Deer Hunting – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Sweet Home, California and New Mexico!

Wowee, it’s been nonstop travel for Gresh and me these last few weeks. As you know from reading the ExhaustNotes blog, Gresh rode his Husqvarna to the Bonneville Speed Week in Utah from his home in New Mexico. He’s a better man than I am. I don’t think I could handle riding a Naugahyde-covered 2×4 all that distance. Joe is back on the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico now, no doubt thinking about concrete, motorized bicycles, getting his vintage Z1 back on the road, and more.

I’ve been on the road, too. It was a scouting expedition for an upcoming hunting trip with my good buddy J, back to Soprano-land for my 50th high school reunion, and then up to Seattle for a friend’s wedding. We’re racking up the miles, but I’m home now, and let me tell you, it’s good to be home! I was supposed to be on the road this past week for the Three Flags Classic (I would have been on the way home from Canada by now), but it was getting to be too much and I bailed out on that one. Like my good buddy Dirty Harry likes to say, a man’s got to know his limits, and I hit mine.

Scouting for Deer

Out in the boonies with good buddy J, proving that beer doesn’t work well as a mosquito repellant.

Good buddy J and I snuck away to an undisclosed location to scout deer. Where we were and where we’re going is a closely-held military secret, but we saw lots of game, we’re going back heavy, and we’re looking forward to bringing home the bacon (or, I guess I should say, the venison). We camped on this trip, which is something I hadn’t done in quite a few years. J makes camping seem like staying at a 5-star hotel. It was fun. Except for the mosquitos. Those little bastards were brutal. I probably won’t be able to make it up there the same time as J (I’ve got another secret mission to Asia coming up real soon), but if I don’t make it on the trip with J, I’ll be there a few days later. Venison beckons and all that. I’ve got a .300 Weatherby load with a deer’s initials on it.

Bonneville Speed Week

Joe’s trek to Wendover for Bonneville’s Speed Week was awesome, and you can get to his posts here…

Salt 1
Salt 2
Salt 3
Salt 4
Salt 5
Salt 6
Salt 7
Salt 8

Reading Joe’s blogs was a real treat; I felt like I was riding along with Uncle Joe. You will, too…click on the above links if you haven’t seen these great stories and enjoy some of the best motorcycle story telling in the world!

Joe has another trip planned in the near term for the Yamaha Endurofest. I’m looking forward to the photos and the stories on that one. I love reading Joe’s stories!

The Big 50

Hey, what can I say? My classmates from our Class of ’69 did one hell of a job putting together an absolutely amazing 50th high school reunion. Surprisingly, I didn’t get a lot of photos…I was having way too much fun. I did get a few, though, and here they be!

Just a few of my classmates taking a tour of our old high school.

Good buddy Tad, whom I met in the 7th grade, with his Honda Gold Wing.

Good buddy Mike, reminding us there’s no talking to the driver while the bus is in motion!

At one point, we started grabbing photos of folks from the different elementary schools in our area. Here’s one of the crew who went to Deans School…my elementary school alma mater.

I’ve known everyone in this photo from kindergarten. I had crushes on every girl in this photo at one time or another. Don’t tell Sue.

We then thought it would be a good idea to take a group photo of everyone who had detention in high school…you know, where they make you stay late to wash blackboards, clean erasers, and stuff like that for cutting up in class. I’m guessing they can’t do that anymore.

The kids who had detention in high school. I was the king of detention.

I can’t remember ever having as much fun as we did at the reunion. Everyone looked great. Some of the folks there I first met in kindergarten, and most I had not seen in 50 years. One of the young ladies you see in the photos above had saved some of our high school newspapers, which had a column titled Exhaust Notes. And you can guess who wrote it more than half a century ago. That’s a story for another blog, and it’s coming your way soon.

