Month: January 2022

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All About Guns

A 3rd. generation Colt Detective Special

Post author By Grumpy
Post date January 16, 2022
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Well I thought it was funny!

Run Forrest, RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Post author By Grumpy
Post date January 16, 2022
No Comments on Run Forrest, RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May be an image of 1 person and text that says '10:21 29° A 4G SHE SHOWS UP UP FOR BLIND DATE, WHAT DO YOU DO ?'

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Just Imagine by KIM DU TOIT

Post author By Grumpy
Post date January 16, 2022
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Here we go, with yet another of Kim’s imaginary scenarios.

Your house and all your belongings were destroyed in a fire while you were away on vacation. Fortunately, you were extremely well-insured, and your payout will enable you to rebuild your life almost completely.

However, you decide that you’d rather move out into the boonies and live in the mountains, e.g. on a piece of land such as this one:

…and you could afford to build a log cabin such as this one on the property:

So having established all that — and please refrain from making any criticisms or comments on all the above, the really important question is this:

What guns would you choose to have on hand, on your new property? (And to make it a little challenging, assume that for the first year, you only have room for a twelve-gun safe for long guns in your new house; and your wife / girlfriend has limited you to six handguns so she can buy better-class kitchen appliances or some such nonsense.)

Note that the locale will have all sorts of critters roaming around that you may have to deal with, so choose accordingly.

My choices are below the fold.

Rifle #1: Taurus Mod 62M (.22 Mag)

Rifle #2: Browning Buck Mark (.22 LR)
…because the next choice is:

Handgun #1: Browning Buck Mark (.22 LR)

Handgun #2: Ruger Single-Six (.22 LR/Mag)

Handgun #3: Ruger Super Blackhawk (.44 Mag) — for those close encounters of the dangerous kind

Handgun #4: 1911 (.45 ACP) — for those occasional shopping trips to town

Handgun #5: Uberti 1875 Outlaw (.45 Colt) — because cowboy

Handgun #6: S&W Mod 65 (.357 Mag) — bedside gun

Rifle #3: Mauser Mod 12 (6.5x55mm) — hunting in open country

Rifle #4: Marlin 1895 (.45-70 Govt) — because bears

Rifle #5: Winchester 94 (.30-30) — hunting in the deep woods

Rifle #6: AK-47 (7.62x39mm) — because every home should have one, even in the boonies

Rifle #7: CZ 550 Lux (.300 Win Mag) — to reach out and touch someone/thing

Rifle #8: M1 Carbine — because you need to have some fun, too

Rifle #9: Cooper Mod 21 (.223 Rem) — for varminting past 75 yards

Rifle #10: Taurus/Winchester Mod 63 (.22 LR) — because I’m sentimental

The last two long guns in the safe are shotguns:

#11: Mossberg 500 (12ga) — for more close encounters of the dangerous kind (and I wouldn’t keep it in the safe, either)

#12: CZ Bobwhite (20ga)

…because you’d better believe that on 160 acres, I’d have at least one of these:

All About Guns Ammo

The Swede

KIM DU TOIT GUN/AMMO TESTS, THE GUN THING

Longtime Readers will all know of my fondness for the venerable 6.5x55mm Swede (SE), and I happened on an article which gives chapter and verse to this wonderful cartridge.

With all due respect to its larger 7mm / .30 siblings, I stand firm in my belief that the Swede is quite possibly the perfect medium-game cartridge, the excellence of the .308 Win, .30-06 Springfield and so on notwithstanding. When you take all the factors of shooting into account: bullet velocity, flatness of trajectory, penetration, and most especially recoil, the sum of the Swede’s parts of this equation are probably higher than the bigger cartridges. Here’s a pic I’ve posted before, comparing the Swede to its contemporaries:

Here it us with some other “quarter-inchers”:

And finally, vs. the .308 Win (my “1.a” choice for a do-it-all cartridge):

I will say unreservedly that if I were limited to only one cartridge for “ordinary” (i.e. excluding African large game) hunting whether human or animal, the Swede would get my vote ahead of every other cartridge I’ve ever fired.

The only caveat I have is that the Swede doesn’t seem to do as well in shorter-barreled rifles. I think that in standard loadings — and certainly with the Hirtenberg mil-surp stuff — the bullet needs a longer barrel to get that bullet spinning towards its performance apex. And the ultimate expression of that is in the wonderful Mauser Mod 96 with its 29″ barrel, as never used (in combat) by the Swedish Army:

In my earlier post on Great War Rifles, I said:

But of all the rifles issued to soldiers of that era, the one I’d have chosen to go to war with would have been the Swedish Model 1896 Mauser. It has moderate recoil, yet the bullet travels flat and hits hard. The rifle is also fantastically accurate: consistently-placed head shots at 400 meters and torso shots at 600 meters are quite possible even for an average shot like myself.

I haven’t changed my mind since.

That said, I have old eyes and the iron sights would be problematic — but mounting a scope on the old M96 can be tricky, with that 90-degree-lift straight bolt. So I’d have to take instead my current love, the CZ 550 with its 24″ barrel: