~1~

Rifle Loony NewsVolume 9 Issue 2 August 2017

John Barsness & Eileen Clarke www.riflesandrecipes.com

What’s Up?

Where Else Are They Now? John is presently appearing in every issue of Guns, Handloader, Rifle, Sports Afield; occasionally in American Hunter, American Rifleman,and frequently logs onto the ‘ask the gunwriters’ forum at www.24hourcampfire.com Eileen wants everyone to know that Tenderize the Wild isn’t just for tough old animals. Yes, it has 112 marinades, brines and rubs for all the animals we North Americans hunt: but those 112 recipes include simple board sauces for tender big game, birds and wild pigs, as well as rubs and marinades for not-so-tender and long marinades and brines for tougher ones. And let’s not forget the art of ‘enhancing’ flavors. We don’t all hold out for the rutty old buck, but with a freezer full of great wild meat, it pays to keep things new and exciting so we don’t ever have to say, “Oh, not that elk again!” www.riflesandrecipes.com

Ode to FidoEC

I walked into the kitchen first thing Tuesday morning and was surprised to find a bit of food on the floor. Sur-prised, because I live with dogs, and as we all know they operate by the Anything-that-hits-the-floor-is-ours rule. But here was food. It took me a second to realize what it was. I’d been making a largish--for us--batch of Fresh Italian sausage, in the course of which I’d chopped up quite a bit of fresh basil. It was a basil leaf on the floor. My dogs don’t eat basil. It was Wilbur, our 22-pound Shih Tzu, who first decided basil was inedible, but Lena the Bird Dog soon agreed. (I think it was peer pressure. Or maybe a lips-that-touch-basil-will-never-sniff-my-butt thing.) In any event, I did the unthinkable in a house where dogs live; I picked food up off the floor. It’s not like these two are fussy. Wilbur spends sunny afternoons eating dandelion tops until, like a trout with the tail of the last little fish he tried to devour sticking out of his mouth, he can’t swallow any more. And Lena? Lena is a magician. Her big act is making Wilbur’s poop disappear.

And bird dogs are famous for eating ANYthing. Friends have reported sweaty old hunting socks disappearing from the bedroom floor only to show up 24 hours later in the backyard. (We’ve found a few bandanas in the same condition.) And when our big male chocolate Lab, Keith, was a pup he slurped up a dime and a bottle cap before we could stop him. Those, too, passed. He continued that way, and it made life easier sometimes. Yes, we had to hold on to our money and bottle caps, but when Keith developed thyroid issues, we’d just toss his pills on the floor. No hiding them in wadded-up balls of cheese, like we’ve had to do with every other bird dog we’ve owned. Of course Keith was also the one who ate my brand new prescription glasses. Well, just one lens and the tem-ple on that side. But it was a 200 mile round trip to get them fixed. Two, trips actually. Two hundred miles to drop them off and 200 miles to pick them up again. But he was just a puppy. Our friend Norm Strung, a long time contributing edi-tor to Field & Stream, proved to me years ago that pup-pies up the ante on dogs-will-eat-anything. He always sat down at 5 to watch the evening news with a martini and a jar of peanuts at his elbow. There was more to the rou-tine. Each evening, Norm’s bird dog would get the first slurp of the martini and 3 peanuts. They all seemed to like it as puppies, but as each bird dog got to about 16-18 months old, the thrill of the martini wore off. (Of course, in my germophobic mind, Norm won the humans-who’ll-eat anything-prize for finishing off those martinis.)

~2~

Norm’s wife Sil had to take it a step farther. We had driven down to their cabin one May afternoon in 1988, to pick up our new bird dog, Keith. He was just 8 weeks old and a mutual friend had delivered him. First she put gravy on his puppy chow. (He was soon to discover that would be the best meal of his life: John and I don’t do gravy for dogs.) But that evening, Sil had a couple more Manhattans than she needed, and wondered just what a puppy wouldn’t eat. It started out pretty innocently, but by bedtime she was sneaking him whole cloves of garlic and, if your dog has never eaten lots and lots of raw gar-lic, let me just say you’d be better off if he puked it up. John and I spent the night in Norm and Sil’s guest room with our noses as close to the open window as possible. For pure grossness, our present chocolate Lab, Lena wins the prize. While walking in the wildlife manage-ment area north of our house one winter day, Lena was casting left and right as if hunting season was still open, disappearing every now and then into the brush for a few seconds at a time. Then she came back to the center of the 2-lane access road, and slicker than snot, deposited something from her mouth to the grass. “What is that?” I asked. “You don’t want to know,” John answered. He was clos-er and I made the mistake of catching up with him. Lena had swallowed, then vomited, a beaver’s foot, this being a trapping area. Had there been a sign posted, which trap-pers are supposed to put up on public land to warn people (we’d already saved Keith from a neck snare years before) we wouldn’t have been there. We left immediately, with Lena on her leash, but still she won that prize. Aside from basil, there has only been one other thing that only one other dog wouldn’t eat. The dog was Gillis, John’s first bird dog and an uncut male black Lab. Gil-lis was nine when I first met John in 1983, and he was my first Labrador re-triever. In a way, he spoiled me. Aside from teaching me to love bird hunting, Gillis was a long, lean dog. You could keep food in his bowl all day long and let him eat whenever and however much he wanted without his gaining weight. One dog sitter tried that with Keith, and within a week he looked like a knockwurst, but Gillis was good that way. You didn’t want to sit on the floor if he was within 100 yards, but he kept his boyish figure. Now the food Gillis wouldn’t eat. John and I had been antelope and sage grouse hunting in Eastern Mon-tana, and after three days in the camper we were driving home again, about 8 hours in good weather. We had stopped for gas in White Sulphur Springs, when I got a craving for chocolate. I’d already looked for ‘good’ choc-olate, and not found what I wanted

while John was pumping gas, but when he got in the truck again, I said, “I’ll be a minute.” I needed chocolate. Any chocolate. No matter. So I went inside the conve-nience store again and walked around for ten minutes, finally purchasing a package of two Hostess chocolate cupcakes. Down the road 20 miles, I’d choked one down, but just couldn’t eat the other. “I’ll save it for Gillis,” I said. “He’ll eat it.” Af-ter all, we already knew he liked chocolate. (And that it wouldn’t kill him or make him even a tiny bit sick. It was he who had snarfed up an entire box of turtles--choco-late, nut and caramel jobs--that John had wrapped and put under the Christmas tree for me. Didn’t touch the Dickel I’d wrapped for John.) So there his cupcake sat, wrapped up on the dash board, until we got to the rest stop 30 miles from home. John let Gillis run around and do his thing while I took my turn at the outhouse. Then we switched places. When John joined us again, I grabbed the cupcake. “Gillis, come. I have something for you,” I said. I un-wrapped the cupcake, and offered it to him. Gillis hesitated. Something I’d never seen him do be-fore. When I offered him the leftover spaghetti on a duck hunting trip, he hadn’t hesitated. (He hadn’t hesitated either, when he immediately barfed it back up.) But he was thinking this cupcake over. Finally, he took a step toward me, rolled his lips back from his teeth, and gingerly grasped the cupcake with the very tips of his incisors, his tongue rolled back too, letting as little as possible of the thing actually be in his mouth. He started to turn, then looked up at us as if to apologize, then spun around and trotted across the parking lot to the trees. We watched as he quickly dug a hole, deposited

