State Fossils, Reviewed

It has come to my attention that the state fossil of my home commonwealth of Virginia is a scallop. No, it didn't have fangs or anything. It was just a scallop. Oh, but it was named after Thomas Jefferson so we're supposed to think this thing is really cool.

I have collected examples of this fossil at the bases of cliffs by the Chesapeake Bay. They don't really look very different from any other scallop shell. I find it embarrassing that this is our state fossil.

Surprisingly, we aren't quite at the bottom of the state fossil barrel, thanks in part to Arizona's embrace of petrified wood as their fossil mascot. That ties for 'most pathetic' with Louisiana and their petrified palm wood. At least our scallops could move.

Kentucky phoned it in big time with their designation in 1986 of the 'brachiopod' as the state fossil. Which brachiopod, out of the 5,000-odd extinct varieties? Oh, nothing in particular. The whole damned phylum, apparently. It reminds me of the story about Mikhail Gorbachev having a brother who is also named Mikhail Gorbachev on account of their father, Mikhail Gorbachev, being too drunk at the time of signing their birth certificates to remember any name except for his own.

I'm picturing the Kentucky state legislature being on a 12 month bender in 1986. It was time to name the state fossil and someone blurted out 'brachiopods!' and scrawled it onto a bourbon-stained napkin which was passed as legislation in a voice vote before anyone got sober enough to realize what they had done.

Georgia tried to get much more specific than Kentucky did. Their state fossil is the shark tooth. Not the whole shark, mind. The rest of the cartilaginous skeleton is apparently verboten. No particular species is named, which was half-assed of them but you have to at least give them credit for trying to come up with something cool.

Utah went balls-out and claimed the allosaurus. If I was Utah I would be putting that shit on the state quarters and the flag and pass a bill that requires the Utah Jazz to be re-named 'the Utah Allosaurus.'

There must have been a contest in special ed classrooms in Vermont to come up with their state fossil because they seem to think its the beluga whale. Which is not even extinct. This is like it might as well be 'hamsters' or 'peanut butter.' Try harder.

South Dakota has it under control with the triceratops. A solid choice which will also encourage investment and tourism from the important 5-year-old boy demographic.

North Dakota must have looked south and thought 'we cannot even compete with this.' They went with 'shipworm-bored petrified wood.' Its like they thought about Arizona and asked, 'how can we be even lamer than petrified wood? What if worms put holes in it?' Choosing 'ship-bored petrified wood' may well have been an act of what amounts to hipster irony.

Alaska, Michigan and Washington have each chosen the woolly mammoth, the American mastadon and the Columbian mammoth, respectively. Which I think we all can agree are practically the same thing for these purposes. Whoever did it first made a great choice. The other two need to go back to the textbooks and come up with their own damn fossils.

New Jersey picked a hadrosaur. These ones in the wikipedia entry look like they're maybe taking a dump. At least its a dinosaur instead of a scallop or pocket lint or whatever North Carolina and Iowa will finally come up with.

[Illustration by Charles R. Knight, public domain]

Deer Rifles for Kids

It would be a bad idea to hand a deer rifle to your typical kid these days. Weaned on toy guns and video games, the first instinct is so often to point anything gun-shaped at the nearest human target and pull the trigger. Yet for children who were raised in hunting households, this can be less of a problem. In my own home, toy guns are forbidden with a resolve matched only by our expectation that the children accompany me once a week or so for practice at shooting targets and stalking deer in the woods and fields.

Since the age of 3, my daughter has accompanied me on these types of outings and at the age of 6 she is more ready to hunt deer this fall than many people 3 times her age. Gun and hunter safety are first nature to her and she spots deer from the corner of her eye in places where most people only see grass and trees. Handy with both rifle and pistol and competent with a knife at skinning and butchering, she is entirely capable of hunting under my direct supervision.

The great difficulty is finding a hunting rifle that will properly fit a 6 year old. A 6 year old girl who is on the small side for her age, at that.

