Category: The Gun Thing

Not just the guns, but all the stuff that goes with them

Different Hunting

Hunting

As I’ve got older, I’ve watched in the rearview mirror as my hunting days disappeared into the distance.  It’s okay, really;  I’ve done enough, and scratched that itch quite sufficiently.

Nevertheless, while I don’t really miss the hunting as such, I do miss the camaraderie of the thing:  going out with a couple-three like-minded souls to send boolets into unwary animules.

Which led me to this thought.

I can’t do the regular hunting thing anymore — all that stalking / crawling around on the belly / walking miles through rough country, you know what I mean — but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be up for something more sedentary or at least stationary.

My preference, of course, would be to do some high-bird shooting with Mr. Free Market, but that would involve an expense that is (far) beyond my wallet.

So I thought:  why not varminting?  Find a farmer with a gopher / prairie dog / coyote problem and offer to help him out, so to speak.  Then take one or two like-minded souls, set up a shooting table, and start popping a few of these undesirables at distances of (say) 200-400 yards.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

Except that I don’t have the proper gear for such an activity.  I do have a shooting table, spotting scope and sandbags etc., but not the rifle or scope.

As things stand, my sporting long gun collection caters well to precision shooting at shorter distances — .22 LR and .22 WMR, oh yes:


…both fitted with bipods, if sandbags are not available, and both being capable of one-hole shooting up to 50 yards (.22 LR) and 75-100 yards (.22 WMR).

But if I want to shoot anything (that’s of the varmint genre) past 100-odd yards, well, there I’m sorely lacking.

The criteria are simple:  quality rifle, decent scope and cheap ammo — cheap in the sense that it costs more than .22, but less than (say) 8x57mm, .308 Win, .303 Enfield and the like (of which I have shall we say an adequate quantity).  Also, I love my shoulder and am not interested in pounding it into fragments by shooting lots of .3x cartridges, as one has to do when varminting.

Step forward the excellent .223 Remington, which I have often denigrated as a poodle-shooter cartridge, but of course I’m talking about shooting at “poodle-sized” (or smaller) varmints, aren’t I?  And even were I to go with actual .223 Rem and not the military-grade 5.56x45mm, the cost thereof is bearable.

So then:  what rifles?  I have three favorites in mind, of course, of rifles I’ve owned or shot before and that are relatively affordable.  (As much as I’d love to have a Cooper Arms or something of similar excellence, they are just too $$$pendy for someone who belongs to the Poor Of The Parish, i.e. me.)  Even so, I’ll have to sell a couple of my mil-surp rifles to be able to buy one of the candidate rifles and a fitting scope for the purpose.

Here, then, are the three candidates, all chambered in .223 Rem and sporting heavy barrels.  The first two run for about $700 (excluding the scope):

1.) Howa 1500 Legacy


Loyal Readers will recall that I used the above rifle at Boomershoot (albeit with a more manly chambering), and raved about its wonderful trigger and outstanding and consistent accuracy.  It’s definitely my first choice, subject to availability.

2.) Ruger American Predator

Like the Howa, I’ve used the Ruger at Boomershoot (once again, its larger cousin the Hunter in .308 Win), and I would have absolutely no hesitation in using this one.

Finally, we have my sentimental favorite, but at $950:

3.) CZ 600 Lux

I like everything about this gun:  that hogsback walnut (not plastic) stock, the excellent CZ trigger and faultless controlled feed — the CZ has it all, and always has.  Were it not more expensive than the other two, there would be no choice;  but as it is, that $200 premium is a hefty speed bump, and I don’t want to have to sell three of my beloved mil-surp rifles just to afford this one.

There are other brands, of course, but I’m more familiar with these, and I can’t afford to mess around.  There are some cheaper options, of course:

  • Savage Apex Predator line runs about $400, which is nice, but I don’t trust those skinny little barrels — for sustained shooting, nothing beats a heavy barrel
  • Mossberg’s MVP is priced the same as the Savage, but I’ve never shot one before so… but it does look interesting and Mossberg have that reliability thing going for them:
    I just don’t know about the trigger, and I’d hate to have to hassle with a gritty or heavy one.

As for the scope, I’d almost certainly go for a Vortex Crossfire II 6-18x44mm AO — once again, I’ve used this scope often before, mounted on several different rifles — and had excellent results each time.  (I’d like to get a similarly-powered Optika6, but $800 is way too much for my wallet.)

Practice ammo is likewise a simple choice:  PPU 55gr. (bless their little Balkan hearts).  For the actual hunt, I might go with something maybe a little more hefty, say a 60gr. pill, but that can be decided later.  (Incidentally, of the three rifles above, only the CZ 600 is comfortable shooting 5.56x45mm as well as .223 Rem, so that’s something else to be considered given the ready availability of the military ammo vs. the .223 Rem.)