the Hostess cupcake and covered it back up--first with his front feet, then turning, threw more dirt on top with a salvo from his hind feet. Done, he wandered back to the truck and jumped in his bed. “Maybe he thinks if it’s buried long enough the nasty stuff on the outside will rot away,” John said. “Just shut up.” “Interesting, that he won’t eat something that you would,” John went on. “What happens here, stays here,” I said, giving him the cold eye. “Oh, yeah. Right,” he said. “Sure.” So: turtles, toast and jelly, my buttered popcorn, John’s sun-dried tomato and red onion popcorn, to-matoes, lettuce, onion slices, garlic and even jicama: those they’ll eat. It makes me wonder what a choco-late Hostess cupcake and a tiny sliv-er of basil have that a beaver’s foot and a martini don’t. I’ve decided I don’t want to know.

Nine-pound Nikki, our first Shih Tzu with one of the more palatable canine edibles, a wild boar bone. Her house mate, Gideon, the 65 pound Lab/Llewellin setter cross pictured on the previous page, was the bandana eater. He would have gone for this wild boar femur, but Nik told him it tasted like basil.

~3~

Good EatsThe Totally Grilled DinnerServes 4EC Despite the somewhat longish list of ingredients, this is a simple, quick cooking recipe. The steaks get marinated overnight, then you toss the dates in a mini chopper and puree, cut a few veggies in half, wipe with oil and grill for a total of 10 minutes of actual ‘work’. The finished dish is a feast for the eyes as well as the mouth, and with most of us anxiously awaiting the start of hunting season, it’s a way to forget just how long it’s been. BTW, I used Ingle-hoffer brand Wasabi. It comes in a squat squeeze bottle, in the mustard section of the store.IngredientsFor the steak marinade1 pound venison steaks½ cup soy sauce¼ oilFor the date sauce6 pitted, chopped dates (about ½ cup)⅓ cup rice wine vinegar2 tablespoons prepared WasabiFor the cooking/assembly2 romaine lettuce hearts, cut in half lengthwise (leave the root attached so they’ll stay intact on the grill)4 ripe tomatoes, cut in half8 sweet mini peppers, cut in half½ red onion, cut in chunks large enough to not fall through the grate (see the photo at right)2 tablespoons oil½ teaspoon salt¼ coarse ground black pepperPreparation The night before, put the steaks in a resealable plas-tic bag with the soy sauce and oil. Close the bag and refrigerate overnight. For the date sauce, combine the chopped dates and enough of the rice wine vinegar in a mini-chopper to purée them without spraying vinegar ev-erywhere. Puree. Transfer to a small bowl or jar, and stir in the prepared wasabi. Cover and refrigerate. Cooking1. Preheat the grill to 400-450°F, about medium.* Cut side up, brush the halved romaine hearts and tomatoes with oil, and sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Puree the wasabi/date mixture in a mini blender and set aside.2. The steaks will take a few minutes more than the ro-maine hearts and veggies, so start the meat first. After 2-3 minutes, gently lay the romaine hearts and tomatoes cut side down on the grill, and strew the mini peppers and red onions beside them. (Tongs are handy for this job, and for pulling the food off the grill later, too.)3. Take the steaks off the grill when they are 130-140°F, rare to medium, however you like them but no more than medium. Cook the romaine hearts until tender and grill marked, about 4-5 minutes then turn the romaine hearts over for another two minutes. Remove all the veg-gies then. (They won’t be completely cooked, but like a good salad, they’ll be crunchy and tasty.)

4. Divide the veggies evenly in four servings, then slice the steaks thin on the diagonal. Serve the steak slices on top of the grilled salad, place a good dollop of wasibi/date sauce on the side and dip into it with each forkful.

* This is a good time to have a well-seasoned grill, so once hot, wire brush any leftovers from the cooking sur-face, and wipe (using long-handled tongs) with a paper towel dipped in about 2 tablespoons of oil.

Don’t have prepared wasabi at your local store? Subsitute the Caribbean Dry Rub from Tenderize the Wild for the mari-nade--1 tablespoon of the mix will do for 1 pound of meat. Then let it sit overnight in the fridge to tenderize and flavor and serve your grilled salad and steaks with bottled Caesar dressing. Put the rest of the dry rub in a shaker bottle and add it to your next potato salad or baked potato. Caribbean Dry Rub2 tablespoons brown sugar1½ teaspoons ground allspice1 teaspoon dry leaf thyme½ teaspoon cinnamon½ teaspoon onion powder¼ teaspoon garlic powder¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper½ teaspoon salt

~4~

Ginger SnapsMakes 3 dozen 2½” cookiesEC There are two things that never taste as good as home-made: the first is tomatoes. It’s why anyone who plants a garden ALWAYS plants tomatoes. But the other thing that doesn’t hold a candle to homemade is Ginger Snaps. Until I made my own a few years ago, I wondered why such a thing even existed. Now I know. These snaps are tangy and with an extra egg yolk in the batter, they’re moist and rich as well. They will spread out 2 to 2½ times their size, as you can see above, so leave lots of room around each cookie on the cookie sheet. And don’t forget to roll them in sugar: that makes the tops crackle a bit, and provides a sweet intro as you bite into this dynamic cookie. Ingredients1 teaspoon ground cinnamon1 teaspoon ground ginger2 teaspoons baking soda2 cups all purpose flour1 whole large egg + 1 egg yolk¾ cup room temperature butter1 cup brown sugar3 tablespoons molasses3 tablespoons white sugar, for dusting/bakingCooking1. Preheat the oven to 350F˚. In a medium-sized bowl, combine the cinnamon, ginger, baking soda and flour. In a cup, break the one large egg and add the extra yolk. 2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until they are well mixed and start to look light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. (Start on low then go a click faster once they’re combined.)3. While keeping the beaters going, add the whole egg and extra yolk, and mix that about 3 more minutes. Add the molasses, and when it’s mixed with the batter, add the cinnamon, ginger, baking soda and flour mixture a half a cup at a time. Mix until well blended. 4. Measure the white sugar out into a saucer. Shape the batter into 1” diameter balls, and roll in the white sug-ar. Place on a greased cookie sheet (or parchment-lined cookie sheet, my preference these days) and bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on the cookie sheet until the pan is cool enough to handle then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. (This is where parchment is handy: holding one end of the parchment slide the cookie sheet out from under it. ) Let them cool 5-10 minutes until they firm up. Enjoy.

