GUNS FOR THE NEW YEAR

There's a lot of interesting new guns out there or about to be released. There's several of them I'd like to add to the collection.

In the past several years, there has been an explosion of .22 LR replica guns that resemble, either closely or not, various centerfire cartridge guns. There's scads of AR-15/M-16 (or for you younger folks, the M-4) looking rimfire assault rifles, as well as those that resemble HK's, AK's, the M-1 Carbine and other guns. In the handgun department, you can get many different brands of 1911 clones and other replica guns that shoot .22 LR.

Now ISSC has come out with a .22 that resembles the excellent FN SCAR rifle, which goes for about 3 grand. The ISSC MK22 rifle is a fair clone on the exterior, and it's given decent ratings in the several reviews I've read. I'm familiar with the Glock .22 clone that ISSC makes, and it seems to be a decently made pistol, adding a much needed thumb safety to the layout.  A reasonably priced and much cheaper to shoot alternative to the real thing.

Another exciting and fun .22 that's supposed to hit the shelves this month is the Umarex UZI .22 Pistol and Rifle. They both look like lots of fun but I'll be opting for the .22 pistol first. Again, it's reasonably priced and cheap to shoot. On second thought, after looking some more at the Umarex Uzi rifle clone, if I come across that I might get it too.

Stoeger one made a pretty cool looking Luger .22 LR replica. Unfortunately, all the reviews I've read on them say it's a Ronco Jam-O-Matic. But this year Stoeger put an interesting twist on the existing line of side-by-side double barreled defense shotguns with an Over/Under model. For some reason, I'm attracted to that, even though I use a pump 12 gauge for home defense.

The Stoeger Double Defense over/under looks like a fun gun. I'd set one up with a lowprofile combination laser and flashlight. It's a great truck gun, under the seat gun or just general good to have with you on the tractor or the lake gun.

For home defense I prefer a few more rounds standing by, because reloading a double barrel with shells from a stock mounted shell carrier is not the fastest or best way to deal with any miscreant you'd need to throw down on while they are breaking in your home. Four or five rounds, as carried in most pump or semi-auto shotguns is usually plenty, but two shots might not be enough.

But hey, a double barrel was good enough for Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven.

Kel-Tek is coming out with a pretty cool .22 magnum rifle, the  RMR-30  that uses the same magazines as the PMR-30, which is a heck of a fun pistol to shoot. Supposedly it's almost ready to ship, but it's yet to appear on Kel-Tec's website, and I know I waited a year and a half until I could find a reasonably priced PMR-30, so Kel-Tec is pretty well known for S--L--O--W--L--Y getting their new products on the shelves.

Likewise, I've yet to see any of the Kel-Tec KSG 15 round bullpup pump shotguns yet, and they are already supposed to be on the shelves. I'd like to see how heavy of a weapon the KSG will be, particularly if it will be front heavy, and I'd want to shoot it before I develop an opinion on it. It could go either way.

I've yet to see the Ruger version of the 1911 or the Browning .22 caliber version of the 1911. Some gun shops have had a few come in, and either had them already on waiting lists or they were sold immediately after touchdown. I'm still interested in seeing these two takes on the 1911.

THAT PESKY ALASKAN CO-PILOT RIFLE MADE BY WILD WEST GUNS

It's a damn nice rifle. I've been aware of these beauties since the 1990's, when I read a feature on them in GUNS magazine. Since then, I periodically pined for one every now and then, only to tell myself it's too expensive.

This week was a particularly difficult week for those of us who think the Alaskan Co-Pilot is a rocking rifle. I happened to mention to my gun friend Max that I was really thinking seriously about buying the Co-Pilot and began to explain the concept of the rifle to him. To my surprise, he has also been a longtime fan of the Co-Pilot, and even visited with the owner of Wild West Guns, who craft the Co-Pilot from a Marlin lever action rifle, at an NRA convention in Houston in the 2000's.

Max sounds just like me when talking about the Co-Pilot: "...And you can get it in hard chrome!".