I have put a great deal of thought and research into this matter. There are two key issues: recoil and ergonomics.

My daughter, Ida, has shot her mother's 7mm-08 with no great concern for recoil. But the length of pull on that Remington 700 was too great for any accuracy finer than what was needed for blowing up shampoo bottles full of water at 10 yards (yes, it was fun).

'Length of pull' refers to the distance between the trigger and the top edge of the recoil pad at the butt of the rifle or shotgun. When the length of pull is too far you will find that not only is it difficult or impossible to align the eye properly with the sights or scope, but recoil will also feel more intense due to the improper fit against the shoulder.

Anyone shorter than about 5'5" is pretty well out of luck in the LOP department. For small children or adults of small stature it is very difficult to find a deer rifle with a stock that will properly fit. Even most 'youth' rifles are a bit too long for most kids under the age of 12.

This necessitates cutting down a stock in order to fit the hunter. Right away, this eliminates a huge swath of deer rifles currently on the market because of the impracticality of cutting down most synthetic stocks. Most of them are either hollow or filled with a sort of foam that will not hold a screw when you need to reattach a butt plate or pad. There are typically bulges on the inside of the material with pre-molded screw holes which will be wholly gone after you have cut 4 inches off of the end. Note that a majority of youth rifles on the market have synthetic stocks.

A wooden stock is essential if your hunter will not fit any of the synthetic stocks off the shelf. Its easy to shorten the length of pull yourself if you do the job carefully and follow Larry Potterfield's instructions in this video. Midway USA has many other videos available for free that explain how to do related tasks, such as installing a new recoil pad.

If you intend to buy a youth rifle with a synthetic stock and replace it with a cut-down wooden one until the kid grows into the synthetic one, do make certain that there is a source for such a wooden stock. I made the mistake of buying my daughter a Rossi 'Matched Pair' with barrels for .22 LR and .410 shotgun with that in mind. As it turned out, there is no source anywhere or anyhow for a wooden Rossi stock unless you buy the rifle with one in the first place. Rossi does not seem to answer their phone and none of my emails were ever returned. We've been stuck with an ill-fitting pink plastic stock ever since. A Crickett would probably have been a better choice for a .22 for that reason.

Another major criterion is the cartridge. A .30-'06 is obviously out of the question, yet one doesn't want to go too light for risk of failing to kill the deer even with a good shot. Cartridges to consider would include the 7mm-08, 7.62x39, various 6mms and the more earnest revolver cartridges. Handgun cartridges like the .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum and .45 Long Colt can all be found as factory chamberings in certain single shot and lever action rifles. With the added length of a rifle barrel, those cartridges can achieve velocities higher than they do in handguns and with a stock against the shoulder their recoil is much milder than in the hand alone. They can all serve as reasonable whitetail cartridges provided that appropriate bullets are used and ranges are kept to no more than about 100 yards.

The short lengths of those handgun cartridges can allow for a shorter, lighter rifle that better fits a very small hunter than a full-length rifle cartridge. Recoil is mild and ammunition is inexpensive.

Unfortunately, there are few bolt action rifles available for any of those handgun chamberings. The Ruger model 77-44 comes in .44 Magnum and is the only bolt action option I am aware of. Marlin makes a lever action .357 that could answer very well as a youth rifle after being cut down to size and all of these cartridges can be found in single-shot offerings from Rossi and NEF at reasonable prices, or from Ruger if you care to spend about $1,000 on a Number One.

The Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP seems like a possibility at first glance, but a look around for factory loads with whitetail-appropriate bullets will quickly rule this out as a serious option for all but the more gonzo reloaders. You will not find hunting ammunition for the .45 ACP.

If you want a bolt action for your young hunter, you are pretty much looking at the .308 family of cartridges. The .308 its self is not so heavy on recoil in the first place and can be lighter through the use of either Remington's Managed Recoil loads or judicious handloading. The 7mm-08 is lighter in recoil than the .308 by design and can be lightened even farther by the same line of reduced recoil ammunition.