Cookie Corner Game Care NotesKnife Sharpening for Dummies (like me)EC Okay. Raise you hand if you can’t sharpen a knife without an electric sharpener. Okay, now the rest of you: raise your hand if you can’t sharpen a knife without train-ing wheels--like a Lansky knife sharpening kit. (That’s not to knock either method: they’re just a bit more weight to carry out in the woods--and what if you get lucky and need to sharpen your knife in the woods? The less weight the better.) Just in case you’re looking around there’s a lot of people with their hands up--and I would have been one of them until about a year ago. It’s the angles. I couldn’t feel them. John, who knows how to do it says, just lay the knife on the stone and feel the angle. Um. Sorry, I just can’t. I’ve tried. And I know lots of other people who’ve tried. And can’t ‘feeeeeeel’ the angle. (Why do I feel like I’m about to get kicked out of yoga class?) The truth is I’m too literal. So last year when I had a houseful of dull knives I went looking for a How to Sharp-en A Knife video. There were lots, but no surprise, not a lot of help. They were mostly into the feel-the-angle school or--worse--selling me their magic knife sharpen-ing gear. A Cooks Illustrated video finally saved me. No zen feely stuff. Their approach was: You know what a 90° angle looks like. Where a floor meets a wall is 90° all day long. (Unless, of course, you live in a 107 year old log house....) A hunting knife is often a 30° angle, which is ⅓ of 90°; a filet knife about 15°, ½ of that, and boning and chef’s knives are somewhere in between (18-25°). So you set your knife at a 90° angle to the sharpening stone--straight up and down--and then divide the 90 to what you need. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve sharpened to 15° rather than 17°; what matters is that you hold the knife at the same angle with each swipe of the blade on stone, each time you sharpen it. So how do you do that? Let’s imagine a hunting knife--30°. If it’s only some-what dull, use a steel on it first because a steel doesn’t take off as much metal as a stone and your knife will last longer: 30° angle, 10-15 gentle strokes on each side of the blade, with the sharp edge of the knife pointed to-ward the steel. Test the sharpness by cutting paper, not your scraping thumb. If the paper folds over instead of the knife slicing through, your next step is a stone. Some people use several stones from coarse to fine, but for simplicity we use a diamond stone and steel at our house. It’s your choice. But here’s the method:

~5~

Rifle Loony LitThe Last HunterWill WeaverPublished in 2010, available on Amazon and other sites. EC This is a cautionary tale for everyone who loves hunting. Yes, the story is saturated with hunting stories, from the author’s earliest weap-on--a chunk of wood with a clothes pin/rubber band pro-pulsion device--to his Dad’s classic .30-’06, but what it’s really about is how our world has changed in the last half century. Will Weaver grew up on a farm, in a family of farmers: his Dad’s farm abutted that of two uncles, and every hunting season dad, grandpa, cousins--once even a local minister who didn’t show good gun safety and was escorted none too politely off the family farm--took to the woods. There was the heirarchy of those who push and those who stand, the daily lessons of respect for game and immersion in living off the land. Whether it was catching frogs to sell to the city folks for bait, or picking fruit to be turned into an army of mason jars filled with mince meat, Weaver’s life was a locovore’s heaven before Uber-Urbanites made it so darned trendy. Yes it was work. Will’s dad had contracted polio as a kid, and the work and post-polio syndrome sapped the strength from him. But it was also the way a lot of us lived pre-WWII. In 1945, the US was divided 50-50, city vs country. We Baby Boomers left the farm to go to college, find a good job and raise kids. Those kids got even further from the farm and rural areas, and here we are now, like Will Weaver, his kids more interested in basketball and high finance than waking up in the predawn cold and head-ing into the woods. More than one reviewer of this book has mentioned that Weaver’s description of family life rang a lot of bells. Despite having grown up in a big city, it did for me, too, given that my Dad was also born in 1913 like the author’s, and my Dad also met Babe Ruth. The author’s father met The Babe while being treated for polio; my Dad was raised in an orphanage, one of the many the Babe visited in his lifetime. Beyond that, I only dreamed of growing up on a farm, but ar-ranged my working life to end up in farming country. In Mon-tana, in my circle of friends, I know several Dads and Grandpas who are raising kids who love hunting. Will’s trajectory goes the opposite way, and sadly, the way most of the rest of us are going. And while more girls are taking hunter safety these days, the overall average age of hunters has risen and hunter access has gotten more difficult. Even getting to the range to sight in a gun can be an all-day affair for a lot of us. The Last Hunter isn’t a hard-core, brass and powder hunting book. But the story is universal and important: we need to heed the message. The legion of those of us who hunt can’t keep get-ting smaller and older.

1. Set the knife on the stone at a 90° angle--straight up.2. Now bend down, and look at that angle, and divide the knife to stone angle in thirds, then angle the knife at the top of the first third as in the photo above. That’s 30°. For this chef’s knife I dropped the angle another third so it was about 20°.

3. Once you have the angle set, place the fingers of your off hand on the knife blade and slide the knife along the stone--knife edge leading as you draw it across, point to heel, 10-15 strokes for each side of the blade--then test on the paper. Still dull? Do another 12 to 15 strokes until it is sharp. BTW, keeping your off hand on the blade keeps it off the stone, with less chance of getting cut. And just so you don’t have to hold the stone, place a folded, wet paper towel under it. That will keep it from sliding around. Test your blade on a piece of paper, and if it slices through rather than folds the paper over, you’re ready to finish.

4. Finish with the steel, using the same angle. Sharp-er yet. The only trick to sharpening knives is to always sharpen them to the same angle, otherwise you’re dullling them instead. The first time you sharpen this way, you may find it takes a while. If you know what angle it was sharpened to last, repeat it. Otherwise accept that you’re starting over, but once the knife is sharp, as long as you continue with the same angle it will be much quicker to sharpen the next time. If you have to, mark the angle you used on your calendar so you’ll remember each time. After years of trying to feeeeeel the angle, being able to divide and conquer--and see--the angle worked. We all learn differently. This worked for me.

