Saturday 26 June 2010

I Want One - A Not So Occasional Series Pt16



Can you tell what it is yet?

I know I said I fancied a Blaser R93, but from the same factory there's another rifle. The Mauser M03. Also with interchangeable barrels, but this time it has a conventional bolt throw and a proper drop out magazine. Being the kind of numb-nuts who managed to drop a round into the undergrowth from a high seat I appreciate a drop box. [Yes of course it clanged off a rung on the way down]. 


Not cheap: but little on the I Want One list of kit lust is.  You can wash yourself with an old car washing sponge, a bucket and a length of hose, but dropping a few grand on a nice bathroom changes the ablution experience. After one too many wasted evenings re-installing Windows 98 I flashed up for a Mac book and never looked back. While you're paying a premium for design, you're getting some those well thought out touches that pass the Doh! test and make life a little better. 

With the Blaser you get a sence of the-rifle-re-thought, with the M03 its more a best of: De-cocking safety - not just blocking the release of the firing pin but taking the tension off the spring - making the rifle inert even with one up the spout, a 'Set trigger' meaning it has two sensitivity settings; one where it breaks at  just under 1 lb and on the other setting at just over 4 lbs - less squeeze for still hunting from a high seat with something to rest the rifle on, or more squeeze for greater safety for stalking. Not a light rifle in anybody's book, at almost nine pounds with a scope. But that's no bad thing for still hunting from a high seat, or from a bipod, and gives a nice, fluid, smooth movement when swinging the rifle at a moving boar. Never going to be called a mountain rifle though. Although, already on the website as vaporware: at some yet to be disclosed time in the near-to-distant future there'll be a Dural aluminium alloy action model that's 400 grams lighter  - nice! For the steel actions Mauser offer all the finishes you'd expect: coated, coloured, or engraved to the depth of your pockets. 


Barrels are available in all the usual caliber's from .222 to 458 Lott. There are two families of barrels 16 mm and 19 mm. Some stocks are only available inlet for the larger pipes. As you'd expect from someone with a name like Mauser to honor  the stocks are something to behold, with interchangeable variations offered in the finest grades of old school walnut (priced from 'cold sweat' to 'emergency resuscitation required') and a series of synthetics with a steel chassis.
The Stutzen (with a twist - it's a two piece): Two trad european looks for a weekend with Count Jägermeister  and Countess Von Jägerin?
Perhaps something more Utilitarian?
Or on a Professional Hunter tip:  
Ideal for a trip to see the Hippo or after the big hawgs with the Chief Chronicler 

Or short and to the point - the Trail with an 18 inch barrel for the Battue or as a handy  hillside gun for Italy?

Come on Santa Baby - hook a Bushwacker up. I've been awful good. Pleeeeeaazzee.
SBW


The Pix are from Pete Moore's review on Gun Mart (also see his videos there) and the Mauser site


The barrel options are listed here as a PDF.



Thursday 24 June 2010

Talking Bollocks And Eating Testicles

A while back I used to go to a butchers shop owned by a man who was both a born-again-Christian and a Chelsea fan. Two subjects that were always to hand in his conversational arsenal. We enjoyed a fairly lively  banter over the Gloustershire Old-Spot sausages.

Bushwacker Jr. and I had taken up his entreaty to 'try crocodile - it's weird' and it was - not like chicken at all - actually a lot like Conger Eel. We also tried Kuhdu from his african range - very lean - deer-like but more irony if that makes any sense at all. I knew from previous visits that he liked to have pre-prepared banter, witticisms that he'd worked up on other customers, so one afternoon I thought I'd try some of my material on him. I strode into the shop, the door bell announcing my arrival, as the smile of recognition broke across his face i hit him right between the eyes with this one.

SBW: This Time [pause for dramatic effect] I'm Talking Bollocks!
Butcher: LOL 'I may have some [dramatic pause of his own] that you can take away with you'......

For readers overseas: While bollocks [or bollox] are testicles there are other meanings too.