So we were at lunch with our friend Cowboy, an inveterate hunter and firearms fanatic if ever there was one, and it turns out that he too has been a'wanting one of the Co-Pilots for many years as well.

I'm shopping for a used Marlin .45-70 that I can send off to have customized and modified by Wild West Guns. One of my friends here locally has several, and was talking about getting rid of at least one of them, so I've got a track on getting one at a reasonable price.

Unless I do some heavy duty ebaying, I'll be getting the parkerized version with the synthetic stock, rather than the ultimate kevlar stocked and hard chromed version.



I'll keep you posted.

A KEL-TEC AND GLOCK CHALLENGE: BUILD A 5.7 X 28mm PISTOL

In 1990, FN introduced the FN P90 personal defense weapon and in 1998, the FN Five-seven, trademarked as the Five-seveN. I'm gonna call it the 57, just so I don't have to type so many characters for this post.

So the 57 pistol has been around for roughly 13 years. As far as I am aware, there is no other handgun (save for the proposed but as yet unseen in retail stores or even advance reviews, the humongous Excel MP-5.7) chambered in this caliber. As I've mentioned in a previous post about the 57, unfortunately, all questions regarding it's effectiveness and lethality as a weapon were answered with the heinous acts of terrorism at Fort Hood.

Still, I'd like to have a handgun shooting a rifle cartridge that's not a single shot (such as the Thompson Contenders) or a revolver (such as a Ruger Blackhawk chambered in .30 caliber). Specifically, a normal sized handgun (Not a cut down AK-47, AK-74 or AR-15) that is a mixture of polymer and steel and that is capable of shooting several hundred yards or through barricades at attackers.

And it got me to thinking, two companies that would be totally capable of doing justice to the 5.7 x 28mm round are Glock and Kel-Tec. Witness Kel-Tex's PMC-30, which has at or near the size handgrip needed to hold the 5.7 round. It would require some reworking of the size of the Glock handgrip, and I'm sure all of this R&D is expensive,  but in my circle of shooting friends, it would be much more likely any of us would purchase a pistol chambered for this round if it ran between $500 and $600.

Kel-Tec's PMC-30 is often mentioned as sort of a poor man''s or a junior 57 pistol. While the Kel-Tec and the 57 both share the ability to carry 30 rounds in a magazine, the 5.7 x 28mm round so dwarfs the .22 WMR in performance that  one need only view the evidence of the tumbling effect of the 5.7 x 28mm bullet upon target impact  to see just how powerful this particular round is. 

As an aside, my personal experience with the PMC-30 has been nothing short of excellent. One failure to feed on the second round of the first magazine fired has been the only issue, and that was many magazines ago.

Of course, for a round like the 5.7 x 28mm, you want some sights that do the gun justice, as the PMC-30 features,  and other updates to the design, but it seems to a novice like me that you're halfway there with your frame design for the elongated 22 WMR cartridge, Kel-Tec.

Kel-Tec is building some mighty interesting guns. A new hot rod bull pup hi-cap shotgun, a dandy 5.56 rifle that not only takes standard AR mags but also folds in half for transport and features an integral foregrip/bipod a'la the Steyr Scout rifle. I'd like to have one of each, please. I've seen and held the rifle at a LGS, but the shotgun has yet to appear on the scene. I'd like to give the rifle a shot, noting that it's chambered for an easy shooting 5.56 round.

Glock, on the other hand, has messed just a wee bit with the basic design from "Generation One" to the current Generation Four guns. The new Glocks haven't grabbed me yet, and I've tried the different grips and such. I'm still liking the Third Generation design and feel. Not to mention function, fit and even now, the form. 

Glock has built guns to shoot high pressure cartridges like the 10mm, and I am perfectly confident that the designers at Glock could build an excellent pistol in this caliber, using the same Glock firing mechanism that people either love or hate. Perhaps build a Glock in 5.7 x 28mm on a longslide frame, or even just a standard frame. One thing though...make a rail optional, or better yet, removeable by allen head bolts to the frame.