~6~

Seeing Is BelievingTract Toric 10x42 BinocularJB

The optics market keeps getting more crowd-ed. One of the new companies is Tract Optics, recently started by Jon LaCorte, who worked for Nikon for many years, where I got to know him. One of the major differ-ences between Tract and most other optics companies is their products are sold only through their website, www.tractoptics.com, bypassing the traditional layers of retailing--including wholesale distributors and their sales representatives, and on-line or brick-and-mortar stores, each of which takes their cut of the eventual price to the consumer. The Tract system results in con-siderable savings to hunters desiring high quality op-tics. A good example is Tract’s top-of-their-line To-ric binoculars. I requested a 10x42 for testing, partly because I prefer 10x42’s for all-around hunting use, and partly because of my Swarovski EL 10x42, used as a base-line for optical performance. Binocular com-parisons are truly valid only when comparing the same size binoculars, both in magnification and objective-lens diameter. Comparing an 8x30 to a 10x42 isn’t as impossible as comparing apples to oranges, but is kind of like comparing Galas to Golden Delicious. They’re different kinds of apples. When making comparisons I use a pretty long check-list, including such optical basics as brightness in dim light, chromatic aberration, accuracy of color rendition, and fuzziness around the edge of the field of view. Then there’s how close the binocular can focus, usually far more important to birdwatchers than hunt-ers, but the list also includes mechanics, including ease of focusing, eyecups, any perceived mechanical slop (including how well the binocular stays in focus), and the diopter adjustment, used to compensate for the slight differences often found in a pair of human eyes. There’s also weight and size. A lot of hunters think very small, light binoculars are more desirable—and they are, if you’re one of those hunters who only looks at stuff they’ve already seen. But when seriously

glassing for details invisible to your naked eyes, say a deer’s antler sticking out of a bush half a mile away, more weight can help steady the view, especially with the higher magnification that makes serious glassing possible. So I went through my checklist, directly com-paring the Toric and EL. Not surprisingly, the Swarovski came out slightly ahead in most optical categories, but wasn’t any sharper, and neither binocular showed any visible trace of chromatic aberration—the fringe of blue or purple color around the edges of objects, due to the lenses not focusing different light-rays exactly the same. Edge-fuzz was just about the same, so minimal nobody would notice it unless really looking, as was field of view. The only optical category where the EL really beat the Toric was close-focusing, but both focused on objects far closer than any hunter would be interested in unless they’re also butterfly watchers. The EL’s is listed at about five feet and the Toric about eight, but the test Toric focused at seven feet. Both have dust/oil/water resistant lens coatings that work very well. The Toric required only ¼ turn of the focus wheel to go from 12 feet to infinity, the EL about 1/3 of a turn—but the Toric’s focusing was noticeably firmer, so is more likely to stay focused in the field. The EL’s diopter adjustment is included in the focus wheel: You pull the wheel back slightly to unlock the diopter, and after adjustment, push the wheel forward to lock it. The Toric uses the more common diopter-ring on the right eyepiece, which costs less to produce. Like the focus wheel, it adjusted firmly yet smoothly. The EL has two slim hinges between the bar-rels, one at the front and one toward the rear, holding the focus wheel. The Toric has a single “piano-cover” type hinge, two inches long. Usually slimmer double hinges save weight over a piano hinge, but the Toric weighs a couple ounces less than the EL, a binocular known for its relatively light weight, and the Toric’s also noticeably smaller in overall size. Both binoculars are rubber-armored with a nub-by finish, making them easy to hold and control even in sweaty hands. The Swarovski has twist-turn eyecups with three click settings; the Toric’s have four settings. I’d rate the mechanics of the Toric slightly ahead of the EL’s, though both binoculars work very well. Now we come to what many hunters consider most important, the price. Right now the 10x42 To-ric can be ordered for $626, which includes free UPS ground shipping. The 10x42 averages around $2600 from various websites, and that normally doesn’t in-clude shipping. Many hunters consider Swarovski bin-oculars the best in the world, and I certainly won’t argue with them—but many hunters also can’t afford Swarovskis. But most of us can afford a Tract Toric.

~7~

Down the Barrel

How Much Does Price Matter?JB One cliché often heard when discussing rifles and scopes is “you get what you pay for,” but whether it’s true or not depends on what individual shooters want from their rifles and scopes. “You get what you pay for” often comes from shooters who (1) want rifles and scopes they can not-so-subtly brag about owning, and (2) often don’t know anything about lower-priced rifles and scopes, be-cause they’ve rarely tried any. In fact I have a local friend who’s exactly like that. The first time we went “gopher” (ground squirrel) shoot-ing together he took one look at my .22 Hornet’s scope and said, “Why do you have a Burris on your rifle?” It turned out he firmly believes expensive European scopes are the best in the world, and not just any Euro-scopes but one particular brand. I didn’t say anything then, but after we started shooting and he missed a gopher or two, I couldn’t resist asking how he could have missed with a $1200 scope. We’re still good friends, however, partly because he’s never said, “You get what you pay for.” The truth is that modern manufacturing has leveled the playing field so much that often a truly “af-fordable” (advertising-speak for “cheap”) rifle or scope is just as accurate or bright as more expensive models, and just as often equally reli-able. I know about scope brightness due to having tested many scopes with my home-made chart since developing it in 2009. The chart has alternating black-and-white lines measuring from 1-inch thick at the top to 1/16-inch at the bottom, and scopes are rated by the thinnest lines that can be seen at night, with the chart illuminated by a 100-watt lightbulb 25 yards away. The best any scope has rated is 8, meaning the 1/8th inch line can be seen. Several scopes have rated that high, and at first they were all expensive Euro-scopes, but during those eight years several scopes made elsewhere rated an 8, including a couple of Leupolds us-ing “outsourced” lenses (meaning made in Asia). How-ever, the Leupolds retailed for over $1000, and the most recent scope making the grade was a Tract Toric 3-15x42, retailing for only $694. My test Toric also proved very reliable. It’s a tur-ret-dialing scope, and worked precisely during an exten-sive test on my primary scope-breaker, a Heym SR-21 .300

Winchester Magnum, with handloads pushing 210-grain Berger VLD’s to almost 3000 fps. But even lower-priced scopes are very bright and reliable these days. I’ve nev-er tested a modern, multi-coated scope that’s rated less than a 6 (1/4-inch line), including a bunch costing $250 or less, and some selling for well under $500 have rated a 7 (3/16th line). For legal hunting in the U.S., there’s little practical difference between a scope rating 7 or 8—partly because a scope’s reticle is more important in dim-light aiming than optical quality, the reason so many newer scopes have illuminated reticles. As for toughness and reliability, in my experience Burris’s Fullfield II’s (FFII) are about as tough as any “set-

and-forget” variables made. In fact, I’ve never had a FFII malfunction on rifles cham-bered for rounds including the .300 Weatherby, .338 Winchester and .375 H&H Magnums, and have had sev-eral scopes costing over $800 come apart on rifles cham-bered for such cartridges. The typical retail price for the 3-9x40 FFII is $199, and they usually rate between 6 and 7 on the optics chart, two rea-sons I have one on my Ruger No. 1B .22 Hornet, the very scope questioned by my Eu-ro-scope-loving buddy. Along with never changing zero in thousands of rounds, the Bal-listic Plex multi-point reticle makes hitting small rodents

out to 300+ yards pretty easy. (Yeah, the .22 Hornet doesn’t kick much, but a lot of shooting with even smaller rounds with often shake a scope apart. Believe it or not, I had a scope come apart on one of my 2017 rodent ex-peditions, while mounted on a .17 Hornady Rimfire Mag-num!) Some Burris fans worried when the production of Fullfield II’s went to the Philippines a decade ago, but the machinery was designed by Burris, and Burris taught the workers how to use it. As soon as possible, I got my hands on one of the Asian 3-9x’s, and in every way it was at least as good as the American-made model, and in some small ways better. That Philippine 3-9x is the one that’s been on my Ruger .22 Hornet for nine years now. The accuracy of today’s “affordable” rifles is be-coming phenomenal. I’ve mentioned Ruger American Rifles (RAR) several times in various articles since they appeared a few years ago, but this July I range-tested an RAR Predator in 6.5 Creedmoor for the first time. The Predator’s a slightly more expensive version of the standard RAR, with a camo-painted stock and a medium-