Your bollocks/his Bollocks - testicles
Oh bollocks - distress or dissatisfaction
Some Bollocks - information of dubious veracity
Talking bollocks - a purveyor of erroneous or un wanted information
The Bollocks - the best, a perfect example
A bollocking - a telling off - usually delivered at some considerable volume


And in Eire 'You bollocks' - a stupid person

........Wiping the tears from his eyes he rummaged in the bottom of one of his freezers and produced half a pair "you can have it - just let me know how you cooked it"

I steamed it whole, peeled off the outer membrane, sliced, coated it in breadcrumbs deep fried it and served the 'nuggets' with a sweet chili sauce. Yummy. You know what? They're good, really good. So I was delighted to read that Kristeva, regular commenter on this blog, who writes the excellent Howling Duck Ranch had been on an unusual date.

More soon
Your pal
SBW

PS: Legend has it that the Spartans were great believers in eating Sheep's bollocks - reputed to contain a generous dose of a steroid now totally illegal in modern Olympic competition.

Sunday 20 June 2010

How To Plait Garlic - Ish!


This afternoon I was able to extract a small sample of mother natures bounty from the Ex Mrs SBW's garden. The Garlic was ready! Yea!!
The Littlest Bushwacker was an enthusiastic helper 
and although the harvest was small, and if I'm honest all mother nature's
work, we were both delighted to be outside doing something together.

The plaiting part was easy to do....  
Well, easy to do badly.

If you'd like to see how the pros do it here's the tutorial I followed gave a cursory glance.

Hope it's all good with you, more posts on the way
Your pal
The bushwacker.

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Hunting Cinghiale In Italy


In this video a group of hunters gather to shoot driven Cinghiale, in the Tuscan countryside. Nicely made, worth a watch.

Your pal
SBW

Friday 4 June 2010

Weekend Reading: How CDW Killed A Bear

Taking some time out from my usual pastime of moaning that outdoor magazines and the writing in them isn't what it used to be, I found time to do a little light reading, and stumbled on this tale. Charles Dudley Warner has an amazing turn of phrase, and not only does his 'voice' come alive in reading his words but his impish grin hovers in the air, much like that of a Cheshire Cat


So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, to myself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear, that the celebration of the exploit may be excused.

The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was not hunting for a bear, and I have no reason to suppose that a bear was looking for me. The fact is, that we were both out blackberrying, and met by chance, the usual way. There is among the Adirondack visitors always a great deal of conversation about bears,--a general expression of the wish to see one in the woods, and much speculation as to how a person would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But bears are scarce and timid, and appear only to a favored few.

It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day when an adventure of any kind seemed impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepers at our cottage--there were four of them--to send me to the clearing, on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackberries. It was rather a series of small clearings, running up into the forest, much overgrown with bushes and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pastured there, penetrating through the leafy passages from one opening to another, and browsing among the bushes. I was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and told not to be gone long.

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appearances, I took a gun. It adds to the manly aspect of a person with a tin pail if he also carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a partridge; though how I was to hit him, if he started up instead of standing still, puzzled me. Many people use a shotgun for partridges. I prefer the rifle: it makes a clean job of death, and does not prematurely stuff the bird with globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharps, carrying a ball cartridge (ten to the pound),--an excellent weapon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, for a good many years back, to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it--if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere was just right, and the tree was not too far off--nearly every time. Of course, the tree must have some size. Needless to say that I was at that time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a robin under the most humiliating circumstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big shotgun pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on the fence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see what had happened, the robin was scattered about under the tree in more than a thousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to enable a naturalist to decide from it to what species it belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a sportsman. I mention the incident to show that, although I went blackberrying armed, there was not much inequality between me and the bear.

In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The summer before, our colored cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, was picking berries there one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and walked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and escaped. Aunt Chloe was paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempting to run, she sat down on the ground where she was standing, and began to weep and scream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewildered by this conduct. He approached and looked at her; he walked around and surveyed her. Probably he had never seen a colored person before, and did not know whether she would agree with him: at any rate, after watching her a few moments, he turned about, and went into the forest. This is an authentic instance of the delicate consideration of a bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbearance towards the African slave of the well-known lion, because the bear had no thorn in his foot.

