Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Outdoors

  • Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges II – The Thirty-Threes

    Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges I:  The 33s

    I find the thirty-threes to be some of the most useful of the thirty-something calibers for the North American game fields.  Most of them are easily capable of taking the largest American big game.  There is a wealth of projectiles available.  Some of them, like Winchester’s excellent .338 Winchester Magnum, have been around for decades, and as a result there is a great deal of loading data available.

    As a result, there are a lot of .33 caliber rounds out there to discuss.  So, without further ado…

    At the End of the Black-Powder Era…

    As we saw back in the series on level guns, the famous John Browning/Winchester collaboration started with a big, tough lever gun called the Model 1886, which could handle some pretty heavy cartridges.  In 1902 Winchester made this rifle available for a new cartridge, the first commercially available thirty-three, the smokeless-powder .33 WCF.

    This was a pretty hot load for its time, launching a 200-grain cast bullet at 2,200 fps.  With more modern, jacketed bullets, it quickly gained a reputation as a hard hitter, ideal for deer, elk and bear at ranges out to about 200 yards.  Besides the Model 1886 Winchester, it was also available in the 1885 single-shot and the lever-action 1895 Marlin.

    The .33 WCF was interesting because it came at a transitional moment in American shooting.  As we’ve noted previously, the end of the Great War resulted in a lot of American shooters and hunters returning home with the memory of their issue 1903 Springfield and Pattern 17 Enfield bolt guns in mind, along with the powerful .30-06 round they fired.  The lever gun was due to lose some popularity; the age of the bolt gun was dawning.

    And the .33 WCF, while a groundbreaking round, was a rimmed lever-gun cartridge.

    The .33 WCF was offered in the Model 1886 until 1935, when Winchester replaced the 1886 with the beefier Model 71 and its .348 Winchester cartridge.  But this first of the thirty-threes had set the stage for some modern bolt-gun rounds to come, and one of those pioneering bolt-gun rounds came (in part) from the mind of someone we’ve discussed before:  Elmer Keith.

    The Mid-Century

    Early in the 20th century Elmer Keith, along with his colleagues Charles O’Neil and Don Hopkins, developed a new .33 wildcat based on the .30-06 case necked up.  The .333 OKH was intended to use the same .333 diameter bullets as the .333 Jeffries then popular in Britain, and while it delivered some good performance it was hampered by the lack of bullets, and since wildcatters live and die by the availability of suitable projectiles, this didn’t bode well for the .333.  The logical evolution was to increase the bullet size to .338, resulting in the .338-06 wildcat.

    This same trio also developed the .334 OKH, based on the .375 H&H case; this ended up being remarkably similar to the .340 Weatherby Magnum, about which we’ll talk in a moment.

    In fact, the tale of the mid-twentieth century thirty-threes is somewhat convoluted, with plenty of wildcats and experiments mixed into the developments by major gun and ammo manufacturers.  But one thing very quickly became apparent – launching a big, heavy projectile at significant velocity called for a magnum-sized case.

    Precedent was already in place.  During WW2 Roy Weatherby had introduced three standard (2 ½”) length cartridges based on the .375 H&H belted case, shortened and necked down.  These three were the .257, .270 and 7mm Weatherby magnums, and they soon gained a following among those fond of high-velocity rounds.

    In 1958, at the urging of Elmer Keith, Winchester took that precedent and applied it to Keith’s and others work with the medium bores.  They followed Weatherby’s example, took the .375 H&H case, shortened it to fit standard-length actions, straightened the case walls a tad and necked it down to take a .338 pill.

    The result of this was the great .338 Winchester Magnum, introduced along with the .264 Winchester Magnum and the .458 Winchester Magnum as a family of cartridges.

    Now the American sportsman had a real world-beater.  The big new medium-bore magnum put out a 225-grain projectile at 2,800 fps in factory loadings, and with the right slug would easily handle any North American big game, including big Alaskan grizzlies and moose.

    The .375H&H, .338 Win Mag, and a quarter for scale.

    It should come as no surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention that this round is a favorite of mine.  My .338, Thunder Speaker, is built on a 1908 DWM large-ring Mauser action with a Douglas barrel and a Bell & Carlson stock.  The .338, while delivering plenty of punch, does it on both ends, having a reputation for recoil as well as hitting power.  Thunder Speaker, in addition to the big, wide recoil pad on that B&C stock, is Mag-Na-Ported and weighs almost ten pounds loaded, which makes it very manageable – at least for me.  I’m large and not recoil-sensitive, so your mileage may vary.

    My favorite load in that big, tough Mauser action is a 225-grain Barnes TTSX boat-tail over 67 grains of IMR 4350.  This gives me about 2,800 fps for almost two tons of muzzle energy.  This load will easily lengthwise an elk or moose, and that’s what Winchester intended the round should be able to do, so I’m pretty satisfied; in Thunder Speaker, with me at the wheel, it will also put three rounds into a 3” circle at 200 yards.  The best shot I’ve ever made on a game animal was with this rifle; a fat meat mulie buck in the open sage country south of Parshall, Colorado.  The buck paused to look back on the edge of an arroyo; I tossed my cap on a flat rock, laid down in the snow, laid my rifle on the rock, took aim and sent one round down the hill.  The .338 slug hit the mulie at the base of the neck, dropping him in his tracks at 280 yards.

    She still does kick, though.  My son-in-law once got a case of Kaibab eye after asking to try out Thunder Speaker off the bench-rest; I warned him not to choke up on the scope!

    The .338 Winchester Magnum was quickly a big commercial success.  In addition to its introductory chambering in another shooting legend, the pre-64 Winchester Model 70, it was quickly picked up in the Remington and eventually, the Ruger, Savage and many other lines.  Browning made it available in the BAR, making it the most powerful semi-auto rifle available at the time.  Wildcatters quickly picked up on the usefulness of the case, bringing about among other things the .30-338 Magnum, which Winchester later legitimized as the .300 Winchester Magnum – bringing the standard-length magnum case back to America’s caliber.

    But the competition was paying attention.

    Only four years after Winchester brought out their thirty-three, Roy Weatherby upped the ante.  His entry into the field was the .340 Weatherby Magnum, on the same magnum-length case as the .378 Weatherby Magnum.  This was a real whopper, sending the same .338 225-grain slug forth at 3,100 fps.  But the .340 Weatherby suffered from the same issues as the 8mm Remington Magnum we discussed in the last installment:  It was limited to a magnum-length action.  What’s more, it was a proprietary round.  When the .340- Weatherby was introduced one could only have one in the Weatherby Mark V, with factory ammo initially only available from Weatherby.  Even today, the only company loading this round besides Weatherby is A-Square, and the ammo is pricey.

    The place of the thirty-three in the American shooting scene was now secure.  But the explosion of rounds to come was to prove an embarrassment of riches.

    Today

    In the magnum world, the .338 Winchester Magnum and the .340 Weatherby Magnum have been joined by some new contenders.  The .338 Ruger Compact Magnum came out in 2008, a 2,700fps thumper intended to be chambered in short-action rifles like the M77 Mk II Compact.

    There are a couple of newer Weatherby-level steamrollers available as well.  In 1989, A Norwegian/Finnish munitions company named NAMMO (Nordic Ammunition Company) saw a market for a powerful, long-range military sniper round; their answer was the .338 Lapua, which was adopted in civilian as well as military applications.  The Lapua is a real rocker, sending out a 250-grain slug at over 3,000 fps.

    In 2002 Remington responded with an expansion of their Ultra Magnum line, the .338 RUM (Remington Ultra Mag.)  This fell a bit short of the .338 Lapua and produces very similar ballistics.

    But both ultra-mag rounds have the same shortcomings:  They both require magnum-length actions, and they both run at very high pressures, resulting in significant barrel wear at a much lower round count than the older .338s.  Still, there’s still news in the non-magnum world.

    2006 saw the introduction of the .338 Federal, which was simply the .308 Winchester case necked up to the .338.  This introduction not only gave .33-caliber thumping to short-action bolt guns, but it also added a medium-bore alternative to the AR-10 platform that was becoming popular as the Tacticool craze accelerated.  The Federal round yielded only modest performance compared to the magnums, propelling a 210-grain slug at about 2,600 fps.  But the use of the .308 case made for a versatile round that punches well above its weight class.

    Finally, in 2009, Marlin brought the thirty-threes full circle by introducing the .338 Marlin Express, a semi-rimmed lever-gun round intended to punch up the power level of that company’s 336-series rifles well above the original .30WCF level.  In fact, at ranges up to about 200-250 yards, the Marlin Express round delivers performance in excess of most .30-06 loads, which makes the 336 rifles far more versatile on bigger, thicker-skinned game – and brings the lever-gun world back to the levels of punch known in the original 1886 Winchester.

    The thirty-threes are many, powerful and versatile. The late 20th-early 21st century proliferation of .338-caliber rounds has been interesting, but none of them have quite managed to knock the good old .338 Winchester Magnum off the top of the heap.

    In the next installment, we’ll examine a group of rifle cartridges that are a little lighter on the long-range magnum loudenboomers and a little heavier on the short-range woods rounds – so stay tuned for an in-depth look at the thirty-fives.

  • Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges I – The Thirty-Twos

    Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges I:  The 32s and 8mms

    Mid-caliber rifle cartridges are very useful.

    A qualifier:  I’ve said before that if you can only afford one rifle for big game in North America, buy a .30-06.  That fine old round, properly loaded, can handle any game in North America, even though it’s a tad on the light side for big Alaskan grizzlies and moose.

    But there are a whole family of rifle cartridges that are useful, solid, and versatile; these are generally known as the mid-range or mid-caliber cartridges.  I’ll refer to them in this series as the Thirty-Somethings.  These rounds launch bullets ranging from the .32 to the .375 and have a wide range of power selections for almost any eventuality.

    In this series we’ll focus mostly on rounds widely used in North America.  So, while we’ll look mostly at American cartridges, we’ll also examine some from other parts of the world that have seen a lot of use here, like the 8X57mm Mauser and the great old .375 H&H.  So, let’s start with the first group – the Thirty-Twos.

    At the End of the Black-Powder Era…

    Remember when we were talking about the history of lever guns?  In 1894 Winchester Repeating Arms Co. and the DaVinci of firearms, John Browning, brought out the great Model 1894 Winchester lever gun.  While that rifle is so intimately associated with the .30WCF cartridge that the terms “.30-30” and “94 Winchester” are damn near synonymous, it’s rather less well-known that the Model 94 wasn’t originally introduced in that caliber; instead, it was chambered in its first year for two thirty-somethings, the .32-40 and the .38-55.

    In 1894 the .32-40 Ballard was a popular round.  It had been introduced ten years earlier in the Ballard Union Hill #8 and #9 target rifles, loaded with a 165-grain cast bullet over 40 grains of black powder, resulting in a muzzle velocity of about 1,450 fps.  The long, straight-tapered case allowed for a smooth, even powder burn and resulted in a good reputation for accuracy.  Famed barrel-smith Harry Pope was fond of the round and made it the basis of his .33-40 wildcat.  This round looks somewhat odd by today’s standard but it successfully made the transition into the smokeless powder era, and was offered in a sporadic manner in Winchester lever guns through most of the twentieth century, although mostly in the commemorative editions of which Winchester was so fond.

    The .32-40 was overshadowed in 1895 when Winchester released the Model 94 in the smokeless powder .30WCF, but the New Haven gunmakers weren’t done with .32s yet.  In 1901 they released the Model 94 chambered for the .32 Winchester Special, which took the .30WCF case and expanded the neck to take a .321 bullet.

    At first glance it’s hard to see a reason for this round.  The .32 WS, in its primary load, fired a 170-grain bullet, like its smaller-bored cousin.  Ballistics were near-identical, with the .32WS having less power past 150 yards or so due to the lower sectional density of the bullet.

    But for the hand-loader who was sitting on a big supply of lead and black powder – not an uncommon thing in 1901 – the prevalent wisdom of the day claimed that the .32 had a couple of advantages.  First, its slightly larger bore was claimed to make for easier cleanup of the messy black powder residue.  Also, Winchester used a 1-16 rifling twist in the Model 94s chambered for the .32, as opposed to the 1-10 twist of the.30WCF; this, again, supposedly made for easier cleaning.

    So, the .32 Special may have been just the ticket for the guy with a lot of black powder to burn, or maybe for the occasional recalcitrant old coot who thought that smokeless powder wasn’t here to stay.

    Like the .32-40, the .32 Special hung on through most of the twentieth century, in later years mostly in commemorative Winchester models.

    Another variation came from Remington, who was determined not to be outdone by Winchester.  In 1905 Remington introduced their Model 8 autoloader, followed in 1914 by the Model 14 pump-gun.  Both rifles saw a fair amount of market, and both were chambered for (among other rounds) the .25, .30 and .32 Remington cartridges, essentially rimless versions of the .25-35, .30-30 and .32 Special.  Unlike Winchester, Remington didn’t fiddle around with different twist rates in their guns and the Model 8 auto – the famed old Remington “piano leg” – was fussy about ammo, fouling and hanging up quickly if black-powder loads were used.  It’s hard to see what Remington had in mind with this range of cartridges other than ensuring that they had an offering in every bore size to compete with Winchester.

    Winchester did have another .32 caliber round, the .32WCF, better known as the .32-20.  This was mostly a small-game round of modest power; while it’s a great old cartridge for big hares, bobcats or raccoons, I’m going to restrict this discussion to big-game rifles – in spite of the fact that I’d love to have an original Model 92 Winchester in .32-20 or .25-20 for hunting snowshoe hares and jackrabbits.

    In 1914, as we’ve seen, the shooting world saw some new influences hit, and the thirty-something rifle cartridges were affected along with everything else.

    The Mid-Century

    In 1898 the famous Mauser-Werke, down in the small town of Oberndorf in Bavaria’s Neckar River valley, introduced a world-changing bolt gun, the Model 1898.  We’ve already discussed this rifle and its significance, so now let’s look at the cartridge that was paired with this rifle for use by the German military – the 7.92x57mm, more commonly known as the 8mm Mauser.

    The 8mm Mauser predates the Mauser 98 by ten years, having been first introduced in the 1888 Commission rifle.  The original cartridge was the Patrone 88, launching a .319, 227-grain round-nose jacketed bullet at about 2,000 fps.  As a first-generation smokeless powder cartridge, the Patrone 88 carried over the heavy, round-nose bullet design common in the last generation of black-powder rounds.  In 1895 the bullet/bore size was changed slightly to reduce barrel wear and ease cleaning (supposedly) resulting in the .323 bullet diameter that would stick with the cartridge in military loadings.