Other than the high price of $1100 in my neck of the woods for the FN 57, I'm interested in the pistol. I don't care much for the rail, which seems like it would make uncomfortable what has been called here in Texas for many years as the "Mexican Carry" method, which involves simply sticking the gun in your pants waist sans holster.

I know that this method of carry is not recommended, nor do I recommend it to you. But there have been moments and times in my life when it has been necessary to carry a handgun  in this manner for a short period of time. And for the same reasons I don't want rails on my 1911's, Browning Hi Power, revolvers or any other pistol.


You can get a 57 with either fixed or adjustable sights, and it would seem like someone interested in distance shooting might want the adjustable sights due to the incredible range the 57 is capable of, which with the proper ammunition is stated by FN to be about 200 yards maximum effective distance,  fired by a handheld shooter I asssume.
Which brings me to the point. I wonder why Glock or Kel-Tec or another gun maker with some vision has not entered into the fray by designing their own pistol in this caliber?  If anyone from their camps stumbles across this post, I'll say it again: Amongst my friends and fellow shooters who have discussed the 57, it's just the price keeping most of us away from the FN 57.

H&K was competing against FN with a caliber of their own, very similar in size but not performance to the 5.7 x 28mm, and both were vying to be the universal NATO replacement for the 9mm being used today. But I know H&K is capable of uniquely designing guns, and I know they could do this cartridge justice with a great handgun design.


As with other unanswered marketing questions regarding guns, such as why Glock has never made a subcompact single stack 9mm or a hi-cap 22 caliber factory pistol (not a conversion), it's a mystery to me why other gun makers have not decided to compete with the 57.

Even though Glock could sell as many single stack 9mm pistols as they could make for the first couple of years if the grip and slide were just a bit slimmer, they haven't seen fit to market a pistol of this nature.

Wiki says that Excel Firearms has 4 firearms in development in the 5.7 x 28mm caliber, and that Savage has two bolt action rifles in the works. So that's encouraging news that other gun makers have recognized the viability of this round after several decades. A quick look at the Excel new products page shows the MP 5.7, a bohemouth of a handgun that reminds more of a Desert Eagle or an AutoMag than the FN 57. Whereas the 57 comes in at just over 20 oz. unloaded, the Excel handgun weighs in at a whopping 54 oz, more than twice the weight.

Given that the 57 allegedly has 30% less recoil than the standard 9mm cartridge, such a heavyweight pistol might not be necessary as with stronger calibers like the .357 or .44 WMR varieties. Or at least it's been my experience that with the more stout calibers, more weight to the gun equals less felt recoil. Although I have yet to shoot the 5.7 x 28mm caliber, from all reports, it has recoil more like a .22 Hornet than anything else.

The videos I've seen of it being shot remind more of the Kel-Tec PMC-30 in .22 WMR than other centerfire handguns and their recoil.

I've rarely seen used 57's for sale, despite the fact they've been available to USA civilians since 2004. One review said they were selling about 23k of them per year, so you'd think you'd see some on the used side of the gun store every now and then. When I first got to handle one, it felt a bit odd, about like the first time I handled the Model 21 Glock in .45 ACP. It was, of course, different than any other handgun I'd felt, and I've owned and shot some of what are considered unusual firearms in my time.

After having shot the Kel-Tec PMC-30 now for some time, I can honestly say that the grip of the 57 doesn't seem that unusual now. Unfortunately, the price of the 57 has remained out of my practical reach, barring a trade in of some sort, and I'm not sure I have any firearms I'd like to trade.

I've only seen one used 57 that was reasonably priced , and it was last August and was priced at $800 in a pawn shop in a bad part of town. A quick bore light inspection and look inside showed a gun that had been shot quite a bit that appeared to have never been cleaned. The bore was pitted and looked as if someone had done some scraping with a screwdriver or similar object inside the barrel. In short, it wasn't in a condition I wanted to buy at any price.

