Guns – Page 32 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

No Refunds!

Some days you just have to pick up your marbles and go home.

We’ve had a lot of rain out here this winter, and I’ve been suffering from cabin fever. Big time. I’m headed to Baja next week and it’s supposed to start raining again, but hey, it is what it is. What I really wanted to do this morning was get to the range to shoot my .45. The range I belong to (the West End Gun Club) is private, it’s tucked behind the hills in the San Gabriel Mountains, and getting there literally involves driving across a stream. Usually there’s only a couple of inches of water in the stream and getting across is no problem. But all that changed with the recent rains. The little stream became a torrent, it’s still a torrent, and it’s moved huge boulders downstream. It’s been that way for a couple of weeks now. I was hoping the water level had gone down and I would be able to get across this morning, so I loaded up the Subie and headed up in the mountains.

When I got to the stream, I could see there was no way I was going to get across short of renting a helicopter. Our little stream was deep and fast a couple of weeks ago when I made the video above, and it’s stayed that way, with the addition now of the aforementioned boulders.

Okay, there’s a commercial range open to the public deeper into the mountains. I’d have to pay to shoot there, and I hadn’t done that in years, but like I said, I had cabin fever and I wanted to shoot. So I rolled another 15 miles or so deeper into the mountains.

“It’s $20,” Grizzly Adams (the guy behind the counter) told me (that’s not his real name, and I’m probably insulting folks named Grizzly Adams everywhere by assigning the moniker, but you get the idea). “It’s another 6 bucks for a target stand,” Grizzly continued, “and more if you need targets.”

Nah, I’ve got my own stand, I told him, and I brought my own targets with me.

“Drive through that gate and turn left,” he told me. I did.

As soon as I parked, another Grizzly Adams type came up and asked me, “Do you see what’s different between your car and every other car parked here?”

Hmmm. I didn’t know. I looked. I thought about it briefly. My car had no primer spots and missing body panels?

“I don’t know,” I said, “and I really didn’t drive out here to take a quiz. Make it easy and just tell me.”

“You’re supposed to back in,” Grizzly No. 2 said. Sure enough, I was the only one who had parked like a normal person. Go figure.

“Okay, I’ll turn my car around,” I said. It’s better to just do things sometimes than to try to argue or comprehend the reasons why. But we were on a line break, people were downrange changing their targets, and I asked if I could set up my target stand first, and then turn my car around.

Just then one of the shooters ran up. “Hey, my gun’s still loaded,” he said to Grizzly No. 2, who as it turns out was also the rangemaster. Wow, I thought. This is a big deal. The rangemaster (and I’m using the term very loosely; the only thing this guy had evidently mastered was controlling which way parked cars faced) had failed to do his most important job: Making sure all weapons were clear before he allowed folks to go out in front of the firing line. I mean, wow, there were folks downrange with a loaded rifle on one of the shooting benches. Pointing downrange. In the Army, best case, that would get you a lifetime of KP duty and maybe a couple thousand punitive pushups.

Then he compounded the felony.

He didn’t tell the people downrange to move aside and return to safety behind the firing line. “Just leave it alone,” the rangemaster quietly told the guy who owned the loaded rifle, which was pointed downrange, while people were out in front of said loaded rifle changing their targets. He allowed the folks who were downrange, in front of the loaded weapon, to continue their activities. I’d never seen anything like this on any range, and I’ve been doing this a long time. I was shocked.

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ve seen enough,” and with that I got back in my car and headed back to the little building at the entrance. I went inside and told Grizzly No. 1 what had just happened. “You’re running an unsafe range,” I told him, and I explained I didn’t feel safe being there. “I’d like my $20 back,” I added. All of this (from the time I drove in, paid my $20, went to the line, and returned to this guy’s counter) happened in the space of maybe 3 minutes.

“Can’t do that,” Grizzly No. 1 said. And with that, he smiled a gap-toothed, maybe-my-parents-were-related-before-they-got-married smile, and pointed to a small sign on the wall.

No refunds.

I looked at him. Then I looked at the sign again. Then I looked at him. He was still smiling. I smiled too. Sometimes I wonder what I’m going to put on the blog the next day, and I had been wondering about that as I drove out to the range. Problem solved, I thought. I still had a touch of cabin fever, but I had no new bullet holes in me and I knew what the 28 February ExNotes blog would be all about.

A custom .375 Ruger…

About six years ago I had an urge to build a custom rifle. Some folks consider a custom rifle to be one you build from the ground up. For others, a custom rifle is one you buy off-the-shelf and then modify. My idea of a custom rifle starts with a barreled action (the metal parts) and an unfinished, semi-inletted stock (I’ll explain that “semi-inletted” descriptor a few paragraphs down). I had built rifles like this a couple of times in the distant past and I had the urge to do it again.

A tray full of .375 Ruger cartridges. I included a .223 Remington in the foreground (it’s the one on the left) for comparison. The .375 Ruger is a powerful round!

My objective was to build a rifle chambered for the .375 Ruger cartridge. The .375 Ruger was a joint project between Hornady and Ruger. The idea was a cartridge faster than the .375 Holland and Holland (a classic African big game cartridge), but shorter so it could cycle through a standard-length rifle action. When the .375 Ruger came out 10 years ago, everyone who tested it said it hit both marks. That was enough for me; I needed a .375 Ruger rifle in my life.

It had been a long time since I tackled a project like this, and I was surprised when I looked for a stock. Three or four decades ago several outfits offered semi-inletted stocks. Most of them were in Missouri (I guess that’s where all the good walnut is). The stock companies I knew decades ago (Fajen, Bishop, and others) are gone. The demand isn’t there. Millenials don’t shoot much, gun laws are more restrictive, and shooters today go for black plastic (there’s no accounting for some folks’ taste, I guess).

A semi-inletted stock is one that 95% inletted (that’s what the stock companies say); what is euphemistically implied is that you need to do just a bit more to fit your barreled action to the stock. That 95% inletting claim always brings a laugh, because final fitting of the action to the stock takes a ton of work…something way more than the implied final 5%.

The English walnut blank I selected and the barreled action that would go into it.

Richard’s Microfit is an old-line gunstock company right here in So Cal. I called Richard’s to ask if I could visit and personally select the piece of walnut I wanted, the answer was yes, and it was time for a ride out to the Valley.

Stock blanks at Richard’s Microfit. There were these and many, many more. Visiting the factory and selecting the one I wanted was a lot of fun.

Richard’s had a lot of lumber and I selected a piece of English walnut with lots of figure and grain that ran lengthwise (what you want in a magnum rifle, as it makes the stock stronger). The contrasty grain was a difficult to see in the blank, but the Richard’s people knew how to mist it with water and that made the walnut come alive. I specified a solid black rubber recoil pad, an ebony pistol grip cap, and a matching ebony fore end tip. The price went up, but I don’t do this sort of thing very often and the heart wants what the heart wants. My heart wanted ebony accents.

