My! Fine sporting writing isn't dead

[solicitr]

Not from the Thirties or even the Fifties, but the Nineties:

Thus ends the technical history of the .348 Winchester. Please pardon us when we say all of that really has little to do with the "real" history. You see, the story of the .348 WCF can never truly be told due to its unique purpose. Designed solely as a powerful hunting cartridge for the finest big bore lever gun that has ever been, its history was played out in dim woods and along forested streams of the cold country. Dark spruce, black water, and white snow have felt its concussion in places where weather was bad and ranges short. Elk, moose, and big bears knew its report, too, but the only witness was the north wind.

Those who brought this rifle and cartridge into being were some of the last men to know what relying on a rifle really meant. Not head hunting, not killing, but slipping as through a curtain, alone, into a land that is big, beautiful, and totally unforgiving. A good canoe, a favorite pack frame, a big Winchester with receiver turned dull silver from wear by countless pairs of mittens are all part of this history.

Then the sudden violent shaking of the brush. A blood chilling half-growl, half-roar paralyzes mind and senses. Quick flashes of brown transform into a slobbering face of teeth and gray guard hairs standing erect, accented by eyes turned red with hate for reasons know only to itself. As death closes the final few feet, there comes, somehow, the crashing thunder of a Model 71 - again and again.

Yes, the .348 Winchester truly belongs to another era. It was created for a place that is part fiction, part reality, part memory. Unfortunately, we have never been allowed to glimpse very much of it."

--Gil Sengel, ".348 Winchester," 1995.

[vison]

"Then the sudden violent shaking of the brush. A blood chilling half-growl, half-roar paralyzes mind and senses. Quick flashes of brown transform into a slobbering face of teeth and gray guard hairs standing erect, accented by eyes turned red with hate for reasons know only to itself. As death closes the final few feet, there comes, somehow, the crashing thunder of a Model 71 - again and again. "

(Bolding mine, obviously.)

Animals don't "hate". Not on planet Earth, anyway.

But, thanks for posting it, solictr, other than the glowing red eyes of hate, that was excellent.

That was an important gun. My son collects guns, and I am pretty sure he has one, although he doesn't often shoot long guns. When he gets home, I'll ask him about it.

My Dad hunted. He hunted for meat - pheasant and other birds with a shotgun, deer and moose with his rifle. I learned to shoot when I was 12 years old. I am no enemy of hunting or of guns. My son is in Bali right now at a world shooting championship - he shoots, among other guns, a .50 cal Desert Eagle. I've fired it, and my son has to stand close behind me to take the recoil - he loads his own ammunition and he likes it to have little extra kick, he's a big guy and can manage it. Flames shoot out about 4 feet. He makes me pay him $3 for every shot, he claims that's what it costs him. And god help you if you lose the brass. He intends to finish well in Bali, maybe better. I hope he does, this hobby costs him a great deal of time and money. He's 37 now, and getting a bit long in the tooth for competitive shooting at that level. Anyway, I just looked and there he is, on Team Canada. Cool.

My Dad had a treasured Winchester, not a .348, but a very old .30-.30, a lovely gun that my nephew still goes hunting with. Now and again I went out with my Dad and those are lovely memories. This very day I was thinking of that, it's such a fine fall here, more colour than we usually have in the bush. Dad gave up hunting when the woods got full of city people. But I remember the sound of that rifle, the long, booming crack that rolled around in the woods. A .348 is a bigger boom. Dad would let me help him clean his guns, and the smell of gun oil brings those times sharply back. He never did his own reloading, though.

But guns are funny things and so are bears. Some years ago an old Indian woman was accosted by a grizzly bear near Prince George. She shoved a .22 into its mouth and pulled the trigger. She survived although the dead bear fell on her.

On Sunday one of the local gun clubs will have their annual after Halloween pumpkin shoot and we usually go. We won't this year since my son is away and I don't know the people all that well, but my grandsons love going, they get to blow pumpkins to smithereens. One guy comes with a muzzle loader, he's all dressed in buckskins, etc, and he gets off about 1 round every 5 minutes. Another guy brings a little cannon, about a foot long. It takes him forever to sight it in, etc., but it's his idea of fun. My son usually brings his .50 cal, and some smaller pistols, and we have a lot of fun watching pumpkin guts fly into the air. Some pumpkins take a long time to die.

[solicitr]

Thanks, Vison. I actually don't hunt, myself, but I enjoy punching holes in inanimate objects. I love old rifles, though- my grandfather was an ardent collector.

Since I'm only a Boy Scout-grade backpacker, I have endless respect for those old-time men (and women) who shoved off into the Great Wilderness to live by their wits and their aim.

