Those of you like ZACH over at THE NEXT CHAPTER know of and indeed share my fascination with Combination rifle/shotguns. Just as cool to me, and probably Zach as well are Drilling guns and Double rifles. Drillings are three barreled guns, either two shotgun and one rifle barrel or two rifle and one shotgun barrels. The ones I've seen had two triggers, one that operates in sequence with the like barreled doubles (as with a single trigger double barrel shotgun) and one trigger that fires the single barrel. Double rifles are just what you'd think, a double barreled rifle.
Both of these types of guns are generally VERY expensive. And I mean very expensive. So much so that the average El Fisho like me can't even begin to afford one. They often stray into the five digit price range. Most of these guns are big game hunting guns used in Africa, Asia or South America on what is known as Dangerous Game, meaning game that is very capable of killing you before you can kill it.
So living here in Texas the only justification I can think of to get either a drilling or a double rifle is, once again, hog hunting. I've always thought double rifles and drillings were the essence of "cool", and there are a myriad of caliber combinations that drillings come in.
If I could make my own drilling rifle, it would have a double barreled 12 gauge with a very large bore caliber, and I'm thinking a .458 Socom would be just the ticket. Match that up with the mercury recoil absorber like in my Benelli Super Nova shotgun and a kevlar or better yet, polymer stock inner covered with a substantial about of Pachmayr or Hogue rubber like they use in pistol grips. It would ideally be a takedown gun a'la takedown double barreled shotguns. It would have a green daytime laser and very strong flashlight built into the foregrip, as one shotgun foregrip maker does with a flashlight mount, and fiber optic sights on top.
The double rifles I've seen and handled at high end gun stores were very large caliber guns, in calibers popular for hunting large, dangerous game in Africa. I've never seen one that cost less than $10k, although I'm sure they are out there under that price. But not too much under that price.
I know recently EAA began importing a double rifle priced at about $600, calibered in .308 and .30-06. About a year ago I was in a Gander Mountain store in College Station that actually had some tolerable prices on some sales guns, and I can't remember the brand but one gun they were selling for about $400 was a double barreled over/under .308. I'd have probably bought it right then and then save for the fact it had 18" barrels. Now normally I appreciate short barrels on rifles, but in a double rifle I'd sure like to have at least a 22" or 24" barrel.
If I'm going to have a double rifle or a drilling, I'd like to have it in a large caliber, something worthy of say a rhino or elephant, and certainly more than a .308 or a .30-06. Something manly and large, about as large as my ringfinger. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the large African hunting calibers to be talking about them, but I know on some of them the numbers are followed by the words Nitro Express. I know bullets for these guns are very expensive as well, but it's not the sort of gun you'd be shooting like a .22 or a .223/5.56 or 7.62 x 39. After getting used to shooting it at various distances, it'd be a hunting gun.
I think the whole reasoning about why a drilling rifle is cooler than a two barreled combination rifle/shotgun can be analogized by why Spinal Tap's guitar amps went to "11" instead of "10". You get one more shot than a regular combo rifle/shotgun with a drilling, and to paraphrase Nigel Tufner, well...that's one more, isn't it?
Which brings me back to the subject of this post. Why doesn't Ruger or Remington or Winchester make a kickarse drilling and sell it for under a grand? Surely there is enough of a market to justify making a drilling, wouldn't you think?
Saturday, February 25, 2012
HOUSTON'S WATERCOASTER AND MALIBU GRAND PRIX AND THE WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM
Who remembers the manmade "mountain" that was The Houston Watercoaster located adjacent to Interstate 45 North where Stuebner Airline intersected with I-45, immediately north of the Little York and I-45 North intersection? Well, J.R. Gonzales, who blogs for the Houston Chronicle didn't mention it in the excellent article he wrote last week about the MALIBU GRAND PRIX that was right next door to the Watercoaster, but someone in the comments section did mention it and it brought back some memories for El Fisho.
Way back then, when the Watercoaster opened, I got a job there. It was a fun place to work, even though it was fatally flawed from the start. It had two troughs that came down the side of the manmade hill but the fatal flaw was that instead of covering the surface of the troughs with some sort of plastic compound, they were more or less bare concrete. Maybe gunnite. I'm not sure, but I know that many Watercoaster riders got strawberries on their bodies if part of their persons came off of the foam mats that were used to ride down the Watercoaster.
For historical information, since that Watercoaster and it's twin located at Stewart Beach in Galveston are long gone, I wanted to note it's existence somewhere. As far as I can recall, it was open the summer of 1978 and 1979. Several of us who worked at the North Houston Watercoaster were detailed on several occasions to go down to the Watercoaster in Galveston and work due to employee shortages at the beach. It was a lot of fun, sortof like a busman's holiday. They paid for our gas and food and several nights at a local motel down there to help train new employees and cover shortages in employees while they were getting fully staffed.
One thing that I soon learned was that if you were wearing the proper pair of tennis shoes you could surf the Watercoaster standing on the inch thick foam mats. At the time, various types of upscale tennis shoes were all the rage, like Adidas and Reebok. I had a pair of yellow mesh Reebok running shoes that were perfect for getting wet at the Watercoaster, as they were mesh and dried quickly, and it was hard to avoid your shoes getting wet. These shoes worked great for surfing the Watercoaster, but the best shoes were cheap Keds slip-on tennis shoes. Something about their sole gave great traction on the otherwise slippery foam mats.