For new 57's, Cabela's sells them for $1100, except this month they have $50 off that price. I've seen them priced in the high $900's in some of the more reasonable gun stores here in Texas, but basically it's a thousand dollar pistol.  I'm not seriously in the market enough for one to look on GB or any of the other gun auction sites, but I might be soon.

I like the idea of having a semi-automatic pistol that can shoot 31 rounds of rifle velocity ammo that is designed to tumble upon impact. I could even tolerate the high cost of ammo for these guns. I'd just like to be able to justify affording the gun.

THE MOSIN NAGANT 91/30 PISTOL, OR THE OBREZ

Picture from http://www.houstongunblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/mosin-pistol.jpeg

To those of you who know something about firearms, the above is a chopped down made into a pistol from a rifle gun.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: NOTE THAT TO MAKE A RIFLE INTO A PISTOL OR SHORT BARRELED RIFLE OR ANY OTHER WEAPON YOU NOT ONLY NEED PRE-APPROVAL FROM THE BATF, YOU MUST OBTAIN A LICENSE OR LICENSES AND PAY FEES OF (AT LEAST BUT COULD BE MORE THAN) $200 TO LEGALLY ACCOMPLISH THIS TRANSFORMATION FROM RIFLE TO PISTOL. THERE IS NO LEGAL ADVICE REGARDING THIS OR ANYTHING GIVEN ON THIS SITE, AND YOU ARE URGED TO CONTACT AN ATTORNEY WHO PRACTICES IN THIS AREA TO BE SURE YOU ARE LEGALLY COMPLIANT WITH ALL LAWS. NOTE THAT I CANNOT ANSWER LEGAL QUESTIONS ON THIS SITE.

I'll post some links later on in this post of some youtube videos of fellows firing some of these guns. Apparently, although the 7.62 x 54r cartridge is very close in power to the venerable 30.06 round, there is not as much recoil from this pistol because some of the powder does not burn up due to the brevity of the barrel.

Now at this point so early on in my musings, you're probably asking yourself "Why does El Fisho have interest in this 100 year old bolt action five shot Russian relic that is long past it's prime"?

First off, I'm not sure the weapon is past it's prime. I prefer the Mosin Nagant rifle variants that are carbine length. It's a heavy weapon and cutting the barrel from the normal-ish 28" to 16.5"/18" makes it a whole new ballgame in handling this weapon.  There are TONS of these guns for sale for prices that begin under $100. Ammo is ridiculously cheap. I've recently bought 440 rounds for less than $80.

Secondly, although there is no contest whatsoever between modern semi-automatic assault weapons used by police and the military and the Mosin Nagant, I'll note that revolutionary armies all over the world have resisted and won armed conflicts over the last century using surplus and knock-off Mosin Nagant rifles against forces using vastly superior arms.

Of course, the outcomes of those situations were dictated by differences in motivations of the fighting forces, sheer mass numbers of oppressed peoples and their will to fight for their version of freedom. I don't know, for example, if the Mosin Nagant rifle was used by rebel forces in Afghanistan in the 1980's, but I recall seeing long barreled bolt action rifle in pictures of the Afghan fighters. I know that as the conflict went on they captured AK's and RPG's to use, but apparently the Mosin Nagant or a gun like it was what got them those superior weapons in the end.

One blog post I read while researching about the Mosin Nagant rifle and it's many variants mentioned that a frugal purchaser catching these guns on sale or at wholesale could arm a squad of men (5) and have TONS of ammo for about $125-150 per man. For that price, you could have a very nice refurbished rifle and say, 440-880 rounds of ammo.

So even though there are many of these surplus rifles on the market and they are cheap as well, many question the wisdom, the judgement and indeed the sanity of those wanting to cut down a rifle into a pistol.

I can't tell you why, but I can tell you I think it's as neat as snuff, as the old East Texas saying goes. An old saw, I suppose, but I'm not partial to using that phrase. It's an old saying is what it is. In any event, I think I'm gonna have to pony up $200 and get the necessary BATF licenses/permits and have a gunsmith do the barrel/sight modification for me and I'll do the stock.

