Ignorance is no excuse, they say…

I just closed a column with the sentence “Know the law, so the law doesn’t get to know you” and I could have kept going for another thousand words.

For instance, there are a lot of very pro-2A states with very relaxed, liberal handgun carry laws that, at the same time, have strict prohibitions against loaded long guns in vehicles.

This isn’t an “anti-gun” thing, it’s the result of the state having a strong hunting culture and therefore having laws intended to thwart poaching and “road-hunting”.

This is the kind of thing folks need to be aware of on roadtrips. Don’t just glance at your handy CCW reciprocity map and think that it’s an indicator of the entire regulatory climate along your route.

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Cocaine Hippos Redux

Remember those four hippos that Pablo Escobar had that were left to roam the wild in Colombia after he got iced by the feds?

Well, there are over a hundred and fifty of the things roaming Colombian bottomlands now.

And you can forget going down there and bagging a trophy because when the Colombian government tried that, the public outcry was so bad that they haven't authorized any hippo hunts since.

You think wild pigs can make a mess in a soybean field? Imagine what something that masses five times as much as the legendary "Hogzilla" can do to your tomato patch. Also, hippo feces is doing bad things to the waterways, because each hippo creates a few dozen pounds of the stuff a day.

Fortunately they don't breed like hogs, but they have pretty much zero natural predators down there, so the herd just keeps growing.

Extraordinary measures are being taken.

[C]astrating an unpredictable 4,000-pound semiaquatic beast isn't as easy as it sounds. Cristina Buitrago, a veterinarian for Cornare, a state-sponsored environmental group, has worked with a six-person team that lures hippos in with 180 pounds of carrots, knocks them out with darts carrying enough sedative to down three horses, and then flips their massive bodies to perform a castration. The five-hour operation can "cost up to $17,000 in a country that struggles to finance health care for humans," the Journal says. So far, the team has "fixed" 11 males and two females. "It's dirty. There's mud everywhere. You're soaked in sweat," Buitrago said. "This is not a practical way to solve the problem."

Purity Spiral

I recycled this old blog post for yuks at pistol-forum:

Examine your wardrobe.

Award yourself one point for any garment that meets any of the following criteria:

• Military surplus
• Has MOLLE loops
• Non-hunting-oriented camo (double points for Multicam, triple for Kryptek)
• Any gun- or gun-related company branding other than Beretta or Browning
• Made by: Arc'teryx, Kitanica, Propper, 5.11, Blackhawk, et al
• Has gun-specific features like mag pouches or holster compartments
• Has epaulets 

Tally up the total number. This is your score. It is important that it be displayed prominently in online interactions because everyone with a lower score is a Fudd and everybody with a higher score is a Tactard. You must fight with them to the death.

Some people were confused about the exemption for Browning and Beretta apparel.

Basically, I gave Browning and Beretta a pass because both lend their logos to lines of branded outdoor wear for the sort of folks who own ballistic golf clubs.

A Browning or Beretta logo'ed fleece vest picked up as an impulse buy at Cabela's while one is purchasing a Citori or Silver Pigeon is therefore exempt from the scoring penalties assessed against one of those idiotic GLOCK-logo "Not A Pepper Spray Kind Of Girl"* shirts.

*You should be a pepper spray kind of girl. Or a pepper spray kind of dude. Whichever. Here's a reminder that POM makes good spray and an excellent stocking stuffer!

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As reported...

...by Bobbi, there's a critter in the basement of some sort.

I was initially down there with a flashlight and my around-the-house gun stuck in my waistband. I hadn't been down there long before the voice of common sense pointed out that a .22 revolver stuffed full of Federal .22LR Punch, optimized for 14" or more of penetration in bad guys, might not be the best choice on thin-skinned varmints in a basement full of Bobbi's old radio gear, to say nothing of the water heater, furnace, and assorted gas and water lines.

So I rummaged around in a big box of assorted CCI specialty ammo I'd received from Farmer Frank years ago (and he must have gotten it for a writing project years before that, because this stuff was a couple CCI label changes old; 1990s, at least) and fished out some .22 CB rounds.

I loaded those into an old favorite...

Those CCI Small Game Bullets in the photo are great for small game hunting, but small game hunting is a different thing than doming a stationary critter from six feet away; CB caps are adequate for that task for anything I'm likely to find in the basement. The last time I did that it was a flying squirrel and a Super Colibri out of a High Standard Double Nine. (Which I felt horrible about, but flying squirrels are horrible pests once they find their way into a home, and this one was the lone holdout at Castle Frostbite, the rest of the troupe having been locked out of the house when their ingress/egress was discovered and blocked.)

