West End Gun Club – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Shoemaker Holsters

By Joe Berk

Back in the 1970s I was a falling plate competitor. That competition involved knocking over a set of steel plates at a relatively short distance, usually with something in .38 Special or .45 ACP. In those days, nobody competed with a 9mm; the 9mm pistols had not made the inroads they enjoy today. A lot of guys competed with 1911s or modified K-frame S&Ws; I was a bit of an oddball and I used an N-frame Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum (with light .44 Specials, as the shot-to-shot recovery was faster and the .44 Special easily knocked the plates down). We shot from the ready position, with the gun held at an angle to the ground. The video below gives you an idea what the falling plate game looks like:

There were variations of this competition. The most exciting one was a bowling pin competition, which involved clearing a half dozen bowling pins from a table. In that one, you needed a .44 or a .45; the .38 Special didn’t have the energy to clear a bowling pin off the table. Both competitions were all about speed; whoever knocked all the plates over (or blew away all of the bowling pins) in the shortest time won.

Other similar competitions involved drawing the gun from a holster, and I wanted to shoot my AMT Long Slide Hardballer, a really cool 7-inch-barreled 1911. It’s the one Arnold Schwarzenegger used in Terminator.

An AMT (Arcadia Machine and Tool) Long Slide Hardballer. The story on it is here.

I needed a holster long enough to hold the Long Slide AMT 1911, and at that time there were none on the market. Other holsters could hold either 5-inch or 4 ¼-inch 1911s, but nobody had anything for the 7-inch AMT. Hold that thought. I’ll come back to it shortly.

I’ve written about good buddy Mike here on the blog before. Mike and I have been buddies since junior high school. He went on to become Chief of the New Brunswick Police Department. We still talk every week. Mike deputized me a couple of times when he attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conventions. I’d always ask for a gun, and the answer was always no. But we had a lot of fun at those conventions.

The Director at the International Association of Chiefs of Police 2023 convention. I was his administrative assistant on that adventure. That story is here.

Mike called me last week. He was pumped up. He found his old New Brunswick Police Department duty holster from the days when they carried Heckler & Koch P7M8 9mm squeeze cocker semi-autos. That was the gun the New Jersey State Troopers adopted back in the ‘80s.

A New Jersey State Trooper Heckler & Koch P7M8 and its Tex Shoemaker holster.

The NJSP emblem embossed on the Tex Shoemaker holster.

The New Jersey State Police had custom holsters crafted for their handguns by the Tex Shoemaker company, a legend in the holster business. They also had Shoemaker emboss the NJSP emblem in the leather. Not to be outdone, the New Brunswick Police Department also adopted the Heckler & Koch P7M8 9mm semi-auto, and they, too went to Tex Shoemaker for holsters embossed with the NBPD emblem. Mike had one when he served, and it was this holster he recently found. The Tex Shoemaker H&K police duty holsters have become collectible items, with this particular model appearing on Ebay for $300. Mike is going to donate his to the New Brunswick Police Department Headquarters display case. I think that’s pretty cool.

Good buddy Mike’s Heckler & Koch P7M8 Tex Shoemaker holster.

The Heckler & Koch P7M8 holster with an embossed New Brunswick Police department emblem.

So I was thinking about this story and Mike’s holster and then I remembered: Hey, I have a Tex Shoemaker holster, and mine is brand new. The Tex Shoemaker company was located in San Dimas, which is not very far from my home. They closed up shop in 2019 (I’m assuming it fell victim to the pandemic, the move toward plastic holsters, and competition from the plastic holster manufacturers). Whatever the reason, it’s a pity. Shoemaker’s was an old line holster manufacturer started by Tex Shoemaker, a former lawman who started out making holsters in his garage. Their quality was unsurpassed.

When I needed a quick draw holster for my anticipated pistol competition (as described at the beginning of this blog), I couldn’t find anyone in the ‘80s who was making a holster for the AMT Long Slide Hardballer. I searched the yellow pages for holster companies (this was all pre-Internet), and that’s when I learned that the Tex Shoemaker company was nearby. I called them and explained what I wanted. I spoke with a nice guy who told me he didn’t know of anybody making a holster for the Long Slide 1911, but Shoemaker was experimenting with a new break-front holster that would handle all 1911 barrel lengths. He explained that it wasn’t on the market yet, but I could swing by and take a look at it.

My AMT Long Slide in it’s Tex Shoemaker experimental holster.