Few rifle manufacturers sell barreled actions today (they all used to), but Howa still does and they had one in .375 Ruger. It is a stout thing with a stubby 20-inch heavy barrel. Howa makes complete rifles under their own name and they also sell to other manufacturers (the Weatherby Vanguard, one of the world’s great rifles, is made by Howa). A custom rifle I built 40 years ago (a .30 06) had a Howa barreled action and I knew from that project they were good.

I took a good 80 hours to fit the barreled action to the stock, but I was in no hurry (it’s easy to take wood away; it’s a lot harder to add it back on), and I glass bedded the action with AcraGlas for added accuracy. That involved coating the barreled action with a release agent, mixing epoxy and glass fibers and slathering the mix in the stock, placing the barreled action in the wet epoxy, and then clamping it all together while the epoxy cured. A day later, I pried the barreled action out of the stock and oila, the action now had an exact fit to its glass bed.

Glass bedding the .375 Howa barreled action in the stock.

The next steps involved shaping the stock exterior and the ebony accents to my tastes, and then sanding everything with 100, 200, 400, and then 600 grit sandpaper. That required another 60 hours. Then it was on to applying the finish. I like TruOil. The drill is to apply the first coat of TruOil heavily (to allow it to fill the wood pores and soak into the walnut), wait a week, and then use 0000 steel wool to remove the excess. Then came TruOil Coat No. 2, a 24-hour cure, and more steel wool. Then another coat and another 24-hour cure. It would be 10 coats total in this manner. With each coat of TruOil the inner beauty of the walnut emerged further. This is one of the best parts of building a custom rifle…finishing the stock and watching the walnut wake up. It becomes a living thing, changing colors and character as the light hits it from different angles.

Somewhere around Coat No. 8 or 9. It’s starting to come together. This was way too glossy for a hunting rifle, but a final steel wool scrub would knock it down to a more subdued and refined appearance.

The feeling of satisfaction that comes from fitting, bedding, shaping, and then finishing a custom gun stock is profound and difficult to describe. Applying an oil finish is the best part. You get a high gloss finish, which can be left that way, or you can knock it down with the steel wool again for a sublime satin low gloss finish. That’s what I did. Shiny looks good but it is reflective and that’s bad for a hunting rifle. And that’s what this .375 is: A hunting rifle. For pigs, to be specific.

On the range with my custom Howa rifle and its 4X Weatherby scope.

While all of the above was going on, I found a used 4X Weatherby scope in a local gun shop’s parts bin. Old Weatherby scopes are stunningly clear and they generally go for something north of $200 when you find them (which isn’t often because they stopped making them more than 30 years ago). I prefer a simple 4X scope even though few manufacturers offer them (it’s mostly variable-powered contraptions today, something I view as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist). The gunshop guy told me I could have the old Weatherby scope for $25. I couldn’t pay him quickly enough. I mounted the scope that night.

How does the rifle shoot? I’m happy to tell you that the answer is very, very well, and it does so with nearly every load.

The Howa and my cast bullet loads. These are accurate and hard hitting. The jacketed bullets are even more accurate, but the cast bullets are close enough for government work.

Not too shabby for cast bullets. Everything came together on this one…the English walnut stock, the glass bedding, the Weatherby scope, and the load development effort. These groups were shot at 50 yards.

I built the .375 rifle to shoot cast bullets. They’re less expensive, they’re cool, and I have a local caster who makes good ones. For my cast 275-grain bullets, I use 30.0 grains of SR 4759 propellant, a load that consistently delivers tight groups at both 50 and 100 yards. I use the same powder and charge weight with 270-grain jacketed soft point Hornady bullets, a load that is scary accurate (as in one-hole, 5-shot groups at the 50-yard mark).

The plan is to hunt pigs with cast bullets, but the rifle is accurate enough to go after grasshoppers with the jacketed load. I haven’t shot the jacketed bullets at 100 yards yet, but I will the next time I’m at the rifle range. Both loads, according to the reloading manuals, are pushing the bullets at about 1800 feet per second. Recoil at those velocities is just shy of being unbearable (it’s stout, but manageable). This rig is a shooter, it’s a powerhouse, it groups well, and it’s fun!

Hey, check out our other Tales of the Gun stories, and for another take on building a modern sporting custom rifle, take a look at this Tavor X95 project!

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The Rifleman’s rifle…

This is a cool story that goes like this…several years ago I decided I wanted to hunt pigs. I had last chased hogs in the woods about 30 years earlier, but I never got one. That was a character flaw I wanted to correct. It was just something I needed to do, but there were consulting gigs overseas, lots of travel, a few epic motorcycle rides, and, well, you know how it goes. Pig hunting stayed tucked away in my mind but I hadn’t acted on it. Then another thing happened: I stopped in a gunshop in northern California and saw a rifle I just had to have. It’s the one at the top of this blog. Specifically, a Supergrade Model 70 Winchester in God’s caliber, the mighty .30 06.

Okay, back to the pig thing. Back in the 1910s folks imported Russian boar into California so rich guys could hunt them without having to spring for a boat ticket to Russia. I guess that worked out okay, but what happened next surprised everybody. The Russian boars loved it over here and I guess they felt right at home. They bred like rabbits. Then, being pigs, they crossbred with domestic hogs. The bottom line? Today, the US has a runaway wild pig problem. If you think you don’t have wild pigs, you either just don’t know it (the more likely case), or you don’t have them in your neighborhood yet (the less likely case, but if you don’t have them yet, you will). Wild pigs are everywhere and they’re destructive. Farmers know they’ll tear up an acre every night looking for food. That’s a problem that guys like me and my good friend Paul are only too happy to help solve.

Here piggy, piggy, piggy... — Here piggy, piggy, piggy…

So who’s Paul? Well, I’ve known Paul all my life. We were next-door neighbors back in rural New Jersey in the days when you could set up a range and shoot in your back yard. And we did. We fooled around with guns, we hunted, we fished, we rode bikes…we did the kinds of things kids did 60 or 70 years ago, before they invented ADHD drugs, safe spaces, cell phones, computers, social media, and all the stuff kids today get to struggle with. Rural New Jersey in the 1950s was a good time and a good place to grow up.

There’s more to the story: Our fathers were outdoorsmen, so Paul and I were, too. Both of our fathers were competitive shooters and hunters. Paul’s Dad had a Model 70 in .270 Winchester and my Dad had a Model 70 in .243. In their day, those two cartridges were the hottest and best things going. There have been newer cartridges and newer rifles since, but both the .270 and the .243 are still dynamite chamberings. And the Model 70 Winchester was (and I still think still is) the ultimate rifle. It’s been called the Rifleman’s Rifle. It’s that good. And it’s what our fathers shot.

So when I saw that new maple Model 70, I bought it. Just like that. I knew I would hunt pigs with it. It’s one of the finest rifles I’ve ever handled.

I suggested a pig hunt to Paul, and hey, who could turn down an offer like that? I took the Model 70 you see above, and Paul had his magnificent pre-’64 Model 70 in .270 Winchester. Paul’s Model 70 has a real pedigree: It was handed down to Paul by his father, and this particular Model 70 is rifle royalty. It doesn’t get any better than Paul’s pre-’64 Model 70, and the .270 Winchester cartridge is the quintessential chambering for it. Google Jack O’Connor, the guy who put the Model 70 and the .270 Winchester cartridge on the map, and you’ll see what I mean. O’Connor wrote a book (The Rifle), in which he explains his reasons for the .270’s superiority. I have O’Connor’s book and it’s a great read. That said, I just like the .30 06, but they’re both great cartridges.