    In 1904 and 1905, the cartridge got a facelift; the neck dimensions were slightly altered, and the brass thickness increased a tad.  The new round was loaded with a 153-grain spitzer bullet, producing about 2,700 fps.  This made the new round, the S Patrone, more effective at extended ranges due to the higher velocity and better bullet design.

    The 7.9×57 S Patrone was the standard German military’s rifle and machine gun cartridge in both World Wars.  Interestingly, after the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles forbade the use of the round in civilian arms, but by 1930 or so the German manufacturers were roundly ignoring the Treaty, and the cartridge again became popular in civilian hunting rifles; a rimmed version, the 7.9x57mm IRS, was even developed for single-shot and multi-barreled rifles.

    The 7.9x57mm remains a popular hunting cartridge in Europe today, at least in those jurisdictions that still allow the unwashed peasantry to own rifles.  In the United States, the round gained a significant following when surplus Mausers became widely available at bargain prices; the 8mm Mauser offers performance very similar to the .30-06, and in fact the round is still loaded by many American ammunition makers today.  In fact, the 8mm Mauser remained the only .32/8mm bolt-gun round commercially loaded in the United States until 1978.

    In the latter half of the twentieth century, Big Green had realized a commercial success with its excellent (then) Model 700 rifle and with their 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge.  I always thought the 7mm Magnum a tad overrated; an old elk-hunting friend of mine shot one and was fond of bragging about its velocity and flat trajectory with his favorite factory load, until I pointed out that in my big commercial Mauser I was shooting a .30-06 handload that ran a 165-grain Barnes bullet at only 100fps less than his factory 140-grain 7mm loads, and took to his brother’s chronograph to prove it.

    In the late Seventies, Remington determined that they wanted to compete with Winchester’s beefier .300 and .338 Winchester Magnums.  Remington’s engineers came up with the 8mm Remington Magnum, but they made one key mistake:  They used the full-length .375 H&H case as the basis for their new round, mandating its use only in Magnum-length actions.  The new 8mm round was intended to compete with the excellent .338 Winchester Magnum, but Winchester’s offering had a thirty-year head-start and could be chambered in standard-length actions.  While the 8mm Remington Magnum was a powerful round that could easily handle any game in North America, launching a 200-grain pill at a bit over 3,000 fps, it never gained much following.  The .32/8mm was generally considered a European bore size, and components (chiefly bullets) were not available in as many options as either .30 or .338 offerings.  The 8mm Remington Magnum is still in use today, but as sporting rifle cartridges go, it’s a footnote.

    Today

    Speaking of footnotes; since the new century dawned, the American shooting scene has seen only one new .32/8mm round.

    In 2000, Winchester and Browning introduced American shooters to the .300 Winchester Short Magnum, a fat round with a rebated rim that provided magnum horsepower in a short-action rifle.  The “short fat” case supposedly allowed powder to burn quicker and cleaner, and soon the WMS rounds gained a modest following.  In 2005, Winchester introduced the .325 Winchester Short Magnum, which actually fired a .323 180-grain bullet at about 3,000 fps.

    After its release, Winchester engineers allowed that the .32/8mm bullet was the largest that could be efficiently paired with the WSM case, and so no larger offerings were forthcoming.  Unlike the 8mm Remington Magnum, the .325 WSM did gain some following, and like its older brother, the .338 Win Mag, it is capable of taking any game in North America with the right load.

    The .32/8mm bore diameter has never been overly popular with American shooters.  If any caliber is America’s caliber, it’s the .30.  It doesn’t help that American manufacturers have never really gone in for this bore size in a big way, and it helps even less that one of the few major offerings was a commercial flop.

    But step up one bore size to the thirty-threes, and the picture changes quite a bit.  My own favorite hunting rifle is one of those; I’ve described my .338 Win Mag, the inestimable Thunder Speaker, in these virtual pages before.  So stay tuned for the next installment, in which will examine the Thirty-Threes.

  • Allamakee County Chronicles XI – The Duck Blizzard

    Aix sponsa, the Wood Duck, in (of course) winter.

    Note:  A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)

    No Ducks!

    This One Time…

    The howling November wind screamed in from the frigid, ice-choked river, blasting against the sides of my friend Jon’s rickety old van, rocking the vehicle back and forth.  Jon and I hunched down, pulling our sleeping bags over our heads; the temperature was dropping precipitously.  Our breath plumed out in the light of the Coleman lantern; Jon’s tiny catalytic heater sputtered weakly, lending almost no heat to the freezing interior.  The remnants of a large saucepan of pork and beans bubbled softly on the propane stove; the beans were a last-ditch effort to bring some warmth to our frozen bodies.

    “Man” Jon observed, “We really put ourselves through all this just for a few dang ducks?”

    “You tell me.” I replied. “We didn’t see any ducks today.”

    “That’s for sure.  Whose idea was this anyway?”

    It had in fact been Jon’s idea.

    “Well, maybe we’ll get into the birds tomorrow,” I offered.  “This storm should bring a fresh bunch down from Minnesota.”

    “This storm will probably bring polar bears down from Canada, too,” Jon muttered.  “We gonna hang around and wait for them?”

    “Quit griping and pass the beans.”

    Whose Idea Was This, Anyway?

    The weekend had started with promise.  We had been planning the Great Upper Mississippi Duck Hunting Trip for weeks.  Several Saturdays were spent touching up Jon’s tiny string of decoys, replacing old anchor lines with new, repainting Jon’s tiny johnboat, sorting and packing camping and hunting gear.  When the great day finally came, the excitement had built to a crescendo; we were primed and ready for a legendary duck-shooting weekend.  Jon and I packed his ancient, arthritic Dodge van on Thursday night, rode to school together Friday morning, and on that glorious, sunny, warm Friday afternoon, left school and drove straight to the Waukon Junction entrance to the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge.

    When we arrived at the boat ramp parking area where we intended to camp, the sun was already low in the sky, but the air was warm.  We kindled a large campfire and sat in our T-shirts, lazily toasting hot dogs on green willow sticks.

    Jon leaned back in his lawn chair, yawned pleasurably, and looked up at the sky.  “Hope we get a few clouds tomorrow.  Don’t want to hunt on no blue-bird day.”  Jon’s observation was destined to fall into the ‘be careful what you wish for’ category, but now all was well with the world.

    We stayed up until a little past ten o’clock, drinking bottles of pop, toasting hot dogs, passing a bag of potato chips back and forth.  The johnboat rocked slowly where it lay against the bank, secured with rope to a large tree; the decoys were already loaded; our shooting vests shell loops were filled with newly purchased steel shot shells.  We were ready to go forth and seek web-footed fowl.   Then, with the stars winking companionably overhead, we decided to toss our sleeping bags out on the grass and sleep next to our dying fire; the last thing I remember of that evening was the sight or the glowing bed of coals, and the cooling air of a remarkable early November Indian Summer evening.

    The Next Day

    The air had cooled quite a bit more by morning.  When my little battery alarm clock buzzed at four o’clock, I awoke pulled down inside my old sleeping bag; when I opened the bag a little, a blast of ice-cold air hit my nose.  I opened up a little farther, trying to get a look out over the Mississippi; the stars were gone, and only darkness greeted my searching eyes.  I leaned over and smacked Jon’s sleeping form.

    “Wake up!”  I prodded.  “You got your wish, it clouded over!”

    Jon muttered something under his breath, rolled over, struck a match and lit his Coleman lantern.  The sputtering light glimmered off the crystalline sheen of a hard frost all around us, on the grass, on the fallen leaves, on our sleeping bags.  We hopped about in the pre-dawn blackness, frantically pulling on every scrap of clothing we’d brought, our invective accompanied by the hissing of the propane lantern.  I attempted to rekindle the fire without success; apparently the wood was too cold to burn and matches only sputtered fitfully for seconds before dying out.  Breakfast consisted of toaster pastries, frozen to the consistency of marble.

    “Well,” Jon finally offered, “let’s get the boat loaded and shove off, OK?”  Already in the distance we could hear the drone of outboard motors; competition for good spots was fierce.

    “Yeah, I suppose so!  Hope it warms up some.” I replied, using a piece of frozen pastry to scrape some mud off my boot.

    It was the work of moments to load guns, ammo, decoys and lunch, and then we pushed off into the black icy water.  Jon grabbed the pull-cord for the motor and yanked.

    Nothing.

    With the weak beam of a flashlight older than he, Jon checked the spark plug wire and the gas level.  All fine.  With a frown, he yanked the cord again.  And again.  And again.

    Still nothing.

    We looked at each other with dread.  The wind was slowly pushing us back towards the bank, the johnboat rotating slowly in the sluggish backwater current.

    “Guess we’ll have to row for it, huh?”  I ventured.

    We took turns on the oars.  The exertion soon had us shedding outer garments, sweating even as we squinted into the icy wind.  The eastern horizon was already starting to brighten by the time we got to a decent spot, a U-shaped inlet on a small island.  The bank was hidden by a tall stand of cattails, forming a natural blind.

    The actual by-gosh Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge in winter.

    I cast a nervous eye at the slowly brightening sky as we set out Jon’s ten decoys.  As far as you could see, the sky was an angry mass of low, scudding gray snow clouds.  The river water was icy, black, and choppy with the freshening wind.  A few snowflakes began to drift down as we finished and set up our folding stools behind an improvised screen of cattails.  Still, things seemed brighter once we were set up, ready and comfortable, guns, food and hot drinks at hand.

    “Well, this ain’t so bad, is it?” Jon wanted to know.

    “Hey, this’ll be great!”  I was mostly speaking for my own benefit, sort of a whistling in the dark comment.  “At least it isn’t a blue-bird day, huh?”  We both chuckled.  It was time to get into some birds.

    Trouble was that the ducks weren’t cooperating.

    Our first sighting of waterfowl was a coot, who swam through our paltry decoy layout and picked in a desultory fashion at some waterweed, mildly insulted a large drake mallard decoy, and puttered away.

    Another hour later, the next sign of life came in the form of a muskrat, nosing along through the cattails.  He gazed at us myopically for a moment, panicked and dove with a loud splash.

    “Should have bought some muskrat traps,” Jon groused, “might have got some more action that way.”

    The Storm

    Just as things were starting to get boring, the wind picked up, and a hard, gritty snow began to pelt us.  We had still – still – seen no ducks; in fact, there had been no shots fired that we could hear, despite the hundreds of waterfowlers camouflaged in this stretch of backwater.  With uncommon fortitude, we hunkered down to tough it out.

    At eleven o’clock, we heard a shot in the distance.  Then, another, slightly closer; more followed, a series of shots working their way down the river towards us.  Jon looked at me, wincing comically under the weight of the ice forming on his eyebrows.

    “Birds comin’ in!”

    No birds came in.  Whatever the other hunters were shooting at didn’t make it as far as our stand.

    By noon, our thermos jugs of hot chocolate were drained.  Jon had demonstrated uncommon foresight in placing his propane stove in the boat; together we discovered the logistical difficulties in warming up a ham-and-cheese sandwich over the open flame of a propane burner, using no tools but a mittened hand.  We finally gave up and ate the sandwiches cold.  Jon chipped a front tooth on a bit of frozen ham.

    Around one, the wind picked up.  The cattails behind which we were trying to hide bent flat against the roiled surface of the water.  Jon’s decoys pulled tight against the anchor lines.  Since the spread no longer looked too realistic, with all the blocks facing upwind with military precision, we rowed out and gathered the ten fake fowl in.

    “M-m-m-maybe we’ll still get some p-p-p-pass shooting.”  Jon hoped.

    “I s-s-s-s-ure hope so,” I shivered in reply.  “Hate t-t-t-o think we d-d-did all this f-f-for nothing.”

    Two o’clock came and went, and all the ducks were apparently still in Minnesota.  The temperature, on the other hand, was something right off Hudson Bay, or perhaps points north of that.  A skim of ice now clung to the sides of Jon’s johnboat.  A similar skin of ice now clung to my face.  Jon had chipped two more teeth due to violent chattering.

    Three o’clock rolled around.  Jon’s teeth had finally stopped chattering, because they were frozen together.  Both of us hunched in the boat, our shivering forms covered with snow.  Life had assumed the proportions of a Norse saga, with the two heroic figures battling wind, snow, ice, and the elements in an epic duel.  The only thing missing was the end-goal of our quest, the web-footed fowl we sought, our Golden Fleece, our El Dorado, our Holy Grail.  The wind now drove the snow sideways, blasting it under our parka hoods, ripping away at our tender, frozen skin.

    Four o’clock.  The light was fading from the birdless sky.

    “We may as well start back,” I offered.

    Jon growled in reply, “I reckon we might.  Maybe rowing will warm us up.”  He tossed an angry epithet at the failed outboard motor, which I won’t repeat here.

    Amazing as it may seem, we had a spot of bad luck rowing back to the boat ramp.  If you look at a map of the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge, you’ll note that Iowa lies on the west side of the river; that afternoon, the gale-force wind was howling out of the west.  Several boats with functioning outboards were tacking into wind at angles, trying to fight their way back to the ramp; even powered boats were having difficulty.  Jon strained at the oars to get us out of our inlet and into open water, but the moment he faced into the wind the howling gale spun us sideways, pushing us back east.

    “GET ON AN OAR!”  Jon shouted over the roaring storm.  I hopped onto the middle seat next to Jon; he took one oar, I the other, and we strained away until our muscles popped.  Our progress was painfully slow; we’d make a few yards headway, and a gust of wind would blow us back.  About halfway across the channel, fighting current and wind, we were overflown by the only bird of the day, a hen wood duck, screaming downwind at approximately Mach Two.  Both of us grabbed shotguns, and blasted away at the hurtling form, with predictable results; the duck was probably traveling faster than the shot leaving our gun barrels.  While we were thus engaged, the wind pushed us back a hundred yards.  Groaning in frustration, we took to our oars again.

    “One duck, and it got away clean.”  Jon grumped.

    It was past seven o’clock, and pitch dark, when we finally arrived back at the boat ramp.  My face was frozen into a grim mask, my parka covered with a rime of ice, my arms felt as though I had soaked them in molten lead.

    Against our better judgment, we elected to camp overnight and try again in the morning.  Jon hauled the motor up into the back of his van, and an hour’s tinkering had it sputtering to life; at least we wouldn’t be rowing.  We repasted on still more frozen ham sandwiches, and the aforementioned pork and beans.  The van was still icy cold when we crawled into our sleeping bags, hoping to shiver ourselves warm and try to sleep.  Exhaustion eventually overcame the cold.