Sue and I rode over to Shoemaker’s that day. It was a factory and they didn’t have a retail facility, so I walked up to the loading dock, looked up at a guy standing above me, and explained why I was there. A minute later that same nice guy I had spoken with on the phone appeared with the holster he told me about on the phone. I had my Long Slide with me and we tried the big 1911 in it; the fit was perfect. He also had two magazine holders (together they could hold four magazines). The holster was just what the doctor ordered, and I told him that even though it wasn’t commercially available yet, I’d like to buy it. He smiled, gave all three items to me, and told me there was no charge.

The Tex Shoemaker holster is adjustable for draw angle. It’s a cool feature.

For normal carry, the pistol is secured with a cross strap.

For quick draw work, the cross strap is removed. The holster has a strong clamp spring inside the leather that secures the pistol. When drawn, the pistol can be snapped forward without withdrawing upward from the holster.

The Long Slide Hardballer, the Tex Shoemaker holster, and two Tex Shoemaker magazine holders.

The Tex Shoemaker logo on the back of a magazine holder.

I was shocked when that nice man told me there was no charge, and then I realized I didn’t even know who he was. I introduced myself, and as we shook hands, he told me his name: Randy Shoemaker. Randy Shoemaker was Tex Shoemaker’s son.

I never pursued quick draw competition. I had visions of shooting myself in the foot, and it just wasn’t something I wanted to do. But I sure enjoy owning my Tex Shoemaker leather. Maybe someday, I’ll enter the Quick Draw McGraw games. In the meantime, here’s an unashamedly doctored video of me playing around a few years ago at the West End Gun Club.

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A Tale of Two Rugers

By Joe Berk

Rifles, that is…two Ruger rifles. I’ve written about them before, but it’s been a while since I shot either one and with the stream crossing to the West End Gun Club almost manageable these days (more on that later), I thought I would take them out to the 100-yard range. I shoot handguns regularly (at least a couple of times a week) on the indoor 50-foot pistol range closer to home, but there are times when the high-powered-rifle-on-a-football-field-length-range itch needs to be scratched.

The two Ruger rifles in this article are two of my favorites: A Davidson’s Circassian-stocked Mini 14 (the one in the photo above) and the Ruger GSR (GSR stands for Gunsite Scout Rifle). The Davidson’s Mini 14 1was a 2009 offering with (as the name implies) a Circassian walnut stock. Back then the Circassian Mini’s $700 price seemed high, but I’ve been at this for a while and I know that when a gun’s price seems high it only means I’m buying too soon. The price will always catch up with the calendar, and that’s certainly been the case with this rifle. It originally came with two 30-round mags and a flash suppressor. California being what it is meant I couldn’t own the rifle as Ruger built it. I had to leave the 30-round mags with the out-of-state dealer, and because of the flash suppressor, it had to ship to the Class III dealer here in La La Land.

Circassian walnut from the port side. It sure looks good.

The California-legal muzzle brake. I wonder what the California legislators were smoking when they passed that law.

The California Class III dealer replaced the flash suppressor with a muzzle brake (which I think looks even more intimidating and I had to buy a 10-round La-La-Land-legal magazine for my Mini.

Circassian walnut from starboard side. This is the fanciest Mini 14 I’ve ever seen.

You might be wondering: Where can I get a Mini with a stock like this one?
The short answer is: You can’t. I watched the gun sale websites for months looking for a Davidson’s Circassian Mini 14 until I found one with nice wood (most had straight-grained, broomstick grade wood). When I saw the one you see here, I pounded (and I’m glad I did). You just don’t see Mini 14 rifles with wood like this one. It’s all mostly black plastic stuff on the range these days, which is almost a crime against nature.

The Techsites rear sight on my Mini 14. It has a slightly smaller aperture and better adjustability than the stock Mini 14 rear site.

I’ve done a few mods to my Mini 14 to improve its accuracy, and I’ve detailed this in prior blogs (I’ve provide a link at the end of this article). The Reader’s Digest version is I’ve added a Techsites rear aperture sight to replace the Ruger sight, I’ve glass-bedded the action, and I’ve done a fair amount of experimentation to find the right load.

So how does the Circassian Mini 14 shoot? It does very well. I grabbed two loads: A full metal jacketed load with Hornady’s 62-grain bullet, and another with Hornady’s 55-grain V-Max bullets. You can see the results below.

A bunch of shots at 100 yards with one of my favorite loads: The 62-grain Hornady full metal jacket boattail bullet and 25.0 grains of XBR 8208 propellant. This ammo was necked sized only, which usually is more accurate in my Mini 14. I held at 6:00 on all targets shown here.