Paul’s particular Model 70 (this very rifle, the one Paul used on our hunt) was my first exposure to high-powered, long-distance marksmanship a cool 60 years ago. Paul’s Dad used to fire that rifle across the fields behind our homes in the 1950s. We lived in a rural part of the state, and you could do that in those days. Before Paul’s Dad would send rounds downrange, though, little Pauly would always knock on our door to tell us all hell was about to break loose. That was mighty neighborly, as an unexpected bark from a .270 Winchester would have scared the bejesus out of us (I’m not sure what bejesus is, but I like the word so I’m using it here).

So, back to the more recent past. In preparation for our pig hunt, I worked up a load for my Model 70 and I found the Holy Grail..a load that was both hard-hitting and accurate. Two of them, actually. Here’s how it worked out…

Model 70 magic... — 100-yard Model 70 magic…

The deal on reloading and these cartridge development efforts is that you experiment with different powders, primers, bullets, and propellant charge weights to find an individual rifle’s sweet spot, and like I said, I found two. Over the course of two days, I fired all of the above loads (at 100 yards), and the bottom one in yellow is the one I used for our hunt. That load uses a 150-grain Winchester jacketed soft point bullet with 48.0 grains of IMR 4320 propellant. I bought a bunch of the 150 grain jacketed Winchester bullets about 10 years ago when it looked liked reloading components might dry up altogether (shooting-gear-related shortages are cyclical, always coinciding with whoever has just moved into public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). After I settled on my preferred load, I’ve shot even tighter groups with it. I once shot a 0.244-inch 3-shot group with my Model 70 with the same load. For the targets we would be shooting (hogs, which get big), that’s good enough for government work.

While I was doing all of the above, Paul had a similar load development effort underway with his .270 Winchester. I found the secret sauce for my Model 70, and Paul found the right recipe for his. We were ready.

My Model 70 is a current production rifle and it’s awesome. The Supergrade Model 70s are glass-bedded and free-floated from the factory, the bluing is deeply polished, and the fiddleback maple figure on mine is exhibition grade. It’s not the kind of a rifle you would ordinarily take on a hunt and some folks have told me it’s too pretty to shoot, but I didn’t buy it just to look at the thing. It’s a shooter and it’s very, very accurate. I actually think the quality of the modern Model 70 rifles is better than the pre-’64 rifles (which are generally regarded as Winchester’s best ever), but don’t tell that to Paul.

Our happy hunting grounds at dusk, east of Kingman, Arizona.

So how did we do? Well, it was one of the best weekends ever. We rolled out to a hilly desert area east of Kingman, Arizona (we were well out in the boonies) and our hunt was hugely successful. Paul got a monster hog the first night out, and I nailed one a bit smaller the next morning. I have great photos of Paul and me posing with our pigs, but if I posted them here it would generate the inevitable comments from folks whose BVDs contract into tight knots over such things. You know, the folks who hate guns and hunting…people who assume their hamburgers come from suicidal cows or whatever. So you’ll have to use your imagination. But they are great photos.

Paul and I both ate pork for a year after that. Roast pork. Barbequed pork. Pork chili. Pork meatballs (pretty good, actually). Pork sandwiches. Pork breakfast sausage (also very good). A special pork/wild mushroom/barley casserole (my favorite). But no bacon. Bacon comes from belly fat and wild hogs are lean, so there is no belly fat. Yep, we had over a hundred pounds of dressed-out pork after our hunt. I came home with a whole cooler full, and I had the little pig. When we figured the cost of the rifles, the ammo, our travel, and the hunt, that pork worked out to about $34 per pound. And it was worth every cent. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

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Precipitation, polarities, headgear, and gobble gobble…

The rain has been nonstop here for the last several days, and for the last couple of nights it’s rained so hard that it woke me up a few times. I guess nearly all of California is getting drenched. It’s too wet to ride and it’s too wet to shoot, so I’ve been catching up on other stuff.

On that shooting bit…to get to my gun club you have to drive down a dirt road for a couple of miles, and at one point the road actually crosses a stream. Usually it’s only a couple of inches deep and sometimes it’s even dry, but that sure isn’t the case right now. The gun club sent out an email yesterday afternoon with a video warning folks not to try to drive across the stream (which is now a little river)…

So, with all this rain (and some hail) I’ve been attending to other things…catching up on writing a couple of articles, doing a bit of reloading, and I even put a new battery in my TT250.

Reloading is a good thing to do on a rainy day, and the menu today included .44 Magnum and .45 AutoRim, two of my all-time favorite cartridges.

.44 Mag loads for more accuracy testing in the new Ruger Turnbull Super Blackhawk. These loads have a 240 grain cast bullet with Unique loaded at 9.0 grains, 10.0 grains, and 11.0 grains. We’ll see which load the Turnbull prefers.

.45 AutoRim ammo. This cartridge is just like the .45 ACP, except the rim allows shooting it in revolvers chambered for the .45 ACP without the use of metal clips. This is a 200 grain moly-coated cast bullet with 6.0 grains of Unique, and it is a shooter!

Shooting the .45 AutoRim cartridge in a Model 625 Smith and Wesson last week before the rains started. That’s 100 rounds at 25 yards. The two outside the black happened when a fly landed on my front sight. Or maybe it was a sudden gust of wind. Or maybe I sneezed. Yeah, that was it.

Back to the battery for my TT250…I’ve owned my TT250 for close to three years now and the battery finally gave up the ghost. I stopped in at CSC and told Steve I wanted a new one on the warranty, and we both had a good laugh about that. Steve told me I was the only guy he knew who could get that kind of life out of a Chinese battery. I thought that was kind of funny because all the batteries are Chinese now.

Seriously, though, I think the reason my batteries last so long is that I usually keep them on a Battery Tender. Those things work gangbusters for me, the bikes run better when the batteries are kept fully charged, and the batteries seem to last a good long time. You can buy a Battery Tender most anywhere; my advice would be to get one (or more) from CSC. They come with a little pigtail you can permanently install on your battery, which makes connecting the Battery Tender a snap. I have one on both my RX3 and my TT250.

I rotate the battery between my RX3 and my TT250, and the batteries seem to last a lot longer. I don’t know why anyone who owns any motorcycle wouldn’t have one of these.

The Battery Tender pigtail on my RX3. You can’t get the polarity wrong on these if you’ve connected the pigtail to the battery correctly. You get a pigtail for free when you buy a Battery Tender.