Of course, regular customers weren't allowed to surf the Watercoaster, but before and after opening the employees would have at it. Not being a great athlete, I was pretty limited to straight surfing down the Watercoaster, but a few of the more athletic employees could do 180's and 360's without hurting themselves. I can't remember everyone who worked there, but I remember my friends Lionel, Stanley and a guy named Freddie who dealt with all of the plumbing and mechanical issues. All of us were either in high school or fresh out, about to go to college, and I often wonder what happened to the folks I worked there with.
When school started, the Watercoaster closed, and several of us went next door to the newly opened Malibu Grand Prix to get a job. Contrary to what some of the commenters said in J.R.'s article, the North Houston Malibu was located right there at the triangle of land that existed where Stuebner Airline intersected with I-45 North, with Little York to the immediate south. Malibu was an import from California, where it had been wildly successful, bringing a 28 horsepower Wankel engine powered fiberglass bodied mini-race car to the throngs who were tired of riding lawnmower engine powered go carts.
The course itself was designed to keep speeds down to the 30 mph range or so, as the many twists and turns and curves in the course made it necessary to slow down quite often. We soon found there were design flaws in the course, where either bad drivers or those who tried to go too fast would shoot off the course in certain spots and slam into the chain link fence that surrounded the course. Our solution was to put the used tires from the cars in these spots at the fence line, thus cushioning the crashes and keeping the fences from falling down on the errant drivers.
Malibu was even a better place to work than the Watercoaster. Of course, it was necessary for employees to "test" the cars, both before opening and during the day as issues arose with the cars. I never came close to beating the track records, but became pretty good at driving the cars simply out of fun.
All employees there began working "in the pits", helping drivers in and out of cars and taking tickets and such. After a couple of months working there, I got promoted to mechanic, which was a far better job than working in the pit area. I used to open the track on Saturdays, and soon myself and others made friends with several HPD officers who patrolled the area out of the North Shepherd Substation. Once we forgot to turn off the silent alarm and had a significant police response, but as we were all attired in Malibu shirts and were engaged in washing and servicing the cars when they arrived, they were quickly able to surmise we were actual employees and not burglars.
One thing led to another that day when HPD came by and soon they were regular visitors before we opened on Saturdays. On my red metal toolbox that was in the garage area was a popular pro-police HPD bumper sticker of the late seventies that featured an HPD badge and the words THE BADGE MEANS YOU CARE. I was already aspiring to be an officer myself, but as a college freshman was too young yet to apply for the force. Once these cops saw that sticker, they started talking to us. Of course, like everyone else, they liked driving the cars, and we would let them have free laps and give them comp tickets so they could come when off duty with their families and friends.
One of us, and I think it was one of my managers, mentioned to the HPD guys one Saturday morning that the Malibu cars were capable of doing nearly a hundred miles an hour if on a straight-a-way instead of on the curvy track. That led to some officers closing down a stretch of the I-45 feeder for a few minutes so we could all radar test the cars. Although covered in a fiberglass shell, the cars of course had an all metal chassis and frame, so as the cars raced down the feeder at speeds of close to, but not quite 100 miles an hour, an officer at the other end was shooting them with radar since the cars had no speedometer.
One of the more daredevil officers not only raced the Malibu car down the feeder, he then cut through the still empty in the early morning hours parking lot of the K-mart located next to the Watercoaster and onto Stuebner Airline, and on that longer stretch probably got the car up to close to 100 miles per hour. There was no radar set there, and the early morning traffic he was passing was quite surprised to see a mini-race car zipping past them.
I worked with some memorable folks there, and everyone of course had their own stories. One of the managers of the track, Kurt Koesters, had moved to Texas from California after starting work for Malibu there. When Warner Brothers bought Malibu, they transferred him to the new track and he relocated. He was a helluva nice guy to work for, and I often wonder what happened to him. The chief mechanic was an extremely interesting fellow named David Bennett. He too was from California but had not worked for Malibu before he joined in Houston.
David is a story in himself. He drove a new Chevy Z-28. At the time, I was driving a 1970 Mustang Mach One that my father and I had restored, and that a relocated-from-Detroit mechanic nicknamed "Mr. 289" had rebuild the 351 Cleveland engine in. It was a far faster car than anyone my age needed, and one day one of the older well heeled Malibu customers inquired about buying. One thing led to another and I sold the car to him for a tidy profit.
About that same time, David's parents had "relocated" to South America. The story about David's dad was always sketchy, but I knew he had what we called "large money" because every now and then David would show up for work with one of his dad's three new Cadillacs. David pulled me aside one day shortly after I had sold my Mustang and told me that his dad and young second wife and baby had moved to South America and that he would be joining them.
David needed to sell his car quickly and knew I was flush with cash after selling the Mustang. I bought the Z-28 from him in a couple of days, and ended up driving David to the Airport to catch his flight to South America via the Bahamas.
I didn't hear from David for about a year or so, and then one day got a call from him that he was in town, staying at the first location of the very upscale Guest Quarters Hotel, located then behind the Galleria a few blocks. I went over there and was visiting with him in his room when suddenly his dad burst in demanding to know who I was and calling David into the adjoining room to have a heated but undiscernable conversation with him. David came back in, quite embarrassed and told me his dad didn't like having strangers around and I had to leave.
