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Col. Biff on New Cartridges and Bullets
copyright 2006 – Stephen Redgwell

(Col. Biff appears courtesy of his attorney and the Clearview County Sheriff's Office)

Okay now, pay attention. I'm not talkin' to you African or dangerous game hunters, although I should. Geez, you sure use a lot of fancy gear these days to get a simple little job done.

In my day, we used 303s or 7x57s to hunt African game. No rules about needing big bores. Ah heck, you're all a bunch of wimps. I don't even know why I agreed to write this, except I promised the judge. I'll get time taken off my sentence...
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Have you ever wondered why something as simple as a cartridge can cause so much fuss in the magazines? Why is something that worked just fine a few years ago suddenly so...so-so? Why do we need ultra anythings for jobs that 30/06s or 7x57s were made for?

You replace a tired old, plain Jane, vanilla flavoured, boring, and underpowered cartridge for something with a little pizzazz. It's the latest totally super, ultra gnarley, magnum 30 something or other. One of the latest thunder monkeys that doesn't work with old style bullets. This is a cartridge that needs the new fangled excelsior grade magma bullets. The factory cartridges are five to ten times the cost, because everything is new and the bullets are special.

So, rather than practice shooting your rifle with comfortable loads that have worked for years, you switch. Why? Well, I can think of three reasons anyway. Boredom, envy and ad hype.

Boredom is so very unspectacular. The same old performance - year after successful year. The rifle always shoots where it's aimed because the scope or sights are always on. The load uses those blah, uninteresting Core Lokts that you bought for $20 a hundred, years ago. They unfailingly hit and monotonously penetrate every time. So tedious. So ho hum.

Then, there's envy. And boy, is it expensive! Remember when you went to the range and met up with a few of your hunting buddies? One of them had a brand new Warnminster Turbo 1000 bolt action rifle, chambered in the new Super Colossus Alpha Turbo (SCAT) 30! He bought it because the guy at the gun shop said that it was guaranteed to outshoot, out penetrate and outperform ANY other cartridge on the market. His proof? The gun writers said so.

And then there were the magazine ads! Loads of full page, colour photos showing them in action, in places like Canada or Africa. And heck, every hunting show on TV featured the host or a guest using one. See? It was obvious wasn't it? You had to have one.

The rifle cost about fifty percent more than your old 30/06, but wow! It was new...and shiny...and nobody else had one! Somebody said - on the internet I think - that in order to realize its full potential, you had to reload for it. Besides, who wanted to pay $80 dollars or more for 20 store bought cartridges when you could reload more cheaply? Five or six hundred dollars ought to cover the dies, cases and accessories...

Then, after you paid for all this stuff, you had to start testing a bunch of loads. You burnt up powder, primers, targets and time. Ah, time. That was always in short supply. It was something that your family and friends crabbed about. You spent too much time playing with the latest new and shiny things and not enough time with them. They could be so selfish. After all, hunting and shooting were two of the very few pleasurable things you had left in life.

And you know what? After all was said and done, you never really got the time to properly load up and test out your new rifle and cartridges. The family demanded too much of your time. Work got in the way. Stuff needed fixing around the house. Life always managed to throw you a curve.

When deer season arrived, you used your 30/06. Just like always. You were too embarrassed to admit that you couldn't use the SCAT 30. Not enough time left to work up any loads. Besides, the damn thing hurt when you shot it anyway. But heck, the other guys were married with families too. They never gave you a rough time over it. And there was always next year...

I know this is meant to be humorous. However...read Col. Patterson's book about the maneaters of the Tsavo. Before they appeared, he tells about a bunch of lion hunting he did. He used a 303. Time after time he says he shot one but it escaped. He probably created a lot more maneaters than he cured.

Read it. Enjoyed it. Don't believe everything you read.

I wouldn't worry about Col. Biff. He fended off an entire pride of lions who attacked his hunting camp with only a pocket knife and a 22 Hornet.

He harvested four and a can of Heinz beans.

Hey!!!!! Where can I get one of those SCAT 30's The IRS refund just came in and it's only 8 months before deer season??

Had a bow hunting buddy who was always claiming to have wounded and lost animals. We joked that the coyotes would follow him around forva easy meal, but I hope he was just full of crap.