"and even then, he'd rather just have a thousand dollar's worth of ammo to run through his No.4."
Now that would be cool, I can see his logic.
Neat kid you got there!
Geno
The desert is a true treasure for him who seeks refuge from men and the evil of men. In it is contentment In it is death and all you seek (Quoted from "The Bleeding of the Stone" Ibrahim Al-Koni)
His No.4 is just the basic barreled action, ladder-style peep sight and all, fitted with sporter-style walnut butt and fore-end. The kid shoots it really well.
When I first gave it to him, it was about as long as he was tall. He enjoyed it from the get-go but enjoys it all the more, now that he's grown in to it.
I could learn a lesson in contentment from him. I offer to buy him guns frequently. He's happy with the No.4, the stainless and laminate Crickett .22 that was his first gun, his 28 gauge Yildiz O/U, and the XP 100 pistol in 7mm BR that my father gave to me and that I said my son could have since it's one of the only guns besides those he has that I've seen him have any enthusiasm over. When I brought it back from California, and showed it to my son for the first time, he proclaimed "Mine" as he latched on to it. He's really fond of that one, too.
It was my father's favorite gun, so it's cool that my son has the same kind of passion for it that my father did. I was more of a Contender guy......
I almost bought him an M-4 style AR yesterday. My son thought about it and said, he'd rather just have either $1,000 worth of ammo or $1,000 worth of components load ammo to shoot through his No.4. He is in JROTC, graduates from High School next year, wants to continue in ROTC in college, with the goal of being a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps, and he opined that he'd have a "real M-4 with a happy switch" soon enough....
Yeah. He's a good kid. Not real gracious when he kicks my butt on a sporting clays course, which is pretty much all of the time, but has few faults, otherwise. .
Excellent poem Steve! Reminded me of the decade I spent only hunting with open sighted lever guns. Mainly my Marlin.30-30. I even killed a Moose with that gun.
Telecaster, I often wish I could have been like your son. My life has been spent hopping from one gun to the next in search of a holy grail or something.
Telecaster, I often wish I could have been like your son. My life has been spent hopping from one gun to the next in search of a holy grail or something.
Yeah... Roger that !!!
And to think that the kid found centerfire rifle Nirvana with a sporter-stocked No.4 "Enfield" that I don't think I paid more than $90.00 for when I bought it a few decades ago.
I spent my life as a "gun slut," hopping from one thing to another, too. I once had an insanely large gun collection, but I paired my centerfire rifles down to the Marlin 336 in .30-30 that I started with as an eleven year old kid, the Ruger M77 Ultralight in .250 Savage that I bought new in 1985, and the .30-'06 Ruger No.1B I bought new in 1987. I am a lot happier with the more modest one I've got now.
The newest rifle I've got is a c.2013 Browning A-Bolt II in .257 Roberts -a rifle I won in a raffle last October. I used that almost exclusively last fall, taking my first elk in 16 years with it, a mule deer, a couple of whitetails, and a few piggies with it. The only hunt I didn't use it on was my annual birthday bash pig hunt out in California. I used my old .30-30 for that. I think I've finally found my own "rifle Nirvana" but an A-Bolt II is a pretty unlikely place for me to to have found it, as I never really wanted one enough to think about buying one. I had to use it for it to grow on me like it has. One season of use might be a premature test, but it seems to do everything I want a center-fire rifle to do, all without beating me up or splitting my eardrums apart while it does it.
I reckon I've finally come full-circle, in a sense. I'm more interested in using the equipment I've got than collecting more of it, so if the choice is between a new rifle set-up or a hunting trip, me and my A-Bolt II are goin' huntin'.
Excellent poem Steve! Reminded me of the decade I spent only hunting with open sighted lever guns. Mainly my Marlin.30-30. I even killed a Moose with that gun.
I'm not surprised in the slightest about bagging a moose with a .30-30.
My now deceased great uncle did that same thing -many times. Uncle John lived for many years in Alaska before I knew him. That's where he did the moose-whacking with a Model 94 Winchester. He kept that thing pristine and it was hard for me to believe it spent any time in the Alaskan bush, but it did.