And that was the last I saw of David Bennett. Several years later, a series of articles appeared in the Houston Chronicle or the long defunct Houston Post about David's dad and his upcoming testimony against a bunch of bankers and others who had been involved in the latest bank swindle. According to the article, at the time I knew David, his dad and indeed his whole family were in the Witness Protection program. His dad had been hooked up with some mob banks and had been involved in some sort of nefarious activities that involved siphoning off money for the mob from these banks, and if memory serves, some kind of money laundering.
After testifying against the mob in that situation, the family was relocated from California to Texas. Unfortunately, David's dad couldn't keep out of the business and soon got involved in some sort of multi-million dollar check kiting scheme involving out of state banks. Some form of organized crime was also involved in that endeavor, and when the family made their hasty departure to South America, that scheme had begun to fall apart.
One interesting thing I recall is that during that brief meeting at the Guest Quarters Hotel David had told me that after arriving in the Bahamas and taking a smaller plane to another locale enroute to South America, the plane had crashed and he had spent months/weeks in a Bahamian hospital recovering from injuries from that plane crash. From his telling of the story, once I later learned of his father's true identity from the news articles, I had strong doubts that the plane crash was accidental.
The news articles about David's dad indicated that he had really been a Vietnam fighter pilot, as David used to tell us, and a heroic one at that. David often wore an Air Force pilots flight jacket with the name tag reading Bennett. So the name tag was fake but the story about his dad being an ace fighter pilot was true. You could see that David was really taken with this father, and David's eyes would literally light up whenever he talked about him.
When I met with David at the Guest Quarters Hotel, his father was in town to turn yet another deal with the feds to testify against his former cohorts or enemies or whoever they were. So it appears he lucked out again, knowing enough that the feds were willing to offer him some sort of deal in exchange for his testimony. I haven't been able to locate the articles in the Houston Chronicle archives and if memory serves the Post's archives perhaps got merged with the Chronicles but I will keep looking, and if I find them I'll post a link here to them.
I have a feeling it's gonna take a trip to the downtown Houston Public Library. I haven't been there in decades, but hopefully somewhere they still have a microfiche copy of the Post from the early 80's. I remember it was a front page story, not "THE" headline story but it was on the front page.
Again, as memory serves, the Bennett family went back into the witness protection program and assumably changed identities and locales again, and who knows what happened to them. I know David was an honest guy, a couple of years older than me, but I never saw him engage in anything other than hard, honest work while we worked at Malibu. He never cheated on time or on buying his own tools from the Snap-On salesmen who frequented our location, and he worked like a dog. Like a fellow soldier stated in a statement about my great-grandfather's time in the Confederate Army, David was "allright as long as I knew him".
Likewise, the Z-28 I bought from him was as he said, in perfect condition. Being an ace mechanic, he had maintained it in perfect like new condition and besides, when I bought it the car only had 7,000 miles or so on it. I remember when I bought it I went to a local Exxon station where a friend worked as a mechanic and we put the car up on a lift and took torque wrenches and the GM maintenance manual and checked all the nuts and bolts and such with the maintenance specs provided by GM. Everything was torqued to the exact specs it should have been, as David had said.
My more talented mechanic friends and I went over every inch of that car for several days, and everything was in perfect order. All scheduled maintenance had been done and had been done well. I paid slightly under book for the car, which had sold new at that time for about $7,500. It served me well for quite a few years.
I still wonder, thirty plus years on, whatever happened to David Bennett. Maybe he'll google his old Witness Protection name, that was outed by the Chronicle or Post way back when, and stumble across this posting one day and pull my email from my profile and contact me. Maybe he'll remember the 8 track tape that he left in the car he sold me.
So you see, my brief few months working at Malibu Grand Prix was a memorable experience. And not because of driving the mini-race cars. But that was fun too.
Way back then, when the Watercoaster opened, I got a job there. It was a fun place to work, even though it was fatally flawed from the start. It had two troughs that came down the side of the manmade hill but the fatal flaw was that instead of covering the surface of the troughs with some sort of plastic compound, they were more or less bare concrete. Maybe gunnite. I'm not sure, but I know that many Watercoaster riders got strawberries on their bodies if part of their persons came off of the foam mats that were used to ride down the Watercoaster.
For historical information, since that Watercoaster and it's twin located at Stewart Beach in Galveston are long gone, I wanted to note it's existence somewhere. As far as I can recall, it was open the summer of 1978 and 1979. Several of us who worked at the North Houston Watercoaster were detailed on several occasions to go down to the Watercoaster in Galveston and work due to employee shortages at the beach. It was a lot of fun, sortof like a busman's holiday. They paid for our gas and food and several nights at a local motel down there to help train new employees and cover shortages in employees while they were getting fully staffed.
One thing that I soon learned was that if you were wearing the proper pair of tennis shoes you could surf the Watercoaster standing on the inch thick foam mats. At the time, various types of upscale tennis shoes were all the rage, like Adidas and Reebok. I had a pair of yellow mesh Reebok running shoes that were perfect for getting wet at the Watercoaster, as they were mesh and dried quickly, and it was hard to avoid your shoes getting wet. These shoes worked great for surfing the Watercoaster, but the best shoes were cheap Keds slip-on tennis shoes. Something about their sole gave great traction on the otherwise slippery foam mats.
Of course, regular customers weren't allowed to surf the Watercoaster, but before and after opening the employees would have at it. Not being a great athlete, I was pretty limited to straight surfing down the Watercoaster, but a few of the more athletic employees could do 180's and 360's without hurting themselves. I can't remember everyone who worked there, but I remember my friends Lionel, Stanley and a guy named Freddie who dealt with all of the plumbing and mechanical issues. All of us were either in high school or fresh out, about to go to college, and I often wonder what happened to the folks I worked there with.