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The Browning B78

Sometime in the late 1970s, when I was an engineer on the F-16 program at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, I visited a company called National Water Lift somewhere in the Great Lakes area. What we bought from NWL had nothing to do with water (they made the F-16’s hydraulic accumulators). It’s a lead into this story, which is about my Browning B78 rifle. You see, every time I had to visit one of these distant places on my business travels, it was an opportunity to check out the gun shops in the area. Which I did, and the one that stuck in my mind had a Browning B78.

The Browning B78 Rifle

The B78 was a competitor to Ruger’s No. 1 single-shot rifle, and the design was basically a resurrection of the old Winchester High Wall. Ruger did surprisingly well with the No. 1 back in the 1970s (the idea of a single-shot rifle was intriguing to me and many others), and I guess Browning wanted in on the action (pardon the pun).

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Rugers outsold Brownings probably 10 to 1 (or more) in those days because they were less expensive and Ruger’s marketing was better. But the Browning was (and still is) a very elegant rifle. I saw one at that store (I want to say it was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but I can’t remember for sure), and it was nice. It was a 30 06 and it had an octagonal barrel, which was all very appealing. But the Browning was a good $100 more than the Ruger and in the 1970s, that kind of money was out of my reach.

Good Deals on Gunbroker

Fast forward 40 years, the Great Recession was upon us, and all kinds of exotic and collectible rifles were popping up on Gunbroker.com (a firearms auction site). I saw what appeared to be a nice B78 on Gunbroker, with an octagonal barrel, in God’s caliber (that would be .30 06), and I pounced. I paid too much, but we never say it that way. I bought too soon. Yeah, that works. I just bought too soon.

A earlier photo from one of my first range trips with the Browning B78. .30 06, one shot, great walnut, an octagonal barrel…this rifle is elegant.

The B78 is sharp from either side. That’s a Weaver 2×7 scope, and it gets the job done.

After I bought the B78, I wanted to put a period-correct scope on it (you know, from the 1970s) and I found a nice Weaver 2×7 on another auction site. Weavers are good scopes and the ones from the 1970s were blued steel and made in America. It was just what the doctor ordered, and it looks right at home on my B78.

My B78 is used, and it’s got a few nicks and dings on it. But the metal work is perfect, and the walnut is (in my opinion) exhibition grade. Take a look, and you tell me.

Good wood. This is exhibition grade walnut…

Preferred B78 .30 06 Jacketed Loads

I’ve owned the B78 for about 10 years now, and it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve never seen another B78 on the rifle range, and I’ve certainly never seen one with an octagonal barrel. It’s just a cool firearm. But it is finicky. It likes heavier bullets and with the right load it’s accurate, but getting there took a lot of experimenting, a little bit of forearm re-bedding, and a lot of load development. I’ve got two loads that do very well in it…one is a heavy-duty jacketed load, and the other is a cast bullet light load. The heavy load is with a 180 grain Remington jacketed softpoint and a max load of 4064 (I’ve shot three-quarter-inch groups with this load at 100 yards). That load has big recoil, but it’s tolerable. I tried 180 grain Nosler bullets (that’s a premium bullet), but the rifle does way better with the less-expensive Remington bullets. That’s a good thing, because I found a good deal on 900 of those bullets and they have a home on my reloading bench now.

A Preferred B78 Cast Load

My cast bullet load is a short-range low power load, and it’s recoil is almost nonexistent compared to the jacketed load. It’s a 180 grain cast lead bullet (with a gas check) and 17.0 grains of Trail Boss power. After zeroing the Browning for the jacketed bullet load mentioned above at 100 yards, I had to crank the scope up a cool 85 clicks to bring the cast bullets back on paper at 50 yards (I was surprised there was that much adjustment in the scope). But wow, those cast bullets at 50 yards cloverleafed consistently. It was essentially putting them through the same ragged hole. At 100 yards, getting the cast bullet load back to point of aim involved another 25 clicks of elevation on the Weaver, and again, I was surprised there was that much in the scope. At 100 yards, the cast load groups opened up to about 2 ½ inches, and that’s still okay. What’s nice is I can shoot the cast bullet load all day long. The barrel doesn’t heat up and the recoil is trivial. As you might imagine with a load like this and the gas-checked bullets, there was virtually no leading.