Another bit of a commercial for CSC…the mailman dropped off a box on Saturday, and it was one of the new CSC hats. I’m a hat guy. I like wearing a hat. My favorite kind of hat is a free one. The CSC hat I received was free (thanks, Steve), but unless you wrote a blog for CSC for 10 years, it’s not likely you’d get yours for free. I think they sell for $19.95, which is a bit above what hats normally go for, but this one is more than worth it. It’s got cool embossed stitching and it looks good. I like it and I think it will make me a better man. Like I said, $19.95 ain’t bad, but maybe you could get one for free as part of the deal when you buy a new CSC motorcycle. I’d at least ask the question. The worst that could happen is Steve will say no. But if he does that, ask for a free copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM when you buy your new motorcycle. You never know.

I got a free hat from CSC. Gresh didn’t. At least not yet, he didn’t. Seriously, these are nice hats.

Hey, here’s one more cool photo. I’ve been spending a bit of time up in northern California. I have a new grandson up there who I think is going to be a rider, a shooter, and a blog writer. On that blog writing thing, I told him it’s a great foundation for any “get rich slow” scheme, and I think he gets it. Anyway, my wife Sue is still up there, and she saw the neighborhood brood of wild turkeys this morning walking around like they own the place…

Genuine Screaming Turkey performance parts? It could work…

You know, there was some talk of making the turkey our national bird instead of the bald eagle when our country first formed (Ben Franklin was pushing for the turkey, but I guess the rest of the founding fathers told him to go fly a kite). As an aside, when I ride up to northern California, I take Highway 152 across from Interstate 5 to the 101, and there’s a tree where I always see one or two bald eagles. Bald eagles are majestic raptors. I can see the logic behind the turkey, though. But wow, would it ever take a rethink of a lot of marketing stuff, and in particular, it would make for a major revamp of one particular Motor Company’s marketing and branding efforts (you know, the guys from Milwaukee). Seriously, their performance parts would all have to be marketed under a new Screaming Turkey brand. You could bask in the assumed glory of your motorcycle’s heritage as you rode like, well, a real turkey. Perhaps the Company could get a patent on a new exhaust note….one that would have to change from “potato potato” to “gobble gobble.” There would have to be new logos, tattoos, T-shirts…the list just doesn’t end. But I guess I had better. You know, before I offend anyone.

Stay tuned, folks. Like always, there’s more good ExNotes stuff coming your way. Gobble gobble.

Pawn Stars, Pellet Pistols, and Bond. James Bond.

When I wrote the CSC blog, I occasionally did a gun piece on it. This is one I did about a pellet gun I still own. I like pellet guns, and you can have a lot of fun with these things. You can set up a 15-ft range in your backyard or in your garage (15 feet is the distance for competitive pellet pistol matches), and shooting a pellet gun is a good way to keep your skills honed when you can’t get to the big boy range. It’s also a good way to pick off a gopher or a bird that wants to start singing at 3:30 in the morning, but we won’t go there. So, for today’s story…my Walther is a pellet gun with a rich heritage and bunch of cool stories. Here are a couple.

I was channel surfing the other night and I briefly clicked through a rerun of Pawn Stars. You know, that’s the reality TV number about these dudes who run a pawn shop in Las Vegas. I like that show but I blitzed right past it to subsequent channels when something clicked.

Wait a second, I thought as my thumb continued clicking channels on autopilot. That can’t be!

So I reversed my path through the zillions of channels we pay for with Direct TV (but never watch). I went back to Rick and the boys in Las Vegas. They were still on the bit that had caught my attention. Son of a gun. Almost literally…son of a gun! I saw what it was that triggered (ah, there it is, the persistent pun) a neuron and made me click back to the Pawn Stars show. Look at that!

What I saw on TV was a Walther LuftPistole Model LP53. Whoa! I actually own one of those! A real Walther air pistol (that’s what “luftpistole” means in German). And there it was…my gun, on TV!

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What further riveted my attention was something I had sort of noticed but never really recognized before. It became clear when the guys on the Pawn Stars show were giving their background spiel on the Walther. I suddenly realized what had captured my attention yet again. It was another thing that clicked! I’d been seeing it for decades and I had never connected the dots, even though I had owned a fine LP53 specimen for the last 50 years.

At this point, you should mentally key in the James Bond theme song. You know….da da, da dahhh, da da daaaaa. Bond. James Bond.

In all those early posters advertising Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and the early Sean Connery James Bond classics (and they were indeed classics; those early Bond movies were magnificent), the advertising had shown Sean holding an LP53. Even though I owned one and shot it extensively, and even though I am a big time James Bond fan (you know, the secret missions and all), it had just never clicked together for me. In all those early advertisements, big bad James Bond, Agent 007, with a license to kill, was posing with an air pistol. Take a hard look at that photo on the left. That’s a Walther LP53 he’s holding. Da da, da daaah, indeed.

So here’s the story. When the Bond franchise was just getting started, the movie folks scheduled a photo shoot in which Bond was supposed to pose with his iconic Walther PPk, the signature secret agent .32 ACP automatic Ian Fleming wrote about. The only problem was that whoever organized the photo shoot had all the props except, you guessed it, the Walther PPk. Whoa. The whole studio, the tux, the photographer, and James Bond himself all dressed up with nowhere to go. They forgot the gun. What to do?

As it turns out, the photographer (a lensmaster named David Hurn) was a pellet gun target shooting enthusiast (me, too, but I’ll get to that in a bit). His target pistol of choice was, you guessed it again, the Walther LP53. The LP53 is a physically large pistol, and it’s a high class, high-ticket item. Real steel, deep blueing, and all the good stuff that makes old guys like me get all dewey-eyed. Hurn ran out to his car and came back with the LP53, and the rest, as they say, is history. Much of the public is completely unaware that their hero, silver screen idol James Bond, posed with a pellet gun. Hell, I didn’t realize it until Rick told the story on Pawn Stars, and I’ve owned an LP53 for most of my life.

That actual pellet pistol, Bond’s stand-in Walther LP53, sold for a staggering $430,000 at auction a few years ago. That’s the story that Rick told while I was watching Pawn Stars. Whoa, hold the presses! $430,000, and I own one of those things!

Well, not so fast. Rick offered the guy $200. $200. Wow, I thought I would be able to retire on that one pellet gun, but not so. Maybe if James Bond had owned the one that was sitting in my closet, but mine had a less famous background. I checked around on the Internet, and $200 seems to be about the going price (as this screen capture from a recent auction shows)…

So, back to my LP53. It’s in immaculate condition. To a collector it would be cool. My Walther has everything except the owner’s manual. That includes the interchangeable sight blades, the wooden cocking plug (the big round wooden thing that fits over the end of the barrel to assist in cocking the gun), the original box, and mine even has the original factory test target. This is mine…

I guess the $200 going rate is a good thing, because I have no plans to retire any time soon and in any event, I’m hanging on to my LP53. It was given to my Dad by one of his shooting buddies (a fellow named Leo Keller, who, like my Dad, was a serious trapshooter). Dad passed it along to me when I was a kid, and I had a lot of fun with it.

One time I walked over to my cousin Bobby’s house holding that gun in my hand the entire way (Bobby lived a mile away from where I did, back in New Jersey). Imagine that…a young teenager like me walking down the road for a mile holding a pistol in his hand. If a kid in New Jersey tried that today, they’d call out half a dozen SWAT teams and maybe even the National Guard. Back then, it was a normal thing to do, and nobody got their shorts in a knot over it.