When school started, the Watercoaster closed, and several of us went next door to the newly opened Malibu Grand Prix to get a job. Contrary to what some of the commenters said in J.R.'s article, the North Houston Malibu was located right there at the triangle of land that existed where Stuebner Airline intersected with I-45 North, with Little York to the immediate south. Malibu was an import from California, where it had been wildly successful, bringing a 28 horsepower Wankel engine powered fiberglass bodied mini-race car to the throngs who were tired of riding lawnmower engine powered go carts.
The course itself was designed to keep speeds down to the 30 mph range or so, as the many twists and turns and curves in the course made it necessary to slow down quite often. We soon found there were design flaws in the course, where either bad drivers or those who tried to go too fast would shoot off the course in certain spots and slam into the chain link fence that surrounded the course. Our solution was to put the used tires from the cars in these spots at the fence line, thus cushioning the crashes and keeping the fences from falling down on the errant drivers.
Malibu was even a better place to work than the Watercoaster. Of course, it was necessary for employees to "test" the cars, both before opening and during the day as issues arose with the cars. I never came close to beating the track records, but became pretty good at driving the cars simply out of fun.
All employees there began working "in the pits", helping drivers in and out of cars and taking tickets and such. After a couple of months working there, I got promoted to mechanic, which was a far better job than working in the pit area. I used to open the track on Saturdays, and soon myself and others made friends with several HPD officers who patrolled the area out of the North Shepherd Substation. Once we forgot to turn off the silent alarm and had a significant police response, but as we were all attired in Malibu shirts and were engaged in washing and servicing the cars when they arrived, they were quickly able to surmise we were actual employees and not burglars.
One thing led to another that day when HPD came by and soon they were regular visitors before we opened on Saturdays. On my red metal toolbox that was in the garage area was a popular pro-police HPD bumper sticker of the late seventies that featured an HPD badge and the words THE BADGE MEANS YOU CARE. I was already aspiring to be an officer myself, but as a college freshman was too young yet to apply for the force. Once these cops saw that sticker, they started talking to us. Of course, like everyone else, they liked driving the cars, and we would let them have free laps and give them comp tickets so they could come when off duty with their families and friends.
One of us, and I think it was one of my managers, mentioned to the HPD guys one Saturday morning that the Malibu cars were capable of doing nearly a hundred miles an hour if on a straight-a-way instead of on the curvy track. That led to some officers closing down a stretch of the I-45 feeder for a few minutes so we could all radar test the cars. Although covered in a fiberglass shell, the cars of course had an all metal chassis and frame, so as the cars raced down the feeder at speeds of close to, but not quite 100 miles an hour, an officer at the other end was shooting them with radar since the cars had no speedometer.
One of the more daredevil officers not only raced the Malibu car down the feeder, he then cut through the still empty in the early morning hours parking lot of the K-mart located next to the Watercoaster and onto Stuebner Airline, and on that longer stretch probably got the car up to close to 100 miles per hour. There was no radar set there, and the early morning traffic he was passing was quite surprised to see a mini-race car zipping past them.
I worked with some memorable folks there, and everyone of course had their own stories. One of the managers of the track, Kurt Koesters, had moved to Texas from California after starting work for Malibu there. When Warner Brothers bought Malibu, they transferred him to the new track and he relocated. He was a helluva nice guy to work for, and I often wonder what happened to him. The chief mechanic was an extremely interesting fellow named David Bennett. He too was from California but had not worked for Malibu before he joined in Houston.
David is a story in himself. He drove a new Chevy Z-28. At the time, I was driving a 1970 Mustang Mach One that my father and I had restored, and that a relocated-from-Detroit mechanic nicknamed "Mr. 289" had rebuild the 351 Cleveland engine in. It was a far faster car than anyone my age needed, and one day one of the older well heeled Malibu customers inquired about buying. One thing led to another and I sold the car to him for a tidy profit.
About that same time, David's parents had "relocated" to South America. The story about David's dad was always sketchy, but I knew he had what we called "large money" because every now and then David would show up for work with one of his dad's three new Cadillacs. David pulled me aside one day shortly after I had sold my Mustang and told me that his dad and young second wife and baby had moved to South America and that he would be joining them.
David needed to sell his car quickly and knew I was flush with cash after selling the Mustang. I bought the Z-28 from him in a couple of days, and ended up driving David to the Airport to catch his flight to South America via the Bahamas.
I didn't hear from David for about a year or so, and then one day got a call from him that he was in town, staying at the first location of the very upscale Guest Quarters Hotel, located then behind the Galleria a few blocks. I went over there and was visiting with him in his room when suddenly his dad burst in demanding to know who I was and calling David into the adjoining room to have a heated but undiscernable conversation with him. David came back in, quite embarrassed and told me his dad didn't like having strangers around and I had to leave.
And that was the last I saw of David Bennett. Several years later, a series of articles appeared in the Houston Chronicle or the long defunct Houston Post about David's dad and his upcoming testimony against a bunch of bankers and others who had been involved in the latest bank swindle. According to the article, at the time I knew David, his dad and indeed his whole family were in the Witness Protection program. His dad had been hooked up with some mob banks and had been involved in some sort of nefarious activities that involved siphoning off money for the mob from these banks, and if memory serves, some kind of money laundering.