If you insist on using the .243 then I certainly can't stop you but I will state that I have never been impressed by the tendency of those slight bullets travelling at such high speed to go absolutely to pieces. When impacting a deer at within 80 yards or so, even a high quality bullet can shatter into a shallow, ugly shoulder wound that does not penetrate into the lungs. The difference in recoil between the .243 and the 7mm-08 is minor while I've found that the performance of the bullets on deer is anecdotally very different.

Barrel length is another issue worth considering in a deer rifle for a child or a very small adult. Every given cartridge has a barrel length which is optimal for it. The reason is that a given volume of a particular type of smokeless gunpowder burns at a particular rate and if the barrel is too short then some of that powder is blasted out of the muzzle before it has finished igniting, which means a waste of potential velocity. Once all of the powder has burned, further barrel length is actually counter-productive since it becomes merely a source of friction against the bullet. Normally we want to choose a barrel length which is just enough for all of the powder to burn and no longer. In a 7mm Remington Magnum, this would be 26 inches while a .308 is probably closer to around 23 inches.

Its ok to throw this out of the window sometimes when choosing a rifle for a small person. Better to lose 150 feet per second of velocity than to have a rifle that is awkward, heavy, and prone to catching on every bit of brush. The minimum legal length for a rifle barrel without a special federal dispensation under a 'class 3' permit is 16 inches. I suggest always keeping it at least a quarter inch over that, in case you eventually need to re-crown the muzzle and find that you have gone a hair under the threshold for a visit from the party van.

Finally, the scope is worthy of special consideration. The ergonomics of most rifles, even youth rifles, are set up with the intent of putting the eye of someone with a 'normal' adult head and neck up to the center of a 40mm scope reticle. A very small person will find themselves craning their necks trying to get proper scope alignment. It will be a little easier to get comfortable and shoot accurately if the rifle wears a 32 mm scope rather than the more common 40 mm variety. Because a .32 mm objective is a smaller circle than a 40mm, the center of that circle is lower to the barrel and receiver. Combine this with a set of low rings and a child will have a much easier time seeing the target.

I wish that there was one rifle or list of rifles that I could recommend above all others for children and small adults, but there is really nothing perfect out there right now. Nobody seems to be making a centerfire, deer-capable equivalent of the Crickett .22 bolt action. A bolt action .357 magnum with a 16.5 inch barrel and a wooden stock with about 9 or 10 inches of pull wearing a 32 mm scope would be perfect. Sorry, nobody is making one. But if any rifle manufacturers would like to approach my 6 year old daughter about an endorsement for a new product then I am sure she will be most willing to discuss trigger weights, television and in-store appearances with you.

[The photo is my own. It's Ida.]

Tactics for Spring Squirrels

We are fortunate enough in Virginia to have a spring squirrel season that runs from June 5th-19th. I have hunted this brief spring season every year since it was first created only about 3 or 4 years ago. While the opportunity to hunt for food in June is a welcome one, this is a much harder season to hunt than the fall and winter.

The biggest difference is the amount of cover. Having leaves on the trees dramatically lowers visibility. The woods behind my house are such a jungle right now that I have completely given up hunting squirrels there this spring, save for an occasional patrol of the edge. Even in the more open deciduous hardwood forest around my brother's place down the road I find that visibility is poor. There is a decent view of the forest floor out to as far as 100 yards but 5 yards off the ground it gets pretty patchy.

This has forced a reassessment of tactics and equipment. I prefer to hunt squirrels with a scoped .22 but I find that under these circumstances there are few shot opportunities for a rifle. With so much cover in the trees, every glimpse of a squirrel is brief and there is a real need to get a shot off more quickly than I can bring the rifle to bear, find the target in my scope and get steady. Moving targets are the rule. Its not that they don't ever hold still; its just that the odds of having a clear view of the squirrel at that particular moment are low. When I go out to hunt again after work today I will be carrying a shotgun instead of a rifle.