~8~

contour barrel, factory-threaded at the muzzle for a sup-pressor. For the first test I handloaded 140-grain Berg-er Hunting VLD’s with 41.5 grains of H4350, a standard Creedmoor accuracy charge for bullets in the 140-grain range. After adjusting the 3-9x40 Burris C4 Plus to get on paper at 100 yards, I fired five rounds. After each suc-ceeding shot the hole just got a little darker, and the group later measured .33 inch, center to center. And yes, you can see the edges cut by all five bullets around the outside of the single hole. I’ve owned several accurate hunting rifles chambered for various 6.5mm cartridges over the years, including a 6.5-06 E.R. Shaw Mk. VII, and a cus-tom 6.5x55 built on a commercial FN Mauser 98 action, rebarreled by Charlie Sisk with a #3 Lilja and a minimum-dimension Pacific Tool & Gauge reamer. None of the other 6.5’s have shot as accurately as this “affordable” Ruger. Of course, the Ruger American doesn’t have sev-eral of the other must-have items on the rifle-loony reli-ability list, such as controlled-round feeding, and it’s not nearly as attractive as my 6.5x55, classically stocked in “California English” walnut. But so far the Ruger’s fed ev-ery round from its detachable magazine, and extracted and ejected the empties. I suspect it will do fine for 98% of big game hunting on earth, despite its classic deficien-cies. But if you must have controlled-round feeding, you also don’t have to spend all that much these days. Among the CRF factory rifles on the market are CZ 550’s, Ruger Hawkeyes, and what used to be called Winchester Model 70 Classics. All can be purchased new for under $1000, often well under, and even if you want a CRF chambered for larger cartridges more suitable on dangerous game, the price isn’t much more. And yes, they are reliable. In Alaska, Ruger Hawk-eyes are probably most popular, while in Africa I’ve seen more CZ’s. The manufacturer-suggested retail price for a big-bore Hawkeye or CZ is $1200+, meaning they can be purchased in what’s often called “the real world” for some-what less. However, if you buy a CZ 550, be aware that some shooters (especially those who sniff “you get what you pay for”) feel they’re not really up to the task unless modi-fied. They often recommend one gunsmithing service in particular, which charges around $800 to replace the fac-tory single-set trigger with a single-stage, the slick-work-ing unobtrusive lever on the side of the action tang with a 3-position Model 70 type, and straighten the bolt handle so it resembles those on Oberndorf Mauser sporters. This is all fine and dandy, but the factory trigger can be easily turned into a single-stage by adjusting the primary pull to around 3-4 pounds, whereupon the set feature disappears. The safety works great as-is, and in fact some hunters don’t think the Model 70 type safety is the absolute best ever designed. I am among them, find-ing pushing its wing all the way forward takes a LOT of movement. In contrast, the CZ factory safety requires far less movement, so tends to be quicker. Some get around the long push of the Model 70 safety by setting it in the middle position when expecting

action, requiring far less movement. Unfortunately, the middle position allows the bolt to be opened, so the bolt handle can be inadvertently knocked upward a little. In quite a few Model 70’s this results in the safety being im-possible to push forward, as some dangerous game hunt-ers have discovered to their dismay. This condition can be fixed by a good gunsmith, but the CZ’s original safety works correctly, all the time. Or at least the ones on my 550’s have. I don’t know what the advantage of an Oberndorf bolt handle might be, except possibly looks. Straightening the handle to a 90-degree angle from the bolt moves the knob about half an inch forward, and bolts are most easily manipulated with the knob farther to the rear—the reason the Lee-Enfield’s considered one of the fastest-working bolt actions ever made. The company also fills the hole in the knob, again to what purpose I don’t know. When I’ve really needed to work the bolts on my 550’s quickly, it’s been easy. In fact even European companies are starting to build less-expensive rifles for the American market, and as you might imagine they work very well. Recently I tested a Sauer Model 100 XT, a “cheaper” version of their excellent 101 XT—so much cheaper, in fact, the suggested retail’s only $699, less than half the price of the 101. This may not sound cheap compared to a Ruger American costing half as much, but in all respects it functioned so much like the 101 there wasn’t any practical difference—and it has a slick 3-position safety lever, somewhat resembling those on CZ 550’s. Apparently America’s “affordable” trend con-tinues to make inroads even across the Atlantic.

The most precise but time-consuming way to make sure case-necks are the same thickness is “turning” them with a tool that shaves off a thin layer of brass. Most lathe-type case trim-mers can be used for the job, and I’ve turned a bunch of necks with my old Forster trimmer. It does a decent job, but really pre-cise turning’s normally done with a hand-tool like the Sinclair in this photo. See page 10, for the rest of the story.

Handloading Tips

~9~

Arnold Erhardt 6MM PPCJB

One of the interesting side-effects in most suffer-ers of RLS (Rifle Loony Syndrome) is an obsession with accuracy. After all, didn’t Townsend Whelen write, “Only accurate rifles are interesting”? However, most hunters naturally confine themselves to bench-testing their hunt-ing rifles, where 1-inch, 3-shot groups are usually consid-ered plenty for big game, and somewhat smaller groups good for varminting—or bragging. Competitive benchrest shooters are something else. Most shoots take place at 100 and 200 yards, and unless your rifle’s capable of putting every bullet into close to the same hole at 100, you’re not going to place at larger matches. This means 5-shot (not 3-shot) groups in what benchresters refer to as “the ones,” groups aver-aging between .1 and .2 inch. A rifle capable of averaging in the twos (.2+) might win a local shoot, but not compe-titions from statewide level on up. I’ve never had any serious interest in competi-tive shooting, mostly because I’m a hunter, and between year-round hunting in Montana there have been trips to other places. But the subject of rifle accuracy interested me from the time I acquired a Daisy Red Ryder “BB gun” at age eight, and at 13, I performed my first “accurizing” job on a Marlin Model 81 bolt-action .22 rimfire. Over the next few decades I accurized quite a few centerfires, but wasn’t exposed to real benchrest rifles until around 40, while attending one of the Ground-hog Shooters and Prevaricators Conferences that Melvin Forbes used to throw at what was called “The Farm,” an 800-acre piece of creekbottom and mountains Melvin and several West Virginia friends purchased as a getaway place for their families. The old farmhouse was converted into a bunkhouse capable of sleeping around a dozen people, while retaining the big kitchen, and the long, cov-ered front porch overlooked a meadow large enough for attendees to wander down to the other end (where some benchrests had been built) and do some target shoot-ing, while not interrupting the prevaricating taking place among porch-sitters. One of the other attendees was the late Mickey Coleman from Alabama, who in mid-life decided to be-