When I had climbed the hill,--I set up my rifle against a tree, and began picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizes when you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing after clearing. I could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the thicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, I encountered a meek cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb society, and picked on in silence, attributing all the wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing of any real bear. In point of fact, however, I was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, and as I picked, was composing a story about a generous she-bear who had lost her cub, and who seized a small girl in this very wood, carried her tenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on bear's milk and honey. When the girl got big enough to run away, moved by her inherited instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to her father's house (this part of the story was to be worked out, so that the child would know her father by some family resemblance, and have some language in which to address him), and told him where the bear lived. The father took his gun, and, guided by the unfeeling daughter, went into the woods and shot the bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. The moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals.

I was in the midst of this tale when I happened to look some rods away to the other edge of the clearing, and there was a bear! He was standing on his hind legs, and doing just what I was doing,--picking blackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, while with the other he clawed the berries into his mouth,--green ones and all. To say that I was astonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discovered that I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about the same moment the bear saw me, stopped eating berries, and regarded me with a glad surprise. It is all very well to imagine what you would do under such circumstances. Probably you wouldn't do it: I didn't. The bear dropped down on his forefeet, and came slowly towards me. Climbing a tree was of no use, with so good a climber in the rear. If I started to run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase; and although a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he can run up hill, yet I felt that he could get over this rough, brush-tangled ground faster than I could.

The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred to me how I could divert his mind until I could fall back upon my military base. My pail was nearly full of excellent berries, much better than the bear could pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and slowly backed away from it, keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear. The ruse succeeded.

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not accustomed to eat out of a pail, he tipped it over, and nosed about in the fruit, "gorming" (if there is such a word) it down, mixed with leaves and dirt, like a pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. Whenever he disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he always upsets the buckets of syrup, and tramples round in the sticky sweets, wasting more than he eats. The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable.

As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started and ran. Somewhat out of breath, and shaky, I reached my faithful rifle. It was not a moment too soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush after me. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now coming on with blood in his eye. I felt that the time of one of us was probably short. The rapidity of thought at such moments of peril is well known. I thought an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, sold fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the proceeds, while that bear was loping across the clearing. As I was cocking the gun, I made a hasty and unsatisfactory review of my whole life. I noted, that, even in such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible to think of any good thing you have done. The sins come out uncommonly strong. I recollected a newspaper subscription I had delayed paying years and years ago, until both editor and newspaper were dead, and which now never could be paid to all eternity.

The bear was coming on.

I tried to remember what I had read about encounters with bears. I couldn't recall an instance in which a man had run away from a bear in the woods and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bear had run from the man and got off. I tried to think what is the best way to kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near enough to club him with the stock. My first thought was to fire at his head; to plant the ball between his eyes: but this is a dangerous experiment. The bear's brain is very small; and, unless you hit that, the bear does not mind a bullet in his head; that is, not at the time. I remembered that the instant death of the bear would follow a bullet planted just back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. This spot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands off, side towards you, like a target. I finally determined to fire at him generally.

The bear was coming on.

The contest seemed to me very different from anything at Creedmoor. I had carefully read the reports of the shooting there; but it was not easy to apply the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitated whether I had better fire lying on my stomach or lying on my back, and resting the gun on my toes. But in neither position, I reflected, could I see the bear until he was upon me. The range was too short; and the bear wouldn't wait for me to examine the thermometer, and note the direction of the wind. Trial of the Creedmoor method, therefore, had to be abandoned; and I bitterly regretted that I had not read more accounts of offhand shooting.

For the bear was coming on.