Schedules in the forest are also a little different in mid June versus December. In cold weather I find that squirrels will be out of the nest as soon as there is some direct sunlight available to warm up in. They will be active on the ground all morning before taking a siesta between noon and around 3 or 4 pm. Then they will be back at it for a few hours.

I have observed very different timing in the spring season. They seem to mostly be concerned with staying out of the heat. The only time of day that I can absolutely count on activity is the last hour before dark. In the heat of the middle of the day, there may be the odd squirrel that finds an errand to run but those will be few. From between roughly 10 am to 7 pm most of the squirrels are out of sight when the temperature is 80 degrees Farenheit or higher.

Right about when I am starting to think that it is time to pack up and go home is when movement will pick up. This is when it gets frustrating. Squirrels can be heard all around but none of them are visible. It is tempting to pick up and move in order to get a better view of what I can hear but unless there has been a recent rain to silence the leaves, this is inadvisable. They will hear the crunching of leaves and will clear out by the time I get into position.

In the fall I sometimes like to walk around in the woods and look for shots of opportunity as the squirrels run from the sound of my approach. This only works when the trees are bare and you can see the squirrels on the trunks and branches. During the spring season I've found that the only consistently fruitful method is to find one good spot and keep still.

The necessary tactics are not unlike traditional turkey hunting. Sitting very still in a carefully chosen spot with a shotgun in hand and pretty much waiting for the food to come to you. Like turkey hunting, it is possible to call a squirrel in. I expect that a decoy would also be worth experimenting with.

Squirrels that live very close to humans exhibit different behavior compared to the truly wild ones. In a semi-suburban backyard you might be able to simply walk outside and pot them with a pellet gun. Set up an ambush by the bird feeder if you like. If the meat is there then you might as well eat it. If on the other hand you happen to be hunting in a truly rural situation then you will find that bagging squirrels in June is much more challenging than the fall season.

[Photo used courtesy of Aftab, licensed under Creative Commons]

Elk Reintroduction Debate on NPR

This morning I had a commentary aired on public radio about elk reintroduction. Anyone interested can hear it through this link.

My commentary was in response to something I heard on the air a week previously. This was a commentary against elk reintroduction that really rubbed me the wrong way. While there are logical arguments to be made against elk reintroduction in Virginia, Andrea Brunais did not make them in her piece.

Specifically, there is a laundry list of facts that she got flat wrong.

1. The elk are or would become 'captive.' These are wild elk and nobody is proposing that they be domesticated. I have no idea why she would open her piece with such a false statement.

2. That Virginia is 'considering laying claim to the elk' that are currently in Virginia. Those animals are already unambiguously within the jurisdiction of our Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. We have already been regulating the hunting of those elk for most of the last decade.

3. That the plan is to start hunting them. The fact is that they are already being hunted. Hunting them is the status quo. The proposed plan is to stop hunting them in order to allow the population to grow to a self-sustaining level. If Ms. Brunais does not understand this fact then the entire issue went way over her head.

4. She stated that elk wandered over to Kentucky from the Rockies. That is false. Kentucky's elk were deliberately stocked by the state of Kentucky. That original stock was captured in the wild in Arizona.

5. That tax-payer dollars were used to pay for looking into this. DGIF is funded wholly by hunting, fishing and boating licenses. No tax money is involved. That is how wildlife protection and habitat restoration gets paid for in Virginia.

Those are just the things she said that were empirically wrong. I could spend all day railing against the stuff that was simply disingenuous, like pooh-poohing the idea that anyone would want to travel to Wise County to look at elk. Or pretending that anyone is claiming that this will solve our budget problems.

I don't have a problem with someone disagreeing with me on elk reintroduction or any other issue. And I am sure that Ms. Brunais is otherwise a very nice and intelligent person. But if you don't know anything about the history and practice of elk reintroduction in eastern states or how wildlife programs are funded in Virginia then kindly stop trying to lecture the rest of us about those issues.