    And Then This Happened

    The actual by-gosh Bear Creek, right in front of our house, one January morning.

    Four AM Sunday came all too soon, announced again by the buzzing of my tiny alarm clock.  I cautiously opened the top end of my sleeping bag and poked my nose out.  The air was frigid, and my abused nose protested the exposure to the cold; but there was something else, something it took my sleep-befuddled mind a few moments to catch onto.

    Silence.

    “Hey, Jon!”  I smacked the side of his sleeping bag.  “Hear that?”

    “Whaa?” Jon muttered sleepily.  “Don’ hear nothing.”

    “That’s what I mean, nitwit.”  I shot back.  “The storm stopped.”

    Jon sat up, rubbing his eyes.  “Yeah.  Doesn’t feel as cold, either.”

    We popped open the back door of the van and looked out on a winter wonderland.  A good four inches of snow had fallen, coating everything in white; large flakes continued to drift down silently in the light of the lantern.  The wind had stopped, and all was dead still.  The only break in the blanket of snow was the black muddy river itself, carrying a burden of ice chunks downstream.

    “You want to try to take the boat out in that?”  I asked.

    Jon considered the churning black water, the gray chunks of ice, the still-falling snow.

    “Hell, no!” he reached his decision.  “We crash out a few more hours and go over to the State forest and shoot some grouse.”

    “Works for me.”  I pulled my sleeping bag back up over my head.

    Late that afternoon, I burst in my parent’s front door, a brace of ruffed grouse in hand, and began stomping snow off my boots.  The white stuff was a good foot deep by now.

    “Funny looking ducks,” Dad commented.

    “You should have seen the one that got away.”  I assured him.

    We eventually mastered the art of hunting the Mississippi, but never again did we go out that late in the season.  Although it might be a stretch to say that we learned something as proved when, a week later, the mercury dropped to twenty below and stayed there or lower for three days.  School was cancelled not for snow, but because all the school buses were hors de combat from the Arctic cold.  At seven o’clock the first morning, with the temperature at twenty-eight below, the phone rang; it was Jon on the other end.

    “No school!” he exulted.  “Let’s go shoot some pheasants!”

    “I’m in!”  More than ready to make the most of our free day, I raced for my parka and shotgun.

    It was half-past spring before we thawed out all the way.

  • Profiles in Toxic Masculinity VIII – Ernest Hemingway

    Young Hemingway.

    Profiles in Toxic Masculinity, Part 8

    Appearances Can Be Deceiving

    The young fellow to the right doesn’t look like anything special, does he?  A young man probably away from home for the first time, looking a little uncomfortable in his uniform, looking a little apprehensive about what lies ahead.

    I have a pretty good idea what that feels like, having been in much the same situation myself.

    But this young man, while he may well have felt the way I have described when he posed for this photo, ended up being something else entirely.  This is the young Ernest Hemingway, one of America’s greatest novelists, an adventurer, outdoorsman and bon vivant, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature, one of my personal literary heroes and today’s Profile in Toxic Masculinity.

    His Maculate Origin

    Ernest Miller Hemingway was born to Clarence Edmonds and Grace Hall Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899.  Named for his paternal grandfather, young Ernest attended school in Oak Park, excelling in boxing, track, football and water polo.  He also took a journalism class and worked with the newspaper of his school, the River Forest High School.

    As a youth, Hemingway spent summers with his family in their vacation home near Petoskey, Michigan.  The home was called Windemere, and it was located on Walloon Lake.  This setting was to have great influence on the young man and would become the location for many of his later works, especially the semi-autobiographical Nick Adams stories.  In this setting he grew to love fishing, camping and hunting, which avocations he would pursue throughout his life.

    I’ve been to Walloon Lake.  It’s a rather idyllic setting, even today; a quiet, medium-sized lake surrounded by the deep pine woods of the north.  I would have liked to have spent more time there; it reminded me of the Boundary Waters canoe area, where I spent some time myself as a young man.  On that same trip Mrs. Animal and I went up to Petoskey, where I drank a beer seated on a barstool that Hemingway reportedly occupied regularly as a young man.

    From such humble beginnings came one of America’s greatest writers.

    Hemingway wrote of those early days often, both literally and in his semi-autobiographical Nick Adams stories; in Fathers and Sons he describes an early encounter with an Indian girl named Trudy:

    “Could you say she did first what no one has ever done better and mention plump brown legs, flat belly, hard little breasts, well-holding arms, quick searching tongue, the flat eyes, the good taste of mouth, the uncomfortably, tightly, sweetly, moistly, lovely, tightly, achingly, fully, finally, unendingly, never-endingly, never-to-endingly, suddenly ended, the great bird flown like an owl in the twilight, only it daylight in the woods and hemlock needles stuck against your belly.”

    But Michigan wouldn’t contain the young Hemingway for long.  While the environs of Michigan had ample opportunities for hunting, fishing and screwing Indian girls, all things the young Hemingway enjoyed, there was a larger world out there for the exploring.

    His Adventurous Career

    After graduating high school, the young Hemingway went to work for the Kansas City Star.  That newspaper at the time had a brief style guide:

    • Use short sentences.
    • Use short paragraphs.
    • Use vigorous English.
    • Be positive.

    It was this writing style that would characterize his work for the rest of his life.

    Come 1918, with America’s entry into the Great War, young Ernest attempted to volunteer.  He went in turn to the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps, but was turned down due to poor eyesight.

    Determined to get into action, in 1918 Hemingway answered an advertisement and ended up as a Red Cross ambulance driver on the Italian front.  He arrived in Paris as the city was under bombardment from German artillery and moved quickly on to Italy, where one of his first tasks was removing body parts of civilian workers after a Milan munitions factory explosion, which incident he later described in Death in the Afternoon.

    On July 8th, Hemingway was hit in the legs by mortar fragments.  Despite his wound he refused immediate evacuation, instead moving to assist injured Italian soldiers to safety, for which action he was given the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery.

    He was eighteen years old at the time.

    Later, Hemingway again used his avatar of Nick Adams to describe his own return home in one of the best outdoor stories ever written.  The Big Two-Hearted River, interestingly, does not take place on the Lower Peninsula’s Two-Hearted River but rather on the You-Pee’s Fox River north of the town of Seney; one of my bucket list items is to fish that same stretch of river.  In that story Hemingway describes Nick’s first night in camp:

    “Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blankets. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.”

    Reporter Hemingway.

    After the war Hemingway accepted a position with the Toronto Star Weekly, where he met and started a romance with his roommate’s cousin, Hadley Richardson.  In time, the two married and relocated to Paris, which this time wasn’t under fire from German artillery.  During the Paris years Hemingway hung around with several other well-known literary and artistic figures, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Pablo Picasso.  It was from this period that arose a famous and yet apocryphal exchange between Fitzgerald and Hemingway in which Fitzgerald observed, “…the very rich, they are different than you and I,” to which Hemingway supposedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”  His first son Jack (nicknamed “Bumby,” because why not) was born in 1923 and became father to some of Hemingway’s most famous descendants, the actors and models Margot and Mariel Hemingway.

    It was during this time in Europe that Hemingway first visited Spain, where he became interested in bullfighting; he also published his first successful book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, and his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises.

    In 1927 Hemingway published his third work, Men Without Women, divorced his first wife Hadley, married his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, and moved to Key West, Florida.  He announced that thereafter he would never again live in a big city, which he never did.

    For the next ten years Hemingway split his time between Key West in the winters and Wyoming in the summer.  He described in Wyoming “the most beautiful country I’ve seen in the American West,” and spent a considerable amount of time fishing and hunting deer, elk and bear.

    In this time, he wrote such works as A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon and The Green Hills of Africa, among others.  With his wife Pauline, he embarked on an extensive African safari in 1933, which yielded much of the background for that latter book.

    In 1937, Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance.  After that he sailed his yacht, the Pilar, to Cuba, where he lived for some time in the Hotel Ambos Mundos.  While in Cuba he was inspired (somehow) by a woman named Martha Gellhorn to write his most famous work, For Whom the Bell Tolls, of which book I have a first edition on my bookshelf.  This work, on publication, sold a half-million copies within the first year and resulted in Hemingway’s nomination for a Pulitzer prize.  His success did not translate into his personal life, however; in 1939 he divorced second wife Pauline and married Martha Gellhorn.

    But in 1941, events unfolded that would see Hemingway on some of his greatest adventures.

    His One-Man War

    In Wyoming.

    Hemingway had been fascinated by war and how men behave in war for most of his life.  When the Great War Part Two broke out, he seized the opportunity to see the raw face of war up close and personal.

    Traveling to London as a journalist, he flew several missions cross-Channel with the Royal Air Force.  His wife Martha was forced to seek passage on a munitions ship to join him, which apparently fazed Hemingway very little.  While in London he fell hard for an American correspondent for Time magazine, one Mary Welsh.  In 1945 he would finally divorce Martha Gellhorn and marry Mary Walsh, with whom he would spend the rest of his turbulent life.

    But before that:  In 1944, Hemingway wangled a spot on a ship bound for the Normandy landings.  He was not permitted to go ashore until the second day, although he was within sight of the landings for some time aboard the ship Dorothea Dix.

    When he finally was allowed ashore, Hemingway attached himself to the 22nd Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Lanham.  On the drive to Paris, Hemingway befriended a small band of French partisan fighters in the small village of Rambouillet; he acted, as some of the American infantry claimed later, as their de facto commander until the liberation of Paris.  One American infantryman, Paul Fussel, who would later become a well-known author himself, remarked that “…Hemingway got into considerable trouble playing infantry captain to a group of Resistance people that he gathered because a correspondent is not supposed to lead troops, even if he does it well.”

    Ernest Hemingway was present at the liberation of Paris.  He covered the vicious fighting in the Hürtgenwald where the U.S. First Army clashed with Walter Model’s 275th and 353rd infantry divisions.  He was present at the Battle of the Bulge until a bout of pneumonia forced his evacuation.

    His “leadership” of the French partisans in the summer of 1944 yielded unexpected fruit, as Hemingway was formally charged with a violation of the Geneva Convention for acting as a civilian partisan, but he was acquitted after insisting that he “only provided advice.”

    The professionals in the American Army recognized Hemingway for his courage and his knowledge of military matters, and in 1947 he was awarded the Bronze Star for his courage and willingness to come under fire to cover the movements of the troops.

    After the war, however, Hemingway’s life took a darker turn.

    His Golden Years

    Partying in Cuba.

    After the war Hemingway returned to Cuba.  In 1950 an unconsummated affair with the 19-year old Adriana Ivanovich led to Hemingway’s writing and publishing his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, which was not well received; in a fit of pique, Hemingway produced the novella The Old Man and the Sea, which finally netted him the Pulitzer Prize in 1952.

    In those post-war years, Hemingway’s life continued to deteriorate.  In 1954, during another African safari, he and wife Mary narrowly escaped death in two plane crashes in as many days; these left Hemingway with a severe concussion.  Later that year he suffered burns in a brush fire.  These injuries resulted in the author increasingly turning to alcohol.

    In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature, about which he remarked that “…Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.  Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness for I doubt they improve his writing.  He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.  For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

    This loneliness may have been one of the demons that plagued him in his final years.  He moved to his home in Ketchum, Idaho, where he compiled his observations of Paris into the novel A Moveable Feast.  He grew increasingly paranoid, thinking that the FBI was monitoring him (they were.)  In 1960 he underwent electroshock therapy in the Mayo Clinic, which did little good, and finally, in April of 1961, Hemingway took his favorite shotgun, a 12-gauge double (possibly a Browning Superposed, but that bit is unclear), from the safe and shot himself.

    In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway wrote:  The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

    Unfortunately, Hemingway was one of the ones the world killed.

    He was an interesting man; he faced German bullets with great courage and produced many works of literature that are still regarded as some of the best in American literature.  But his own life was a train wreck; he could find happiness neither in marriage nor in his work.  Success in a chosen field, obviously, is not a panacea.  If we learn nothing else from the life of Ernest Hemingway, we can learn that.

    His Bibliography

    On the cover of Life.

    Below are all of Hemingway’s works (some, obviously, were published posthumously.)  I’ve read most of them and enjoyed them all.

    Fiction Books

    • (1926) The Torrents of Spring
    • (1926) The Sun Also Rises
    • (1929) A Farewell to Arms
    • (1937) To Have and Have Not
    • (1940) For Whom the Bell Tolls
    • (1950) Across the River and into the Trees
    • (1952) The Old Man and the Sea
    • (1970) Islands in the Stream
    • (1986) The Garden of Eden
    • (1999) True at First Light

    Nonfiction Books

    • (1932) Death in the Afternoon
    • (1935) Green Hills of Africa
    • (1962) Hemingway, The Wild Years
    • (1964) A Moveable Feast
    • (1967) By-Line: Ernest Hemingway
    • (1970) Ernest Hemingway: Cub Reporter
    • (1985) The Dangerous Summer
    • (1985) Dateline: Toronto
    • (2005) Under Kilimanjaro

    Short Story Collections

    • (1923) Three Stories and Ten Poems
    • (1925) In Our Time
    • (1927) Men Without Women
    • (1933) Winner Take Nothing
    • (1938) The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories
    • (1947) The Essential Hemingway
    • (1961) The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
    • (1969) The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War
    • (1972) The Nick Adams Stories
    • (1979) 88 Poems
    • (1979) Complete Poems
    • (1984) The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
    • (1987) The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
    • (1995) The Collected Stories (Everyman’s Library)
    • (1999) Hemingway on Writing
    • (2000) Hemingway on Fishing
    • (2003) Hemingway on Hunting
    • (2003) Hemingway on War
    • (2008) Hemingway on Paris

  • Gold Standards IV – The 1851 Colt Navy

    The Perfect Single-Action Revolver

    Resolved:  The 1851 Colt Navy is the standard by which all succeeding single-action revolvers must be judged.  Now that that’s established, let’s take a look at this ground-breaking product of the mind of Colonel Colt, how it changed forever the concept of what a revolver should be, and how it affected every single-action sixgun model that followed – including its famous offspring, the Single Action Army.

    The Forerunners

    The 1849 Colt Pocket Model

    Colt’s production of revolvers up to this point had not yielded a reliable, effective piece for belt holsters.  The Paterson guns were underpowered and had fragile folding triggers; their popularity was mostly due to their being the only effective mass-produced revolver available in the 1830s and 1840s.

    The Paterson guns had five-shot cylinders, but prudence dictated loading only four and leaving the hammer down on an empty chamber; this precaution was required for Colt revolvers up to and including the Single Action Army.  Further, the Paterson guns were loaded using a separate tool for seating bullets.  If that tool was lost, what the shooter was left with was an expensive and rather ineffective hammer.