come a part-time gunsmith, partly to make accurate rifles for himself. He figured it out pretty quickly, and soon was making hunting and benchrest rifles for other people. Mickey set up some wind flags and a target at the other end of the meadow, and invited me to shoot one of his bench rifles, a 6mm PPC. I’d never used formal wind-flags before, mostly judging wind by “natural” signs, thanks to plenty of varmint shooting. Mickey explained how to keep track of the flags out of my left eye, while aiming the scope with my right. After a few warm-up shots to get used to the flags and the very light trigger, I shot a 5-shot group. It started off really well—as Mickey said, looking through his spotting scope, “the hole’s just getting darker”—but the fourth shot landed outside the dark hole, far enough to see a sliver of white paper between them. The fifth made the original hole slightly darker. “That third flag got ya,” Mickey said. “On that shot it switched around just as you shot.” This was all very interesting, especially learning how a very mild shift in the breeze, partway to the target, could ruin perfection. Back in Montana I started experimenting with ben-chrest handloading and shooting techniques with one of my varmint rifles, a heavy-barreled Remington 700 I’d accurized in several ways. Eventually 5-shot groups averaged in “the middle twos” (in ordinary English a quarter of an inch) but there’s a big difference between the two’s and one’s. A few years later a genuine benchrest rifle showed up on the used rack at capital Sports & Western Wear, with a very low price tag. Chambered for the 6mm PPC, it was also marked with the name of the gunsmith, Arnold Erhardt, one of the two veteran smiths in Capitals’ shop. Arnold’s since semi-retired (I don’t believe any gun-smith every fully retires), but over the decades he built just about any sort of rifle, from traditional flintlocks to modern benchrest rifles, partly because he liked to shoot any sort of rifle, including hunting with flintlocks and com-peting in modern benchrest shooting. Arnold’s name on the rifle compelled me to carry it over to the counter to start the paperwork. It’s a rifle he built for a local customer, with a synthetic stock painted metal-flake Kelly green, a 25-inch Hart barrel measuring .960 inch at the muzzle, a 2-ounce trigger, and (because the customer’s budget was limited) a “sleeved” Remington 700 action, with a thick aluminum tube was epoxied around the action to stiffen it. Ben-chrest actions built specifically for the purpose don’t have magazines, so the bottom of the action was left solid, with enough steel in other places to hold a heavy barrel very firmly in place, reducing vibrations. But such actions are understandably more expensive than a sleeved 700. Primarily I bought the rifle to experiment with which factors really matter in accuracy, but also thought it might be interesting to use it some on prairie dogs. Rather than buying the precisely-made hand dies that real ben-chresters favor, I used a set of Redding Competition Dies. These use bushings to size down the neck, and you can try slightly different diameter bushings to see which result in the most accuracy with a particular bullet. The seating die has a sleeve very slightly larger than bullet diameter,

Honest Guns

~10~

keeping bullets perfectly in line with the case body while they slide into the neck, and a micrometer seating stem, to control seating depth within .001 inch. I’ve covered the basics of handloading for this ri-fle before in a chapter of The Big Book of Gun Gack, including how I didn’t mount a real benchrest scope. Serious “short range” bench shooters normally use fixed-power scopes in the 35-40x range, often with their adjustments “frozen” so they don’t shift, but the only vaguely appropriate scope I had was a 4.5-30x50 Bushnell Elite 6500, and it worked very well. I tried several powders and bullets, including a couple of bullets made by small manufacturers specifically for benchrest shooting, but the most accurate load turned out to be the 65-grain Berger with 30.0 grains of Hodgdon Benchmark, not one of the usual suspects in bench shoot-ing, though some competitors use it. After some experi-mentation with seating depth, 5-shot groups at 100 yards averaged .18 inch—in the ones, but barely. I thought this was pretty good for a scope not usually considered ap-propriate for serious benchrest shooting. Just as nifty, to me anyway, was the fact that 5-shot groups with 55-grain Nosler Ballistic Tips averaged just about ¼ inch with two different powders, Benchmark and CFE223—and the Benchmark load averaged 3500 fps at the muzzle. The Bushnell 6500 can be used as a dialing scope, and the 55-grain Ballistic Tip load turned it into a pretty good 500-yard prairie dog rifle. Now for the rest of the story. During a visit to Western Powders in Miles City, Montana, a couple years ago, they gave me some of their new Accurate LT-30 and LT-32 powders. LT-32 had become all the rage among short-range benchresters, and by golly groups shrank slightly in my rifle too, at least with the 65-grain Berger bullet. Accuracy with the 55-grain Ballistics Tips declined slightly. In 2016 Lee Hoots, the editor of Handloader magazine, asked me to test some Sellier & Bellot prim-ers. These can sometimes be found at lower prices than American-made primers, and some handloaders like their performance. I said sure, and ordered two bricks, one of large-rifle primers and one of small-rifle. The test consisted of substituting the S&B’s in various handloads already worked up for eight rifles. Among the rifles chosen was, naturally, the Erhardt 6mm PPC. Lo and behold, the S&B’s resulted in a slight but measureable difference in the accuracy of the 65-grain Berger with LT-32. Between the new powder and primer, I now own a benchrest rifle that groups an average of .03 inch smaller at 100 yards! That’s only about 1/32nd of an inch, but amounts to an improvement of 20% over the original load, putting the rifle firmly in the “middle ones.” Many hunters would be extremely happy with a 20% in-crease in accuracy. Which is exactly why I bought this rifle, and con-tinue to dink with loads. Its superb accuracy demonstrates how changes in techniques or components can affect our handloads. It’s a VERY honest rifle, so honest it speaks more accuracy truth than any of my others, and I suspect Colonel Whelen would find it extremely interesting.