After testifying against the mob in that situation, the family was relocated from California to Texas. Unfortunately, David's dad couldn't keep out of the business and soon got involved in some sort of multi-million dollar check kiting scheme involving out of state banks. Some form of organized crime was also involved in that endeavor, and when the family made their hasty departure to South America, that scheme had begun to fall apart.
One interesting thing I recall is that during that brief meeting at the Guest Quarters Hotel David had told me that after arriving in the Bahamas and taking a smaller plane to another locale enroute to South America, the plane had crashed and he had spent months/weeks in a Bahamian hospital recovering from injuries from that plane crash. From his telling of the story, once I later learned of his father's true identity from the news articles, I had strong doubts that the plane crash was accidental.
The news articles about David's dad indicated that he had really been a Vietnam fighter pilot, as David used to tell us, and a heroic one at that. David often wore an Air Force pilots flight jacket with the name tag reading Bennett. So the name tag was fake but the story about his dad being an ace fighter pilot was true. You could see that David was really taken with this father, and David's eyes would literally light up whenever he talked about him.
When I met with David at the Guest Quarters Hotel, his father was in town to turn yet another deal with the feds to testify against his former cohorts or enemies or whoever they were. So it appears he lucked out again, knowing enough that the feds were willing to offer him some sort of deal in exchange for his testimony. I haven't been able to locate the articles in the Houston Chronicle archives and if memory serves the Post's archives perhaps got merged with the Chronicles but I will keep looking, and if I find them I'll post a link here to them.
I have a feeling it's gonna take a trip to the downtown Houston Public Library. I haven't been there in decades, but hopefully somewhere they still have a microfiche copy of the Post from the early 80's. I remember it was a front page story, not "THE" headline story but it was on the front page.
Again, as memory serves, the Bennett family went back into the witness protection program and assumably changed identities and locales again, and who knows what happened to them. I know David was an honest guy, a couple of years older than me, but I never saw him engage in anything other than hard, honest work while we worked at Malibu. He never cheated on time or on buying his own tools from the Snap-On salesmen who frequented our location, and he worked like a dog. Like a fellow soldier stated in a statement about my great-grandfather's time in the Confederate Army, David was "allright as long as I knew him".
Likewise, the Z-28 I bought from him was as he said, in perfect condition. Being an ace mechanic, he had maintained it in perfect like new condition and besides, when I bought it the car only had 7,000 miles or so on it. I remember when I bought it I went to a local Exxon station where a friend worked as a mechanic and we put the car up on a lift and took torque wrenches and the GM maintenance manual and checked all the nuts and bolts and such with the maintenance specs provided by GM. Everything was torqued to the exact specs it should have been, as David had said.
My more talented mechanic friends and I went over every inch of that car for several days, and everything was in perfect order. All scheduled maintenance had been done and had been done well. I paid slightly under book for the car, which had sold new at that time for about $7,500. It served me well for quite a few years.
I still wonder, thirty plus years on, whatever happened to David Bennett. Maybe he'll google his old Witness Protection name, that was outed by the Chronicle or Post way back when, and stumble across this posting one day and pull my email from my profile and contact me. Maybe he'll remember the 8 track tape that he left in the car he sold me.
So you see, my brief few months working at Malibu Grand Prix was a memorable experience. And not because of driving the mini-race cars. But that was fun too.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
BIG CATS ON THE PROWL IN TEXAS
Three years ago, on a Christmas vacation to the Big Bend area, whilst we were relaxing in the Fort Davis State Park, we spied a very young and small mountain lion walking through one of the camping areas, in as relaxed of a mood as it could be. Sauntering, as if it owned the place. Which, knowing that where there is a baby of nearly any mammel species that there is likely a momma nearby, I gathered the family into the SUV and caught a peep of the momma in some brush as she watched her young spawn. We left that area pretty quickly.
Over the past few years, as perusing news articles will tell you, there has been an increase in sightings of mountain lions and bobcats and perhaps other types of non-domesticated cats in Texas. As the articles say, whether this means an increased number of these critters or that due to drought, water and food shortages they are just making themselves more public is anyones guess. We've also had hog and deer population explosions throughout many areas in Texas. Although deer don't attack, the larger numbers have led to many auto-animal collisions as deer seek forage near roads in near more populated areas as the drought and as overcrowding of their species mandates.
Again, on that same trip to the Big Bend, we hung out in Alpine, Texas, one of our favorite Texas towns to visit. At sundown, hundreds of deer descended from the nearby mountains to invade the front yards and the city golfcourse. Although deer are very cool animals, they become pesky like a rodent infestation in certain parts of Texas. At about that same time, I was watching a friend's cabin that was located near the town of Blanco, north of San Antonio, Texas. My friend Billy Ray and I had to take a night time roadtrip from nearby San Marcos, Texas to the area south of Blanco known as Twin Sisters, which refers to two mountains/hills located in that area.
The route we took was Ranch Road 12 (RR 12), and I actually slowed to less than 30 miles per hour upon much of that trip because foraging deer were EVERYWHERE on the roadsides, leaping hither and yon as the car lights approached. Never mind that I had one of those ultrasonic deer whistles on the front of my SUV, which is supposed to deter and make deer go away when they hear it. It seemed to have little or no effect on the deer we encountered that night. Folks were angrily passing us quite frequently but I was not going to speed through such an area with so much roadside deer activity. I've had a friend whose F 150 truck was broadsided by a large fast moving deer some years ago in Fort Bend County and his truck was actually knocked over onto it's side by this deer. And the truck was totaled out by the insurance company from the damages to the frame where the buck struck the truck.