Anyway, when I got to Bobby’s house we sat on his back porch shooting the Walther, and then we got the bright idea it might make sense to have something to shoot at. Bobby looked through the trash and found an empty orange juice can. You might remember those cans…they were little (maybe an inch in diameter and about 3 inches tall). The idea was you took the frozen concentrate out and mixed it with water, and voilà, you had orange juice.

Bobby set the can out about 30 feet away and I took a shot at it. Bingo! The can went down.

“Wow, that’s pretty good,” Bobby said. Bobby was about 7 years younger than me (he still is, actually). He was easily impressed back then (today, not so much).

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I said. “I’m going to shoot it again and make it stand up.”

Bobby looked at me in amazement. I was his big cousin. He thought what he saw in me was supreme confidence that I could make that shot. You know, that I did this sort of thing all the time. The truth is I had no idea if I could make that shot, but it was such an outrageous thing to claim I had nothing to lose. But….if I made the shot, we’d be talking about it for years.

I took careful aim at the base of the can and gently squeezed the Walther’s trigger. The Walther spit out compressed air and the little .177 pellet connected, catching the orange juice can right at its base. The can spun around, flipped up, whirled around a few more times, and came to rest. Standing. I couldn’t believe it. It was a one-in-a-million shot, and I made it! Pure dumb luck on my part. But I acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world for me to do. That was sometime in the early 1960s. I was back in New Jersey last month and Sue and I had dinner with Bobby and his wife, Sheree. And yes, we talked about that shot.

In researching the background of this unique handgun, I tried to learn what it originally cost. I checked some vintage gun books I own. In my copy of the 1974 Gun Digest, I actually found it. The retail price in 1974 was $59. I had to go through several old books to find it, and as I did so, I was amazed at the artwork on some of them. The 1956 Shooter’s Bible, in particular, stood out. I thought I would scan the cover and include it as a nice touch in finishing this post…

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The Rimfire Series: First Person Shooter

The odds are infinitesimally small that I will ever be called upon to overthrow a tyrant. I’m much more likely to be part of the brainwashed mob chasing down the righteous and the truth-tellers. I haven’t bought any guns lately because I don’t want to fit out my broken moral compass with the tools to get the job done. I get the public’s fascination with guns, though, the solid, no rattle feel, the precision machine work, and the black menace that radiates from a well-oiled rod. With a slight nudge to the right I could have become one of those guys that owns 43 guns. Who needs so many guns you say? I would have.

I bought my first gun when I was 20 years old. It was a Ruger bull-barrel .22 caliber target pistol. The thing was a load of fun out on San Diego’s Kitchen Creek road where a self-policed gun range glistened with glass shards in the late 1970s. You could buy milk cartons full of ammunition for the Ruger at department stores or sporting goods retailers. Nine dollars equaled 500 rounds and it made for a cheap, fun day blowing up bottles and cans.

The Ruger would rust if you didn’t keep it clean and the bottles weren’t shattering enough to suit me so the next gun I bought was a stainless steel Smith and Wesson .357 revolver with a 4-inch barrel. When you pulled the trigger you could see the drum turn, the hammer draw back and flames shoot out the sides of the weapon. It was like a miniature cannon. You got dirty shooting the thing. The whole process of firing the S&W revolver satisfied me on so many levels that at this point I was perilously close to becoming a gun nut.

For some reason, maybe it was God’s Hand, I didn’t become a gun nut. The trips out to Kitchen Creek became fewer. The ammunition got more expensive and the two pistols were packed away. It was only a few years ago that I dug the guns out. The Ruger was a mess. Rust had scarred its smooth gun-black finish and the mechanism was stuck. It took hours to get the thing cleaned up and the rest of the day to figure out how the various parts fit back into the handgrip. Being stainless, The Smith was fine, only needing a bit of oil to loosen things up.

My wife, CT, and I took the guns out to our local range to relearn how they operated. It was kind of fun and it really helped CT to see the difference between an automatic and a revolver. Like me, she prefers the revolver because the works are out in the open. Just by looking you can see the status of a revolver. With an automatic it’s anyone’s guess if the thing is ready to go off or it’s empty.

This Christmas CT gave me one of those heavy steel spinner targets, the kind with a large round target on the bottom and a smaller one on the top. When you manage to hit the thing the target spins around like a kinetic lawn ornament. I guess CT enjoyed our day at the range more than I did. Now she wants a Mosberg pump shotgun and one of those scary looking assault style rifles. You know, for home protection. It seems like we might end up with a gun nut in the family after all.

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Gun stuff is da bomb!

Or so sayeth Joe Gresh, soothsayer, philosopher, and observer of the human condition extraordinaire. Say what you wish, every time we post a gun blog here on ExNotes, the hits (no gun puns intended) go through the roof. We’re primarily a motorcycle site, with an emphasis on vintage bikes, restorations, destinations, Baja, and adventure riding. But our readers love gun stories. What to do?

I guess we’ve got to find a way to merge the two topics: Guns and motorcycles. Somebody did it with roses. We’ve got to be smart enough to find a way to do it with motorcycles. Here are my thoughts…

Maybe armed motorcycles. Hmmm, that might work. I’m thinking a .45 ACP Gatling mounted centerline on a big V-twin, maybe with the bike being designated the FLH-GG. Centerline mounting would prevent recoil-induced torque steer (just as was done on the A-10 Warthog), and the .45 ACP chambering would allow for increased ammo storage and shorter barrel length (plus, the .45 ACP is an incalculably cool cartridge). I’m thinking a firing rate of 1000 rounds per minute would do nicely.

I’d go with a single Gatling mounted in the headlight, chambered in .45 ACP. You get the idea. If you need to know more about Gatling guns, take a look here.

That Gatling thing could work. When I was in the Army, we called our 20mm Gatlings Vulcans, and Kawasaki made a motorcycle called the Vulcan. There are branding possibilities here, folks.

Or maybe we look for bikes that have already been built. Ural had a sidecar model with a machine gun mount a few years ago. Yeah, that could work.

Ural’s Gear Up model, complete with machine gun mount. Machine gun sold separately. From The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles, by You Know Who.

We could focus on police and military motorcycles. Hmmm, I know a pretty good book on that topic, and Lord knows there’s enough models of police and military bikes to support a string of blog features. But hey, we’re already planning to do that. And it will be cool. I guarantee it.

A Harley WLA, complete with a Thompson submachine gun scabbard. Thompson submachine gun sold separately. This is another photo from Police and Military Motorcycles.

Maybe a feature or two on how to carry a gun on a motorcycle, both out in the open and maybe a concealed carry feature. The Army had some cool ideas on open carry back in the 1940s (see the above photo). For concealed carry, I’m thinking maybe something that’s integrated into the clutch lever, or a tankbag holster that looks like a map case. Or maybe a cell phone mount with a Derringer designed to look like a cell phone. Yeah, we could have a lot of fun with this one.

When I was at CSC, we sometimes ran a postal match. You know, where folks shoot at a target, send the target to us, and we’d score them to find a winner. That was a lot of fun.