I realize moose are a might bigger than elk are, but I've shot close to half of the elk I've taken thus far in my half-century of life on earth with my old Marlin .30-30.
A moose hunt is definitely on my "bucket list." I've often thought of how cool it would be for my first moose to be one more memory attached to my first rifle -my old Marlin.
I've also thought long and hard over the notion that that first one was really the only one I ever needed.
Telecaster, I often wish I could have been like your son. My life has been spent hopping from one gun to the next in search of a holy grail or something.
Yeah... Roger that !!!
And to think that the kid found centerfire rifle Nirvana with a sporter-stocked No.4 "Enfield" that I don't think I paid more than $90.00 for when I bought it a few decades ago.
I spent my life as a "gun slut," hopping from one thing to another, too. I once had an insanely large gun collection, but I paired my centerfire rifles down to the Marlin 336 in .30-30 that I started with as an eleven year old kid, the Ruger M77 Ultralight in .250 Savage that I bought new in 1985, and the .30-'06 Ruger No.1B I bought new in 1987. I am a lot happier with the more modest one I've got now.
The newest rifle I've got is a c.2013 Browning A-Bolt II in .257 Roberts -a rifle I won in a raffle last October. I used that almost exclusively last fall, taking my first elk in 16 years with it, a mule deer, a couple of whitetails, and a few piggies with it. The only hunt I didn't use it on was my annual birthday bash pig hunt out in California. I used my old .30-30 for that. I think I've finally found my own "rifle Nirvana" but an A-Bolt II is a pretty unlikely place for me to to have found it, as I never really wanted one enough to think about buying one. I had to use it for it to grow on me like it has. One season of use might be a premature test, but it seems to do everything I want a center-fire rifle to do, all without beating me up or splitting my eardrums apart while it does it.
I reckon I've finally come full-circle, in a sense. I'm more interested in using the equipment I've got than collecting more of it, so if the choice is between a new rifle set-up or a hunting trip, me and my A-Bolt II are goin' huntin'.
It sounds like you are in a good place. Be sure to stay content.
Excellent poem Steve! Reminded me of the decade I spent only hunting with open sighted lever guns. Mainly my Marlin.30-30. I even killed a Moose with that gun.
I'm not surprised in the slightest about bagging a moose with a .30-30.
My now deceased great uncle did that same thing -many times. Uncle John lived for many years in Alaska before I knew him. That's where he did the moose-whacking with a Model 94 Winchester. He kept that thing pristine and it was hard for me to believe it spent any time in the Alaskan bush, but it did.
I realize moose are a might bigger than elk are, but I've shot close to half of the elk I've taken thus far in my half-century of life on earth with my old Marlin .30-30.
A moose hunt is definitely on my "bucket list." I've often thought of how cool it would be for my first moose to be one more memory attached to my first rifle -my old Marlin.
I've also thought long and hard over the notion that that first one was really the only one I ever needed.
Oddly enough that Moose I killed with my .30-30 was what put me on the path to looneyism. Until that Moose hunt I was perfectly happy with my .30-30 and all I really bothered to do was buy a .35 Marlin to go with it. A back up I guess. After shooting that Bull four times I got real interested in more powerful lever actions. Then I took up Pronghorn hunting and got heavy into the bolt gun scene. I do miss the days of being content with that .30-30.
There's something unclean about that combination. ---
Have you noticed that almost everyone accepts polymer stocks, will shoot them in the field and at the range, yet decry them in publicum. 'Specially here.
Everybody claims to run Leupold, Zeiss or Swarovski scopes, yet you see 'em with Simmons and Tascos at camp.
They talk up the bonded or copperized bullets - they're all I use! But pull Core Lokts out of their range bags. And load them into their Stevens 200 or Savage Axis rifles (Axes rifles?)
And then there's the big one - people actually admit to owning Remington bolt actions. Talk about your intellectual and hunting lepers!
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