Animals don't "hate". Not on planet Earth, anyway.

That's an interesting issue, and probably not exactly a Rivendell topic- but I'm not sure I agree. Do animals feel emotion of the same savour as ours? I'm inclined to think they do. Dogs can love, I'm convinced of it. Certainly they fear. And (abused) dogs can hate- just ask Michael Vick.

So does "hate" describe a charging grizzly? I'm not sure. I haven't known any personally. But reportedly they can be bellicose, attacking for no apparent reason. How else would one describe that raging impulse to rend, maim, pulp?

[Primula Baggins]

Bears in the wild are animals—I don't think they can hate. They just have the instinct to attack when they feel threatened (or when they're hungry).

"Hate" is what we paste on to justify killing them, when self-defense would be perfectly adequate.

Dogs who've been abused? If they can't hate, they ought to. I have a friend who cares for rescued abused dogs. What's pathetic is that, given the least opportunity to love anyone and to feel safe doing so, they take it.

I'm glad my friend, and others like her, gives them the opportunity.

[vison]

I don't think a grizzly bear attacks out of "hate". I think if you cross a grizzly's path, you are interfering in its territory and the bear recognizes that as a threat, if not as food. Grizzlies do eat people when they can get them, viz. that idiot who lived with them in Alaska. We are pushing into their range further every day and every day there is yet another grizzly paying the price for it. We cannot tolerate an "aggressive" grizzly, we have this lunatic idea that we are "special" and the bears ought to know it. Like the opprobrium attached to a "man eating" lion or tiger. Like, they should know? They catch and eat people because they can. No other reason. There is no deep-seated regard of Man as "different" in the animal kingdom, to large predators such as killer whales, lions, tigers, grizzly bears, and polar bears, we are just ordinary meat. They can learn to fear us, but they don't "respect" us as being Special.

This is indeed a fascinating topic. I do believe that people are far, far, far too inclined to put human emotions onto animal behavior, and to put human thoughts into animal minds. Dogs, in particular, have lived with Man for so long that it gets pretty confusing. But I think that dog behavior is still dog behavior, even when a toy poodle is dressed up in rhinestones and pink velvet.

Friends of ours had a mean toy poodle and a big, rather assertive German Shepherd. Charlie the poodle was Top Dog in that relationship. They lived in bear country and it was Charlie who would defend his pack from bears - he was one tough little dog. The big shepherd took his orders from Charlie. And both dogs took their orders from my friend Donna. So when her husband, often away from home for months on end, was on the scene, Donna said it was a laff riot to see Charlie and the shepherd work their way into accepting him. He was never Top Dog, though. Came third!

eta: a weird thing, though. Last night, after I posted my first post in this thread, I went up to watch the last of the hockey game and guess who phoned from Bali? My head went wuggawugga. Sadly, although he began extremely well, he had a crappy third and fourth day and will not place very high. However, he's having a blast and after he leaves Bali he and some friends are going to Hong Kong for four days before heading home.

[solicitr]

Does he shoot centerfire or smallbore?

-------------

I'm not sure it isn't rather Victorian to draw a hard line between the emotional/hormonal processes of Man and other mammals. Are we really different in kind, not just degree? After all, when humans 'hate', often it's because turf or possession or family has beean transgressed by some interloper. And the mugger is just, well, preying, even if the desire for 'food' has been sublimated into cash or jewelry.

[vison]

Centre fire? One of his sponsors is Beretta. His main competition pistols are Berettas. I guess it's centre fire, as he shoots a .38 or .50, not a .22. Jeez. My knowledge just came to a screeching halt!

Yes, your comment about animal vs human "emotion" is quite true, we like to forget we are animals.

But we aren't "just animals".

I think one of the issues we face is that we are still hard wired for small tribal/family living and very few of us live that way. Our "territory" is constantly being invaded, both by actual people and by people on TV, etc. Messes us heads up.

[solicitr]

Oh, yeah, that's centerfire. That .50 DE is one BIG mutha of a pistol! "Smallbore" or "rimfire" usually means .22, although recently .177RF has come into vogue in match shooting.


*Note: Just FYI (and I'm really NOT trying to condescend): the earliest reliable metallic cartridges had the priming compound rolled into the rim of the case- the firing pin crushed a point on the rim, detonating the charge, thus 'rimfire.' By the 1870s this had been replaced by centerfire cartridges, with the primer in a cup in the center-base of the brass. All except the .22, which has soldiered on, the oldest caliber still in regular use.

**If you like BOOM, you should have heard my g/f's Sharps and Ballard buffalo rifles, firing blackpowder monsters like .45-90 and .50-110 Express!