Drive By Bike GIF from Driveby GIFs

While we were running the postal match, somebody actually wrote to me suggesting we have a match in which you have to shoot from a rolling motorcycle (no kidding, folks…I can’t make up stuff this good). It would be kind of like polo, I suppose, but with bikes and bullets instead of horses and mallets (or whatever they call those things they whack the ball with). Liability coverage might be tough, but it could be made to work.

We could design a gun that transforms itself into a motorcycle. You know, you carry the thing in a holster, say a few well-chosen words, and it converts itself into a motorcycle to allow for a convenient and quick exit. We could maybe call it something catchy, like the Transformer. We ‘d probably sell a few just because it sounds like an electric thingamabog (you know, it would sell to folks wanting to show they’re green). Nah, I don’t think he technology has caught up to the EPA challenges yet. But it’s fun to think about.

The Transformer, a motorcycle that changes into a gun. We’d sell a lot of T-shirts.

I’ve done a blog or two on motorcycle companies that started as firearms manufacturers. You know, BSA (which actually stands for Birmingham Small Arms), Royal Enfield (of Lee Enfield rifle fame), and well, you get the idea. That would involve a lot of research, so it may not fit in with our ExNotes labor minimization strategies. But it might be worth considering.

All of the above is food for thought, but I’m rapidly approaching a state in which I’ve been thinking so hard I may not be able to think for the next several days. Help me out here, folks. What are your ideas?

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Pigs and Poison Oak

A stunning, Turnbull color case hardened Ruger Super Blackhawk in .44 Magnum.

Another beautiful .44 Magnum…this one is a 1970s Marlin Model 1894 with a Williams aperture rear sight.

Friday was a good day, as is any day spent on the range, and for me, Friday last week meant a visit to the West End Gun Club. Hey, I’m retired. Ride the motorcycle, or head to the range? Life is good either way. This past Friday, the range got the nod.

I took two guns with me. One was a new Ruger Turnbull Super Blackhawk I recently picked up from a Gunbroker auction at a decent price. The other was Marlin 1894 lever action rifle that I’ve owned too long and shot too little. Both are chambered in .44 Magnum. The idea here is that you have two guns both chambered for the same cartridge, and it makes for a good combination to carry afield. Mind you, I’m not too sure where “afield” is actually located, but I kind of get the idea…it’s a place that frequently appears in gun ads and Western novels, a place where manly men hang out. The thought is that you only have to carry one cartridge, so you can save your manliness for other endeavors.

My take on the concept? I think it’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. I had opportunities to carry both a rifle and a handgun at the same time when I was in the Army, but I thought doing so was just dumb. I didn’t want the added weight, so I always went for either an M-16 or a 1911 (but never both) depending on what I was doing that day. On a hunting trip, I think it’s an absolute bust. When I was a lot younger, one time chasing hogs I carried a 9mm handgun and a .300 H&H Mag custom Weatherby rifle (I know, .300 H&H was massive overkill for hogs). The first day of that adventure was enough to convince me that carrying both a handgun and a rifle was silly, and I left the handgun home after that (I spent that entire first day walking through the woods trying to not scratch the rifle on the handgun). And in case you were wondering, the only thing I came home with on that trip was the worst case of poison oak I ever had.

That said, the idea of a lever gun and a sixgun both chambered for the same cartridge maybe made sense when the .44-40 was winning the West. In those days, you could get a Colt six-shooter and a Winchester lever gun that both used the .44-40 cartridge. Or maybe I’ve just been reading too many Zane Grey novels. But the idea has had a following stimulated by rifle and handgun marketing types for years. Like I said, unless you are transported back in time and you get around on a horse, I think carrying a rifle and a handgun is wacky. But I own a rifle and a handgun that shoot the same cartridge (the two firearms you see in the above photos), and just for grins I wanted to see if I could find a load that is superbly accurate in both.

To cut to the chase, the answer so far is no. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve been shooting .44 Mag since shortly after Dirty Harry adorned the silver screen, and I’ve been reloading the round for about that long, too. I haven’t shot .44 Mag in a handgun much in the last few years (the recoil can only be described as brutal and Lord knows I’m no spring chicken), and I had not shot the .44 Mag Marlin rifle hardly at all. It was time to address both character deficiencies, I thought, and last Friday was as good a day as any to do so.

I’m a sucker for lever actions with pretty wood, and the Marlin checked all the boxes for me.

See what I mean? It’s not bad. Not exceptional, but above average, and the price was right.

The Williams aftermarket aperture sight on the 1894 Marlin. The theory is that an aperture sight is more accurate than a simple notch rear sight. I prefer the plain notch sight.

I bought the Marlin when Reagan was in the White House. I’m not sure why. It was one of those guns you buy and then just never shoot much. I felt guilty about that. And the Turnbull was one I wanted to use. Yeah, it’s almost too pretty to shoot. Almost. Like I said, I hit the Gunbroker “bid again” button a sufficient number of times to take it home. It’s beautiful, and like you’ve read on these pages before, I am a big fan of Turnbull-finished firearms.

Turnbull color case hardening. Gresh talked about what constitutes art in his most recent blog. To me, this is it.

The starboard side of the Turnbull Ruger. Pretty, huh?

Even though I had not shot much .44 Magnum in recent years, I had a half-dozen different loads in .44 Mag squirreled away in my ammo locker: One box of factory ammo that’s been there for a decade or more (I can’t remember where I picked it up, one I reloaded with Hornady jacketed bullets, and the rest I had reloaded with various cast or swaged lead bullets. My intent was to find the magic load that shot well in both the Marlin 1894 rifle and the Ruger revolver. There was nothing scientific in any of this; I just had a bunch of different loads and I thought I would try them all.

So, back to the range. It was a beautiful day, but it was windy as hell out at the West End Gun Club last Friday and I’m sure that affected my results. But, sometimes it’s windy. What are you going to do? I shoot when I can. And I just wanted to get an idea what my six different loads would do in the rifle and the handgun.

So, here’s the bottom line…

Revolver and rifle load testing results with the Ruger Super Blackhawk and the Marlin 1894. These are my loads only; you should start lower and develop your own to make sure any load is safe in your gun.

None of my cast or swaged loads had acceptable accuracy in the rifle. That’s probably because of the Marlin microgroove bore and the diameter to which my cast bullets had been sized. I don’t think Marlin uses microgroove rifling any more in their .44 Magnum lever guns. Microgroove rifling is a very shallow rifling technique; current Marlins use more conventional (and deeper) Ballard-type rifling. I’d read online that to get a .44 Magnum cast bullet to shoot in the Marlin microgroove barrel, you had to size the bullets to 0.433 inch. All of my cast stuff is sized smaller than that around the standard 0.429 or 0.430 inch (yep, that’s right, a .44 Mag is actually not 0.44 inch in diameter; it’s only 0.429 inch…not that it would matter to anything struck by one of these monstrous high velocity slugs). Oh, and that factory ammo? My box of old HSM factory .44 Magnum was terrible in the Marlin.