All this said, I’m a little early in the game;  I don’t have a location planned, nor have I even thought much about setting up a shooting party.  But I will need to have extensive practice before I do any of that, because if there’s anything I hate more than burning up ammo to no avail, I haven’t thought of it.

So there it is:  Death To Varmints, at a time TBD.

Your thoughts and input are welcome, as usual;  and if anyone has such an excursion planned for the spring, summer or fall of this year, please consider me as a participant.

Oh, and please don’t use this opportunity to try to talk me into getting a Mattel rifle.  Bolt-action only.

Background To The Range Report

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

A Longtime Loyal Reader (also a good friend who’s broken bread in my house) had occasion to, and I quote, “Replace a light bulb in my #3 gun safe.”

This necessitated emptying the thing of the guns stored therein, which required the assistance of his Son&Heir.

Then (and I quote again):  “I realized that I had about four CZ 75s tucked in the back that I’d forgotten about.  I bought them during the Obama years when there was all that talk about gun confiscation and mag-size regulation, then forgotten about them since.”

And then came the part which made me choke on my morning gin:  “Would you like one?”

Feebly I protested that I’d love one, but being one of the Poor Of The Parish, I couldn’t afford it, no matter the cost.  “Never mind all that,” was the airy response, “I need to make space in the safe.  What’s the address of your FFL?”

So I picked the 75 up yesterday, and raced off to the range to make its acquaintance.  What follows is the range report.

I should point out that when I divested myself of the Browning High Power early last year, I also divested myself of all my remaining 9mm ammo, donating it to Doc Russia because, “Oh hell, I’m never going to need all that again.”

Foolish man, right?  Anyway, I picked up two boxes of self-defense hollowpoint 9mm at the Merchant Of Death’s place, because I have decided that I’m only going to shoot what I carry.  So on with the show…

Range Report: CZ 75 (“Pre -B”) — 9x19mm Para

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

The CZ 75 has been made in several configurations, the earliest being the “Pre -B” (story here) and one of these was what was given to me and which I took to the range.

My Kind Benefactor had the temerity to apologize for the wear on the finish — like that has ever been a concern of mine — but even the guys at the Merchant Of Death, hardened gunnies though they are, were oohing and aahing over the thing, playing with it and trying out the trigger.

I’ll talk a little bit more about the gun itself later, but let me set the scene for the workout.  I made several decisions before the gun even arrived:

  • I’m only ever going to shoot heavy hollowpoints out of the thing, and never the cheap 115gr FMJ ammo because I despise it.
  • So I chose SIG’s Elite JHP 147-gr offering:
      …because that was the cheapest ammo of those specs I could find.

There are a couple of issues with the CZ pre-B 75 guns, but only one of which might be problematic (for me), and that is that their magazines are not compatible with those used in the later CZ 75 B models (and their sub-variants).  I discovered that the pre-B mags are like hen’s teeth, but this is not a concern for me because I intend to carry the 75 as a backup piece, its 15-round mag replacing the S&W 637’s 5-round cylinder.

Anyway, so this is the background to the workout below.  I only had two boxes (all I could afford at the moment), and I had to hold back 15 rounds for the carry mag, so all I had was 25 rounds to play with.  So instead of blasting away (as is my wont), I had to go all South African Army and watch my ammo count carefully.  Here’s how it went, at 7 yards (20-odd feet) distance:

The double-action trigger pull on the CZ 75 is okay, a tad stiff — more like a WWII P-38 than (say) a Glock — but it doesn’t really matter because as a self-defense piece, and not being constrained by department policy, I’m going to carry it cocked and locked like my 1911 so I don’t have to think about it:  safety off, and away we go.

The single-action pull is lovely:  a smooth take-up but no stop before the bang, which for this 1911/BHP user is going to take a little more work.  It did catch me unawares a couple of times during the session, to be sure, with a couple of annoying flyers, but no matter because MOAR PRACTICE oh boy.

I had intended to do a side-by-side with the 1911, but by the time I caught myself, I only had four rounds left.  Never mind, thinks I, let’s just do four rounds of the 9mm, and four rounds of the 1911 carry ammo:


(This is all I carry and shoot these days in my 1911, because heavier .45 boolets (e.g. 230gr FMJ) do a number on my aged wrists after a few mags thereof, and these soft-shooting Normas are both accurate and deadly — “MHP” stands for “monolithic hollow point”, whatever that means.)

Here’s the 4-round comparison, aimed at the “head” portion of the target:

All were fired in what I call “aimed-rapid”, i.e. bang [beat] bang [beat] etc., and the left-hand hole in the .45 group contains two shots, as it happens, the first two I fired.  (Many thousands of practice rounds helps with this kind of thing.)

I noted that I’m shooting the 75 a fraction high after the first shot, something I’ll be watching in future practice sessions.  (The first shot in the above target is the bottom-left hole.)

The grouping is… acceptable — for me anyway.

This SIG ammo is about 58c/pull, the Norma about 50c.