Another 100-yard Mini 14 target with two different loads, both using the 55-grain Hornady VMax bullet and 24.5 grains of ARComp propellant. The very tight 5-shot group was shot with bullets that were not crimped. The larger group was the same load, but the bullets were crimped. Surprisingly, both loads were full length resized. As mentioned in the photo above, neck-sizing usually provides better accuracy in this rifle.

The second rifle in this Tale of Two Rugers story is the Ruger GSR in .308 Winchester. This is an amazing (and amazingly accurate) rifle, but it didn’t start out that way.

How I purchased this rifle is kind of a funny story. I had oral surgery to start the process of installing two fake teeth, and the doc knocked me out with anesthetics. They warned me I would be in no shape to drive home, so good buddy Jim Wile volunteered to do the driving. Jim’s gone on to his reward (RIP, Jim). On the ride home, in a drugged but conscious state, I told Jim about this new GSR rifle Ruger had introduced, and we somehow managed to convince ourselves we each needed one. They say you should not buy guns when you’re under the influence. Like Hunter Biden, though, I didn’t heed that advice and Jim followed my lead.

The Ruger GSR on the range at the West End Gun Club.

The GSR is Ruger’s interpretation of the Scout rifle concept first put forth by a gun writer named Jeff Cooper. Cooper’s concept was a short-barreled rifle that would hold a scope in a forward location and make for a sort of do-anything long gun. Steyr built the first commercially available Cooper-inspired Scout rifle, and then about a decade later Ruger followed suit. Mossberg has one now, too (good buddy Johnny G has one). The Steyr is crazy expensive, the Ruger started out at a reasonable price but has since gone kind of crazy (along with everything else), and (in my opinion) the Mossberg is the best value (it’s a fine rifle and one I’ll probably own some day).

The left side of the Ruger GSR. Note the laminated stock, which provides a very stable bed for the barreled action.

The Ruger’s aperture rear sight. It’s similar to the original Mini 14 site. Techsites doesn’t offer a replacement rear site for the GSR; if they did, I would have a Techsites rear sight on this rifle.

The Ruger GSR flash suppressor. It’s the same type that originally came on the Mini 14. On a bolt action rifle, it’s legal in Calilornia; on a semi-auto, it is not.

When I first took delivery of the GSR, it was a real disappointment. As had been the case with half the guns I bought in the last couple of decades, it had to go back to the manufacturer. The problem was that the rifle printed way to the right, and there wasn’t enough adjustment in the rear aperture to get it back to the point of aim. I returned it to Ruger, they greatly relieved the stock around the barrel, and I had it back in about a week. When I took it out to the range the same week it was returned, I was astonished by its accuracy.

A target I shot a few years ago. The GSR can be amazingly accurate. The difference between the two groups is probably due to how I held the rifle. The upper group is one of the best I’ve ever shot with open sights.

But that group above was then and this is now. I had not fired the GSR in a few years. I grabbed two loads for this rifle (a load I had developed for my M1A Springfield, and a box of Federal factory ammo with full metal jacket 150-grain bullets).

Federal American Eagle .308 ammo. I bought a bunch of this a few years ago for the brass; this ammo was about the same price as .308 brass.

My reloaded ammo. This load shoots extremely well in my Springfield Armory M1A.

I only fired a couple of 5-shot groups at 100 yards with the GSR. It was getting late in the day, I was getting tired, I had not fired the rifle in a long time (shooting is a perishable skill), and I realized I wasn’t giving the rifle a fair shake.

With the same rear sight adjustment used for the previous GSR target shown a couple of paragraphs above, the Federal factory 150 grain load shot high and to the left. The group is considerably larger than the load with 180-grain Noslers and Varget propellant.

Another 5-shot group, this time with 168-grain Sierra hollowpoint bullets and IMR 4064 propellant (the accuracy load for my Springfield M1A). The load doesn’t perform as well in my GSR as it does in the M1A, but it’s still substantially better than the Federal factory ammo. It’s why I reload.

That stream crossing I mentioned at the start of this blog? Lytle Creek flows across the dirt road going into Meyers Canyon, and it can be a real challenge at times. With all the rain and snow we’ve had this past winter, the reservoirs are full and the snow up in the San Gabriels is still melting. You may remember the blog I wrote about the time I high sided my Subie attempting a crossing. The stream is down a scosh since then, but it’s still not an easy crossing. Here’s a video I made on the way out on this trip after visiting the range with the Mini 14 and the Ruger GSR.

I’ll be shooting the GSR more in the coming weeks now that I’m back into the swing of shooting a .308 off the bench, so watch for more stories on it. I think I can do better than the groups you see above.

More stories on good times at the West End Gun Club are here.