Recently, in a part of central Texas ravaged by wildfire, a friend of a friend was guarding his home from vandals and looters. The home, and in fact the entire sprawling subdivision in which it was located was out of power, since the power lines had been burned by said fire. This is a very hilly subdivision, replete with many ravines and hills and has many brushy and wild areas. Firefighters had been all around that area, dousing homes that had not burned and fighting the fires that raged, which resulted in some large puddles in certain areas.
At the friend of the friends home, there was a huge puddle on the back portion of the several acre spread he lived on, with wilderness coming right up into the lot. As this fellow sat there with his AR-15, a campfire and some auxilary lighting provided by the small generator he had, he spied a very large mountain lion creeping up to the edge of the brushline. He said the lion was side-eyeing him as the lion approached the large puddle of water, as if to say that "hey, I've lived through this dang fire and I'm just here for something to drink.". The lion drank for a long while from the puddle, and when finished again crept away back into the woods, still side-eyeing the man as if to say "Thanks for letting me get a drink." He said the cat was clearly aware of his presence, and he was drawn down with his rifle attached laser on the creature during the entire event, but the cat never attempted to approach him.
Last week, the newspapers had the story of an Austin area boy, six years old, snatched from his parents in the Big Bend National Park. Walking hand in hand with his parents, the unusal thing about this attack was that it occurred at the park's lodge. The family was returning to the lodge from the adjacent restaurant when the cat lept onto the boy and grabbed him from the grasp of his parents and drug him into some nearby bushes.
Fortunately, the parents were not weeping willows and the father jumped into the attack and began punching the lion while the mom held onto the cat's hind legs. They described the cat as thin and sickly looking. Finally, the news reports indicate the father got his pocketknife out and began stabbing the critter, which convinced him to move on. It's unfortunate dad didn't have some sort of handgun present, as this would've instantly solved the problem. Fortunately, although injured pretty badly, the young man is apparently recovering as I write this.
Mountain lions and even black bears reside in the Big Bend area. Mountain lion sightings are really not unusual for that area, but they mostly occur in areas of the park that are not regularly occupied by humans, mostly happening at remote sights and trails as far as I know.
Today, I saw in the news where a large gray cat was spotted in Chambers county, which borders the bays that feed ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico and is located to the east of Houston, Texas. Several huge wildlife preserves are located in this county as well. This cat was spotted by several folks, including the mayor of Beach City, Texas according to news accounts. Mayor Billy Combs described it as bigger than a coyote, and gray in color. Although I was aware that Texas has it's fair share of big cats of several varieties, until today I was not aware that these cats resided in coastal areas.
For those unfamiliar with the coastal areas of Texas, the bay areas are often populated by gators, rattlers, various species of hogs, copperheads, water moccasins and other creatures who bode ill for the unaware sportsman or tourist. On more than one occasion, I've seen beachgoers rapidly fleeing sand dune areas near the beach, where these folks decided to go when nature calls, because they stumbled onto a rattler or rattlers.
One time about 12 years ago, whilst driving the family jeep down some trails that wound through sand dunes just off the beach at Matagorda Island, Texas, Mrs. El Fisho and I (actually it was I, because I was driving that day), acccidently took a corner too quickly and the back end of the jeep slid or rather slammed into the side of a sand dune, collapsing the dune and revealing what can only be described as a "nest" of rattlers. We were lucky we had the top up and closed, otherwise a few of the snakes were positioned at a height where they could have fallen into the back of the jeep.
Talk about a scene that reminds of the movie Snakes on a Plane. Yikes!
I'd heard of "nests of snakes" all my life, but had never actually seen one until that day. Unfortunately, I didn't have a shotgun with me because the natural instinct I had was to start shooting into that writhing nest with birdshot until it moved no more. After that, I reflected on the tens if not hundreds of times over the years I had traversed dunes and other coastal areas in snakey territory and upon how lucky I was that I had not stumbled into a nest of rattlers during some of these journeys to either heed nature's call or to get to areas I wanted to fish.
I don't go walking in the dunes anymore. And that cured Ms. El Fisho of wanting to buy a beachhouse in Matagorda.
I'll wrap up with another wild cat sighting from my formative years. When I was about 12 years old, we were up at the family place, fairly deep in the woods of East Texas. Our property was divided by a year round, twenty foot wide and twelve foot deep creek, and we had a large amount of frontage on that creek. Needless to say, as the only live water in that area, it daily attracted a wide variety of critters, both seeking water and some seeking those critters who came there for the water. Big snakes of several poisonous variety were in abundance, as were hogs and deer and possums and raccoons and nutria and turtles and all sorts of animals.
My dad standardly carried one of his .38 Special revolvers with him as we traversed or worked on the property. There was a large four bedroom, two story cabin on the easily accesible side of the creek, and as with most cabins, there was always something that needed repairing. The cabin, indeed the whole property of about 45 acres, was comprised of many huge pine, pecan, magnolia and oak trees. Really tall and big old growth trees.