It wasn’t all bad news with the Marlin, though. The load with Hornady jacketed flatpoint bullets and Winchester’s 296 propellant shot well in the rifle, as you can see in the chart above. That’s good to know. Interestingly, those bullets are 0.429 inch in diameter. But they shot well. Go figure.

With the Turnbull revolver results varied, but they were generally way better than with the Marlin rifle. All of my cast loads shot reasonably well, although the recoil was horrendous with all of them (except for the one light Bullseye load). The Hornady jacketed bullet load with 296 powder shot well. I’ve always had good luck with 296 powder in both the .357 and .44 Magnum. The HSM factory load? It shot the same in the Ruger as it did in the Marlin, which is to say it was terrible.

Chasing a load that shoots well in both a rifle and a handgun may be a fool’s errand (like I said ealier, I may be reading too much Zane Grey), but it was something I wanted to play around with. The Marlin liked those Hornady jacketed bullets with 296 and they did well in the Ruger, too, so I think the next round of testing will involve using just those bullets with different levels of 296. It may be I need a different loads for the Marlin and the Ruger, but that’s okay. The next time I go “afield” I’ll only be carrying one gun, and you can bet I’ll be keeping a sharp eye out for pigs and poison oak.

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The Turnbull scars…

Doug Turnbull’s personal 1886 Winchester. Note the color case hardening on the receiver and the ultra-high grade walnut. These are magnificent guns.

I’m bombarded with emails and phone calls every day. I haven’t answered a call on my home phone literally in years because of the marketing calls (anyone important calls me on my cell phone), and now I’m starting to get marketing calls on my cell phone, too. Sorry, folks…if I don’t recognize the number, you’re going to voicemail, and just so you know in advance, I don’t need any work done on my home and I’m not in the market for solar panels. And email, wow…delete, delete, delete, delete, and on and on it goes. Once in a great while my inbox will have a marketing email I’ll take a look at, though, and this morning was one of those times.

The email that caught my eye this morning was from Turnbull Restorations. A quick word about Turnbull…they are a company back east that restores firearms and they’re known for their color case hardening. That’s a process that adds magnificent colors to selected bits of a firearm to enrichen their appearance dramatically. It’s what you see on uber-expensive shotguns, Colt Single Action Army revolvers, and a few select lever guns. Turnbull has mastered the process, and Mr. Turnbull makes and restores some of the world’s finest firearms.

I’m surprised color case hardening hasn’t shown up on custom bikes. A few years ago, engraving on selected bike bits had a brief half life on custom Harleys and the like. I thought that was kind of stupid, actually, and it never got an “oooh” or an “ah” from me. But I could see it working with color case hardening. Say an all black bike with color case hardened clutch covers, handlebars, and a few other pieces. Just for accent.

Anyway, the email that caught my eye was about Doug Turnbull’s personal rifle, a restored and rechambered 1886 Winchester, and the scars it bore from the various hunts he’s taken. It referred me to the Turnbull blog, and I just spent the last few minutes reading that story. It’s a good one, and it’s one that hit home. I’ve got a few nicks and dings on my favorite rifle from its outings. You might enjoy the Turnbull story, too. You can read it here.

That got me to thinking about some of the scars on my motorcycle. I like a bike that has a few battle scars on it. Not the ones induced by careless motorcycle technicians during routine maintenance (don’t get me started on those), but the ones that come from real trips to real exotic places. Or the ones that occur naturally through aging. I’ve got more than a few of those on my personal RX3, and each one of them tells a story. That might be a topic for another blog. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m going to poke around a bit on the Turnbull blog. I love looking at those color case hardened Turnbull guns.

Do you feel lucky?

Lester, one of our Chinese guests, drawing a bead with a Ruger Mini 14 at the West End Gun Club. Photo by Ying Liu.

If you do, sign up for our free email updates. You can do so with the widget to the right (if you’re on a computer) or at the bottom (if you’re reading this blog on a mobile phone). At the end of March, we’ll pick a name from the folks on our email list and that lucky person will get a free copy of one of our moto adventure books. In the meantime, here’s one of my favorite chapters from 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM, one of our best selling books. The background is this: We had a bunch of folks coming over from China and Colombia (huh, Colombia?) to ride with us from LA to Sturgis to Washington and Oregon and back to LA along the Pacific coast, stopping at every National Park and hitting the best roads along the way. It was a hell of a ride. But the events of a trip to the rifle range and a nearby Bass Pro store were equally as interesting.

Take a look…here’s Chapter 12 of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM…

The Chinese and the Colombians all arrived around the same time, and they all came in through Los Angeles International Airport. Steve and I met our six Chinese guests as they arrived. I’ll take a minute here to introduce everyone.

Hugo was the first to arrive. Hugo is a Zongshen employee, and he is the Zongshen representative and sales manager assigned to Colombia. Colombia is Zongshen’s largest export customer, and Zongshen keeps a full time representative in that country. Hugo came to us as a result of the US government denying entry visas to the original Zongshen people who planned to accompany us on the Western America Adventure Ride. I liked Hugo the instant I met him. He’s a good guy.

I should also tell you at this point that our Chinese guests’ names may be a little confusing. The Chinese use their family name first, and their given name second. Hugo’s real name is Ying Liu, so Ying is his family name and Liu is his given name. I read that and I called Hugo “Ying Lew.” He laughed at my pronunciation and told me how to say it correctly. I tried a couple of times and then dropped any pretense of being culturally sensitive. Hugo it would be.

A lot of the Chinese adopt an English name to make it easier for big dumb Americans like me to communicate with them. It’s a nice move on their part. I’m telling you all of this so you’ll realize that some of the guys have Anglicized names, and some have Chinese names. You’ll get the hang of it as the book progresses.

The next flight brought Lester, Tony, Tso, Kong, and Kyle to us.

Lester is a tall man who looks just like Yul Brynner in The King and I. He’s a physical fitness instructor in a primary school in China, and he also owns a very successful motorcycle and bicycle luggage manufacturing company in China. Lester spoke English well. He is a prominent blogger in China on their premier motorcycle forum. Lester blogged about our trip extensively while we were on the road.

Tony is a celebrity photographer. He owns several motorcycles and his photos are widely published in China and other parts of Asia. He’s an interesting man. You’ll see him holding a small stuffed dog in my photos. That’s MoMo, a mascot who has accompanied Tony to more than 20 countries.

Tso would emerge as the quiet one in our group. He stuck with his Chinese name (it’s pronounced “szo” with a hard “sz” sound). Tso is another industrialist; he owns a motorcycle clothing company in China. He was wearing his company’s motorcycle gear, as were several of the other Chinese riders.

When I met Kong, I immediately told him that from this point forward on our ride, he would be “King Kong.” The Chinese got a big laugh out of that. They all knew the movie and they all liked Kong’s new name. Kong is a prominent automotive journalist in China.

Kyle had an English name, but he didn’t speak much English. He is an advertising designer and executive, and his customers include the big oil companies in China. Kyle was a lot of fun, and he sure could work wonders with a video camera.