Home on the range…

The stream crossing to the West End Gun Club has been too deep to cross in my Subie Outback since early January. I tried it once back then and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

My January Meyer Canyon Road mishap. The Subie is not a submarine and I am not a U-boat commander, although we both came close that morning.

I’ve been going to the Magnum Range in Ontario (an indoor pistol range), watching the West End website for updates and occasionally driving out to check the stream. The Magnum Range is a good place to shoot, but I missed shooting my rifles. Then a good thing happened earlier this week: Good buddy Duane offered to pick me up and attempt a stream crossing in his Toyota 4×4. I was in.

Duane’s Toyota 4×4. It’s an impressive vehicle.

I’ve known Duane for years, going back to my work with CSC Motorcycles in their early days of the replica Mustangs and the RX3 250cc adventure bike. Duane and I both owned the CSC bikes and we traveled extensively on them.

The Meyer Canyon Road stream crossing was still deep and the water was moving swiftly, but Duane’s Toyota had no problem crossing it.

I knew which rifle I wanted to shoot when I received Duane’s email invitation: My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. It’s the one you see at the top of this blog. The Mosin is a favorite. It’s accurate, I reload 7.62x54R ammo, and it is fun to shoot.

My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. The Russians built 17 million of these rifles. They are becoming hard to get and prices have risen substantially. These rifles are surprisingly accurate.

I’ve owned this Mosin rifle for maybe 10 years now. It came about almost as an afterthought. To me, the Mosins appeared to be cheap pieces of junk. Then one day after a class about engineering creativity, a student asked about the cover photo on a book I wrote. He told me he and his father owned a Mosin and enjoyed shooting the rifle. I saw a Mosin on the rack at a sporting goods store a short while later for $139. It looked crude, but for $139, I thought I’d take a chance. The guy who sold it to me did not know there was a bayonet in the Mosin’s cardboard box, and when he put the rifle back in its box, the bayonet scratched the stock. Neither of us knew this until 10 days later (after California’s silly waiting period). The store offered to sell me a different Mosin, but that meant starting the 10-day waiting period all over again. I viewed the scratch as an opportunity, and indeed it was. I refinished the stock (10 coats of TruOil worked nicely). Then I glass bedded the action, reworked the trigger, polished the bolt, and worked up a load. It was fun and I learned much about the rifle. Mine has matching numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt. I know it’s weird: I own some really nice rifles, but the Mosin is one of the ones I love the most.

Serial Number 2339, built in 1940. Production rates ramped up sharply in 1940, but this rifle was built before that occurred. Fit and finish nosedived that year; mine is one of the good ones.

When Duane and I arrived at the range, I set up a target at 50 yards. Like always, shooting the Mosin felt good. It had been too long.

Duane is a milsurp rifle enthusiast, too. He has a beautiful 8mm Mauser K98 that his uncle took home from Germany after World War II. I keep trying to buy it from him. He keeps saying no.

Nazi markings on the Mauser’s barrel and receiver.

Like me, Duane is a reloader. He had reloaded reduced loads for our outing. A reduced load is one loaded for lower velocity, which means the rifle has significantly less recoil. One of Duane’s loads had cast bullets. The other had jacketed 150-grain bullets. Both were loaded with Trail Boss powder, and both shot well.

8mm Mauser reloaded ammunition. The upper rounds have 150-grain jacketed soft point bullets, the lower rounds have 150-grain cast bullets.

As soon as Duane fired his first shots, I knew he had reduced-load ammo. Check it out in the video below.

Duane and I both brought handguns, and to my surprise, we both decided to bring our Smith and Wesson 9mm Shields. I’ve written about the Shield before, as well as the custom work TJ (of TJs Custom Gunworks) did on my Shield. I shot my Shield at 50 yards. Using a short-barreled 9mm concealed carry handgun at 50 yards is not a formula for accuracy, but I managed to keep all of my shots on the target. The group was large, but at least they were on the paper.

My Shield in flat dark earth. I shot my reloaded ammo with Gardner powder-coated bullets.

My Sheild and Duane’s. Duane’s has a Crimson Trace laser just forward of the trigger guard. The laser is actuated by a pushbutton below the trigger.

One of the things I like about my Shield is its bright sights. Duane’s Shield has white dot sights and a green Crimson Trace laser mounted beneath the slide. The laser is a cool touch for close in work. My Shield has high visibility fiber optic sights (they catch light from the side and light up green and red dots). They’re good if there’s any light at all. If there’s no light, the sights don’t light, but if there’s no light, it’s not likely you’d be shooting.

A comparison of the sights on both Shields. My pistol’s Hi Viz sights are the best I’ve ever used on a handgun.