The difference between the two guns in felt recoil is almost imperceptible.  The 75 is surprisingly hefty and tames whatever recoil the heavier 9mm rounds generate.  In terms of size, it almost fits in my 1911’s holsters, but for the larger trigger guard.

Speaking of which, this is one way you can tell the immediate difference between the CZ 75 and the CZ 75 B:

 
Note too the bobbed hammer of the later B;  those two features and the incompatible mags (grrrrr) are the major apparent differences between the two.

As for me:  I now carry a 1911 with 24 rounds (three mags) of .45 ACP, and a backup CZ 75 with 15 rounds of Europellet in its single magazine.

That should work.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: FN-49 (8x57mm Mauser)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

If ever you’ve wanted to own a WWII-era battle rifle but were put off by the cost of the M1 Garand, the Russian SVT-40 and the German G.41 or G.43, allow me to suggest a decent alternative, the Belgian FN-49, as offered by Collectors in its “Egyptian” variant.

Why choose a gun that was obsolete almost as soon as it began production?

Let’s start off with the fact that it was designed by Dieudonné Saive, the man who refined the John Moses Browning High Power pistol.  He began work on the design just before Belgium was invaded in WWII by you-know-who, and only got to finish it in the late 1940s.  So you know the gun is going to work well.

Secondly, it uses stripper clips rather than a detachable magazine, which means that replacement / additional mag costs are zero because 8mm clips are cheap and readily available.

Thirdly, it shoots the manly 7.92x57mm (a.k.a. 8mm Mauser) cartridge.  (Those wanting less recoil should opt for the Venezuelan contract model, which shoots the 7x57mm cartridge.  I lost mine in the Great Canoeing Accident On The Brazos, but I can attest to its greatness.)

Finally, it is a joy to shoot:  smooth operation, reliable feeding (even when chambering the rimmed 7×57), manageable recoil and excellent accuracy.  (One caveat:  the older single-piece firing pin is prone to breaking, and when it does, you’ll get the occasional double-fire slamfire which is irritating not to mention dangerous.  When you buy yours, have the seller affirm that it’s been fitted with a two-piece firing pin.)

Yes, it’s a heavy gun, just like the Garand and G.41, but that’s why the recoil is bearable.

If you already own a Mauser K98 boltie (as every rifleman should), why then, you’ll have an adequate supply of ammo, won’t you?

And if you have rifles chambered in .30-06 Springfield, then you should get the “Belgian” contract FN-49, which are thus chambered. (If you want to read more about it, go here or here.)

Sheesh… as I write this, I can sense that I’m talking myself into wanting this lovely rifle.

You could do worse, a lot worse, than having the FN-49 as your SHTF rifle.

Being Prepared

The Gun Thing

Excellent news from Israel, in the matter of self-defense:

An Israeli news anchor has carried a gun live on air while presenting from the studio amid fear of another Hamas attack.

Lital Shemesh, a presenter for right-wing Israeli broadcaster Channel 14, was pictured on Tuesday sitting behind her anchor desk with a gun tucked into the waistband of her trousers.

Makes sense, of course, because if Channel 14 is indeed a “right-wing” news outlet*, then they would be a likely target of Hamas terrorist scum.

Also, she seems to be quite a cutie:

…and therefore would be a target-within-a-target for terrorists’ swinging dicks — so she damn well should be armed in the event of some Muzzy reindeer games.

Good for her, refusing to be a victim.

*Given the source of the report (a Brit newspaper), “right-wing” would translate as “center-left” in American terminology, i.e. not screamingly-socialist like most TV stations and other media in the West.

Vulcan’s Worthy Descendant

The Gun Thing

Among the small (and it should be said, wealthy) group of gun aficionados, the name Duane Wiebe is well known, and justifiably so.  Here’s a brief auto-bio of the man — but it must be said, his real bio is in the long guns he has crafted over the past three decades or so.  Here are a couple-three, at Steve Barnett’s place (right-click to embiggen):

Argentine Mauser in .375 H&H Magnum

And to the question, “Can an old Mauser handle the .375 H&H?” the answer is a smack upside the head and an “Of course it can, you silly person!”

Here’s another DW special:

Mauser G33/40 in 6.5x55mm Swede

…and if that doesn’t get your drool flowing and trigger-finger itching, then we can’t be friends.

Okay, for those who want something more American and in a more modern chambering [sigh] :

Winchester pre-war Model 70 in .300 Win Mag:

…with Winchester’s typical swept-back Mod 70 bolt.

Okay, none of the above are inexpensive (see the links), because they are each one of a kind, crafted by an expert who not only knows guns, but loves them.

With a decent lottery win, I could find at least two more (along with all three of the above) Wiebe rifles I’d want to buy, and that’s only at Barnett’s.

I don’t just appreciate craftsmen, I venerate them.  And Duane Wiebe is all that, and more.