Neck Thickness UniformityJB One basic technique for improving handload ac-curacy is making sure the necks of your cases are at least reasonably similar in thickness. Cases with uniform necks normally end up straighter after resizing in dies with ex-pander balls, and also release the bullet more evenly upon firing. The most precise but time-consuming way to make sure case-necks are the same thickness is “turning” them with a tool that shaves off a thin layer of brass. Most lathe-type case trimmers can be used for the job, and I’ve turned a bunch of necks with my old Forster trimmer. It does a decent job, but really precise turning’s normally done with a hand-tool like the Sinclair in the photo, page 8. However, I only neck-turn brass for my 6mm PPC benchrest rifle and my new 6XC by Charlie Sisk, another heavy rifle with one of the customized “700 footprint” actions he turned out a few years ago. Both rifles are so precisely made accuracy can definitely be improved by neck-turning, but most hunting rifles have looser tolerances, to allow sure chambering and extraction in the field. Consequently neck-turning doesn’t normally improve accuracy, but sorting brass for reasonably consistent neck-thickness can. One reason I use my RCBS Casemaster more than any other concentricity gauge is it also measures neck-thickness. Cases for varmint rifles are sorted for no more than .001 inch in variation, while in most big game rounds I’m looking for a maximum of .0015. Cases for calibers from around .35 up work fine with no more than .002 inch variation. A recent example was a Weatherby Mark V Ultra Lightweight in 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum, loaned to me for an article on handloading their latest super-zapper. I bought 40 Weatherby cases which, since they’re made by Norma, are usually quite uniform. These were: 37 of the 40 had necks varying less than .0015 inch, and the other three measured around .002. The Ultra Lightweights, like all newer Weatherby rifles, are normally very accurate, but their slim, fluted barrels can make them pretty particular about the loads they shoot well. Cartridges with lots of powder room for their caliber also tend to be touchy, but after sorting the brass I was able to come up with loads for four bullets, from the 127-grain Barnes LRX to the 143-grain Hornady ELD-X, that grouped well under an inch for three shots at 100 yards. (The most accurate load used the 140-grain Nosler Partition, which some shooters would find aston-ishing, though I didn’t. But that’s another story.) However, for most factory big game rifles you don’t need a gauge to measure neck-thickness unifor-mity. Instead, trim the cases and chamfer them lightly, then look at the shiny ring around each dark mouth with a $2 magnifying glass. You’ll be able to see if any necks vary significantly in thickness. Set those aside for offhand practice, and use the cases with consistent neck-thickness to work up handloads.

Handloading Tips

~11~

The Back BurnerThe Conflicts of Public Hunting LandJB When I was growing up and starting to hunt in Montana, plenty of public land was a given—and some-times included private land. Until relatively recently, up-land bird hunters could legally hunt unposted private land, and often did. This was a strange law, since it by-passed property rights and didn’t include big game hunting, no doubt because birdshot posed little dan-ger to livestock, buildings and humans. The wardens of the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department basically ignored trespassing laws until big game rifle seasons opened in October—unless, of course, the trespasser wasn’t carrying a shotgun, or was stupid enough to shoot near a ranch house. Eventually, however, many people from other states “discovered” western upland hunting, partly be-cause upland birds declined in many other places. More bird hunters meant more people hopping fences to hunt private land, so more landowners started objecting, and the law was changed. Conflicts between various laws have always ex-isted, even in America, the land of the free. The classic example is not being allowed to yell “Fire!” in crowded buildings (unless of course there’s actually a fire), despite the First Amendment of the Constitution plainly stating, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” Another legal conflict also applies to hunting, and in fact was part of the reason for Montana allowing upland hunters to hop fences. This conflict goes back to when our country was established. One of several things Americans hated about Britain and Europe was that wild game belonged to the owner of the land it lived on, and landowners were often royalty. One little-mentioned aspect of royalty is how they originally became royal: They forcibly took land from oth-er people, especially those they eventually called “com-moners.” To royalty, hunting eventually became not a means of obtaining food but a political pastime, much like business golf. They reserved huge tracts of land where only royals could hunt, and commoners caught poaching were severely punished. Commoners (also called peas-

ants) were sometimes allowed to take small game, but since they usually weren’t allowed to own weapons, they primarily used traps and snares. The fictional character Robin Hood was an outlaw because he and his band of merry men used longbows to poach deer, the King’s game. (No wonder they were merry.) Americans designed a more equitable society, and one of the by-products became known as “the North

American model of wildlife conser-vation,” where wild game doesn’t belong to the landowner. Instead game is held in trust for citizens by their states, provinces and—sometimes—national governments, which regulate hunting to insure a reasonable chance for everybody to participate. I’ve hunted in several countries following the European model of game belonging to the landowner, and not just in Europe. After pur-chasing a hunting license, hunters must also pay landowners for any

game killed, though that doesn’t always guarantee hunt-ers the entire animal. When I hunted red stag in the Czech Republic in 1992, the fee to the landowner only bought the head, hide and innards. The meat cost extra, because game meat is sold commercially in most of Europe, as well as other countries around the world. (“Market hunt-ing” was common in North America into the early 20th century, partly because the supply of wild game seemed endless, but eventually we realized it wasn’t, and made selling wild game illegal—also part of the North American model.) In some ways the European model works pretty well, since placing a price on game enhances its value to the landowner, a common argument for hunting in Africa: The landowner gets paid, whether a rancher, native tribe or, in the instance of parks or reserves, the government. (Hunting in parks is common in Africa and Europe, but also occurs in a few parks in the U.S., including national parks.) This monetary return provides an incentive to conserve wild game and habitat, the reason outlawing the sale of elephant ivory or rhino horn does more harm than good. By eliminating a legally-controlled commer-cial market, it creates a black market, increasing prices enormously, thus encouraging poaching on the poorest continent on earth. In many parts of Africa, ivory and rhino-horn poachers are shot on sight, something many American hunters support, though they wouldn’t have

~12~

supported punishing poachers of “the King’s deer” in Eng-land. However, the European model makes hunting more expensive. While I’ve encountered hunters of aver-age means in European countries, their opportunity is far more limited than over here. In Norway I hunted with employees of a major hydro-power company, who as a perk were allowed to hunt company land surrounding private reservoirs. But if they changed jobs, or the com-pany changed its policy, they’d have to pay to hunt. (A similar situation sometimes exists here, especially in east-ern North America. A friend from northern Maine used to hunt huge tracts of timber company land, but public access ended several years ago due to liability problems.) Today, many American landowners lease the hunting rights to their land, or charge hunters a “trespass fee” to gain access to game belonging to all of us. Some states even sell tags to landowners, who can then re-sell them on the open market with an added-on trespass fee—often amounting to big bucks, for big bucks. Some hunters object to landowner tags, because they seem dangerously close to the European model, even though the meat can’t be sold. Another contradiction of the North American model is the raising of privately-owned deer, elk or oth-er “wild” animals as livestock. Game ranching’s legal in many North American states and Canadian provinces, and a major source of chronic wasting disease, due to importation of ranch-grown animals from other parts of the U.S and Canada. Game ranching’s been legal in Montana for a long time, but started growing considerably about 25-30 years ago, for the same reason more non-residents came to Montana to hunt upland birds: Hunting became more difficult in other parts of the country, due to increased urbanization. This increased demand from “hunters” who don’t mind shooting animals (in particular large-antlered bull elk) in what are essentially livestock pastures. As game ranching grew, resistance also grew among more hunters, partly due to the threat of chron-ic wasting disease. In 2000 a Montana voter initiative banned “hunting” game-ranched animals, along with new game ranches, and the transfer of licenses for existing ranches. Elk ranchers can still sell the meat, hides and antlers, but those don’t generate nearly as much profit as “hunts.” (If you order elk steak or burgers in a restaurant, the meat’s ranch-raised, because it’s illegal to sell meat from wild elk.) This of course conflicted with private prop-erty rights, and some landowners sued, but so far the law’s held up in court, because the wild elk belonging to all of us took precedence over the private elk owned by a few. Federal agencies administrate the vast major-ity of public land west of the Mississippi, primarily the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Some Americans, however, firmly believe the United States gov-ernment can’t legally own land, or only own very small amounts. This belief’s based on part of the U.S. Constitu-tion, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17. Primarily concerning