What could one possibly use a Mosin Nagant pistol for (not to be confused with the Nagant revolver, and interesting gun in itself as it is one of the few, if any others exist, of revolvers that can actually be suppressed like a semi-auto pistol) ?

The Nagant revolver is interesting in a Webley sort of way, in that it has that throwback design look to it. Me myself,  I prefer the look and function of the Model 1917 Smith and Wesson and Colt and those many evolutions of revolvers made by those companies in the intervening years.

I guess the $99.99 rifle that becomes a $299.99 rifle with Federal BATF fees/taxes/whatever plus the gunsmithing fees for barrel reduction and sight relocation/replacement. I'm thinking my guy would charge me at least $300 to cut and crown the barrel and to relocate the front sight and whatever other cut down work would be required. At least. So now we have a $599.99 Mosin Nagant pistol that can shoot five rounds of a pretty potent round at an insanely cheap price for centerfire shooting.

All of this is not without historical precedent either. Back in the old days, according to my forum and web reading, the 91/30 and it's variants were prevalent as well.

Obviously, the cut down pistol version conceals much better than the full sized or even carbine version of the 91/30. I don't know how much historical accuracy lies in the following statement I read on one forum or webpage, but it basically said that you use the Mosin Nagant 91/30 pistol to get a better pistol. Fair enough.

Various Russian revolutionaries called the pistol the Obrez.

Here's some youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXMYhekpGhI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNFsUvh078I

If you look carefully, you can see the huge fireball coming out of the end of the gun. It's daylight in both videos, but if you've ever seen videos or actually shot even a full sized 28" barrel Mosin Nagant under dark or cloudy conditions, you know how much of an otherworldly superfireball comes out of the end of it. Imagine that huge fireball coming from the cutdown pistol! I suspect it would be a stout deterrent  to any attacker.

Witness here an example of one of these homemade Russian pistolas, The Obrez.

Picture from http://operatorchan.org/k/arch/src/k142364_sawn-off-nagant.jpg

Picture from http://therealgunguys.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/obrez.jpg
Here's another more modern day adaptation. Note the grip on this modified gun is more of a straight grip than a pistol grip on the one shown above and a longer barrel.

Picture from http://orshagorodmoy.info/_nw/16/48956130.jpg
The above picture appears in a thread on this forum that features one poster who has a nifty design that says:

"OBREZ When you need to put a fist sized hole in someone at less than 10 feet and set their clothes on fire at the same time, accept no substitute."


For me, I'd like a green daylight laser mounted up front on the bottom of the barrel to aid in good shooting from the hip.  Again, it's a potent round, and you can literally blow the hell out of something with it. I recently saw a waterlogged tree floating in a big ole' Texas River (The Mighty Brazos) literally get blown in half as it floated past  an elevated shooter with a $100 unmodified 91/30 with the 28" barrel.

I also wonder if the stock could structurally handle being cut down so that a Pachmayr or Hogue pistol grip off of a revolver could be fitted to it. My initial thought was to obtain a S&W N frame actual steel pistol grip from a parts gun, and weld it to the receiver of the 91/30, and then use a Pachmayr or Hogue grip on the transplanted frame and this still may be the best plan.

Another thought would be to replace the grip using an SKS or AK grip attached so that it was perpendicular to the receiver. Like a regular AK. Get the grip frame attachment portion off of an
AK or SKS and weld that sucker to the receiver of the 91/30, then any number of kinds of more vertical (as opposed to straight back or pistol grip) could be used.

The more I think about it, the more I think that no matter how ungainly or unconventional the more straight back horizontal grip of the standard 91/30 looks when cut down, it may work in this case as function over form. Since there is no rear stock using the shooter's shoulder for support, it does put the wrist and arm of the right handed shooter in a different position than either shooting from the hip or shooting from an elevated position using the iron sights.