Build Your Own Mauser Class: Photos Are Up

The photos from the first Mauser class are up, thanks to John Athayde. Most of these photos were taken by me with his camera, although anything with me in it was taken by John.

Anyone paying very close attention will notice that there are a lot of photos of us re-working the original military barrels but then later we are rebarreling the rifles. This was because the original barrels did not shoot well at the range, prompting us to replace them. Barrel replacement is now a standard part of the class for every rifle built.

A majority of the work done on each rifle will be done by the student. You will go home with a deer rifle that you personally put together.

We still have one spot open for our next 2 day class on the weekend of June 26th. Other classes are being scheduled throughout the summer. Anyone interested can email me at jack.landers@gmail.com

Squirrel Meat: Chicken of The Tree

The beauty of the fact that everything tastes like chicken is that you already know how to cook it. One would hope that this would encourage people to eat more readily outside of their usual repertoire. In practice, that stereotyped declaration, 'it tastes like chicken,' is never especially reassuring.

An omnivorous locavore will do well to overcome this natural resistance to the 'tastes like chicken' category of strange meat. You will probably find a lot of wild squirrels in your own immediate area and relatively few wild chickens. If you want to eat free-range, hormone-free and relatively cruelty-free meat then you ought to get comfortable with eating what is actually around you.

Most of the Eastern United States is thick with squirrels of various species. They do in fact taste like chicken, though I would describe the texture as similar to snake. Three or four smallish squirrels will yield a volume of meat similar to 1 grocery store chicken. The meat is simple to make use of once the squirrels have been skinned and gutted.

If you are going for easy then they can be butterflied, slathered in whatever spices are handy, pan-seared and finished in the oven. Or a few minutes with a paring knife are all it takes to strip the meat completely off of the bone. Then you've got yourself a dish of shredded squirrel meat that you can use in a straight substitution for chicken in recipes that you are already comfortable with. Soak it in a lime juice marinade for a few hours to tenderize it and use it in tacos or chimichangas. Or fry it briefly in olive oil with minced garlic and carmelized onion and build it into a pasta sauce.

I've been meaning for ages to try frying the whole, battered quarters like fried chicken but keep ending up doing something easier with my squirrels.

Squirrel meat is at least as flexible as chicken. It is easy to butcher and easy to cook. It is also probably available for free some place close to where you are sitting right now. All you need is a hunting weapon and a hunting license.

If you already have a .22 rifle or handgun then that will probably work just fine. In very flat terrain a .22 may not be ideal, because squirrels are often to be found up in the branches of trees and one doesn't want to risk having a bullet go flying off in space to come down some place potentially dangerous. I prefer to hunt squirrels with a scoped .22 rifle, favoring ground in this mountainous area (the foothills of the Blue Ridge) where hillsides will act as safe backstops.

A shotgun will also work quite well. I find that I like to carry a 20 or 12 gauge when I intend to walk around a lot. Moving around, I tend to surprise a lot of squirrels that will run off right away as they hear me approach. A shotgun is a tool designed to hit a moving target and they will by definition be moving in this situation.

I like the .22 better if I'm expecting to sit in one place for a long while, listening and watching. In that situation the squirrels that I see will either be unaware that I am present or will have become comfortable with my presence. There should be opportunities for shots on stationary prey and the .22 will allow me to reach out to about 80 yards or so, which is farther than I would shoot with any shotgun.

Both a .22 and a 12 gauge shotgun are generalist tools that any locavore hunter should have at his or her disposal anyway. A .22 is essential for target practice and can also be used for rabbits, groundhogs, and the like. A 12 gauge is good for geese, ducks, doves, turkeys and pheasant. With solid slugs it can do double duty for deer or wild pigs if strange local regulations prohibit the use of a rifle.

The hunting will usually be a little harder than one would expect. Our ideas about squirrel behavior are typically based on the behavior of urban and suburban squirrels, which get comfortable with close proximity to humans and live their whole lives in the relative absence of predation. Rural, non-backyard squirrels are more wary and will be harder to get within range of.