Those trees that lined the creek tended to be tall, and formed a canopy over the creek. One day, when working with our hired handyman Charlie repairing the tin roof on the cabin, some kind of mouse or rat was stirred up out of the attic and onto the roof by their hammering. As the handyman took aim at the rodent with his Ruger .22, what was described by my father as a very large bobcat lept down from the canopy of trees onto the roof in pursuit of the rodent. Apparently, the cat had been poised somewhere in the tree canopy for at least a little while, which after the fact gave my father pause to think as to how long the bobcat had been watching him and Charlie and whether the bobcat thought they were meal size or not.
The arrival of the bobcat onto the roof spooked my dad, but not so much that he couldn't draw and fire a shot at it before it again lept away into the canopy of trees. Likewise, Charlie got off several shots. One of the shots did hit home, as there was a blood trail across the roof, but beyond that they didn't know who hit it or where it was hit or what happened to the bobcat.
Before we went back out to the land, my dad acquired a Ruger Blackhawk in .41 magnum with a 7 and 1/2 inch barrel. He was determined that the next time a bobcat was in his vicinity that he was gonna make sure his bullet did what it was supposed to do. Over the next few years, in addition to accounting for dozens of dead water moccasins and copperheads, he took out two bobcats that dared come into his comfort zone. He called that Ruger his "Bobcat Medicine".
Every now and then, Mother Nature reminds that it is she who makes the rules and that those who don't abide her with caution can deal with the sometimes fatal results that spring forth. And as the attack last week in Big Bend shows, it's not just hunters, hikers, fisherman and other wilderness trekkers that tempt fate by virtue of their activities, but regular folks just walking from a restaurant to the motel at a National Park are not immune from attack.
EDIT: Mike Leggett, the sports columnist for the Austin American Statesman, ran this commentary today. I'll note that, although he hasn't responded to my email suggesting that soaking in the Hot Tub at the Big Bend National Park be added to his bucket list of x number of things a Texan needs to do before they die, I enjoy his writing and outdoor columnists are few and far between with in the struggling newspaper business. Nonetheless, great minds think alike. LOL.
Over the past few years, as perusing news articles will tell you, there has been an increase in sightings of mountain lions and bobcats and perhaps other types of non-domesticated cats in Texas. As the articles say, whether this means an increased number of these critters or that due to drought, water and food shortages they are just making themselves more public is anyones guess. We've also had hog and deer population explosions throughout many areas in Texas. Although deer don't attack, the larger numbers have led to many auto-animal collisions as deer seek forage near roads in near more populated areas as the drought and as overcrowding of their species mandates.
Again, on that same trip to the Big Bend, we hung out in Alpine, Texas, one of our favorite Texas towns to visit. At sundown, hundreds of deer descended from the nearby mountains to invade the front yards and the city golfcourse. Although deer are very cool animals, they become pesky like a rodent infestation in certain parts of Texas. At about that same time, I was watching a friend's cabin that was located near the town of Blanco, north of San Antonio, Texas. My friend Billy Ray and I had to take a night time roadtrip from nearby San Marcos, Texas to the area south of Blanco known as Twin Sisters, which refers to two mountains/hills located in that area.
The route we took was Ranch Road 12 (RR 12), and I actually slowed to less than 30 miles per hour upon much of that trip because foraging deer were EVERYWHERE on the roadsides, leaping hither and yon as the car lights approached. Never mind that I had one of those ultrasonic deer whistles on the front of my SUV, which is supposed to deter and make deer go away when they hear it. It seemed to have little or no effect on the deer we encountered that night. Folks were angrily passing us quite frequently but I was not going to speed through such an area with so much roadside deer activity. I've had a friend whose F 150 truck was broadsided by a large fast moving deer some years ago in Fort Bend County and his truck was actually knocked over onto it's side by this deer. And the truck was totaled out by the insurance company from the damages to the frame where the buck struck the truck.
Recently, in a part of central Texas ravaged by wildfire, a friend of a friend was guarding his home from vandals and looters. The home, and in fact the entire sprawling subdivision in which it was located was out of power, since the power lines had been burned by said fire. This is a very hilly subdivision, replete with many ravines and hills and has many brushy and wild areas. Firefighters had been all around that area, dousing homes that had not burned and fighting the fires that raged, which resulted in some large puddles in certain areas.
At the friend of the friends home, there was a huge puddle on the back portion of the several acre spread he lived on, with wilderness coming right up into the lot. As this fellow sat there with his AR-15, a campfire and some auxilary lighting provided by the small generator he had, he spied a very large mountain lion creeping up to the edge of the brushline. He said the lion was side-eyeing him as the lion approached the large puddle of water, as if to say that "hey, I've lived through this dang fire and I'm just here for something to drink.". The lion drank for a long while from the puddle, and when finished again crept away back into the woods, still side-eyeing the man as if to say "Thanks for letting me get a drink." He said the cat was clearly aware of his presence, and he was drawn down with his rifle attached laser on the creature during the entire event, but the cat never attempted to approach him.
Last week, the newspapers had the story of an Austin area boy, six years old, snatched from his parents in the Big Bend National Park. Walking hand in hand with his parents, the unusal thing about this attack was that it occurred at the park's lodge. The family was returning to the lodge from the adjacent restaurant when the cat lept onto the boy and grabbed him from the grasp of his parents and drug him into some nearby bushes.
Fortunately, the parents were not weeping willows and the father jumped into the attack and began punching the lion while the mom held onto the cat's hind legs. They described the cat as thin and sickly looking. Finally, the news reports indicate the father got his pocketknife out and began stabbing the critter, which convinced him to move on. It's unfortunate dad didn't have some sort of handgun present, as this would've instantly solved the problem. Fortunately, although injured pretty badly, the young man is apparently recovering as I write this.