And speaking of the sights. Well, I'd get some of those high dollar sights that Wild West Guns in Alaska uses on it's Alaska Co-Pilot rifle installed when the barrel work was being done. Get the receiver tapped for a rail and put a great rear sight on the gun. A nice-to-do at that time also would be to have the gunsmith attach an AK scopemount to the left side of the receiver. This would facilitate the quick attachment/detachment of a red dot scope. You'd want, or at least I'd want, the scope mount to be high enough so as not to block the view of the iron sights.

Of course, the other modification you'd want to consider is the replacement of the bolt handle. The straight bolt handle would not work with some optics, and the stock straight handle is replaced with a bent handle that works with a scope positioned in the traditional rearward location.

The original sights are not that bad, particularly the front sight, but the rear sight is not my favorite. There is a certain cool about an adjustable rear sight that goes to 1000 meters, and apparently there is documented examples of these high powered full barreled guns hitting the target at that distance. So even with a pistol version of this gun, you've got the strong possibility of having a  handgun that can shoot several hundred yards with a dang good degree of accuracy, not to mention sheer power.

So replacing the sights, and maybe even mounting a rail so that very cool rear sights could be used and interchanged. 

There was another web page I read about a fellow who didn't want to pay the Federal tax to cut his 91/30 into a pistol, so he opted to make his into one of the shorter, legal rifles. He left his barrel at 16.5 and cut it so that he was well over the minimum length in his state for a rifle. He put a bipod on it and the gunsmtth who cut the barrel to 16.5" said it was like a high powered Remington XP-100, while it's owner compared it to a Super Thompson Contender. I can't find that link right now but if I do I'll post it.

So it'd be a fun gun to have and to shoot, and to shoot cheaply. With great power. With a laser attached, you could hit a hog or a good sized snake with ease at some distance, and with lots of knockdown power.

And a good bit of flame.

HAPPY NEW YEARS TO ALL!

I'm thankful for much this holiday season. Good friends. A wonderful family. Great times together. A good job with great co-workers and boss and a good place to live with mostly decent folks and fairly low crime, being as I originally hail from Houston and grew up with crime. Crime, they say, is my business.


So it's nice to escape crime, in the enclave of your own home and family. Of course, we went to the folks house for Christmas, and although I've never had a bad Christmas, this one was so relaxing that it stands out.


A firefighter friend of mine, still dealing with the remains of the huge fire that terrorized and pretty much destroyed a quarter of our community this year, can't seem to relax, and I've been there. He was commenting that just sitting around was eating him up, about he was ready for the holidays to be over NOW.


I can't agree. We're having a great holiday, particularly this week, and I wish it would last a couple of more weeks up until MLK day.


I'm thankful for visitors like Helene and Zach who actually read my blather and comment. Helene probably doesn't live too far away and apparently engages in many of the same activities I do, like a little hog hunting. She posted recently that her granddaughter supplied their Thanksgiving and Christmas ham, and let me tell you, if you get the right size (smaller) hog, it is tastier than any ham or bacon you've ever had.


Hunting for food is a way of life for folks I know. We may not do it out of necessity and as regularly as my grandparents did in East Texas, but it's a good skill to have and frankly, I think it's embedded in our DNA. For me, same with fishing also, and I mean all kinds of fishing: rod and reel sport fishing, cane pole fishing, seining, trot line fishing, jug fishing and so on. I've never done any "hand grabbing" of catfish or any of that nonsense.


One resolution I have is to do more fishing camps this year. I have several friends with nice places on the Colorado, one of the few rivers (other than the Brazos) in Texas that have much water in them. I like getting some friends together, taking a few campers and some cooking gear and setting up a fishing camp for an extended weekend. Usually there's at least a jonboat along for the trotlining. Once the grills start grilling and the food starts cooking, it's a several day feast. This year, my friend Neal suggested we go hog hunting the weekend before the fishing camp and get a couple of hogs. The idea is to have one processed for grilling and then to have the other one frozen for later use in a Hawaiian Luau style cooking pit, just for the helluva it.