Once it knows that something is there, squirrels have a maddening tendency to stick to the opposite side of a tree trunk from the position of the observer. Hunting with someone else can provide a simple counter-measure. Have your friend circle around to the other side of the tree and make some noise while you hang back a little ways and shoot the squirrel when it moves to your side. Do be careful not to shoot your hunting companion.

Processing the deceased into something edible is not complicated. Start by chopping off all four feet and then make a single incision through the hide across the backs of the legs, passing just underneath the tail. Starting at this opening you will find that you can peel the hide back like a banana peel from the back legs and then keep going until the whole thing is off. You can either cut the head off before beginning or pull really hard right at the end and it will come off with the hide. I advise gutting it after the hide has come off, rather than the other way around. Gutting is fairly self-explanatory and you will find that it is little different from gutting a fish.

With these things done, you will find yourself holding something not unlike a long, skinny chicken. Cook the squirrel with the chicken comparison in mind and you will be most satisfied with the results.

Yesterday afternoon I took my friend, Fergus Clare, on his first squirrel hunt. After a ridiculously involved ambush, a stalk to within range, and joint gunnery tactics, we succeeded in taking a single fox squirrel. The following is Fergus' excellent recipe for fox squirrel that he came up with on the fly.

Fergus Clare's Zombie Squirrel recipe
(serves one with one small squirrel).
All ingredients are organic unless noted otherwise.

Ingredients:
Six Cloves of Garlic
Half a stick of butter (unsalted)
One teaspoon of Salt (to taste)
One teaspoon of Pepper (to taste)
10 to 14 leaves of fresh Sage
One quarter Red Onion (diced)

Recipe:
-Clean squirrel thoroughly and cut into two halves lengthwise, removing the spinal cord.
-Turn on cooktop to med/high, add quarter cup of butter and quarter of diced red onions (for mirepois) to cast iron skillet & begin to brown butter (stir occasionally).
-Take three cloves of garlic and grind through planer.
-Rub half teaspoon of salt & pepper & 8-9 leaves of diced sage leaf onto squirrel halves
-Rub garlic all over squirrel halves (and spine if you want to eat backstraps)
-When butter has browned, place seasoned squirrel halves into skillet and sear both sides.
-Turn heat down to medium/low and let sit for 3-5 minutes or until done (turning occasionally: add dash of high heat safflower oil to prevent burning).
-Add remaining three cloves of diced garlic and diced sage.
-Take squirrel off of heat, plate and add salt/pepper to taste.

Alternates:
-Use white wine after searing and add small amount of chicken broth with sliced carrots and reduce to increase moisture of finished squirrel.
-Consider seasoning squirrel meat overnight in brine to soften.

[Photo used courtesy of John-Morgan under Creative Commons license.]

Fighting the Zombie Menace, 3 Years Later

I would like to point out that 3 years since I wrote the initial blog entry, I continue to see new comments added to my discussion of what the best off-the-shelf zombie rifle would be.

Probably my opinions of the SKS have changed since I wrote that article (I kind of hate mine a little bit, following a few years of trunk gun duty), but the fact that people keep feeling the need to weigh in on this important issue warms my heart. My pledge to the good people of this planet is that at some time in the next month I will revisit this topic and provide yet another dead serious analysis of the zombie rifle issue with a dispassionate consideration of what off-the-shelf technology would best be suited to fighting your way to safety though the zombie hordes, according to the doctrine of World War Z.

I really and truly appreciate the seriousness with which readers have been willing to take this absurd premise. It is not clear to me what it was about this article that captured readers' imaginations as opposed to, say, my piece on preferred sasquatch guns. But whatever it was, thank you all so much for having this much fun with it.

Incidentally, if you are even slightly concerned about a possible zombie menace, I highly recommend World War Z as the book to read. No, I'm not getting a kick-back from Amazon to recommend it. The book is just that awesome.