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Big Lizard in My Back Yard

With the Everglades overrun with so many pythons that bounty hunters are...well, being paid bounties to hunt them, Florida has decided to get serious about other invasive reptile species as well.

Florida Man (and Florida Woman, too!) has been cleared hot to go after the state's iguana population wherever it may be found.

Apparently the lizards are not only incredibly fecund, but they poop everyplace, transmit salmonella, and devour the herbaceous borders. Also, their burrows threaten pavement and foundations.
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Sitrep...

I think Sebastian's layout of the weaknesses in the RKBA movement's political and cultural game is pretty cogent. You should go read it.
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Side Effects

Cutting down on beer consumption and making a conscious effort to be in bed around 10PM means I'm having dreams again.

For instance, the other night I dreamed I got a job photographing safaris in Africa for a double rifle manufacturer. I woke up from that one with genuine pangs of regret, and spent some time in the morning at my keyboard furtively fingering a .405 Winchester cartridge like a worry rock.
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#StayInYourLane

Well, @NRA, don't forget that pontificating on things he doesn't understand is pretty much @piersmorgan's job description.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 7, 2016

I need to save this as a text-file...

...so I can copypasta it every time Indiana's weird deer regs get brought up in conversation:

Here's an interesting .pdf of a PowerPoint presentation on deer overpopulation and its impact, on page five of which is a map showing the estimated deer range in the US in 1947.

Note that in the crosshatched "scarce or extinct" area, you can see the borders in Michigan and Minnesota that are currently the demarcation lines of where rifle hunting is legal and where in those states it's shotgun-only to this day. Ask any Bubba in MN or MI why the south half of his state is shotgun-only, and $5 says he'll give you something about how its "flat and densely populated".
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Coming up...

Shooting deer with a scoped rifle in .243 Win is against the law in Indiana*. Hunting deer with a handgun is okey-dokey, however.

Ceci n'est pas une fusil.

Need to get the Leupold 2x20 scope dialed in with the 100gr GameKings. This should be fun; I'll write it up as I go.


*Whitetail were successfully eradicated in this state and then reintroduced, which is like reintroducing rats. Subsequently, Hoosiers were forced to hunt them with one hand tied behind their back, metaphorically speaking, lest they be wiped out again. This is the reason behind the "shotgun/muzzleleoader/handgun-only" law. Somehow, over time, folklore decided that the reason was that Indiana's flat and rifle bullets would hit an orphanage in the next county, without stopping to think that it's legal to hunt squirrels or coyote with a .300 Weatherby Magnum in this state. Apparently those bullets turn into pixie dust if they miss?
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Archer

Some years airguns and other years bows, the hunter education exhibit in the DNR building is always a huge hit. Friday had a line snaking a third of the way across the lobby for kids to try their hand with junior woodchuck compound bows. I couldn't help but hum while I snapped these pictures...
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Just as a FWIW, internet...

I have a smoothbore slug barrel with rifle sights on the 870, and I also have a 209x50 Encore muzzleloader. I was just curious about the optics setup to use on my .243 pistol, and the scope I should use is apparently a .44 magnum lever-action carbine. I don't know if I have a set of rings that can hold a Marlin 1894, and it's gonna look funny bolted on top of a pistol, but if y'all say so...

(The above should be read with a tone of wry amusement. I mean, it's not like it's my first day talking guns on the internet and I well know that even if somebody asks whether they should use a Ruger LCP or a S&W Bodyguard .380 for pocket carry, ten posts in somebody will have recommended a Glock 21 and by page two of the thread, two people will be at each other's throats over the maximum fragmentation range of military M855 ball ammo.)

A Gun For Dinosaur

People asked about the prehistoric time travel hunting books I'd mentioned in the past. Here they are:

• Rivers of Time: Contains the original 1956 L. Sprague DeCamp short story "A Gun For Dinosaur", which was so popular that he revisited the setting and viewpoint character many years later with an anthology's worth of short stories. Paleo buffs will enjoy the juxtaposition of the dinos from the lumbering tail draggers of the '50s in the original story and the post-Bakker renaissance science of the rest of the 1990s era collection.


• Time Safari: Another short story collection. This time it's David Drake, with his gritty, flawed hero slinging a Garand converted to use BAR mags while PH'ing for hunting expeditions in the Mesozoic. What's not to like?

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path

Trumpeter.

The Indiana State Museum has a temporary exhibit called "Ice Age Giants", running through August 17th, on Pleistocene Proboscidea, a fair number of which have been unearthed in the Hoosier State.

Apparently this is dead elephant country.

 This has led to the state museum having a heffalump ossuary as well-stocked with Jumbo bones as the Roman catacombs are with lion table scraps.

Dem bones, dem bones...

...dem dry bones.