As Helene notes in her comment on the previous thread, it is being predicted by some pretty knowledgeable folks, particularly at Texas A&M, that our drought will likely continue despite our current rainy conditions and could continue not only for months but for as long as ten years. That's very scary to us in  Texas. Some smaller communities are still on the brink of running out of water, and many have not recovered and are teetering on the brink of outage as I write this. Where I live is in good shape water wise but not to fer west of us they've still got water shortage issues.


Our current rain is not enough to recharge aquifers, lakes, streams and such. We basically need it to rain for the next year or so on a daily basis.


We're infested with hogs in Texas. There are many different species I refer to here collectively as hogs, but in the Central Texas/Hill Country areas where I live and roam, I know more than one landowner who has sustained major financial loss to crops and livestock from marauding hordes of wild hogs.

Coyotes are also quite a problem as well, and are much harder to eradicate. Several of my friends who raise goats or sheep or cattle have invested in night vision scopes, expensive ones, because that's about the only way you can get a coyote.

But as always, I digress. There's a lot to be thankful for in my world, and I thank you for reading my musings.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

A Merry Christmas to all who land here, and Happy Holidays for all!

I heard from fellow blogger and my friend Zach today, and it inspired me to at least throw a few words out there. It's been an interesting year, with the last 3 months being especially stressful and busy. Strangely, the past 90 days have just flown by, as has the past year.


We've been getting rain in our part of Texas lately, and finally. After the months long drought and heat wave Texas underwent this summer, it's a weird weather warp around here right now. The San Augustine and Bermuda grasses in my yard think it is spring, as do the weeds. Roses in the front garden have been blooming, and many of the trees that would normally be leafless are now where they should have been at the end of the summer. The beech tree in the front is just now, four days from Christmas, throwing out pollen balls or whatever they are, that usually fall from the tree in mid-summer.


I've been through many droughts in Texas over my life, but none as severe and as long lasting as the one this year. I read today in the paper where Texas lost an estimated 500 million trees. Yes, you read that right. 500 Million, or roughly 10% of the trees in the state. My old friend Billy Ray has been making many family visiting trips out to West Texas this year, and has been foretelling of the large number of dead and dying trees he's seen making that journey from the Hill Country. Billy Ray is an old Texas road dog, and has racked up a lot of miles over the years, and he knows the topography of the state well.


On my rear porch, today I saw a new family of birds moving into a gourd birdhouse El Fisho Jr made some years ago. Thing is, usually birds only move in that house in the spring. Well, the new bird family is moving in nesting material and by all appearances is setting up a springtime nest. I'll keep you posted if chicks appear.


The Guest Rooster still lives across the street, and now has a passle of young 'uns that he leads around the area. It's hilarious, like Foghorn Leghorn he's got three small baby roosters following him like robots, roaming the area. He comes by the front fenceline every few days just to annoy my dogs and let them know he's still around, teaching his offspring how to annoy my dogs.

Texas Rainbow Trout stocking season is upon us, and I am going to do some emailing to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and see which lakes and creeks are actually being stocked. Despite the budgetary crisis thrust upon our TPWD by our inept legislators, they've managed to hobble together the trout stocking program yet another year.

For many Texans, it's the only opportunity they'll have to fish for Rainbows. Ever. And of course, they are a culinary delight, and having been raised by the TPWD, are probably as safe to eat as any fish caught in the wild, even though the trout are hachery bred and raised.

I've been fishing for Rainbows all over the state, since I was a kid. My dad was also excited by the stocking program, and it was he who would schedule family vacations during spring break so we could go catch trout in the Guadalupe and in those colder western and northern stocking places in the state where trout were still lingering in early March.

So I've been doing the Rainbow fishing thing every year since then. Somewhere. Somehow, I manage to get to a lake for the trout fishing. I've been remiss the past few year in taking Rainbow Trout roadtrips, and need to make the time for them. El Fisho Jr. mentioned the other day how we had not talked about Rainbow fishing yet when we were dining with his Godfather Billy Ray.