[vison]

I have heard a couple of those rifles, actually. The gun club my son belongs to has a few guys who shoot them. They use a different part of the range, the long guns have their own gravel pit.

Long ago we knew a guy named Ike. He died years ago and sadly no one wrote down his life story, it was like a very exciting novel. He was born in the USA in about 1880 or so and his family left the USA in a covered wagon (true!) and came north to Canada, taking 8 years on the way. They settled near Rocky Mountain House, which is a very, very small town in Alberta, once important in the fur trade. Anyway, the year Ike was 9 and his older brother was 13, their Dad told them, "I can't afford to keep you any more, so you'll have to leave home." He gave them each a saddle and two horses and also some traps, etc., and a couple of guns, one of which was a buffalo rifle, likely one like your grandpa's. I saw it once or twice when we visited him, but I never saw it fired. Those two boys went into the Rocky Mountains and came out 2 years later with their pack horses loaded down with furs and hides. They did fine, obviously, although Ike told some hair-raising stories about bears and bull elk and wild water and rockslides and all manner of dangers. Ike was about 5 feet tall and never weighed more than a hundred pounds in his life, and yet he fired that big rifle expertly, his brother being a poor shot. I don't know of any boys aged 9 and 13 who could do that now. Ike never learned to read or write, but he was one of the smartest people I've ever met. He married a widow with 6 children and they had 3 together and all his step-children and children adored him, he was just a great, great man. Man, I wish one of those kids had thought to tape his conversations. He lived about 2 miles from us and would often stop in to chew the fat with my husband. He could drink more coffee and smoke more cigarettes than anyone I ever knew. He was one of those chain smokers that lights one cigarette from the previous one.

Sorry. Got off topic there for a minute! And good heavenly days don't get me started on me maternal Grandpa, for whom a Rocky Mountain is named, likewise a creek, a flats, and wide spot in the road . . . .

My son has a friend who has a "punt gun", it is a very big bore shotgun used for waterfowl. King Edward VII supposedly had an 8 gauge shotgun, someone told me even a 4 gauge. Can you imagine?

[solicitr]

Oh, yeah. I've seen punt guns in museums (they were very big on the Chesapeake Bay), but never seen one fired. I've shot a 10-bore, but never an 8. Was King Eddie's a shotgun or a rifle? The old blackpowder break-action elephant guns came in 8, 6 and 4 bore- with black powder, there wasn't any way to increase power except through gargantuan size.

Ike's story is absolutely amazing. My own g-g/f went from Texas to the Arizona Territory by covered wagon, and established a general store/ trading post (now buried under Phoenix, which didn't then exist) where at least half his customers were Yaqui Indians, but that's downright tame compared to Ike's life. (He was also a beekeeper- and that's what nearly killed him once.)

His son (my maternal g/f) shot small (and large) furry creatures all over the Southwest, but it wasn't his day job. He just had a few workin' guns. My paternal g/f (the rifle collector) never hunted- when he was a boy he had to take part in the annual hog slaughter and it turned him off gore for good.

The amazing thing to me about our forbears of the pioneer sort- my mother's family in Arizona, or the Appalachian mountain folk who lived around and sometimes worked for my grandfather- is how gol-durned *tough* they were. Like old boot leather. My father recalled Lana Fennesee pitching fifteen tons of hay before breakfast: at the age of seventy-something. Goodness gracious, we're all wimps now.

[vison]

King Edward probably had an elephant gun or two, but the guns I meant were shotguns, used to shoot waterfowl. From a punt, apparently.

Which reminds me of a really dreadful joke that I do not dare post here. It's funny, though.

Really funny.

People of that generation had to be tough to survive, I think. Once they got past the childhood diseases and if they survived teenagehood (no wars for the boys, not too many babies for the girls) there wasn't much that could kill them. I knew a woman, born in Oklahoma, who homesteaded in Northern Saskatchewan. She, too, was brought to Canada in a covered wagon and she had many children and lived through the Great War and The Dirty Thirties and then WW II and died at 98, with her hair still dark brown and her sense of humour unimpaired. She chewed tobacco, to her family's despair, and she said "yaller" for "yellow" and she called black people the N word, although she meant nothing by it. It was just the word she'd been taught and since she never went to school a day in her life - never - it's not so odd that she didn't "larn" better. Still, it made everyone flinch.

The rest of us who have come after do seem like a pretty wimpy bunch. But that's probably not entirely fair. We none of us know what we can do until we are tested.

[solicitr]

That's something Tolkien sensed- we would all like to think that, like Hobbits, we could be tough in a pinch.

[Primula Baggins]

And we often find we can be.