I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As my family is small, this was not difficult. Dread of displeasing my wife, or hurting her feelings, was uppermost in my mind. What would be her anxiety as hour after hour passed on, and I did not return! What would the rest of the household think as the afternoon passed, and no blackberries came! What would be my wife's mortification when the news was brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear! I cannot imagine anything more ignominious than to have a husband eaten by a bear. And this was not my only anxiety. The mind at such times is not under control. With the gravest fears the most whimsical ideas will occur. I looked beyond the mourning friends, and thought what kind of an epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the stone.
Something like this:




HERE LIE 
THE REMAINS OF
----- -------
EATEN BY A BEAR 
Aug. 20, 1877
It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. That "eaten by a bear" is intolerable. It is grotesque. And then I thought what an inadequate language the English is for compact expression. It would not answer to put upon the stone simply "eaten"; for that is indefinite, and requires explanation: it might mean eaten by a cannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the German, where essen signifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast. How simple the thing would be in German!




HIER LIEGT
HOCHWOHLGEBOREN
HERR ---- ------

GEFRESSEN



Aug. 20, 1877


That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten by a beast, and presumably by a bear,--an animal that has a bad reputation since the days of Elisha.

The bear was coming on; he had, in fact, come on. I judged that he could see the whites of my eyes. All my subsequent reflections were confused. I raised the gun, covered the bear's breast with the sight, and let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I did not hear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The bear had stopped. He was lying down. I then remembered that the best thing to do after having fired your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge, keeping my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked back suspiciously. There was a quiver in the hindlegs, but no other motion. Still, he might be shamming: bears often sham. To make sure, I approached, and put a ball into his head. He didn't mind it now: he minded nothing. Death had come to him with a merciful suddenness. He was calm in death. In order that he might remain so, I blew his brains out, and then started for home. I had killed a bear!

Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to saunter into the house with an unconcerned air. 
There was a chorus of voices:
"Where are your blackberries?" 
"Why were you gone so long?" 
"Where's your pail?"
"I left the pail."
"Left the pail? What for?"
"A bear wanted it."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it."
"Oh, come! You didn't really see a bear?"
"Yes, but I did really see a real bear."
"Did he run?"
"Yes: he ran after me."
"I don't believe a word of it. What did you do?"
"Oh! nothing particular--except kill the bear."
Cries of "Gammon!" "Don't believe it!" "Where's the bear?"
"If you want to see the bear, you must go up into the woods. I couldn't bring him down alone."
Having satisfied the household that something extraordinary had occurred, and excited the posthumous fear of some of them for my own safety, I went down into the valley to get help. The great bear-hunter, who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, received my story with a smile of incredulity; and the incredulity spread to the other inhabitants and to the boarders as soon as the story was known. However, as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them to the bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last started off with me to bring the bear in. Nobody believed there was any bear in the case; but everybody who could get a gun carried one; and we went into the woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and sticks, against all contingencies or surprises,--a crowd made up mostly of scoffers and jeerers.
But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and pointed out the bear, lying peacefully wrapped in his own skin, something like terror seized the boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. It was a no-mistake bear, by George! and the hero of the fight well, I will not insist upon that. But what a procession that was, carrying the bear home! and what a congregation, was speedily gathered in the valley to see the bear! Our best preacher up there never drew anything like it on Sunday.
And I must say that my particular friends, who were sportsmen, behaved very well, on the whole. They didn't deny that it was a bear, although they said it was small for a bear. Mr... Deane, who is equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it was a very fair shot. He is probably the best salmon fisher in the United States, and he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is no person in America who is more desirous to kill a moose than he. But he needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound in the bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made by a cow's horn.
This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to sleep that night, my last delicious thought was, "I've killed a bear!"

Nice one eh?
Your pal
SBW
Picture credit goes to Rick at The Whitetail Woods

Thursday 3 June 2010

Horrific Bloodsport Video. Yea!


I told you about this before; some of you didn't belive me, the less charitable among you said I was making it up.
Here's some of that old-time Ferret legging action - and still no press release condemning this sickening 'sport' from PETA? Must be a busy week at the slaughter house/press release factory.

Your pal
SBW