Before we called it a day, Duane let me try a couple of shots with his Mauser. I shot at the same 50-yard target I’d been using with my Shield and the Mosin-Nagant.

The proof is on the paper. The upper red circle surrounds the shots I fired with my Mosin-Nagant (with one exception, all are in the 10 ring…that one exception was the first shot I fired). The circle around the two shots below were mine, fired with Duane’s 8mm Mauser and his reduced-load ammo. All the other shots were with the Smith and Wesson 9mm Shield.

After the West End Gun Club visit, we stopped at our local Mexican restaurant. I had albondigas soup and a chile relleno. As always, both were outstanding.

A toasted chile relleno. It was excellent.

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Charles Darwin, Alive and Well

You know those signs that tell you not to drive into flooded areas?

Every time I’d see one, I always wondered about the target audience. I mean, who would be stupid enough to drive into a flooded area? And if they were that stupid…well, maybe ol’ Darwin had the right idea.

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Based on the cover photo, you may have already guessed where this story is going. I don’t have to look very far to find someone stupid enough to “enter when flooded.” I see that guy in the mirror every morning when I shave.

You see, there’s a creek that flows across the dirt road out to the West End Gun Club. I’ve been driving across it for close to 40 years now. Most of the year, it’s a dry creek bed. After a rainy spell, we’ve had times when it was so obviously flooded I wouldn’t attempt to cross it. Most of the time. But other times when the water was flowing, it didn’t look bad enough or deep enough to keep me from taking a chance. I mean, what could go wrong?

I guess I’m one of those guys who has to urinate on the electric fence to see for himself. Yep, I finally got stuck, and stuck good. I always figured with my all wheel drive Subie I could get out of anything. But you know, AWD ain’t the same as 4WD. Something I learned today.

When I heard the underside of the Subie hit the ground on the ledge (that was now more of a bank than a ledge), it hit hard. I felt it as much as heard it. I was in trouble. I tried to back out, but I knew from the downward facing hood the Subie’s butt was in the air and I could feel the front wheels spinning in the water. I was balanced on the bank, and I could feel the car rocking and pivoting slightly to the right. It was like being in a formulaic movie or a bad dream when a car has gone out of control and is hanging over a cliff. I opened the door and the bank was directly under the opening, and as I looked at the ground, the bank was eroding. In the wrong direction. Water started coming over the door sill and into the car.

I beat a hasty exit out the passenger door. Other folks going to the range, wondering if they could cross, had stopped and were watching me. I had set the example. The spectators tried to help by pulling down on the rear bumper. It did no good. I was high sided, and if anything, the car was moving more toward the stream, which was starting to look like Niagara Falls. Yikes.

I called the Auto Club, but they put me on hold. The bank continued to give way under my Subie, so I called 911. They took my info and I never heard from them again, nor did anybody show. You know the old saying…when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away. The other spectators drifted away. I was on my own.

Then a miracle occurred. Good buddy Lee, who I met for the first time this morning, came by in a Jeep. A real Jeep. With a winch. We connected (literally and figuratively), but it was no good. As the winch did its thing, it dragged the Jeep toward the Subie. Lee and I looked at my situation. Lee put boulders in front of the Jeep’s wheels, and the winch dragged them along, too. “If I could hook up to another vehicle,” Lee said, “we could make this work.”

Then the second miracle occurred. Another newly-met good buddy named Aaron rolled up in a big Dodge pickup. He hooked up to Lee’s Jeep, Lee hit the winch button, and just like that (with some God-awful undercarriage scraping and grinding), I was free. For a few seconds, I thought my future held a commission as a U-boat commander, but no more. Lee and Aaron, wherever you are, thanks much!

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Catching up…

So…I’ve been back from Baja for a few days now and I’m just starting to get back into the groove of life in So Cal again. I had one more short video of our whale watching day I thought I’d share…

Good buddy Greg and I thought we’d head out to the range yesterday. The creek was still flowing pretty well from all of our So Cal rains and we made it across, only to find out that the range was still closed. We could have shot as full members, but we didn’t bring target stands with us thinking that the range would be open and they’d be available. Greg commented that he should have video recorded our turning the Subaru into an amphibious vehicle, and then we realized we’d soon have another opportunity…we had to get back across that creek…

That’s it for now. We have two or three more posts from the Baja trip we’ll be adding in the next few days…one focused on the dining, one on not panicking when bikes break down, and one on our itinerary (as good buddy Peter requested). This trip was a bit more relaxed than usual, in that we did about 200 miles per day and we took a full day in Guerrero Negro, and that worked out well.

Later, my friends. Stay tuned!