I asked Hugo how Zongshen selected these guys for the Western America Adventure Ride. I didn’t understand everything he told me, but I think it was based on their motorcycling experience and a contest of some sort Zongshen had held in China. Each of these guys has a huge media following in China. They were all what I would call high rollers. These folks owned their own companies and were well-known writers and bloggers in China.

The two Colombians also met us at the airport that night. Their participation in the ride was a last minute arrangement. I received a Skype message from Hugo about a week before the ride asking me if the Colombians could accompany us. It was a surprise to me, but I didn’t have a problem with it. I thought they would be AKT employees, but they weren’t.

Juan Carlos, one of the two Colombians, owns the only motorcycle magazine in Colombia. He’s a tall thin guy and an excellent rider. He once rode a KLR 650 to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America, and he had written a hell of a story about it.

Gabriel Abad was the other Colombian. He was instrumental in helping Juan Carlos start his motorcycle magazine. Although Gabriel is a Colombian, he lives in Canada. That certainly was in keeping with the international flavor of our team.

When our good buddies from China and Colombia arrived in the USA that evening, one of their first requests was for an In-N-Out Burger. We did that on the way home from LAX. Then it was on to the hotel in Duarte (the next town over from Azusa) and a good night’s sleep after their long journeys to America.

We had a spare 2 days before the ride. We rode around locally to get everybody used to their bikes on the first day, and on the morning of the second day I asked our guests what they would like to do.

Their answer was direct: We want to shoot a gun.

I was happy to oblige. I’m a firearms enthusiast and I’ve been a member of our local gun club for decades. I put my Ruger Mini 14 in the van and we were off to the West End Gun Club.

Our guests were fascinated with everything America has to offer, and the freedom guaranteed by our 2nd Amendment was obviously high on that list. After a brief lesson at the gun club on the rifle, the .223 cartridge, and firearms safety, we set up a target and took turns putting the Ruger through its paces. The guys loved it. The smiles were real, and I had brought along plenty of ammo. The Chinese and the Colombians did well. Literally every shot was on target. They told me I was a good teacher. I think they are just good shots.

Now before any of you get your shorts in a knot about guns and shooting, let me tell you that even though I am a strong 2nd Amendment supporter, I can understand why some of you might be opposed to the freedoms guaranteed by the US Constitution. When I go to a public range I sometimes see people who I wouldn’t allow to have oxygen (let alone firearms).

The problem, as I see it, is that if you restrict our rights in this area, it would be a government pinhead making the call on who gets to have guns and who doesn’t (and that scares me even more than some of the yahoos I see with guns). It’s a tough call, but I’ll come down on the side of the 2nd Amendment every time. The founding fathers knew what they were doing, and they did it before the pinheads permeated the government.

Ah, but I digress yet again. Back to the main attraction…my day at the range with our guests.

I didn’t get photos of that event. I was busy teaching, watching, and explaining, and I just didn’t have an opportunity. The Chinese and the Colombians did. They were having a blast (literally and figuratively), and they captured hundreds of photos. I didn’t realize just how special this would be to them when we first left Azusa for the gun club, but it became apparent as soon as we arrived at the range. They all ran up to the line and were fascinated by the spent brass lying on the ground. Several of our guests took pictures. Imagine that…taking pictures of empty shell casings!

When I took the rifle out of its case and opened the ammo box, there were even more oohs and aahhhs. And more photos. I guess I’m so used to being around this stuff I didn’t realize how special this day was for our guests. These guys had never held or fired a gun before. Ever. I was amazed by that. They were amazed that we have the freedom to own and shoot firearms. It was an interesting afternoon.

When we finished, all of our guests collected their targets. I had brought along enough targets to give each person their own. We had the range to ourselves that afternoon, so each of the guys would shoot a magazine full of 5.56 ammo, we made the rifle safe, we went downrange to see how each person did, and then we put up a new target for the next guy. Many of the guys repeated that cycle three or four times. It was fun. The guys were like kids in a candy store. I enjoyed being a part of it.

It was hot when we finished shooting at around 4:00 p.m. that day. We were due to meet for dinner at Pinnacle Peaks (a great barbeque place in San Dimas) at 6:00 p.m., and we had a couple of hours to kill. I asked our guests if there was anything else they wanted to do before we went for dinner. My thought was that they might want to go back to the hotel and freshen up. That’s not what they had on their minds. They had another request: Can we go to a gun store?

That sounded like a good idea to me. We have a Bass Pro near where we were, and it’s awesome. Okay, then. Our next stop would be Bass Pro.

I was already getting a sense of how much our guests liked taking pictures, so I told them when we entered the gun department at Bass Pro we should put the cameras away. Usually there are signs prohibiting photography in these kinds of places. We gun enthusiasts don’t like being photographed by people we don’t know when we are handling firearms (big brother, black helicopters, and all the rest of the unease that comes with a healthy case of paranoia and a deep distrust of the government). I told our guests I would ask if we could take photos, but until then, I asked them to please keep their cameras in their cases.

The guys were in awe when we entered Bass Pro, and then they were even more astounded when we reached the gun department. They were literally speechless. Open mouths. Wide eyes. Unabashed amazement. There isn’t anything like Bass Pro in China or Colombia. I’ve been to both countries and I know that to be the case. Hell, there wasn’t anything like Bass Pro in America until a few years ago. It’s a combination of a museum, a theme park, a gun store, an armory, and a shopping emporium. I love the place and all that it says about America.

Now, you have to picture this. The Bass Pro gun department. Hundreds of rifles and handguns on display. Targets. Ammo. Gun cases. Reloading gear. A bunch of guys from China talking excitedly a hundred miles an hour in Chinese. The rest of the customers watching, literally with dropped jaws, wondering what was going on. We were a sight.

The Colombians were talking excitedly the same way, but in Spanish.

I was the only guy who looked like he might be from America (my YouTubby belly probably gave me away). The gun department manager looked at me with a quizzical eye. I explained to him who we were and why these guys were so excited. He smiled. “Would they like to take pictures?” he asked. Hoo boy!

The guys loved it. So did the Bass Pro staff. They were handing the Chinese these monster Smith and Wesson .500 Magnums so they could pose for photos, ala Dirty Harry. It was quite a moment and it made quite an impression. One of the guys had his video camera out and he was recording one of the Chinese riders holding a huge Smith and Wesson revolver. The guy with the revolver did a pretty good impersonation of Clint Eastwood (albeit with a Chinese accent):

Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?

It was pretty funny. That Dirty Harry movie is 40 years old and it was made before most of our guests were born, but these guys knew that line. The Chinese would surprise me a number of times with their mastery of many American things from our movies and our music. All that’s coming up later in this story, folks.

The Chinese and the Colombians were absolutely fascinated with the whole guns and shooting thing and what it is like to live in America, and the Bass Pro staff were quite taken with them. I was pleased. Our guests were getting a first-hand look at American freedoms and American hospitality. It was a theme we would continue to see emerge throughout the Western America Adventure Ride.

For me, a crowning moment occurred on the way to dinner that night. One of the Chinese told me that all the time he was growing up he had been told that Americans were evil and we were their enemy. “That’s just not true,” he said.

Mission accomplished, I thought.

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