Some of you boys are overthinking this stuff too much.
At the reload bench, I can make a lot of different calibers fill a lot of different 'gaps' I might perceive,
when in reality, its all in our heads
I think most of the guys on the Campfire have too many guns and not enough opportunity to use them
all.
The one exception is Gee Dubya... Glenn is one of the few guys on the planet, that I know who has
way many guns yet has the opportunities to use them all on a regular basis out on his lease...
On the flip side, I got to sit down at a campfire once with a now deceased gunsmith, with some notable
fame, Chick Donnely... Chick was one of the last of the guys that trained under P.O. Ackley.
I asked Chick, as a man that could have any firearm caliber he wanted for hunting Elk, deer etc, what were his favorite
calibers and choices. His response was from a man of long ago simpler times...
He pulled out his Remington 721.... and as his story went " I bought this rifle at the PX in Japan, when I was shipping
home after the Korean War ended in 1953....this is pretty much the only rifle I've used for all of my hunting.... as a gunsmith
I can't tell ya how many barrels have been on this old 721.. but I can tell ya this.. every darn one of them was a 30/06..."
From coyotes to Big Bears. Gotta be some wisdom long ago forgotten somewhere in that answer...
Myself, I find I shoot a boat load of 223, and the 22.250 when I think I need a 223 Magnum...for distance.
The 243s and 260s also see a lot of trigger time... come deer season, I tend to reach for the 6mm Rem ( on a Long Action)
or the 7 x 57 Featherweight... I loan rifles to kids I take out hunting with me, friends of my son or some of our Boy Scouts from
our troop.
I really don't lust for something new every year and seem to prefer to rebarrel something than sell it and buy something new, any time I think I need something different.
I do enjoy pulling out some of the old military stuff, that has come my way... the 8mm Mauser, the 30/40 Krag, the old Enfield.
each usually down loaded as all I am doing is killing targets at the range or out in the woods... 80- to 100 year old rifles.
Those are a joy to shoot... that along with the old 30/30....nostalgia I gather...
But there is nothing new I really need in my world... just more opportunity like old Gee Dub has...
if the family won the lottery, the wife would go on a world tour.. myself, I'd go hunting all over the planet....minus Africa..
a place I have zero desire to go to...