    The later Colt Walker and First, Second and Third Model Dragoon revolvers were significant improvements.  They had a loading lever attached to the gun under the barrel.  They were also big, powerful guns, firing a .44 caliber ball propelled by a stiff charge of black powder from a six-round cylinder.  The Walker and Dragoon guns were reliable and powerful, but they were also heavy and cumbersome, so much so that many were fitted with shoulder stocks, making rather effective carbines.  But it’s important to note that these were, as named, dragoon pistols, meant to be carried in saddle holsters by mounted troops.

    Contemporaneous with the Dragoon guns were a small selection of Colt “Pocket” revolvers, .31 caliber six-shot revolvers that began with the 1847 Baby Dragoon and continuing with the 1849 and 1850 Pocket Models.  These were, effectively, scaled-down versions of the Dragoon pistols.  Barrel lengths ran from four to six inches, allowing for a decent sight radius for the small-framed guns, but the .31-caliber cylinder put them back in the Paterson level for power; most loads yielded performance roughly equivalent to a modern .32 ACP full-metal-jacket round.

    So as of 1850, your choice in Colt revolvers faced a strange dichotomy; you could either have a big, powerful, heavy horse pistol, or a pocket-sized pipsqueak.  Clearly something new was needed.  Colt decided the answer was obvious:  Split the difference.

    The New Holster Gun

    An original Colt Navy

    In 1851 Colt revealed their new gun.  The 1851 Colt Navy revolver was a scaled-up 1849 Pocket Model, but it differed in several significant ways:  It fired a .36-caliber ball, yielding power roughly equivalent to the later .38 Special 158-grain RNL standard loads; it had a 7 ½” barrel, yielding a good sight radius while maintaining portability; and it was lighter than the Dragoon models, making it easily portable in a belt holster.  It did retain the odd sighting arrangement from the earlier guns, using a small conical brass front sight and a notch on the hammer as the rear sight; despite the rather crude sighting arrangement the new gun quickly developed a reputation for accuracy.

    Another innovation, oddly, didn’t quite catch on; some early Navies were made with a “safety peg” in between chambers on the six-shot cylinder that fit into a recess on the hammer face, allowing the gun to be safely carried with all six chambers loaded.  For some reason this feature wasn’t carried over into later models, and even the famous Single Action Army is only safely carried with the hammer down on an empty chamber.

    Rooster Cogburn’s pair of Colt Navy sixguns, correctly depicted as in Charles Portis’ novel.

    The new revolver was well received, and with good reason.  It was more powerful than the Pocket Models or the Paterson guns, while still being light enough to allow easy carry in a belt holster.  Its grip frame, adapted from the earlier guns, was designed for a one-hand shooting style, making it easily usable either on horseback or on foot.  Further, the curved grip meant that, like later single-actions from Colt, revolved upwards on recoil rather than slamming into the web of the hand.  This made follow-up shots a fraction slower but was much easier on the hand and wrist in repeated shot strings.

    While the majority of Colt Navies were made in the Colt works in Hartford, Connecticut, some were also made in the London Armoury near Vauxhall Bridge; a few other copies were made in Belgium and (unlicensed) in Russia.  They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that holds true for guns as well as people.  During the war, the Confederate Army widely used the Leech & Rigdon revolver, an unlicensed copy of the 1851 Navy made in several locations throughout the war.

    Interestingly, the appellation “Navy” was not intended to denote a sidearm designed for naval use.  In fact, the production 1851 Colt revolvers cylinders were engraved with a scene of the victory of the Second Texas Navy at the Battle of Campeche on May 16, 1843; this decoration was intended to commemorate the Republic of Texas’ purchase of Paterson Colt revolvers, which was Colt’s first major commercial success.  In fact, most of the Colt Navy revolvers were sold to Army and civilian customers.

    The 1851 Navy proved a great commercial success, remaining in production until 1873, when its niche as a fast-handling holster gun was taken by the next Colt Legend:  The Single Action Army.  It’s important to note that while the SAA improved in several ways over the Colt cap-and-ball guns, it retained the grip shape introduced with the Colt 1851 Navy.  You don’t mess with success, and it was largely the shape of the grip that made the Navy handle so well.

    The Gunfighters

    Wild Bill with his pair of Colt Navy revolvers.

    During the years leading up to the Civil War, the 1851 Navy gained a strong following.  The new gun was popular among outdoorsmen and Army officers, but it also gained a powerful following amongst professional guntwists and outlaws.  Why?  The Navy Colt, even today regarded as perhaps the best-handling single-action sixgun ever made, was the ideal model at that time for the gunfighter.

    The 1851 Navy was the best sidearm yet made for the guntwist.  It was lighter than the Dragoons and thus faster to place into operation.  It was more powerful and, with a longer sight radius, more accurate than the pocket models.  It could be carried on a saddle or in a belt holster and was slim enough to be well concealed beneath a long coat or vest if one was of a mind to do so.

    Famous users of the Navy sixgun were legion, including such historic names as John Henry “Doc” Holliday, Jack Hays, Ned Kelly, John “Rip” Ford and Frank Gardiner.  And, not least, one of the West’s more notorious professional guntwists also favored the Navy Colt:  John Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok.

    Bill Hickock and the Navy Colt

    Wild Bill would be a great subject for a future Profile in Toxic Masculinity, but a lengthy discussion of his life is probably well outside the scope of this article.

    Suffice it to say that Hickock was one of the more notorious figures of the Old West; in his career he worked as a scout for the Army, a cattle drover, a wagon master, a lawman, a gambler and, not least, a gunfighter.  He was involved in several high-profile gunfights and was said to prefer the Navy Colt for its power, light weight and accuracy.

    Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hickock took shooting seriously as an art unto itself, reportedly practicing quick-draw, rapid-fire and slow fire for an hour or more each day.  This served him will on July 21, 1865, when he took part in one of the few actual, recorded instances of the kind of quick-draw duel generally only seen in movies.

    Wild Bill’s guns

    On that day Hickock was playing cards in the Lyon House Hotel in Springfield, Missouri.  Another gambler, one Davis Tutt, stood nearby.  Tutt was known to dislike Hickock and was continually lending the other gamblers money as they continued to lose to Wild Bill.

    One thing led to another and, eventually, the two repaired to the street to settle their differences.  They faced each other at the range of 25 yards; when hostilities commenced, Hickock drew his Navy Colt and promptly plugged his adversary between the fifth and sixth ribs.  Tutt shouted to his friends, “Boys, I’m killed,” and collapsed.

    Eventually Wild Bill was himself killed over a card game, yielding the famous “dead man’s hand” legend, but his death was not due to any failure of his pair of Navy Colts, who continued to serve him well until the end.

    Today

    There are a wealth of 1851 Navy replicas for sale today.  Colt themselves reintroduced the 1851 Navy in the late 1970s and made them for a while, but it was a pricey item and had difficulty competing with the many cheaper versions.  I had one for a while, a brass frame model made by an outfit called Early Modern Firearms (EMF), about which I’ve written here before.  It was a neat piece and I shot it until the brass frame deformed so badly that it wasn’t safe to operate.

    The Uberti Navy model.

    Uberti makes a great steel-frame replica.  So does Cimarron.  There is a wealth of replica guns on the market, but I’d give one precautionary note based on my own experience:  Avoid the brass-frame guns if you intend to do a lot of shooting.  A steel-frame gun will last a lot longer.

    As time goes on, I’m thinking more seriously of picking up one of the Uberti replicas.  I’ve handed a few Uberti guns and find them to be excellent pieces, and I still remember my original Navy Colt replica fondly.  As I’ve written before, it was light, accurate, fast to clear leather and slick as a snake.  Even at the age of fourteen, when I bought the gun and started practicing quick-draw and reflex shooting, I could easily see why the old gunfighters preferred this piece.

    The 1851 Colt Navy was a ground-breaking gun, one which set the pattern for all single-action sixguns that followed.  It was a seminal piece, changing the sixgun market and the expectations of sixgun shooters more than any preceding gun.  The Navy Colt also had long-lasting impact on sixgun design, not just by Colt but also Remington and later, Ruger, as well as Great American, Cimarron, Uberti and other replica makers; this qualifies it as the Gold Standard of single-action revolvers.

  • Allamakee County Chronicles X – The Skunk

    Note:  A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)

    Skunks

    Walking a Trapline With Your Pals the Other Day…

    Trapping was a fine old pastime for me and my friends back in the day.  Through most of my teenage years proceeds from my winter trapline kept me in pizzas as well as shotgun and .22 shells most of the year, although around the age of seventeen I gave up the trapline in favor of more consistent and better-paying work on local farms and in town.  I do still have all my traps and some day may take the hobby up again, but for now, my traps are idle.

    My old buddy Jon, on the other hand, went to great lengths to keep his trapline active until he was in his twenties, when a new wife objected to his having to run the line twice a day all winter.  But when we were in high school, he still ran the line, and his trapline was the location for many a city kids’ outdoor education.  On one Sunday when we were seniors in high school, it was Jon’s cousin Albert’s turn.

    Waterloo Creek in winter.

    Albert had already been introduced to late-night cat fishing on the Mississippi.  For our crew of outdoor bums and misfits, this mainly involved running a trotline between two backwater islands, retiring to one island, and sitting around a bonfire drinking beer all night.  (This was back in the days when the drinking age was 18, and many a high school senior was legal.)  He had earned our respect by his sporting acceptance of his introduction to that inveterate outdoor tradition, the Snipe Hunt.

    But on this sub-zero January Sunday at 6AM, the three of us – Jon, Albert, and I – were out running Jon’s trapline on the upper reaches of Waterloo Creek.

    The morning was frigid, but as veterans of the Northeast Iowa winters, we were prepared for it; and the bag already contained two raccoons, a mink, and four squirrels brought down by the inevitable .22 rifles we carried everywhere.  We were walking towards a fox set Jon had set in a fencerow, talking about crows and laughing over the occasional crude joke, when Jon first spotted the skunk.

    Mephitis mephitis, the Striped Skunk

    “Hey, guys, I think I’ve got a skunk in my fox set” Jon warned.

    I peered ahead, made out black fur against the snow, and the telltale white V was moving.  “Yep, you do,” I replied, “And it’s still kicking.”

    “Know what my Dad told me about skunks?”  Albert asked.  Jon and I both gave him a blank look.  “He says if you grab ‘em by the tail and hoist ‘em up fast, they can’t spray you.  Ever try it?”

    Mephitus mephitus, the Striped Skunk.

    I immediately saw the opportunity to test that assertion.  “I never heard that, but heck, Jon, if Albert’s Dad said it’ll work, I think you ought to try it.”  Jon gave me a baleful look – Albert’s Dad ran a hardware store in town and wasn’t exactly renowned for his vast knowledge of wildlife habits.  “What’s more, you’ve got the perfect opportunity right there.  That skunk’s still alive, and he’s facing the other way – you can probably sneak right up on him down the fencerow.  And we can put him in your trapline sack.  Here, I’ll put your ‘coons and the mink in my coat.”

    “I think you ought to do it, man.”  Jon replied.  “You’re a lot better at sneakin’ than I am.”

    “Can’t do it, sorry” I answered with a grin.  “New coat.  If I get skunk on it, it’ll be my hide.”  That was a good dodge – I made a mental note to always wear a piece of recently purchased clothing when on Jon’s trapline.

    “Go on and try it, Jon.”  Albert persisted.  “Otherwise we’ll never know if it works.”

    Jon was hesitant, but on some instinctual level he knew his reputation was at stake, such as it was.  With a frown, he handed me his .22.

    “Hold this.  I don’t want skunk all over it, too.”  I guess he wasn’t too optimistic.

    To give credit where credit was due, few people were as sneaky as Jon, and on a skunk hunt, his sneakery was unsurpassed.  He drifted down the fencerow like a puff of smoke on the breeze, placing each foot with great care, freezing every time the skunk lifted its head.  He worked his way right up behind the skunk, and in no time, he was impossibly close, the skunk still oblivious; and then Jon’s gloved hand flashed out, grabbing the skunk’s tail and yanking it skywards.

    Wonder of wonders!  It worked!

    The skunk dangled, popping its teeth and growling.  A faint drift of odor escaped, but no more.  “Get over here!” Jon shouted, “And bring that sack!  I don’t believe this works!”  We ran to his side, hooting with praise for our hero of the moment, and Jon grinned broadly in triumph.  We removed the #2 fox trap from the skunk’s front leg – there was nothing but a little bruising on the skunk.  And then, into the sack he went.

    Amazingly, the skunk settled down in the sack, facing his predicament with a certain philosophical air.  After we finished the morning’s run, we took the skunk to Jon’s parent’s place.  Jon had an old abandoned rabbit hutch, and the skunk went into it.  A pan of water, a little dog food, and the hutch was hidden in the back of the Hooper’s machine shed.  After a day or two he became quite reasonable, only threatening for a moment with his upraised tail when Jon came in with more dog food.

    But a captive skunk, weaponry intact, was too good an asset to go unused.  In those days, “de-scented” skunks had a certain popularity as pets and could be quite tame and gentle if raised from kits.  Our skunk, though, was an independent, tough old male, and all his natural defenses were in place – which, after a few days, began to tell on the back end of the machine shed.  Jon knew that only a matter of days remained before the skunk was discovered.  We had to come up with something good, and fast.

    The Plan

    The inspiration.

    It came to us one day at school, as Jon, Albert and I were hanging out in the parking lot behind the school building.

    “You guys going to the dance this Saturday?”  Albert asked.  Jon and I responded with amused snorts – we weren’t the kind of guys who went to school dances.  “Well, I’m not.” Albert continued.  “I got no date, and I don’t care anyway.  Nothing there but bad disco music and the school gym full of all the “popular” kids talking about how great they are.”

    Jon’s expression changed, suddenly; I could almost see the light bulb go off, right over his head.

    “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”  I asked him.

    Jon grinned back at me.  “You bet I am!  You think we can do it?”

    “I think so.” I answered, feeling the beginnings of a plan.  “You know what, Albert?  You’re going to the dance after all.  You don’t need a date.  It’ll be worth it.”

    Albert looked skeptical, but I won him over with the immortal words that would have immediately spelled GREAT DANGER to anyone who knew Jon and I a little better.  “Trust me!”  I assured him.

    He really should have known better.

    The night of the big dance, Jon and I saw to it that Albert was all fitted out – shiny blue disco shirt, gold chain, white pants, white shoes.  “How do I look?”  Albert asked.

