More Triple Dub Wits Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Mind Hacks is a blog maintained by authors by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb...

Haven't read the book yet (form a line please) but the blog examines strange stuff about how our very interesting brains work, or seem to.  Worth a look see from time to time.

Other Things We Learn At The Deer Rifle Sight-In (The 2008 Late Edition)

The Good, the Bad, and the "Whoa, Nelly!"  One hopes the 2010 program will be a little less interesting.

Tried to work off my service hours at the gun club last Sunday but the 40 mph winds, rain, sleet, and snow combination reminded me more of an episode of "Deadliest Catch" than it did a sensible day on the range. Yesterday was much better.

The Good... One shooter showed up with a new Nikon scope on his rifle saying "the gunsmith bore-sighted it", so of course we put him on the bags at the 25 yard line. Guess what? It actually was boresighted! He put his first shot an inch low and precisely centered at 25, so we sent him to the 100 yard line for more refinement. A youth minister shot his first centerfire - a borrowed pre-64 M94 with factory open sights - quite nicely once I explained what to look for in a sight picture. He shot into an inch at 25 yards, then made several groups at 50 you could cover with the palm of your hand, outshooting the owner of the piece by a good margin. His hunting hosts promised him a box blind with precisely that sort of shot so he was good to go.

The Bad... There was a fella shooting a Remington 710 with scope that wouldn't take any adjustments. The club member coaching him noticed the cap of the vertical adjustment turret was stove in. Then he noticed that the blow that ruined the cap also gave the scope tube a sot of ~ shape. Said fella drove off to buy another scope. He returned with a brand new 3-9x big box cheapy ("$65 bucks; what a deal, eh?") and some very scary looking steel cased 30'06 roundnose softs (Russian Barnaul). They barked louder than a muzzlebraked 300 Weatherby and made a muzzle flash the size of a beach ball that was visible in bright sunlight. He had to use a block of wood to hammer the bolt open two times in three. It was all he had so he persisted but managed only a eight inch pattern at 100 yards as the last whistle blew.

And the "Whoa, Nelly!" The most striking event of the day was a father and son team who arrived with the young man's brand-new, custom-ordered Savage 110 in 243 Winchester (nice wood and a scope brand I've actually heard of). Excellent choice for a new hunter's first deer rifle.  Junior fired the first shot from the bags at 25 and completely missed the paper. Such things happen. We checked the bore sighting. Wasn't perfect but the shot should have landed within a cubit of the bull. I refined the bore sight and Dad took another shot. Nothing. Clean paper. How could this be? As the case fell to the ground it looked very wrong. The case mouth was huge and the neck ruptured in several places. Sheesh, did he get a rifle chambered for 358 Winchester or something? I picked up the case. It had no neck at all. What gives? I look at the roll mark on the barrel. The special-ordered 243 Winchester pride-and-joy was in fact a 25-06 Remington! The short case was apparently held back enough by the extractor for the primer to pop, send a .24 caliber bullet rattling down a .25 caliber bore, and create an all but straight walled empty with just a touch of the long chamber's shoulder showing. Son wanted a 243. Dad ordered a 243. The shop delivered what was supposed to be a 243 and sold 243 ammo for same. Somewhere between the factory and the gunshop counter someone's paperwork was not in order. How it is Pop and The Boy didn't notice will likely become the stuff of family legend. Gratefully no one was harmed and Junior seem genuinely pleased by the upgrade.

Well, that's it for recollections of Deer Rifle Sight-In months past.  In a couple weeks I hope to offer the 2010 edition...

In This Case Popular Is Not Good

There are popular passwords and there are good passwords...

Here are some all too popular usernames and passwords.  You do not get a prize if you find your's on the list, but someone else might.

Other Things We Learn At The Deer Rifle Sight-In (The 2008 Early Edition)

"The more things change the more they remain the same"...2008 was similar to past years in many ways.

photo from wikimedia commons

Well, it's that time of year when the average deer hunter takes his deer rifle out of the closet and off to the range to see if anything has changed since the end of November last year. I went to the gun club Sunday and served on the line in weather that varied between rain and wind, drizzle and breeze, or cool gray stillness. Still we have sixty some guns show up.

My first client was a fella with a 300 magnum bolt gun topped with a $40 variable scope which fell apart immediately. The 25 yard target looked farther away through the scope than with the naked eye and if you looked through it just so it seemed one of the lenses turned sideways inside the tube. He left to buy a quality scope and returned a happy camper (he asked for a Leupold VX-1 but Burris is giving aways a binocular with their 3-9x for the same price).

There was the usual plethora of Remington 76XX and 74XX rifles - true to the rule pumps did fine and the selfl-loaders did not. Some of the best shooting we saw was a father-son team using Browning BARs - 7mm Rem Mag and 30'06 respectively - topped with low steel mounts and quality optics. Both had BOSS blast enhancers [muzzle brakes]. They shot one inch or smaller clusters at 100, acquitted themselves at 200, and went home.

The Hmong hunting crew numbering a half dozen brothers and cousins returned for their annual verification. All but one are running the Mossberg 500 rifled barrel package guns in 12 or 20 gauge. They chew up the bull at 25 and 50, verify the point of impact at 100, and say "See you next year!". They use the fanciest sabot slugs from Federal and Hornady and reported that all but one of them filled the freezer last year. He's the standout in the crew, running a Winchester self-loader rifled bore 12 ga. He missed a magazine full of shots at spitting distance last year and found that his original scope had fallen apart. His luck was no better yesterday; the soft alloy rings on his new Bushnell red dot wouldn't stay tight for more than three shots so he was planning to visit Gander Mountain for a remedy.

Unlike years past there were no pistols or handguns and only one muzzleloader (this shot by a club member who can actually shoot a group at 100 [yards] with a roundball flintlock).

As usual there were a few stern men making life miserable for their wives and sons. One fella insisted his wife pound her way through three boxes of full power 30'06 ammo from the bench at the 50 yard line. She shot as well as he did but did not appear to be enjoying herself at all. Who would? There were a good many dads who said the iron-sight family heirloom was good enough for their first hunt so the boy will make due with it as well. There's something to be said for tradition of course, but why berate them for minute-of-buck groups at 100 yards their first time to the range shooting a center-fire wearing nothing more than a round bead and a U-notch sight set-up? Perhaps these coaches were yelled at while being taught to shoot (which might explain why they, as a rule, are not hotshots themselves) but why can't they figure out that if they make the experience enjoyable and the hunt successful they have a much better chance to make a lifetime hunting partner of their spouse or child?  [More on recoil management in a forthcoming post.]

Half my club's annual work requirement is out of the way now. I'll serve at least one more Sunday this month. Seems the closer to the season the stranger the problems become. We'll keep you posted...

Funny? Sad? Eerily Prescient?

You decide...

I was pointed to this old Onion article by a fellow malcontent at the Schneier on Security blog

I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up.