When I go for deer later this year, it’s going to be with this rifle. One shot. I think that’s all I’ll need. We’ll see.

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3FC19 and more…

First up today…our good buddy Gary’s Vintage Yamaha Enduro site. Gary alerted me to it a few days ago, I’ve enjoyed poking around on it, and you will, too.

This is a cool site about cool bikes. Spend some time here; you’ll be a better person for doing so!

I’ve always admired those vintage Yamaha enduros. Gresh has one and it’s one his favorite motorcycles. I remember the maroon 360 Yamaha offered back in the early 1970s (I was still in college then). I always wanted one, but it’s an itch I haven’t scratched yet. Maybe someday. I’m still young.

Good buddy Buffalo, a world-class artist who rode with us on one of the Baja rides, created a line art RX3 motorcycle and it’s available in several formats. Buffalo loves riding and he loves his RX3. Hey, what’s not to like?

This is muey cool, and it’s from a muey cool dude.

Buffalo is a very cool guy who’s done some very cool things. We’ve written about Buffalo before here on the ExNotes blog. Buffalo also has a very cool blog (MotoFritz.com), and it’s another I recommend you visit. Buffalo (along with his cousin and niece) recently toured Vietnam on motorcycles, and there are cool videos on the MotoFritz blog from that trip.

I’m going hunting. Deer this time, in Idaho. Good buddy J invited me to head up north with him later this year to chase Bambi, and I’ll be posting about that here on the ExNotes blog.

Good buddy J and the Power Wagon on an earlier Baja expedition.

I mentioned J recently when I described his new website (Sierra Mountain Passes), but J and I go back a few years. We first met when we were involved in manufacturing high performance sails for ocean racing yachts. Think a million bucks for a set of sails for one boat (and the sails are only good for one season). Good times, those were.

But back on the deer quest…I’m starting to research venison recipes (yeah, I know, it’s a little early for that and I am counting my chickens before the eggs have hatched). I’m really looking forward to this adventure. We may get a deer, or we may get skunked. Either way, it’s going to be fun. I’m thinking I’ll take my .300 Weatherby Vanguard. It’s way more power than I’ll need, but we’ll be in some rugged country, the Vanguard is my only composite-stocked rifle, and the thing is a tack driver.

The Weatherby Vanguard in 300 Weatherby Magnum.

More cool stuff…you’ve seen the series we did on the 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally from Mexico to Canada. I rode with good buddy Marty, and it was a hell of an adventure.

Good buddy Marty on the left and yours truly at Lake Louise in Canada during 3FC05. There were signs warning us of grizzlies in the area!

The 3FC is one of the world’s premier motorcycle events, and it’s sponsored by one of the world’s premier motorcycle clubs: The Southern California Motorcycle Association. As it turns out, the SCMA is one of our biggest ExNotes fans. They’ve run our ExNotes stories in the SCMA newsletter and they follow our zany ramblings daily. Good buddy Gonzo, their president, suggested that I join the festivities again this year for the 3FC19 rally, and you know what? I’m going. I’ll be on a new CSC RX4 (one from the very first shipment), and I’ll be blogging the hell out of the ride the entire way from Mexico through the United States and on up into Canada. And then I’ll do the same thing on the way home, for which I’ll take a different (to be determined) route.

The CSC RX4 up in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The CSC RX4 is an exciting motorcycle. There was a recent article on this bike in Adventure Motorcycle magazine, but I thought that review was a bit on the short side. (How about that? A review of a review!) You can read a lot more about the RX4 right here on ExNotes, and you’ll see a whole lot more when I do the 3FC19 on one of the new CSC 450cc RX4 adventure bikes.