    Jon and I looked at each other, both of us clad as usual in worn jeans, engineer boots, black t-shirts and denim jackets.  “Uh, you look great, Al, no kidding” we assured him.  “You’ll be a chick magnet.  No fooling,” Jon added.

    “Now,” I reminded Albert, “Remember – at exactly ten-thirty, you’ve got to go around and open the back door next to the bleachers.”

    “I don’t know about this, guys.  Are you sure this is a good idea?”  Albert’s second thoughts threatened to ruin our whole evening, so Jon and I jumped on it hard.  “No, it’ll be great!  Trust us!”

    Albert looked skeptical.  He wasn’t a complete fool.  Still, he went off to the dance, ticket in hand, doubts about his sanity in mind.

    The Execution

    Ten-thirty eventually rolled around.  Jon and I were waiting silently outside the back door to the gym, using the dumpster for cover.  In Jon’s hand was the original trapline sack, once again containing the skunk.  Right on time, the door opened, and Albert strolled out.

    “Look, guys, I don’t think…” Albert let out a “YOWP” as I grabbed his arm, pulled him out of the way, and caught the door before it could swing shut.  Jon, reacting with a speed rarely seen in him at any time, reached in the sack and grabbed the skunk’s tail.  The skunk came out of the bag enraged and was immediately tossed in through the open door.  I slammed the door home, hearing the latch click into place.

    “Oh, boy!”  Jon exulted.  “This oughtta be good!”

    For a long moment, nothing happened.  We heard the faint strains of the Bee Gees stop suddenly.  There was silence, a moment of silence, but only that brief moment.

    Then, as the saying goes, all Hell broke loose.

    “SKUNK!” came the shout, form a dozen or more teenage throats at once.  The sound of pounding feet roared inside the gymnasium, all headed for the front door on the opposite side of the building.

    “Suppose we better get the hell outta here, huh?” Jon noted, and we all thought that a wise idea, so we legged it on away form the door and up to the shelter of a row of shrubs on the edge of the school property.  From there we were treated to a rare live-action re-enactment of a Pepe LePew cartoon.

    From what we were able to find out later, Monsieur Skunk hit the floor in the gymnasium in a state of confusion.  That didn’t last long – his confusion turned to rage, possibly at being subjected to bright lights, loud disco music, and around fifty teenagers dancing to the questionable talents of the Bee Gees.  (I can’t blame him for being enraged at the disco music, myself.)  Being a skunk, he reacted as skunks do.  In fact, he reacted with great abandon, casting all restraint to the winds and firing wildly in all directions; no skunk had ever found himself faced with a more target-rich environment.  His reaction was so profligate, in fact, that the entire gymnasium had to be repainted and the wood floor re-varnished.  The school’s janitor resigned in protest; contract workers had to be imported from Waterloo and lavishly paid to restore the gym to some semblance of usability, although the odor lingered for months, maybe years; in fact I would not be surprised if one could still detect it today.

    But back then:  as we watched from the safety of the bushes, the doors were thrown open and a flood of teenagers, teachers, and chaperons flooded out of the building and onto the snow-covered lawn.  Gagging, screeching, and retching, the flood of bodies continued for several seconds.

    We observed several notable performances.  One such was particularly satisfying.  My old girlfriend, Rhonda Walters, staggered onto the lawn clutching the arm of her latest, one William Jeffries.  Master Jeffries came from a family with money, and so was enthusiastically approved by Rhonda’s father as being a much better companion than a certain longhaired woods bum.  So, it was with a certain vengeful glee that I watched Will turn to Rhonda, adopt a thoughtful expression, and then suddenly throw up on Rhonda’s white strapless dress.

    Nasty dousings in skunk spray have been known to have that effect.

    Being vomited upon tends to exacerbate the effect.  Rhonda threw up in return, right onto Will’s shiny red shirt.

    Jon nudged me in the ribs, grinning.  “You see that?  Watch ‘em all go now.”

    All around the unhappy couple, teenagers looked upon the spectacle and reacted in kind.  Even the kids who hadn’t been hit directly were caught up in the wave; when everyone around you is discharging their latest meal into the snow, it becomes difficult to keep from following suit.  The sounds of retching reached us in our hideout.  We did our best to keep from laughing, but the crowd below us wouldn’t have heard a 747 revving its engines in our hedgerow hideout.  The school lawn was littered with bent, retching teenagers.

    Several started scrubbing themselves frantically with snow; the temperature being right around ten degrees, the snow didn’t have much effect.  Several others abandoned the scene to race for cars and pickups, presumably in search of large cans of tomato juice.  A few who lived nearby just plain ran.

    The back door stood open now, where several people had crashed out. The skunk, his anger discharged in spectacular fashion, strolled casually out and made his way into the nearby woods.

    Then, through the chaos, came the imposing figure of Mr. Dean, the vice principal.  Seemingly immune to both the skunk stench and the display of serial vomiting, Mr. Dean strode through the spectacle like an avenging angel, shouting, “They’re near that back door someplace!”  Pointing to three of the larger teen boys still on their feet, he ordered, “You, you and you!  Come with me!”  With uncanny instinct, he headed for our row of shrubs.

    “Time to go!”  Jon and Albert were of a similar mind, and we slipped quietly down the slope of the hill to our rear.  With all the skill gained in a lifetime of stalking sharp-eyed squirrels and wary, wily deer, we evaded our pursuers and arrived back at Jon’s van an hour later.

    The best part of the entire exercise was our satisfaction in having completely one-upped the previous year’s senior class, who had only managed to turn loose a half-grown feeder pig into the same dance.

    The Aftermath

    It’s fortunate that a certain burden of proof is required, even for school systems that suspect a certain pair of young miscreants in the commission of a heinous act.  It was widely known that Jon ran a trapline, and skunks will get caught in traps; it was widely known that the two of us had what were at best twisted senses of humor.  It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, but the only witness that could place us at the scene – Albert – was likewise incriminated, and there’s no Fifth Amendment in detention proceedings.  Albert kept his mouth shut.  Reprisals from our classmates were limited to a few hallway scuffles; for good or bad, we were a pair of big, tough country kids, and that discouraged physical confrontations.  Mr. Dean insisted that he’d get even with the culprits if it took him the rest of his life.  At this distance in time, forty years later, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s still looking for evidence of our guilt.

    And so, eventually, the whole thing blew over, at least until the following winter, when Jon managed to capture a badger.  But that’s another story.

  • What’s up, Doc?

    The Moon, Jupiter, Jupiter’s moons through a binoculars-October 2019

     

    Editor’s Note: Some photos may be enlarged by clicking on them.

     

    Well, after the “downer” tone of my last piece, this piece will look up and away. The night sky captured the imagination of our ancestors. Every known culture has used the sky to capture reminisces of some of their tales. Every week Not Adahn pitches us on how the stars foretells our futures. But in the modern world many of us have lost our connections to the wonders of the night skies. We can go inside where it is warm and well-lit and we can amuse ourselves in ways that were undreamed of even 50 years ago. Our cities have also robbed the night sky of the ability to grab our attention. Ambient light obscures our chance to even see what is visible. None of this is bad. Warm, lit evenings with plenty of food and entertainment has been a goal of mankind for thousands of years. But sometimes you may wonder “What is that light up there in the night sky?”

    You can observe the night sky year round but the summer and fall are easier times to break the problem of not seeing the night sky. During the summer the night sky faces to center of our galaxy and the night sky has lots of things to look at. The evenings are warm. The autumn in some ways is even more favored because many people hunt and are arriving at dark locations away from cities before dawn and remaining until well after sunset. Others are out for morning or evening walks and night clings longer so the opportunity to see the night sky is more easily presented.

    This article is for the casual sky observer. I assume the readers have no precision telescopes, special software or the other equipment that serious amateur sky observers use. If you have an internet connection (if you don’t you’re not reading this anyway), working eyes, binoculars, maybe a spotting scope or a kid Xmas gift grade telescope* you have all the equipment you need.

    (* This is a smaller refraction telescope with no electronics and generally with pedestrian quality lenses. Typically they have low magnification around 35X and higher magnification around 80-90X.)

    What will you see when you look up? Stuff. Most of which is beyond the care and concerns of humanity. Some of the stuff is from mankind and can be humbling to see it whiz along. Some of it is our neighbors. The rocky or gassy planets which formed around us. Maybe you’ll see a visitor from the icy far suburb of the Solar System. I guarantee that you’ll see our companion orb. With patience and luck maybe you’ll see reminders of the power of the universe to alter life, planets or entire star systems.

    One word of warning. What you will see in with your own eyes is one sense, disappointing. You won’t observe the rich colors, incredible details and literally otherworldly viewpoints in the best images released by the elite observatories, NASA, or the ESA. But that will be more than made up by the fact you will be seeing the objects first hand with your own eyeballs and mind. You will be able to combine the seen with the presented and hopefully be able to better enjoy both.

    What do you need to observe the night sky? 1) A night without solid cloudiness.; 2) Your eyeballs at a minimum; 3) Something to tell you what is out where and when. (More in a bit); and it helps if 4) you have some type of optical aid. This doesn’t need to be a $10,000 telescope. It can be a decent pair of binoculars, a kid xmas present type telescope, a spotting scope, or even a decent rifle scope. The more magnification and light gathering ability device has the more detail it will enable you to see. It will also help if you give your eyes some time to adjust to the night away from lights.

    This scribbling will be broken down into Solar System sky objects and manmade objects. I’ll try to keep the jargon down so as the Hitchhikers Guide advises, “Don’t panic”. So let’s head out to the deer stand, or out for the evening walk, and make sure to look up from time to time.

     

    The Solar System and Manmade Sky

    Let’s start with the easy stuff in our immediate neighborhood of the universe. The Sun, Moon, planets, comets, manmade stuff and others. Seeing these objects rates from really easy to challenging (or lucky). For the most part these things are bright, it is easy to observe their movement, and they show details even with the most basic binoculars or scopes.

     

    The Moon

    This is the earliest known night sky object and for the most of a month it takes no great skill to find it, even in a city. The Moon is a delight to observe as the terminator (line of light and night) crosses the lunar surface. The area around the terminator is full of shadows which allows surface features to “pop” into view. Mountains thousands of feet tall cast their shadows miles deep into the cooled lava “Sea” that surround them. Large craters will have bight rims with inky black interiors, and occasionally you’ll see the top of a crater’s central peak poking into the sunlight from the dark void.

    So when is it best to observe the moon? Any time you can see it, except for the 4 days or so around a full moon. During that period the moon appears flat because the light doesn’t cast noticeable shadows
    Through binoculars or your scope the view changes by the hour as the edge of the night rushes along the surface. One cold, dark, and clear pre-dawn in Montana I got into position and waited for daylight and the elk. While I tried to stay, warm, quiet, and unscented I had a great view of the terminator and as I looked at the moon through my binos I caught the moment the sun rose high enough to pass through a breach in a crater wall and send a narrow beam of light spilling across the crater floor.

    Even with no optics the face of the moon changes between nights. If the moon is already up at sunset, you are approaching the full moon. If at sunset, it is the full moon. If there is a noticeable period between sunset and the moon- the moon is waning. Finally if the moon is bright and high in the sky around noon, it is about a week to no visible moon. AKA- the new moon.

    Fun fact about the Moon. Because of a small wobble in the lunar orbit an Earth observer over time can see almost 60% of the lunar surface as the wobbles (libration) let us peek around the corner of the Moon. Also, most lunar sea surface material is about the same color as a middle aged asphalt parking lot.

     

    The Moon’s features seen through binoculars

     

    The Sun

    In short don’t look at the sun without eye protection.  Especially now since even there are very few sunspots to see (aka solar minimum).  Welding goggles are not usually dark enough to protect you since most commercial welding goggles are a level 12 darkness and the sun requires level 14.   Small “XMAS Telescopes” usually come with a “solar filter” which can be used with the lowest power lens configuration.  In other times you can carefully observe the Sun’s face for sunspots.  Right now the risk is probably not worth the view.  But, unless you have specialized equipment, the Sun is best observed online from a solar observatory website.   There are three exceptions to this: solar eclipses, planetary transits, and the green flash.  I’ll discuss solar eclipses later.

    Planetary transits are the rare occasions when Mercury or Venus actually are seen crossing the face of the Sun for a few hours.  Because the planets don’t follow the Solar equator the geometry required for the Earth to experience this view are few and fleeting.   The last transit by Venus was June 5, 2012 and was fun to see.  The next will be December of 2117.  A Venus transit was how the atmosphere was discovered and that led to a rush to have observing sites around the world in 1769.  Today science has moved beyond transits for scientific purposes but watching the progress of a planet across the face of the Sun puts the scale of the Solar System in perspective.  While my bet is that I’ll miss 2117 transit of Venus, I am holding out hope for the Mercury’s November 11, 2019 transit of the Sun.  The transit will be visible from all of North America and much of Europe. Japan, you’ll have to catch it online.  I live near an east facing beach so I’ll be able to experience it at dawn.  What you’ll see is a black dot that moves across the face of the Sun.  This website will provide you the information for your location including where on the solar disk you will see Mercury.  If you miss this transit your next opportunity will be November 13, 2032.

     

    Venus Transit 2012

     

    To observe the “green flash” you need an unobstructed view of a flat horizon at sunset or sunrise.  It works best if you use an ocean or a Great Lake.  I have heard people have seen the “green flash” on the Great Plains, but I had no luck when I lived in the KC area.

    A “green flash” occurs because the atmosphere acts like a prism and just as the solar disk disappears (appears) at the horizon the prism causes a 1-2 flash of green to appear at the top of the solar disk.  Again, a fun thing to see if you are aware and lucky.

     

    Green Flash over Pacific Ocean

     

    Jupiter

    In the current night sky at sunset Jupiter reigns.  Venus is usually brighter but right now it is close to the Sun and hides in the glare of sunset.  In contrast if you look west of south after sunset the largest planet with be the first “star” to come out and remains the brightest object in that part of the sky.  With the naked eye Jupiter is very bright silver white “star”, while through even the smallest binoculars it appears clearly as a disk instead of a point of light like a star.  You can do a quick check if this.  Find Jupiter and check it out.  Now make a closed fist and extend your arm.  Place it just below Jupiter and look at 5 o’clock. That bright red star is Antares. Now look at Antares in your binos.  Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky.  It a red super giant of about 12 solar masses only about 550 light years away and if it swapped places with the Sun it would fill the Solar System until midway between Mars and Jupiter.  It is truly big. Even that close and big Antares is a mere pinpoint of light.  Every major planet is clearly a disk and not a point of light. (See opening picture)

    In a dark location with good binos (with large front lenses to gather light) you can see Jupiter’s four large moons.  They appear as distinct “stars” along Jupiter’s equator.  With any scope these stand out.  Depending where they are in their orbits you can see up to four of the moons Galileo discovered.  All four are fascinating for their own reasons, but the inner two moons (Io and Europa) move so quickly that observing even an hour apart will reveal clear movement.  With a scope as well you’ll be able to make out some of Jupiter’s banding which look like brownish stripes north and south of the equator.   Jupiter takes about a year to move one zodiacal constellation.  So once you find it, it’ll be easy to follow.