Billy Ray was raised in Houston and like me, had a dad who enjoyed fishing for Rainbows and who took his family in quest of them. Time after time, when I go fishing for the Rainbows at various locations, I meet other folks who've been doing it as long as I have. Like a family tradition in Texas, not unlike the white bass runs of springtime or the crappie and largemouth bass breeding seasons.

But again, back to reality and the fact that many of the locations that are on the current stocking list are probably devoid of enough water to support any healthy fish population. The temperatures couldn't be better, for the stocked trout get that (what I suspect is) genetic friskiness when it gets cold, and that of course leads to more eating and better fishing. It's in the mid-40's at my house right now and would be perfect, except my local stocking location which is due to be stocked soon has about 1/4 of the usual capacity.

I suspect it's the same story for many other places in Texas where the trout are usually stocked. Since Christmas is smack dab in the middle of the normal trout stocking season, I often equate the time off on the holidays with a little trout fishing.

So I'll get in touch with the powers that be and see how the stocking program has been going, and hopefully will muster the effort to post all of that here. I've driven hundreds of miles to fish for these rascals in years gone by, and I'm not above driving hours to a good location.

THE ORVIS COMPANY: EXCELLENCE CONTINUED

When I graduated from law school so many years ago, I trucked myself over to the Orvis store and bought myself the graduation gift of a long-awaited Orvis fishing outfit. Because I was planning to do some traveling looking for a job after taking the bar exam, I opted for a lower end offering of the Orvis company: a four piece rod with reel and line in 6 weight.


I had been getting Orvis catalogs since I was about 11 years old. Of course, I could never afford their higher end rods and reels back then, and although my parents certainly kept me equipped with some excellent fishing tackle in more moderate price ranges, an Orvis rod back then was out of the question. I would by flies and various accessories from Orvis though. Back then, in the early 70's, Orvis ran promotions in the fishing magazines, where if you sent in a few dollars, you would get an item like a leader wallet with some leaders or a streamer wallet with some streamers, and so on. I still have and use the promo items like these that I bought in my pre-and-early teens via these promotions in Outdoor Life, Sports Afield and Field and Stream.


So when I bought my own graduation present, which I think went for about $300 when all was said and done, I remember declining to purchase an extra spool for the outfit. I've always been a WF floating line fly fisherman. But lately, I've been using an outfit I picked up used that had a sinking tip line on it, and found it to be productive in the heat of the day. So I set about to find an extra spool for the Orvis Madison III Disc Drag reel from the graduation rod purchase.


I knew that Orvis had not made this reel for many years. I think the Madison might have been one of the last "low end" Orvis reels made in England. You can still get that English quality nowadays, but you're gonna pay big for it. I looked on ebay, and didn't find any spools there. On a whim, I emailed Orvis, and over the next couple of days had some back and forth with a very nice gentleman about the specifics of my reel.


Orvis then emailed me that they had an extra spool in their parts warehouse and I could buy it. I figured a spool was going to cost me some dollars, as much or more than an entire lower end fly reel from an asian manufacturer, and was amazed when quoted the price of $11.


$11. That might be cheaper than it was back when it was in production and a regular selling item. In any event, it's on it's way here now, and I've got some backing and a dandy Orvis sinking tip line ready to load on it.


I'm also on the lookout for a reasonably priced spin/fly bamboo Rocky Mountain rod from about 40 years ago. There are several on ebay right now, and failing that exact model, over the next few weeks I'll be looking for a good used 30-40 year old Orvis bamboo rod, in anywhere from a 2wt to 4wt and hopefully of a shorter length, anywhere from 5' to 6.5'. I've seen some auctions end under $200 for decent rods lately, and that's encouraging to a working man with a family who can't come close to affording one of Orvis's few current bamboo rod offerings.


Orvis has been making excellent fishing and hunting gear for many years now. One reason I keep coming back is because there is so much service after the sale. In this case, many years after the sale. And that service I got from two gentlemen and one young lady who took my order over the phone? It couldn't have been more polite, efficient or respectful.

Or productive.