Mountain lions and even black bears reside in the Big Bend area. Mountain lion sightings are really not unusual for that area, but they mostly occur in areas of the park that are not regularly occupied by humans, mostly happening at remote sights and trails as far as I know.
Today, I saw in the news where a large gray cat was spotted in Chambers county, which borders the bays that feed ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico and is located to the east of Houston, Texas. Several huge wildlife preserves are located in this county as well. This cat was spotted by several folks, including the mayor of Beach City, Texas according to news accounts. Mayor Billy Combs described it as bigger than a coyote, and gray in color. Although I was aware that Texas has it's fair share of big cats of several varieties, until today I was not aware that these cats resided in coastal areas.
For those unfamiliar with the coastal areas of Texas, the bay areas are often populated by gators, rattlers, various species of hogs, copperheads, water moccasins and other creatures who bode ill for the unaware sportsman or tourist. On more than one occasion, I've seen beachgoers rapidly fleeing sand dune areas near the beach, where these folks decided to go when nature calls, because they stumbled onto a rattler or rattlers.
One time about 12 years ago, whilst driving the family jeep down some trails that wound through sand dunes just off the beach at Matagorda Island, Texas, Mrs. El Fisho and I (actually it was I, because I was driving that day), acccidently took a corner too quickly and the back end of the jeep slid or rather slammed into the side of a sand dune, collapsing the dune and revealing what can only be described as a "nest" of rattlers. We were lucky we had the top up and closed, otherwise a few of the snakes were positioned at a height where they could have fallen into the back of the jeep.
Talk about a scene that reminds of the movie Snakes on a Plane. Yikes!
I'd heard of "nests of snakes" all my life, but had never actually seen one until that day. Unfortunately, I didn't have a shotgun with me because the natural instinct I had was to start shooting into that writhing nest with birdshot until it moved no more. After that, I reflected on the tens if not hundreds of times over the years I had traversed dunes and other coastal areas in snakey territory and upon how lucky I was that I had not stumbled into a nest of rattlers during some of these journeys to either heed nature's call or to get to areas I wanted to fish.
I don't go walking in the dunes anymore. And that cured Ms. El Fisho of wanting to buy a beachhouse in Matagorda.
I'll wrap up with another wild cat sighting from my formative years. When I was about 12 years old, we were up at the family place, fairly deep in the woods of East Texas. Our property was divided by a year round, twenty foot wide and twelve foot deep creek, and we had a large amount of frontage on that creek. Needless to say, as the only live water in that area, it daily attracted a wide variety of critters, both seeking water and some seeking those critters who came there for the water. Big snakes of several poisonous variety were in abundance, as were hogs and deer and possums and raccoons and nutria and turtles and all sorts of animals.
My dad standardly carried one of his .38 Special revolvers with him as we traversed or worked on the property. There was a large four bedroom, two story cabin on the easily accesible side of the creek, and as with most cabins, there was always something that needed repairing. The cabin, indeed the whole property of about 45 acres, was comprised of many huge pine, pecan, magnolia and oak trees. Really tall and big old growth trees.
Those trees that lined the creek tended to be tall, and formed a canopy over the creek. One day, when working with our hired handyman Charlie repairing the tin roof on the cabin, some kind of mouse or rat was stirred up out of the attic and onto the roof by their hammering. As the handyman took aim at the rodent with his Ruger .22, what was described by my father as a very large bobcat lept down from the canopy of trees onto the roof in pursuit of the rodent. Apparently, the cat had been poised somewhere in the tree canopy for at least a little while, which after the fact gave my father pause to think as to how long the bobcat had been watching him and Charlie and whether the bobcat thought they were meal size or not.
The arrival of the bobcat onto the roof spooked my dad, but not so much that he couldn't draw and fire a shot at it before it again lept away into the canopy of trees. Likewise, Charlie got off several shots. One of the shots did hit home, as there was a blood trail across the roof, but beyond that they didn't know who hit it or where it was hit or what happened to the bobcat.
Before we went back out to the land, my dad acquired a Ruger Blackhawk in .41 magnum with a 7 and 1/2 inch barrel. He was determined that the next time a bobcat was in his vicinity that he was gonna make sure his bullet did what it was supposed to do. Over the next few years, in addition to accounting for dozens of dead water moccasins and copperheads, he took out two bobcats that dared come into his comfort zone. He called that Ruger his "Bobcat Medicine".
Every now and then, Mother Nature reminds that it is she who makes the rules and that those who don't abide her with caution can deal with the sometimes fatal results that spring forth. And as the attack last week in Big Bend shows, it's not just hunters, hikers, fisherman and other wilderness trekkers that tempt fate by virtue of their activities, but regular folks just walking from a restaurant to the motel at a National Park are not immune from attack.
EDIT: Mike Leggett, the sports columnist for the Austin American Statesman, ran this commentary today. I'll note that, although he hasn't responded to my email suggesting that soaking in the Hot Tub at the Big Bend National Park be added to his bucket list of x number of things a Texan needs to do before they die, I enjoy his writing and outdoor columnists are few and far between with in the struggling newspaper business. Nonetheless, great minds think alike. LOL.
Friday, February 10, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, January 6, 2012
THE MOSIN NAGANT 91/30 PISTOL, OR THE OBREZ
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.
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.
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.
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