     

    Jupiter and four largest moons through a small telescope

     

    If you look at Jupiter or Saturn near the horizon you may be tempted to say, “WTF Double Eagle?  Either you lied about where the moons (rings) are, or the planet tipped over.  Not to fear. This is just an optical illusion because you are essentially looking sideways at the planet.  Look closer to when it is at the highest point it’ll reach in the night sky (AKA zenith) and things will appear normally.

    Fun Fact: The gas giant Jupiter rotates so rapidly (a day is about 12 hours) that even though binos it visibly bulges along the equator.

     

    Io eclipse on Jupiter’s southern hemisphere from Juno pass Sep 2019

     

    Venus

    Venus is the Earth’s nearest twin in size and our closest planetary neighbor on average.  (Depending on locations in their respective orbits both Venus and Mars can be closer on any given day.) Because Venus is closer to the Sun it sometimes appears in the morning and other times in the evening (aka Morning and Evening Stars) and can never appear all night like the plants farther from the Sun than us.  Venus is even brighter than Jupiter and at peak times on moonless nights can cast a faint shadow.

    Unfortunately, Venus is not a fascinating view through your optics.  It appears as a silvery disk but with no moons so you don’t get the obvious movements as the moons parade around Jupiter.   The only real trick Venus will display for you is that it goes through phases like the moon, less a “full” Venus.  The fuller Venus appears, the farther it is from Earth; and the more crescent it appears, the closer it is. Because of this, the apparent brightness of the planet remains fairly constant.  A crescent Venus is noticeably larger in your optics than an almost full Venus.

    Venus is not much of a visual treat right now since it just passed behind the Sun.  It sets within minutes of the Sun and is not visible to the casual observer.  In a few months it will return to easy visibility.  In fact, Venus can be seen during daylight hours and is sometimes reported as an UFO near the Sun.  Here is how and where Venus will appear after sunset for the next few months.

    Venus phases and location late 2019

     

    Fun Fact: Venus’s surface runs about 900F and the atmosphere is so dense that the pressure at the surface is the same as the deepest parts of the Marianas Trench.  The odd thing is that the planet rotates so slowly that a Venusian day is longer than a Venusian year.

     

    Venus surface in true colors from USSR Venera 14

     

    Saturn

    Saturn is the third brightest planet and is brighter than almost every star.  As a bonus, now it is near Jupiter in the evening sky so it is really easy to find.  To find Saturn locate Jupiter.  Using the same closed fist stretched out arm technique, go left a bit over two fists and up slightly (10 o’clock position).  That yellowish star is Saturn.  Through even a small scope Saturn will grab your attention because the rings are right there and easy to make out.  (Most binos make Saturn look like a yellowish football.  If you have high quality lenses and steady them against something you can just make out the rings in good conditions.)  Saturn and Jupiter are slowly closing together so over the next months they will be easier to see together. In December 2020 they will appear to almost touch they will be so close together in the night sky (AKA conjuction).

    Saturn’s rings are “open” and easier to see now.  In fact even a cheap telescope will reveal that there are “rings” and not a ring.  As the years continue on we will move more in line with the rings and they’ll almost disappear.  Then they’ll open to the other side.  (14 year cycle).  It takes a bit over two years for Saturn to move between constellations which is why Jupiter will “catch up” next year.

    Saturn through low power scope in poor conditions

     

    Fun Fact: Gallieo was the first to observe the planets though a telescope and discovered Jupiter’s moons and phases on Venus.  He could only make out that Saturn bulged and it was a later scientist who discovered the nature of the rings.  The rings are almost all small pieces of water ice ranging 1cm to 1M in size and the most visible rings are ~63,000 km wide, but only 10-30 meters deep.

     

    Night side of Saturn from Cassini. Earth visible at 10 o’clock through the rings.

     

    Mars

    Mars may not be our closest neighbor planet, but it is the most “earthlike” neighbor with seasons, clouds, snow, occasionally running water, and hosts of other similarities.  In the night sky Mars is an odd duck because it zips through the constellations (a Mars year is 687 Earth days) and changes brightness and apparent size dramatically over a short period of time.  Right now?  It is so close to the Sun it is hidden in the glare.  Come March it’ll escape the Sun’s glare to appear as a bright red point of light around dawn.  By as the months go on the distance between us and Mars will fall until October when we will be only 0.4 AU apart and Mars will be bright bloody red and one of the brightest objects in the sky.

    Mars through a year with the moon for scale.

     

    Through your binos or spotting scope Mars appears a red disk (Mars’ surface is covered with rust colored rocks).  As the months go on the disk will get larger and the white polar cap will become easier to see.   You need to keep your eye on Mars because it crosses constellations about every other month unlike the dawdling Jupiter (1 per year) and Saturn (1 every other year).  It also spends part of the year “going backwards” as the Earth catches up as it passes the planet.

    Fun Fact:  It has the largest known mountain, Olympus Mons, which is visible through a moderate sized telescope.  It was discovered on Earth in the 19th Century and named Nix Olympia but it was an unknown object. It took until Mariner 9 orbited in Mars in late 1971 to determine what it was.  Olympus Mons is a shield volcano that stands 14 miles high above the base and covers a surface area almost equal to the size of France.  In comparison, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is the tallest volcano on Earth and rises only 6.3 miles from the ocean floor to the summit.  Olympus Mons weighs so much that it has deformed the crust and sits in a 2km deep depression surrounding mountain.

     

    Curiosity photo of Murray Butte 2019.

     

    First photo from the surface of Mars July 1976.

     

    Mercury

    For your basic sky observer Mercury is like Venus but more so.  With a year of only 88 days it rapidly transitions between the morning and evening sky.  Because it is closer to the Sun it never gets far from the horizon.  But sometimes when you are out and the day is transitioning a “star” is seen low in the sky.  If the time of the year is right you are looking at Mercury.  Through our optics it appears as a small oddly shaped disk or crescent similar to Venus but much smaller. See “Transits” (above) to take advantage of the rare opportunity to watch Mercury cross the face of the Sun.

    Fun Fact: Mercury is smaller than some moons.  Both Ganymede (Jupiter) and Titan (Saturn) are all larger than Mercury.  Ice has been detected in several craters near Mercury’s poles in pockets that are perpetually in darkness.

     

    The Outer and Minor Worlds

    How about the rest of the solar system?  The planet Uranus is dimly visible to the naked eye in a dark location and “good seeing”.  (“Good seeing” is a dark night with little to no wind and a steady temperature gradient through the atmosphere so the atmosphere is moving very little.)  But for the casual observer Uranus is best seen when it is near an easier see thing.  During a lunar eclipse in 2014 Uranus was right below the moon and any observation of the moon meant you couldn’t miss a gray green disk.  That disk was Uranus.  My suggestion is don’t try and find Uranus without the aid of an easy object nearby.  Many websites will be happy to let you know when these days are approaching.

     

    Total lunar eclipse and Uranus 2014
    (Uranus at 5 o’clock)

     

    Fun Fact:  Early in the Solar System Uranus was smacked by another object near the same size.  Now it rotates on the side and essentially rolls around the Sun.  Uranus was not recognized as a planet by early astronomers and shows up as a “star” in several sky maps.

    Neptune is invisible to the naked eye but like Uranus can be found with optics when it is near something else.  One morning when I was out before dawn getting into position for a turkey hunt Neptune was near the crescent Moon.  In my binos I could make it out as a very small bluish disk.  Even with a small scope that is the best you can hope for.

    Neptune through small telescope

     

    Fun fact:  Neptune was discovered by two astronomers independently doing the math on small perturbations of Uranus.  It has been visited only once by an Earth launched space probe.  Voyager 2 passed by the planet in 1989.

    The dwarf plant Pluto.  Forgetaboutit.  Even through the largest earth based scopes Pluto is a speck of light that can only be made out by how it moves over several nights.

    Fun Fact: With a very elongated orbit, Pluto actually moves inside of Neptune’s orbit for 20 years every orbit (248 Earth years).  The last time it did so was 1979-1999 ce.

    The dwarf planet Ceres is another dwarf planet but is more conveniently located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.  Under almost perfect conditions it can be made out as a dim star.  It is not worth the effort to find unless you start getting hooked by amateur astronomy.

     

    Eclipses

    I’ll discuss only the two most common, solar and lunar.  Solar eclipses only take place during a new moon, because that is when the moon is directly between us and the Sun.  Because of the tipping of our orbits it is only sometimes the Moon’s shadow crosses the earth’s surface.

    The next totality that will cross the US is April 8, 2024 and totality will cross Texas and cross west of the Appalachians through eastern NY and curve into eastern Canukistan.

    Solar eclipses – North America

     

    Lunar eclipses only take place at a full moon and only sometimes for the same reasons.  But since the earth’s shadow is so much larger the area for observed totality covers a larger part of the planet and for a longer time.   As the bulk of the Earth’s shadow hits the face of the moon it starts turning dark, usually orange-ish, but rarely black.  This is because our atmosphere always bends some light through.

    The next lunar totality for the US is January 21st.  The mainland will be in position for the entire thing, while on my island hideaway the moon will rise a bit before totality and I’ll get to observe the rest.  Convenient and warm for me, if not for some of you.

    Occultation

    These are when one object crosses in front of another.  It is the astronomy equivalent of the saying, “Standing there makes you a better door than a window. “  Almost all of the most visible of these events take minutes to a few hours and cover a fairly small portion of the surface of the Earth.  There are websites that highlight the most noteworthy of these.  No real science to be learned, but they are fun to see.  Watching a planet disappear and reappear from behind the moon is a kick.  Visible from naked eye to scope.

    Saturn about to go behind the Moon 2014 through small telescope

     

    Meteors and Meteorites

    A meteoroid is a small bit of metal, stone or a metal/stone mix in space. A meteor is a meteoroid burning up in the atmosphere.  A meteorite is a meteoroid that makes it to the surface of the Earth.  The average visible meteorite was the size of a marble when it hit the atmosphere.  Most meteoroids burn up at 75-50 miles above the Earth.

    Seeing a meteor is a matter of chance and luck.  You can improve your odds by watching after local midnight so your chunk of Earth is facing our direction of movement.  The other way is to watch during known periods of “meteor showers”.  (See a good website for info.) These are the times when the earth passes through the orbital paths of larger comets and sweep up the dust and small objects left behind comets in their flight.  If you get really lucky you can watch a fireball which is a larger meteor burning brightly. Sometimes they leave a visible smoke path, or even break apart into multiple pieces while you watch. The best fireball I ever saw was one early morning in 1992.  We were out for the Javalina hunt. I had left camp and was walking up a hill to get into position when the hill in front of me blazed white and I saw my shadow.  I quickly turned around and saw a huge fireball traveling across the sky.  As I watched it broke into 4 pieces and kept going, eventually blinking out far to the southwest.  The light from the still hidden Sun caught the smoke and lit it up in the pre-dawn sky.  I thought it was space debris but when I checked with the local observatory a few days later they confirmed it as a meteor.

    Fireball meteor

     

    As much as many of us hoped for the “Sweet Meteorite of Death” in 2016 and will do so again in 2020 the odds are small that the next extinction level meteorite strike will happen then.  You can play around with this website and find how your very own SMOD will impact you.  Have fun with it.  Can you design the next KT event?

    Fun Fact: The change of definition from meteoroid to small asteroid was formally defined only in 2017.  A meteoroid is grain sized to one meter in size. Smaller size are micrometeoroids and larger are small asteroids.

    Comets

    Here is Comet 1A.  Comets are dirty snowballs left over from the formation of the solar system.  Well outside of the planets there is a large cloud of dust and ice stretching out over 100,000 Astronomical Units (AU = roughly the distance from the Sun to the Earth).  This cloud is known as the Oort Cloud and is the home of the comets.  Passing objects and stellar events give the cloud gravitational nudges and some of these nudges eventually result in a dirty snowball to start to fall into the Sun’s gravity well.  (It may take millions of years between the nudge and the solar pass.)  Those snowballs which come in close to the Sun start to warm up and give off ionized gas and dust.  These are known as comets.  Every year dozens of comets are found and most remain faint and fuzzy telescope objects, but every few years (on average) a comet becomes a bino and naked eye object.  About once a decade a comet will shine bright and luminous thus becoming a spectacular sky show.  Since most bright comets take a long period to orbit the sun their arrival is a once in a lifetime event.  Even Halley’s Comet takes 76 years per orbit so at best you might get two chances to see it.  Spectacular Comet Hale-Bopp passed within 1 AU of Jupiter so the orbit was considerably shortened.  If you are around in 4380ce Hale-Bopp should put on a good a good show.

    Right now the night sky doesn’t feature any worthwhile comets for the casual observer.

    Comet Wirtanen- average visible comet Nov 2018

     

    Comet McNaugt in daylight Jan 2007

     

    Aurora

    Aurora form when Solar Wind particles hit the Earth’s magnetosphere and then ionize.   Lower energy particles are blue and green while high energy particles display red. The map shows the band of common occurrence over North America.  Especially energetic solar storms can result in red aurora appearing throughout the continental USA.       More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora

     

     

    Manmade Stuff

    There is a bunch of it up there, so much in fact that some areas of prime “real estate” are getting downright crowded.  Most manmade stuff is not easily visible to a casual observer, but some of it is.  The biggest and brightest object is the International Space Station (ISS).  This is my recommendation to try and find first.  It is BRIGHT, moves relatively slowly and is impressive.  It is often mistaken for an airplane heading to a nearby airport.  When you see the ISS, you will know you saw it.  Conveniently the nature of the ISS orbital parameters means that it will be visible for multiple days from your location before it goes dark again.  The ISS will be visible from your location during passes for several hours before dawn and after dusk.  I recommend using Heavens-Above.com for finding your visible passes.  (More info below).  For other satellites a find a dark location on a night with no moon.  Watch and you’ll see small lights than are too small to be passing planes moving along.  If you are ambitious yu can use Heavens-Above.com Db to find specific satellites.

