed from game that is killed with a lead core bullet. I maintain that the amount of lead consumed from a properly butchered deer would be insignificant to a person's health over their lifetime. Al

I don't bet my life on what some retarded kid does, how about you, if your life depended on it would back the tall tale you came up with? More likely than not that kid was purposely trying to harm himself and did, I do not know of any hunters that claim eating lead shot is perfectly OK and will not cause some harm, Like I pointed out earlier if that kid had swallowed a handful of non toxic shot he would have still more than likely clogged up his appendix. had it been non toxic shot I doubt the photo would have ever been posted! I do not know any hunters that find any lead in the game they take and purposely leave it there to be eaten. Standard procedure 101, butcher your game properly, remove all bloodshot meat and any bullet fragments and discard. Fire up the grill and enjoy your venison. Al

The "Walking Lead Zombie Apocalypse" that is what some seem to being trying to imply. Humans have been eating game shot with lead bullets for hundreds of years. Millions and Millions of tons of meat shot with those lead bullets have been consumed, can anyone show me any incidents of people getting lead poisoning from eating game harvested with a firearm using lead. Where are all these sick and dying people because by the way some represent lead bullets there should be thousands of them? The picture of a retarded kid's appendix who swallowed a handful of shot and the corny speculated story to go along with it has no sway with me. Every stinking thing we eat these days seems to have somebody coming up with something in it that is bad and will kill you. The least of my worries is eating a deer I killed with a lead core bullet!! I will butcher properly and enjoy with zero fear! Al

Like guns you can't have too many scopes Al

Waste from any game animal or farm animal I butcher is buried, What I consider to be good bones are given to my dogs. I would not consume any bloodshot meat regardless of the type of bullet that is used be it copper or lead, it is cut away and discarded. Al

What I am saying is place the blame where it belongs, "lousey butchering", not taking the time to cut away any questionable meat around the wound area where there may be some lead. Al

This lead tainted meat crap is caused from piss poor butchering practices. Bloodshot meat and anything else questionable around the wound area is easily seen, it should be cut away and discarded instead of being put into the grinder with the good stuff. Implying that a deer shot with a conventional lead core bullet is unsafe to eat is pure baloney! Al

It is a Pigeon.

Country boy so all that I had available was farm work, mostly on a vegetable farm. Everything from planting, irrigation and harvesting, $7.00 a day and glad to get it. Al

Is there anything that is safe?, seems like copper has it's own dirty little secrets, I have not read anything detrimental about copper based bullets YET! http://www.arltma.com/Articles/CopperToxDoc.htm

One could also speculate that this kid was maybe trying to commit suicide by consuming a large quantity of lead, the complete opposite of thinking it was harmless because his Dad said so. Unless the exact facts are known the whole story is open to speculation! Al

Well like red meat, booze, sugar, butter, eggs, etc. etc, consuming just about anything in excess is going to be bad for you. The fact of the matter is the results would probably been the same had this kid swallowed a handful of bismuth, IXT or steel shot. Al

When it comes to shotshells nobody seems to want to step up to the plate and get serious about manufacturing a lead substitute shot.Very conservatively there are tens of thousands of older shotguns that are not proofed for steel shot and would be ruined by shooting steel through their barrels. Hevi shot is even worse. The only shot these older firearms can use is Bismuth or IXT shot but nobody wants to produce factory ammo. I looked all over the place last summer and fall and could not find one box in all of central NY. I could not even special order it. I ended up having to buy IXT shot and load it myself at $153.00 for a seven pound bag. As bad as that price is it is still less than half of what factory shells would have cost me if I could even find any. Al

Yikes!!, that was a hot one alright, to blow the cylinder and the top strap like that she had to be way over. Al

You did good, nice job! Al

I have been seeing a few in my yard under the bird feeders for the past few days. Al

"Sharpshooters" in Pulaski comes up for me as does "AXtactical" in Utica they are pretty much equal in distance from me. I price checked both outfits and "AXtactical" does a little better on the stuff I compared. Al

I saw an advertisement from one of my local gun shops that has an affiliation-partnership with this outfit called the National Firearms Dealer Network. I went to the site and checked it out and they seem to have a pretty good inventory of firearms, scopes, accessories and ammunition at fairly decent discounted prices. The way it works is you hit the buy now button and it asks you to put in your zip code. It will then show a listing of affiliated dealers that are closest to you with the selling price they want to get for the item. It looks like you pay with a credit card along with a fee, what ever you purchase is then shipped to the dealer of your choice. The dealer will call you when your order comes in and you just go and pick it up. I checked out a couple of different dealers and apparently they set their discount because prices varied. Once you decide on a dealer you can save his home page to your favorites and the next time you check in you will go directly to his affiliate home page. It is a good site just to get an idea of what stuff is going for. http://www.nfdnetwork.com/ Al

I am well aware of the potential problems due to recoil when scoping break barrel air rifles, the NP Trail will be a good test for the Bugbuster, if she holds up I should be OK. When it comes to problem guns like this Benjamin I can and will usually come up with a solution and fix myself, been at this kind of stuff for a long time and I like the challenge. Al

It is one of those Benjamin NP Trail nitro pistons in a 25 cal, it does not seem to have much recoil at all compared to the springers so that should not be much of a factor. This gun has caused me big time headaches getting a scope properly fitted because of it's long welded on scope base that I do not believe is properly aligned. I have several nice scopes laying around that for one reason or another could not be mounted back far enough to give a full field of view, or I could not get them high enough, some actually ran out of adjustment to get zeroed. The scopes I could get on this thing were big game scopes without an adjustable objective and the parallax too severe at short ranges to shoot accurately. It has been a real nightmare. I hated to buy another scope but to make this gun right I was forced to. So as far as fit everything is good with this Bugbuster, it is at the right height, it is back far enough to get a proper field of view, my boresighter shows it is on target and that there is plenty of adjustment, and it has an adjustable objective that eliminates the parallax at air gun ranges. I will give it a good wringing out when the weather gets good. Al

I just mounted one of those 3X9 Bugbusters on a Benjamin Air rifle, I have not had the opportunity to sight the gun in yet so I can not say how well it performs but from what I am seeing it looks very nicely made. The one thing I can say it is very heavy for it's compact size. Al

The Syracuse gun show is coming up April 16&17 there is always a big selection of M1 Garands there for sale. Al

I have two Simmons 22 mag scopes that were purchased back in the late seventies. At that time Simmons scopes were just being introduced into the US market and they were made in Japan and a concerted effort was made to be of very high quality. If I remember right back then they cost me around $130 each. I think so much of their overall quality that one is mounted on a Winchester 52 sporter and the other on a Remington 541S both are higher end guns at least for me. The Simmons of today I know nothing about, and while they may be a good scope they have not been made in Japan for some time and at $50 today I would have to think there is a substantial difference from their early days. Al

Depending on the scope I would not have any qualms about buying used as long as you do your homework. I have in fact saved quite a bit of money doing so. I just purchased a 2.5X Leupold compact that can not be told from new and saved $70 plus tax. Really no risk with Leupolds as they have a lifetime guarantee. Just yesterday mounted an old Redfield 3200 20X target scope on my Model Win 52 target gun, that scope I picked up years ago for a song when I bought the 52. It still works fine and today and it is worth 7 or 8 times what I paid for it. That being said I would probably stay away from a lot of the off brand imported cheap stuff that is used. Al