Pygmy

PM sent.

Larry...Give your sweetie a big NEW YEAR's hug from Sis and I ! We'll have to get together again soon.

Dang, TF, I drive right past there probably a dozen times a year ( at least) and never knew it was there. Thanks for the heads up..I'll give it a try..

Dang, 4SW, I'm starting to chub up just READING your post !

The letter from Hagel was typed with an old non electric typewriter..Every few letters there is one higher and/or fainter than the others. Aagaard's letter was typed with an electric, but he hand wrote his return address on the envelope...Aagaard, Rt 9 Box 33B, Llano, TX 78643.

I just looked at some of my old reloading data, and found a couple of letters that I had kind of forgotten. One was a letter from Bob Hagel, typed ( with an old fashioned typewriter) on an NRA letterhead, answering some questions that I had posed about loading for the 7x 57. It is dated Feb. 4, 1981.. The other is a letter from Finn Aagaard, answering some questions that I had about loading the .338 Win mag. It is dated April 4, 1990. Both letters are personally signed by the above gentlemen. Not STAMPED, but signed in ink. I'm wondering if the current gun scribes still take the time to do such things..

I do the same thing, and if it tastes different out of the foil package I can't detect it.. A lot of guys who were in the service won't eat it because of memories of eating it in the service, probably in basic training. Well, that **** on a shingle did NOT taste like what my Mom used to make..I make it like she did and it tastes great.

I love you, Man....<<sigh>>...

No Dom, I just bought it at either Wegman's or Wallyworld, can't remember which one, within the last couple of weeks..It is the 2.5 oz. jar made by Hormel. Makes just enough chipped beef gravy for a meal for The Mermaid and I. She likes it on toast, I prefer it over mashed, boiled taters. They also have it in bigger jars AND in foil envelopes,by Armour, I believe, which are bigger and make enough for a couple of meals. Let me know if you can't find any..I'll buy some and mail it to you. I'll bet you could also order it online.

Thanks, Skillet...I appreciate that and I am sure that my friend Jim would too... He was 6 months short of his 21st birthday when he died.

Happy New year ALL ! I am sipping on a little dried beef glass about half full of Jack Daniels and drizzling a bit of LaBatts Blue Light behind it Works for me.. BTW, I picked up the "wording" on the girl's shirt immediately. I think I LOVE her !

I have had birds spook from the lookout...My favorite is a bobblehead feeder. A little breeze gives Miss Bobblehead a little movement and adds to the reality of the set. I often use her with an inflatable feeder.. I probably will soon invest in one of the ultra realistic hens like the Avian. I do think that the realism helps seal the deal in many cases. A friend of mine who lives in Florida uses a regular taxidermy stuffed hen in conjuction with his custom portable blind. Most years he tags out in Florida and Georgia with his recurve bow, and his average shot is about ten yards.

Yes Bob, I believe it is.

It SHOOTS !! I took the Springfield to the range today. I shot one of the factory loads that came with the rifle to see if I was on paper at 50 yards. It was, so I moved to 100 yards and shot a group with the same handload that I run in my Garand, 47.0 of H4895 with a 150 flat base spitzer. The first three shots grouped right on the point of aim and measured just under 3/4". A fourth shot opened the group to just under 1.5" , but I think I pulled it a little. I had also loaded up a mid-chart load with RL-15 and the same bullet.. It strung the group vertically about 2.5". It may shoot with higher or lower charges that powder, but if it groups as well as it does with 4895, why bother ? I am tickled to think that the rifle is going to shoot well with the M1 load, simply to condense the variety of components I need to stock. I just love it when a plan comes together !

The Leupy 3X will work fine on your mauser and will LOOK cool too ! Much handier and more attractive than some monstrosity of a variable with a bulbous objective. My first deer rifle was a M95 Mauser in 7 x 57. I Bubba'd it with the help of my machinist Dad. He cut the 29" bbl down to 21" and re-crowned it, I cut the stock down and made it a full stock carbine with a Mahogany forend tip. Bought an S&K Instamount and mounted a 2.5X steel tube El Paso weaver scope on it. It shot good with Winchester 175 grain factory loads, and I killed my first few PA deer with it back in the 1970s. Good call sending the M8 4X back to Leupold.. They will either fix it good as new or replace it, for no charge.

I have hunted quite a bit with fixed 4X Leupolds on 3 different rifles, a .280, a .338 Win Mag and a 9.3x62. I have shot caribou, mule deer,whitetails, pronghorns and moose at ranges of 300-400 yards with my 4 powers and have never felt handicapped by lack of magnification.

I do that at least a couple of times a day !

Good point, Shawn..The Nosler partition is a good example of this. Many people think of the partition as a "tough" bullet that expands slowly, because of its reputation for deep penetration. Actually, the partition is a very fast expanding bullet. The front section expands very quickly and does a lot of damage just inside the entrance wound. The front section usually washes away and the sealed rear section stays together, retaining about 65% of the bullet's weight, and keeps penetrating, usually exiting. Exit wounds for NPs are often smaller than entrance wounds because of this. Often hunters look at the small exit wound and think the bullet did not expand properly, despite the fact that they are standing over a very dead animal.

A faulty bullet that doesn't expand is certainly a possibility.I'm not calling you a liar. However, that same faulty bullet would pencil right through at 100 or 200 yards also. The phenomenon of a bullet "pencilling through" due to high velocity is a myth. Bullets DO have MINIMUM velocities when they are no longer going fast enough to expand properly, however any given expanding bullet will ALWAYS expand at least as much and usually MORE at closer range, due to its higher velocity.

An expanding rifle bullet NOT expanding at close range, but then expanding at longer range ? It doesn't work that way. Any given bullet will tend to expand MORE at close range because of it's higher velocity.

The physical stuff isn't very appealing either..I was just commenting to friends the other day that my "boobs" keep getting bigger and my "nether region" keeps shrinking. That means if I live long enough, I'll eventually become a woman......An old, ugly woman...How depressing! However, the good news is that it's highly unlikely that I'll live that long...<<grin>>...

I believe High Standard made most of the pumps and autos, Marlin made the levers, Mossberg made the bolt action shotguns and rimfires, Savage/Stevens and others made single shots.. Some of the centerfire bolt rifles were made with FN mauser barreled actions, and are very high quality .

Happy Birthday, TF ! May you bag many more gobblers...

Growie, all I can say is that your Browning must have a pretty fine bead... Ol' "Whitey" Whitehead hunted with us for years, and he had one of those "special" smoothbores, a Win M12 16 gauge.. He swore that at 50 yards he could blow a hole in a hummingbird as big as your fist.. None of us could ever prove that he COULDN'T....<<grin>>..

I don't understand it either, Doc, but the phenomenon is far from new. Just like wanting to kill very large, dangerous game like brown and polar bears and Cape Buffalo with bows and arrows. Many of those dudes would be stomped into dust if they did not have a professional hunter with a very large rifle standing next to them to kill the animals when it charges. I read that Fred bear shot 6 polar bears with his bow before he could enter one in the record books, because he kept shooting them and then they would charge and the guide would have to kill the bear with a rifle to rescue his silly, scrawny ass. I remember reading an article in a gun magazine back in the 1960s. The author and his buddy were hunting black bears with revolvers chambered in .22 Remington Jet, which is a .357 mag necked down to .22 and is about the same power level as a .22 Hornet.