There's a gloomy nook with a metal replica of a Clovis spear affixed in place, pointing at the darkness of the far wall at a 45° angle, and a placard instructing you to lightly grasp the spear. When you do, the far wall lights up with the image of a mastodon in the swirling snow. It notices you and bellows, the ground beneath your feet trembling first to its trumpet and then, as it charges into the screen like some berserk NatGeo version of a FATS simulator, to the thud of its pounding feet.

These things are freakin' big.

And before the parts of your brain that know algebra and sonnets can react, your inner monkey is wishing for something other than the thin reed in your hand. Specifically, something that can throw fire and thunder at the pissed-off wall of fur bearing down on you out of the picture. If you could figure out a way to profit on whelk shells back here in the 21st Century, you could probably make a pretty penny smuggling .458 Win Mags back to the Clovis people. I bet they'd be enthusiastic adopters.

New blog...

Matt* is dead set on going to Africa to hunt plains game, which makes me faintly green-tinged with envy. However, we can live vicariously through the workup for his safari as he blogs the long process at "A Dream of the Dark Continent".


*Not Matt G; but another Matt who also came by his gun nuttery the old fashioned way: He inherited it.

QotD: Luxurious Idiocy Edition...

Over at Gun Nuts Media, Tim weighs in on the current lion hunting hooraw:

Nevertheless, people who say that Ms. Bachman should be killed (are you KIDDING ME?) for legally taking a lion bred specifically for hunting (which is totally different than the cow they ate which was bred specifically for food because…well…shutup.) will give money to organizations that accomplish nothing of value beyond paying lobbyists and euthanizing a whole bunch of animals.

I have joked before that I got the .405 Winchester barrel for my Encore in case any lions escaped from the zoo, but in reality, you couldn't get me to hunt lion with that rifle, and here's why:



That dude came »« this close to standing in a pile of his own innards.

Since Mohammed couldn't swing the airfare to the mountain...

In eastern Ohio some dude had an exotic game preserve on his little suburban ranch, with lions and tigers and cheetahs and bears and wolves, and he was found dead last night, but that's not the important part. The important part is that someone or someones unknown opened all the cages.

SWAT teams have been deployed, four school districts have been closed, residents have been warned to stay inside and, for all I know, the Ohio state legislature is rushing into an emergency session to ban something or other.

I know, I know... If you're like me, your first reaction was to hit your knees, exclaim "Praise Jesus! I knew I bought the safari-grade .375 Holland & Holland Magnum for a reason!" and rush out and buy a baby goat to tether in front of your blind, but take a moment to double check Ohio's laws for transporting long guns before you run out the front door.

Also remember that the Buckeye State's a little fussy about whose toter's permits they honor. However, there's probably no ODNR-established season or bag limit on Bengal tiger.

Meanwhile, you know that internet gun fora across the nation are pondering the important question raised by this event: "Is this a good reason to CCW a .44 magnum? "

He'll rip your lungs out, Jim!

Watched the recent remake of The Wolfman on the TeeWee last night.

The script is so predictable that it's impossible to actually be startled or frightened by anything that occurs. Worse, Benicio Del Toro seemed to have been possessed by Keanu Reeves and Sir Tony Hopkins apparently only took his part because he was behind on his Bentley payments or something; in an uncharacteristically lackadaisical performance, his delivery couldn't have been flatter if he actually walked around his scenes reading from a script in his left hand.

On the upside, there was plenty of eye candy, lots of werewolf-tearing-things-up action, and guns. Lots of guns. If you like underlever heavy double rifles so much that you thought they were cheated out of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in The Ghost and the Darkness, you'll be happy. What gun for werewolf? A sidehammer Rodda 10-bore with silver solids, of course. Oh, and Agent Elrond shows up and does a good job as a Scotland Yard inspector: "You werewolves are a disease. You are a cancer of this planet, and we are the cure..."

If you're a huge fan of werewolf movies or Victorian costume pieces full of Webleys, Martinis, and great big hunting rifles, it's a must; otherwise you're not missing much.

Good news, everybody!

Once upon a time, Odocoileus virginianus, the North American Hoofed Rat, was extinct in Indiana outside of zoos. Then somebody decided it would be grand to re-introduce them, which strikes me as the equivalent of re-introducing the anopheles mosquito or crabgrass. Every winter since, brave Hoosiers have set out into the fields to beat back the tan menace.

Despite being hamstrung by using only shotguns, handguns, or pistol-caliber carbines, Indiana hunters bagged over 86,000 hoofed rats this season. When you add in the efforts of would-be Dan'l Boones and Robin Hoods, a record 134,004 crop-devouring furry traffic hazards met their demise in the fields and forests of Hoosierland over the '10-'11 season. Great job, everybody! I feel like an absolute slacker for not taking part.