    If you are near Commiefornia or the Floridaman Atlantic coast you can occasionally see launch vehicles heading to orbit.  It is impressive to watch a small object at the head of a rapidly lengthening cloud as it is gaining speed and altitude. After the vehicles cross the sky you can watch the remaining gas plumes be twisted by the winds alofy.  They often make surreal shapes with transient splotches of the spectrum. Both the Kennedy Center (FL) and Vandenburg Air Force Base (CA) will publicly announce non military launches to the public.  Most military launches may get only a few minutes, or no, public announcements.

     

    ISS passing in front of the moon. Time of transit less than two seconds.

     

    A Smattering of Websites

    There are scores of astronomy related websites out there.  In fact, there are more potential websites for you to visit than the number of fleshy globes that Q offers for viewing to the Glib community each month.  But here are a few websites that are easy to use and are geared toward the interested general public.

    Astronomy Picture of the Day.   You might as well visit it since your tax dollars pay for it.  This is a great site which features just what the name says.  Each picture has a clear description of what you are seeing.  The photos origins are diverse (in the good sense) from NASA, other space agencies, observatories from across the globe, and from amateurs sending in some incredibly artistic works.  The archive goes back to the mid 1990’s.  This has been my first website daily since 1997.

    EarthSkyNews.  This organization covers what is going on for the general sky observer.  You can sign up for a free daily email newsletter.  It has observing updates, news from space, photos, and only a small touch of occasional “climate change” stuff.  They also keep your subscription information tight.  I can’t think of a time when I got unsolicited emails that would have come from them selling my info.

    Heavens-Above.  This is a serious but easily accessible site. It is “THE” public website to track satellites, get sky charts, past and future night skies etc.  When you first visit this site note the upper right corner of the page.  There is a box there. Open it and set your location from a database.  It will not change all the data for your location and remember it.  Look down the left side and the ISS is highlighted.  Click on it and it will give you the visible passes for the next 10 days.  Click on the day and BINGO, there is a sky chart for that pass.

    Keep following down the left side and you get to the astronomy portion with easy to use interfaces.  You want to see what was going on the sky at the moment of your birth?  Just put in the data and there will be the sky for that time.  Want to see the sky for 4th of July 3000 years ahead?  It is there.

    These three websites will serve a casual observer.  There are hundreds of other websites out there from the USG, other governments, private organizations and amateurs. If there is interest after this article I can do a “Part Two” with easy to observe deep sky objects.   With just binos, or in some cases a deep dark sky, you can observe a host of objects, including a galaxy that will one day crash into our own.

     

    [No photos in this article are mine.]

  • Animal’s 2019 Hunt Report

    My hunt this year got cut short.  Loyal sidekick Rat and I ascended into the Routt National Forest early on the Friday before Opening Day; Tuesday at noon we passed through the dusty little mountain town of Kremmling, where I checked my phone and discovered my daughter was to give birth to my fifth grandchild that evening.  So we broke camp and, venison-less, headed back to town.

    My new grandson, of course, made that all worthwhile.

    This was what it was like Friday when we set up.

    There’s not too much to report from the hunt.  Saturday was clear and warm, and we enjoyed wandering around in the woods even though it wasn’t good weather for hunting.  Saturday night the snow started, sending the deer and elk into the dark timber, where the only way you’ll find them is to look literally under every tree.  By the time we left mid-day Tuesday there was over a foot of snow on the ground.

    But since I don’t have much to report, I thought I’d present something else.

    Some years back I wrote an article for a U.K. waterfowling website, which site I let have the article gratis.   Well, that little article has grown legs, as it has been reproduced in several academic point/counterpoint publications, all of whom actually paid me for secondary/tertiary/variousotheriary publishing privileges.

    That being the case, it seemed logical to reproduce it here.

    Why hunt?

    Modern hunters seem to find they are answering that question frequently.  Sometimes the question is put by the genuinely curious; sometimes it is a hostile demand for justification.  In the first case, the answer is complex and thought provoking.  In the second, the answer is simple – “because it suits me to do so.”  Hunting in and of itself requires no justification.  The hunt is not only natural and healthful; it’s an inextricable part of our heritage as human beings.  Man is and has long been a terminal predator, as marvelously equipped for hunting by our intellect as a lion is by his claws and fangs, as a wolf by his swift legs and pack instinct.  No matter whether humans today hunt directly, or employ middlemen to prepare their prey for them on farms and meat packing plants, the fact of our status as predator is in our very DNA.  We owe the very fact of our world-conquering intellect on the hunt, on the stimulus that drove us to overcome the handicap of our clawless, blunt-toothed bodies, to develop weapons to match the feats of the greatest of animal predators; we owe our great brains to the access to high-quality diets of meat, marrow, and fat that predatory behavior allowed.

    But, the question remains nonetheless.  Why, now, do we hunt?

    Some hunt for the meat.  A good reason in itself; game meat is lean, healthy, and free from additives; the process of obtaining it provides exercise and time in the outdoors, away from work pressures and the temptations of couches and televisions.  The fruits of the hunt, properly cared for, are welcomed on the most discriminating of tables.

    Some hunt for the camaraderie, another fine reason; for many of these, the actual hunt is secondary to the outing with friends, sharing the campfire with others of like mind and feeling.  Another good reason; it is in the enjoyment of fine companions that we grow as social animals.  The annual ritual of the mountain elk camp is a vital part of the year for many.

    But, there is frequently another reason.  A reason that’s more compelling, and at the same time harder to explain.

    This was what it was like Monday afternoon.

    Henry David Thoreau, in the great classic Walden, wrote “Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day — farther and wider — and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving.  Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.  Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.  Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home.  There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.”  Thoreau spoke for many hunters in those words, hunters who hunt not solely for the meat, or for the company, but for the ageless, timeless experience of the hunt itself.

    For it’s true that for some of us the hunt is an answer in itself.  It’s enough to awake hours before the dawn, and to know the utter silence of a late autumn morning.  To hear the crunch of snow under your boots as you begin the hike into the distant, silent mountains.  To smell the pines along the trail, and see the silent sentinel spruces on the ridges, barely glimpsed in the pre-dawn dark.  It’s enough to sit, shivering, at that best spot on the top rim of a remote basin, watching the east grow bright, waiting for the first rays of warm sunshine to break though the trees and drive away the bitter cold of night.

    But those moments, treasured as they are, pale before the ultimate goal of the hunt.  It’s a part of the hunter’s soul, to carry the knowledge that somewhere, out among the pines, in the dark timber or the frost-covered meadows, a bull awaits, and the chance of the day may bring him within your awareness.  The snap of a branch, the ghosting shape of antlers through the aspens, the sudden ringing bugle of a bull elk, as he appears, suddenly, where no bull was a moment before.  His breath plumes out in the cold as he screams his challenge, and your hands and will freeze momentarily in awe of his magnificence.

    It’s enough to know that the day may bring the chance of a stalk, through the darkness under the trees, along the edges of the golden grasses of a meadow, creeping, creeping, under the streamside willows, silently, slowly, ever closer, testing the wind, watching underfoot for twigs, whispering a silent prayer to the forests and fields to allow you to close the gap, to make the shot.

    With luck, you’ll raise your rifle or draw your bow, and make your shot.  More often than not, though, the bull escapes, to play the game of predator and prey another day, in another valley.

    You can’t buy moments like that; you can’t find them on the Internet, or at the movie theatre.  When the alarm rings in the icy cold of a pre-dawn tent at 9,000 feet, this type of hunter doesn’t groan at the prospect of climbing out of the warm sleeping bag; instead, the prospects of the day are enough incentive to brave the cold, to pull on wool and leather, to step into the pitch-black outdoors, under ice-chip stars.  It is with pleasure and anticipation that this hunter begins a day that will likely end back at the same tent, in the freezing dark, hours after sunset, at the end of a long hike out of the wild.

    For hunting requires a level of participation unknown in any other human venture – hunting requires a communion with the very primal forces of Nature, taking life so that life may be.  Hunting requires a contact that the non-hunter can never know, a contact with life itself.  The hunter eschews supporting his or her life through a middleman; knowing the cost of one’s diet, engenders respect for the lives that must be taken to sustain one’s own life.

    Early hunters knew this very well, as they revered their primary prey.  For example, Plains Indians referred to the bison as “uncle” and “brother.”  Paleolithic cave drawings of game animals and hunt scenes are rendered with a loving reverence that is still evident today, thousands of years later.  Modern hunters are much the same.  Enter a hunter’s home, and you’ll likely find framed prints of deer and elk, waterfowl sculptures, photography of upland birds.

    To some it seems contradictory; to express respect, reverence, even love for an animal that you pursue, hunt, kill, and eat.  It’s true that this seeming contradiction is as hard for hunters to explain as it is for non-hunters to understand.

    Perhaps the answer lies in the very understanding of our role in nature. nature has but one law; life feeds on life, and life gives life to life.  People who obtain their steaks, chicken, and burgers from supermarkets and butcher’s shops can lose sight of this fundamental truth, and perhaps they would prefer to have that process sanitized in just such a manner.  In our modern, urbanized society, many like to imagine their own existence is bloodless, clean, and sanitary.  But such an outlook is self-deluding.

    The hunter knows very well the cost for the steaks that grace his plate.  A year has been spent in preparation for the hunt, planning, caring for equipment, and practicing marksmanship.  Without complaint or reservation, the hunter has arisen before dawn, as described above, and walked the many miles to where the game awaits.  In the bright sun of a meadow, in the twilight of dusk, or in the shadows of the forest he has made the stalk, taken the shot with painstaking care, and dressed the animal.  He has packed out quarters of elk, perhaps a two or three-day process, often through rough, grueling country.  The hunter has cared for hides and antler and meat, and the price for the meal of elk steak is ever with the one for whose life the elk’s life has given way.

    Loyal sidekick Rat contemplates another stretch of dark timber.

    Most of all, the hunter has seen the sudden transition from a living animal to an inanimate food source, from animate life to meat for the table.  The non-hunting urbanite likely has never seen this take place, and would not care to do so; but the hunter knows, with bittersweet regularity, the price that must be paid for continued existence.

    It is for this very reason that the hunter reveres his prey.  The intimate, timeless knowledge that Life springs from Life can only lead to reverence for the source of that Life.  The bull elk in the dark timber, ghosting through the trees silently as smoke, will live on in the blood, bone and sinew of the hunter waiting on the ridge above; and the hunter, in his turn, will return to the Earth, to nourish the soil, to give rise to the grasses that will feed the elk.  And how can the hunter not revere the greathearted bull, revere the magnificence of the great deer that will go to feed the hunter’s family in the winter to come?  Reverence for the game, reverence for the wellspring of life, reverence for the great, largely unknowable cycles of the Earth, all come from the intimacy with Nature found in the hunt.

    Hunting is indeed what makes us human; hunting is what led humans to cooperate, to plan, to anticipate, to form society.  The first great turning point in Mankind’s development was when two unrelated families found they could hunt large animals by working together, and so be more efficient at obtaining high-quality food; thus was the first tribe born.  Hunting has made us what we are.

    It’s unfortunate that the non-hunter often cannot see past the fact that the hunt results in the death of an animal.  The death of an animal, it’s true, is the goal of the hunt; but a greater goal is to be found in the overall experience, of which the actual kill is only the climactic moment.  The hunter’s soul often thrills as much, if not more, to the blown stalk, the bull that senses something amiss and vanishes into the mountains like a puff of smoke on the breeze, leaving no trace in his wake.  Fond memories include the grouse that explodes from underfoot at the worst possible moment, the squirrel that set up a warning chatter in the penultimate seconds of a carefully planned approach.  The vista of a great gulch viewed from the rim, with a herd of elk grazing peacefully, undisturbed, and totally unapproachable on the far side.  And, indeed, in the final moment of success, when the hunter approaches, cautiously, the downed bull, lying still now against the bed of needles; the heart-pounding thrill of success, weighted against the bittersweet regret of the necessity of taking the life, facing the final truth that for life to be, another life must give way.

    Life feeds on life, and life gives life to life. The hunter in success understands this great truth as no other human possibly can.

    Why hunt?

    We hunt to pay homage to nature, to life, to the earth.  To make our annual pilgrimage to our beginnings, to lay hands on our heritage as members of the biotic community.  To affirm once more that life feeds on life, and life gives life to life.  We hunt for the gift of an elk to a family, the gift of life from the earth.  In the hunt lies an affirmation, a recognition that we too will one day return to the earth that has fed and nurtured us, and the elk will then feed on the minerals and nutrients returned to the soil from our bodies.  That affirmation alone is enough for many of us who hunt, to send us once more out of our tents, trailers, and ranch houses, out into the freezing darkness under the glittering stars, to climb an unseen mountain for the chance at an elk.

    Hunting has a fundamental truth that few non-hunters understand.

    It’s not about death.  It’s about life.

    That’s why.

  • Camp Stories

     

    The summer of 1984, at a sleep-away camp in the Tennessee mountains, the counselors–earnest, well-scrubbed Christian kids–would tell us ghost stories around the campfire. If I had been older, I would have recognized most of them as fairly standard urban legend stories: the hook-hand, the spider eggs, the vanishing hitchhiker. When I was younger, I had heard almost the same stories at sleep-over camping trips run by the YMCA, so they didn’t bother me all too much.

    But on nights when the counselors left our 16-kid cabins to drink or fuck or sneak off to the McDonald’s in the little town nearby, one of the kids that had been at the camp before told us The Story, an oral tradition that had been passed down kid-to-kid for who knows how many years. A horror story that carried a lesson in socialization and proper behavior. Here’s how I remember it…

     

    There was a boy a few years back who had nightmares. His name was Timmy. He would thrash around in his upper bunk bed and call out. He kept all the other kids awake and they would be exhausted the next day, not having any fun, doing poorly at the archery range or falling asleep by the pool.

    At first light, Timmy would jump down from his bunk and race to the bathroom facility, someways down the mountain that had been dotted with camper cabins. His bunk-mates understood that this meant Timmy was too afraid of the dark to go to the bathrooms at night. But this lead to Timmy finally having a nightmare so bad that he peed the bed, the urine soaking not only his mattress but also dripping down on the kid below him. Everyone was disgusted when they found out what had happened and so when the cabin counselor took Timmy down to the bathroom to get him cleaned up, a plan was hatched.

    The next night the counselor was gone–like that very night we were hearing this story–all the boys in the cabin woke Timmy from his usual nightmare, rolled him in his bedsheets and carried him out into the woods, never saying a word. The carried him far from the cabins and the lights around camp and tied him up in a tree. Not to a tree, up in a tree, dangling a few feet off the ground and gagged him. Timmy begged and squirmed and screamed into his gag, but the other boys left him there, not telling him if they planned to return. They went back to the cabin and all fell asleep.