Who Can Help Me Contact the NSSF?

For the past month or so I have been trying to get in touch with a human being at the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Their web site has been useless and nobody has responded to the emails I have sent to the email address supplied there. I have been hoping to enlist their help in identifying a qualified person to speak to a group of budding deer hunters in New York City about how to navigate the process of legally acquiring a hunting rifle in that city and how to go about finding a place to practice shooting.

Is there any kind reader of this blog who can put me in touch with someone at the NSSF? My overall mission of teaching a whole new demographic of people how to hunt should be very much in line with their goals.

Range Report on the Mauser Project

Sent to me from Paul Fritz just a few minutes ago:

"I took the Mauser out to the range today. It took two, two shots to zero at 100 yards. Very nice.

"After my zero, I shot for groups and to break in the barrel. My position wasn't comfortable for some reason (I suspect the seat was the wrong height), which resulted in some errors in my shooting that expanded the groups to 1.5 MOA. The weird part was that after cleaning the barrel, the first three bullets would cluster around 1.5 MOA, then the last two would kiss each other in the middle of the cluster. I did this three times.

"After shooting four groups of 5 (one at 50 yards & three at 100 yards) and cleaning between groups, I stopped cleaning to see what it would do. The next five were tighter at less than 1MOA. Not bad.

"Since I had only ten rounds left, I walked down to the 300 yard range to see if I could hit the 4 inch gong at 300 yard. Since I was zeroed at 1.5 inches high at 100 yards, I held about 1 mil high and the first (and only) shot impacted dead center sending the gong flying off of its chain. Which meant I was done.

"I'm very pleased considering that this rifle is not fully floated and has not been bedded yet. I am shooting sub MOA out to 300 yards with a rifle that has had only 25 bullets through it. Very happy.

"Oh, the chamber is tight. I'm glad we sized it for the 8mm brass as the factory brass resisted slightly on insertion. The fired brass looked like it had no stretch at all. Superb. I also had several people comment on the rifle. It looks great and shoots great."

We are looking at a sub-MOA rifle here. With just a little more work, I have little doubt that Paul will be getting even better groups out of it. These are the exact same parts and methods that we will be using in the upcoming 'build your own deer rifle' classes.

For those reading this whose eyes glaze over at any detailed discussion of rifles, bear in mind that some amount of this is necessary in order to hunt for food. I'm getting a little geekier than most people really need to, but an understanding of and interest in the tools required to harvest wild meat is a good idea if you want to consistently put dinner on the table. Accuracy counts.

'Build Your Own Mauser' Class - Beta Testing is Complete

The memorial day weekend* Mauser challenge was a success. What you see here is a photo of one of the two hunting rifles that we built from stripped K-98 receivers. More and better pictures of the process, rifles and accuracy tests will be up as soon as they have been uploaded and sorted through.

We started with a pair of military K-98s with worn-out barrels and stripped them down to the bare receivers, which were thoroughly cleaned and worked over with a wire brush. Those receivers and their soon-to-be reforged bolts were the only original parts included in the final product.

When I say 'we,' I don't just mean myself and Paul Fritz. Our guinea pig student, John Athayde, participated in every step along the way. John had experience with basic tools and knew the fundamentals of riflery but had never done this type of gunsmithing before. He proved that an intelligent person with the right instruction and tools can quickly build their own custom hunting and target rifle.

The bolt of each rifle was placed into a heat sink and blasted with an acetylene torch until it was hot enough to re-shape into a new contour that would clear a scope. Paul and John took turns at holding the torch and shaping the bolt.

Because of the extreme throat erosion discovered in one of the rifles, we made the decision to re-barrel not only these rifles but all Mausers used in the class going forward. The rifle with the eroded throat would not produce groups of shots less than 2 feet wide at 100 yards. We simply cannot take the risk of finding that a surplus barrel will not hold a group and end up sending students home with useless rifles.