the Federal formation of the District of Columbia, it also includes “like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.” In other words, military installations for the defense of the nation. The counter-argument is another part of the Con-stitution, Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2: “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Consti-tution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.” This sounds like Federally-owned land is legal, and the Supreme Court has ruled to that effect a number of times going back to the mid-1800’s. It’s also exactly why the United States has been able to purchase a LOT of land since the country was founded, including 1803’s Louisiana Purchase of the Mis-sissippi River drainage from France in 1803, doubling the size of our young nation. In fact, the Lewis and Clark Ex-pedition, formally named the Corps of Discovery, was an Army survey of the Louisiana Purchase along the Missouri River, the major tributary of the Mississippi. We’ve also purchased some other good-sized chunks of countryside from other nations, including southern Arizona and New Mexico from Old Mexico (the Gadsden Purchase of 1847), and 1867’s Alaska Purchase from Russia. A second objection to Federal land ownership is assuming state governments will take better care of lo-cal public land than cumbersome Washington-based bu-reaucracies. Here in Montana, state lands (as in many other states) are legally bound to create income for public schools, due to the U.S. Enabling Act of 1889, allowing the territories of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington to form state governments and enter the Union. The Enabling Act says “the people inhabiting said proposed States do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public [Federal] lands lying within the boundaries thereof.… That provision shall be made for the establishment and maintenance of systems of public schools, which shall be open to all the children of said States, and free from sectarian control…. That upon the admission of each of said States into the Union sections numbered sixteen and thirty-six in every township of said proposed States…are hereby granted to said States for the support of common schools….” As a result, Montana’s so-called “school sec-tions” didn’t follow the multiple-use mandate of Federal lands. Often they were leased to farmers and ranchers, who could legally post the state land against trespassing. This seemed strange to some Montana citizens, because other states covered by the Enabling Act allowed public access to their state land. Eventually a compromise was reached—a fee paid by anybody who wanted to hike, fish or hunt on state land, adding to school funding. This made quite a few landowners angry, because they’d always regarded leased state land as theirs. (I’ve

~13~

What’s Next? Our next issue is November 2017--the 15th in fact--

right when the whitetail and mule deer bucks throw cau-tion to the wind. (At least in Montana.) A lot of hunters do the same, given that there’s usually only a few days left to the season and, since Thanksgiving weekend is in the mix, lots of competition out there in the woods that last week. I have a hidey-hole I like to sit in then, where the grass is long and quite crisp by November. I go in

early, with lunch, hot tea and a book, and just sit until it’s time for the animals and hunters to start moving. The crackly vegeta-tion provides a wake-up call for both caution and opportunity, but more than once the thick cover and narrow lanes have given me only a fleeting glimpse of big ant-lers chasing lovely does. It’s a trade-off. That’s where the big guys are that time of year, but you have to get really lucky to get a good enough look to actu-ally put one in the freezer. On the other hand I know if another hunter is nearby. For now, it’s still summer, and

John and I are working on the next big projects. Yes, John is planning on Gun Gack II, though I have no idea what stage he’s at until he hands over the CD. All I know is there’s still some car-tridges and opinions that didn’t make it into GGI and rumor is, he’s going to fix that. In the kitchen I’ve decided

that the world needs more tasty jerky and pepperoni sticks made from wild game. It seems appro-

priate for hunters to carry wild snack sticks while they’re out hunting.... So I started with a Canada goose that was lurking in the freezer, and brined it in the pastrami brine from Tenderize the Wild (page 175), then sliced it all into ¼” thick lengths and slow cooked it at 175°F for 4 hours on metal grids in the oven. It’s amazing. (And I dare any-one who doesn’t like goose to realize that’s what they’re eating!) From there I’ve moved on to bear meat, which gets no respect, and am on my third batch of yummy hot sticks--a combination of onion powder, garlic powder, salt and red pepper flakes that John loved from the start but I’ve now toned down, but both versions will make it into the cookbook because--some like it hot. So, a working title? How about Slice, Dice, Chop and

Grind: Snack sticks and jerky for the Hunter? Or, Chew: The complete guide to wild jerky, pepperoni sticks and pemmican? Or even, The Anti-Vegetarian’s guide to meat snacks? Or Five Times a Day: Get more meat in your diet? I’m groping, here: eileen@riflesandrecipes.com.

even known one rancher who built his house on a school section.) For a few years after the change, some ranchers were so mad they refused to allow hunting on any of their land, but things have since cooled down. Public land is an almost essential part of the North American Model, since without free or cheap access many hunters can’t afford to hunt—and if we turn over Federal lands to the states, some will inevitably end up in pri-vate hands. In fact, about 70% of the Federal land that’s been transferred to states since the founding of America has ended up privately owned. Much was land granted to states east of the Mis-sissippi in the 1800’s to encourage settlement, but state lands are still being sold or traded off in some western states. About 15 years ago Eileen and I hunted quail in southern Arizona with a friend from the Tuc-son area, and we were blocked from hunting a public canyon, by a chunk of former state land at the mouth of the canyon that had been traded to a real estate developer. As to whether state lands are more effectively managed than Federal lands, it depends. Some state-owned timberlands in Montana are managed pretty well, especially since National Forests have become plagued by lawsuits contesting al-most any timber sale. But most state sections leased for ranching are vastly overgrazed compared to Bu-reau of Land Management tracts. Some pretty good-sized chunks of Federal land also exist east of the Mississippi, the largest Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota, at 3270 square miles al-most as large as Yellowstone Park. Several of over 1000 square miles exist in other states, including Florida, Loui-siana, Maine and Michigan. Eileen and I have also hunted National Forest land for ruffed grouse and woodcock near Crystal Falls, Michigan. Many of the people who want Federal lands trans-ferred to the states admit their ultimate aim is making all public land private. If this happens, leasing of hunt-ing rights and charging trespassing fees will become the rule, not the exception. As in much of Europe, hunting will primarily become a pastime of the elite, not the average “commoner,” and America was founded for the greater good of all its citizens, not just a few. If you believe in public hunting and the North American model of wildlife conservation, you might con-sider joining a group like Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (www.backcountryhunters.org), a group founded in 2004 specifically to keep public ground open and wild. It’s be-come a major voice in preserving our hunting heritage, and not just for us, but our descendants.