    Timmy couldn’t get loose and he couldn’t cry for help. There was no hope anyone from the camp would find him by accident. He hanged there limp and defeated.

    And then something licked his foot.

    He looked down. As quiet as ghosts, a pack of wolves had surrounded the tree he was suspended in. Another lick of his foot. It almost tickled. Timmy screamed. The closest wolf finally bit his foot and tore away a few of his toes. He could feel the other wolves lapping at the blood. This drove the wolves in a frenzy, more of them biting his feet, worrying off their own pieces of Timmy, tugging as they pulled his flesh away. Timmy screamed until he had no voice left.

    The wolves continued eating Timmy, bracing against the tree to eat further and further up his legs. Finally jumping to bite into Timmy’s knees, dangling there until their body weight tore off another chunk of the boy. They ate Timmy down to just stumps.

    After the wolves were done, they wandered away into the woods. Timmy was quite insane from pain and shock at this point. But all the terrible tugging of the starving wolves had loosened the ropes and he finally fell into the mud his blood had made at the base.

    Using his hands and arms, Timmy dragged himself into the woods, vowing revenge. He would go back and kill the boys who had done this.

    The boys from the cabin returned the next morning and found blood and chewed bone at the base of the tree. They assumed that Timmy had been entirely eaten and realized they would be in huge trouble if it was discovered what they did. They climbed the tree and took down what was left of the ropes, they threw the chewed bones in different directions and piled leaves and loam over the blood at the base of the tree. They made a pact never to talk about this to anyone else as long as they lived. And then they went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast.

    When it was discovered that Timmy was missing, the summer camp organized a search for him, assuming this troubled little boy had run away. When they found nothing, they called in the state police. The state police interviewed the counselor, who lied and said he had been in the cabin all night; when they interviewed Timmy’s cabin-mates, none of them confessed to what they had done. When the state police finally left empty-handed, the panic and unrest in the camp died down. Buy this time, summer was almost over. The boys who left Timmy to the wolves were about to go home to various states.

    On the last night of camp, Timmy got his revenge. He dragged himself into his old cabin, his half-healed leg stumps leaving tracks of mud on the floor as he smothered the boys one-by-one, quietly to not wake the others. But just the boys on the bottom bunks. He couldn’t reach the ones on the top bunks. They were safe.

    The next morning, the surviving kids woke to find the muddy drag tracks on the floor. Their screams woke the counselor and he freaked out at finding all the boys in the bottom bunks dead. The survivors of the massacre instinctively knew this was the work of Timmy.

    They warned the other kids at camp that Timmy was still out there and he could get you if you slept in the bottom bunks.

     

    What a fantastically gruesome story, right? 36 years later I still think about, maybe more than I should. I know that the boy in my cabin, in his upper bunk, didn’t tell it just like I did. I’m sure I’ve added details and embellishments to where the story is just as much as his at this point. But I know it was about a boy left in the woods who had his legs eaten off by wolves, and the revenge he extracted.

    So many plot holes, but, then, this was a child’s story told to children. Terrified in our bottom bunks, we didn’t think about the distinct lack of wolves in 1980s Tennessee, or effects of traumatic limb amputation and blood loss on a 12-year-old, or the camp somehow covering it all up and not being sued out of existence.

    Do any of you have one of these? Or local urban legends? Please share in the comments.

  • Allamakee County Chronicles VIII: Hold My Beer!

    Note:  A prologue from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)

    You Ever Wonder Why…

    It’s well known that teenage boys are driven by testosterone; your typical teenage boy is basically a pair of testicles with legs, and I was certainly no exception.  At this sensitive age boys are prone to doing stupid things, sometimes to impress girls (that rarely works out like intended) or sometimes just because.

    Country kids, of course, have many opportunities to risk life and limb in pursuit of… well, who knows?  I certainly don’t.  Back then, in the glory days of the late Seventies back in Allamakee County, I didn’t know either.  And that probably explains a lot.

    This One Time…

    One of those “just because” times came in the autumn of 1976.  My grandfather had passed away the year before, and my grandmother was preparing to pass off the big farmhouse to my uncle and move into a smaller structure on the property, and so had been clearing out a lot of my late grandfather’s stuff.

    By the early November day when my cousin Jeff and I went out to the farm to shoot some pheasants, most of Grandpa’s stuff was already gone, but after we had knocked over a few birds, we went in to the house where Grandma had offered to feed us lunch.  As we were eating, Grandma let us know about the few things left.

    “Boys,” she told us, “out in the barn, there are a couple of old boxes of Grandad’s things.  You two go look through them when you’re done eating.  If there’s anything you want, take it; I’m going to have your uncle Norman haul all the rest to the dump.”

    So, once we finished eating, we went back outside.  We stood in the drive for a few moments.  As Jeff was lighting a cigarette, I walked over and poked my head in the small entry door on the side of the barn.

    “Hey,” I told Jeff, “there’s a couple boxes in there, just like Grandma said.”

    “Well, let’s have a look,” Jeff responded.

    Old dynamite. Fortunately we didn’t find this much.

    There wasn’t much of any use in the boxes.  As I recall at this distance in time, there was a small stash of Grandpa’s girlie magazines that gave us a chuckle (a few years later I was mildly horrified when I suddenly realized why Grandpa kept that stash in the barn and not the house), a broken socket wrench and, down in the bottom of one of the boxes, two old sticks of dynamite.

    Lots of folks who haven’t worked with explosives don’t know that old dynamite sweats.  This isn’t sweat in the human sense, it’s more like an old D-cell battery breaking open.  A gritty, crystalline white crust exudes from the paper covering of the dynamite sticks, eventually heavily covering the stick.  The main substance of that gritty crust?  Nitroglycerine.

    This, understandably, makes these old sticks of dynamite tetchy to handle.

    Now, then and there, the smart thing to do would have been to leave the sticks where they were, to tell Uncle Norman, who was taking over the farm, about them, and leave him to find someone experienced and equipped to deal with these hazardous objects.  But not us – oh, no, not us!

    Holding one of the sticks, my cousin looked at me.  “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got my .22 in my truck.  I wonder if these would go off if we shot ‘em?”

    Jeff was four years older than me, and, I assumed, wiser.  So, my reply seemed obvious: “Let’s find out!”

    Some instinct made us go a good way from the house before commencing our experiment, so once Jeff retried his old .22 bolt gun, we walked through the orchard and out to the far side of the south cornfield.  There we propped the sweaty old dynamite sticks up against a dirt clod, backed off about fifty yards and commenced experimenting.

    We each had fired off a five-round magazine at the two sticks with no result.  After carefully approaching the sticks, we saw several inarguable bullet holes through them.  But no explosion had commenced.

    It was this moment that Jeff realized the real, physical danger of what we were doing.  “You know,” he said, “if Grandma hears the .22 and comes out here and sees what we’re doing, she’ll cut a switch and wallop the tar of us both.”

    Jeff and I were big tough country boys.  Jeff was about 5’10”, maybe 160 pounds, and hard as rock; at fifteen, I was already a six-footer pushing 200 pounds and could easily toss around 75-pound hay bales.  Grandma was 4’10”, weighed maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, and was in her middle seventies, and we had no doubt whatsoever that she could beat the hell out of us both without breaking a sweat – or that she would certainly do so if she figured out what we were up to.

    “Yeah,” I agreed.  “We’d better do the smart thing, I guess.”

    So, Jeff got a shovel from the tool shed, we dug a four-foot deep hole in the fencerow and buried those two sticks, tamping the dirt down good and hard and scattering dry leaves over the filled hole.  Nothing more was said about the incident by either of us for many years, and as far as we know nobody ever got blown up, so presumably the damp earth rendered the dynamite, eventually, inert.

    I’m no expert on dynamite, though.  For all I know those sticks, buried in the ground all these years, may well still be ert.  Personally, even now, I don’t think I’d go back and try digging in that fencerow, but then there’s lots of things I wouldn’t do nowadays.

    Youth, Testosterone and Beer

    Now, add a couple years and some beer to the mix.

    Back in these days, the age of majority for almost everything was still eighteen.  I could buy beer at eighteen, any kind of alcohol for that matter, which resulted in my being a legal drinker through most of my senior year of high school.  This was the cause of some consternation on the part of teachers, especially since my high school had open campus for seniors.  We generally went downtown for lunch, usually grabbing a sandwich and a brew at one of the local taverns.

    “These boys are coming to afternoon classes smelling of beer!” the teachers protested to the principal.  Bear in mind that this was a time when some semblance of common sense still held sway in a significant portion of the population.  So, the principal’s reply was, shall we say, principled; “Are they drunk?”

    “No,” the teachers replied.

    “Are they disruptive?”

    “No.”

    “They’re legal.  If they have a beer with lunch, and they’re paying attention after that, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

    The teachers withdrew their complaints, we went on having a beer or two with lunch, and everybody was, if not content, at least accepting the inevitable.

    On schooldays at lunch, see, we were mostly responsible.  But add girls to the mix!  That’s when the old saying about “hold my beer and watch this” really gains some traction.

    At This Dance…

    The actual by-gosh Highlandville General Store.

    Fast forward to the summer after I was manumitted from high school.  That summer of 1980 I was working at some odd jobs (bouncer, car repo guy, various farm jobs) while I tried to decide what to do next.  But the highlights of that long-ago summer took place in the little town of Highlandville, about six miles from the Old Man’s place.  That little unincorporated village contained an old one-room schoolhouse that had been converted into a little social center and, that summer, there were danced there every Saturday night.  There was always a local band, usually a few unofficial kegs of beer in crates of ice, and local farm boys and girls from miles around came in to check out the other farm girls and boys.

    One particular Saturday found my folks leaving to go to an Audubon Society conference down in Decorah.  Dad was annoyed with me for some reason I can’t recall and so, when he and Mom left in Mom’s car, he took the keys to his pickup.  He knew my old 66 Ford’s gas tank was dry as a fart and the big gas tank out by the shed was likewise empty, and so presumed I’d be left to sit out a Saturday night at home.

    But there was one thing he forgot.

    After the folks left, I walked around a little bit, grumbling to myself and considering possibilities.  It was a beautiful July afternoon getting along towards evening; the afternoon heat was giving way to the cool of the evening, and the cicadas were still calling from the big box-elders along the driveway; a perfect evening to find a girl and enjoy some of the finer things in my eighteen-year-old life.

    For a few mad moments I considered getting my old bike out of the shed and riding it to Highlandville, but I would not garner any respect from the other local kids if  I had to resort to that, and so dismissed the idea out of hand.  It was too far to walk, and I wasn’t interested in driving the tractor that far.

    Then, as I stood irresolutely in the yard, a bright light dawned:  It was the sun, glancing off the windshield of Dad’s 1954 F-500 six-yard dump truck, parked in the orchard.

    I hopped in.  The old truck, being an unlicensed farm vehicle that had nevertheless seen many years of hard use on northeast Iowa’s graveled roads and farm fields, didn’t have a conventional ignition switch any more, the key switch being replaced by a simple old Radio Shack toggle.  To start the truck, one had to flip the toggle to On, pump the gas pedal three times – not twice, not four times, but three times – and then step on the starter button on the floor, at which point the truck’s old 312 Y-block engine would cough, sputter and come to life with a flatulent roar.

    The actual by-gosh old Highlandville schoolhouse.

    At least, it did so on this occasion.  I had been driving the truck for several years already, hauling dirt and gravel for various jobs around the place, and so was already well familiar with its operation.  I crawled the old vehicle out to the road, stuck the two-speed rear axle in High, and headed for town.

    I arrived without incident.  The old dumper, parked at the edge of the parking lot, occasioned some comment from the dancegoers, but otherwise my evening went well.  I danced with a few girls, drank more than a few beers.

    About ten o’clock, having had no luck with the local girls at the dance, I went outside to grab a beer.  A group of local rowdies were gathered around the keg in the back of Miles Duffy’s pickup.  As I was filling my cup, one of them asked me, “Hey, are you the guy who drove the dump truck in?”

    “Yup,” I agreed.  “Was either that or walk.”

    “I hear ya,” he agreed easily.  He drained his beer at a single pull.  “Say,” he went on, “if a fella was to climb in the back of that, and you were to dump it out, how long you reckon a guy could hang on?”

    “I can’t think of but one way to find out,” I answered.

    We found out.  Not one guy but about six climbed in the back of the truck.  I started the old monster up and, after letting the engine run a moment to build up hydraulic pressure, pulled the knob to dump the box out.

    Not actually Dad’s dumper, but much the same.

    Bear in mind that this vehicle, like a lot of old dumpers, had a tailgate that was hinged not at the bottom but at the top, allowing it to swing open at the bottom to release the contents.  I had undogged the latches on the tailgate before climbing in the cab.  As the box upended, I heard scrabbling as the fellows tried to hold on to the rusty surface of the dump box, and then sliding sounds, followed by a few hard thumps as a couple of them hit the tailgate hard before sliding out.

    Leaving the engine running, I climbed out to see the results.  The first guy to have the idea had a welt on his forehead and a swelling under one eye that looked like it would turn into a beautiful shiner.  “Hey!” he yelled.  “Let’s go again!  I think I can do better!”

    We ended up trying it four or five times.  At one point I tried a run in the back myself and managed to slide out without breaking any bones.

    None of the local gals were impressed, of course, even though at the time we young guys had considered it a serious possibility that they would be.  Eventually an older fellow, certainly on the wrong side of twenty and therefore expected to be responsible, walked over and pointed out, “you know, if you guys keep doing that, someone is gonna get hurt.”

    We all looked at each other, with our collection of bruises, scrapes, cuts and sprains, and agreed that he was likely right.

    Thus, ended the great dump truck experiment.  Eventually, girl-less and bruised, I finished my last beer, climbed in the old dumper, put the axle in Low to keep the speed down to match my impaired reflexes, and guided the waddling, farting old beast back home.

    As It Stands

    Many years later I told my Mom of the incident, one in a series of things that I revealed to the folks after enough years had passed that they would hopefully find the stories amusing rather than enraging.  I had generally been surprised to find out how much they already knew of my escapades, but that one they weren’t too sure of, although Mom remembered one time when they came back from a weekend in town when Dad swore the dump truck wasn’t quite where he left it.

    Nowadays I’m a much more settled sort of fellow, and a phrase like “hold my beer and watch this” will only pass my lips in jest.  Then again, there’s the time I crossed a flooded Arizona creek in the middle of the night in my old Bronco by hitting the stream at about sixty miles per hour and skipping the truck like a rock across the water…

    …but that’s a story for another time.