After careful consideration we decided to re-barrel both guns for the 7mm Mauser cartridge. This cartridge was chosen for several reasons:

1. 7mm cartridges in general tend to shoot quite flat and are easy to be accurate with.

2. The 7mm Mauser cartridge was one of the first cartridges that this action was designed to handle and as such the rest of the rifle requires zero alteration for perfect function.

3. Among the various 7mm cartridges, the 7mm Mauser has far less recoil than the 7mm Remington Magnum and a wider array of possible bullet weights than the 7mm-08. While the 7mm-08 is easier to find ammo for in stores, Paul is teaching the basics of hand-loading to every student. This way, the greater flexibility of the 7mm Mauser can be realized in practical terms. The 7mm-08 cartridge has such a short neck that one is limited to 140 grain bullets, making it ideal for whitetails but marginal for anything larger. Whereas the hand-loader can easily load up to 188 grain bullets in the 7mm Mauser and credibly use it to hunt elk-sized prey.

4. The 7mm Mauser has a fascinating history that I won't get into just now, but suffice to say that the sort of person who favors a 7mm Mauser will find approving nods from the right sort of people. Its like driving a car powered by a straight six engine or listening to Dave Brubeck albums on vinyl.

But back to the rifle. The replacement barrels have slightly different thread patterns than the originals did, so the threads on the receiver were re-cut on Paul's vintage 1898 metal lathe (built the same year that the K-98 Mauser was designed). We used short-chambered Adams and Bennett barrels and clamped them into wooden blocks in a 6 ton shop press. Paul demonstrated proper technique with a chamber reamer which shaved away precisely the right amount of metal to produce a chamber shaped like the 7mm Mauser cartridge. John reamed the chamber in his own rifle, checking it every few turns with a head space gauge to make sure he hadn't removed too much metal.

Holes were drilled and tapped for screws in the tops of the receivers so that scopes could be mounted. One receiver had a face that wasn't quite squared enough to meet the sporter barrel properly, so that one was chucked up on the lathe and re-faced.

At this point, the metal work was complete and it was time to protect the raw steel from the elements. As much as we all appreciate the look of blued steel, it is not practical to cram a decent bluing job into a course that has to be finished in two days. Nor does bluing hold up well to the elements in wet weather. For these reasons we opted to finished the metal with black, high-temperature paint and rub it with oil after curing. The paint is dry enough to handle within about 20 minutes and will have fully cured by the following morning. Trust me, it really does look good. The photos demonstrate that. I would say that it looks about the same as the finish on a brand new Remington Model 700 BDL (which I have bought one a few years ago and feel qualified to say this). If chipped or damaged, a spray can of this paint costs about $3 at any hardware store and it is very easy to touch up on your own.

The composite stocks, chosen for the relative speed of fitting them as opposed to working with wood, were inletted using a Dremel Moto-tool and various hand tools. Adjustable, sporting triggers with built-in safeties were installed on the receivers. The rifles were fully assembled, scopes, bases and rings were centered, leveled and installed. After cleaning out any remaining metal shavings from the chamber and barrel, they were ready to shoot.

Now that we've done the tests to prove to ourselves that we can take someone through this process in a single weekend, we are ready to begin offering the course on a limited basis. While we would like to work our way up to groups of 4 students, we are going to start with classes of only 2 at a time in order to have as much one-on-one supervision and instruction as possible. The class will cost $1,000 per student. This price includes all parts, tools, instruction, trip to a shooting range, a set of gunsmithing screwdrivers and a gun vise to keep, etc. You will go home with a cased rifle that you built and in which you will have pride of workmanship for the rest of your life. You will probably be able to take down a Mauser action in your sleep at that point; you will have the tools and knowledge to install and zero scopes and you will be capable of inletting stocks and doing some basic metal work.

Included in that figure is the estimated price of purchasing a donor rifle to begin with (we are not firearms dealers and therefore we can only direct you to a suggested source for a Mauser action and we cannot sell it to you per se).

If you already have a 98 action to use, we are happy to work with that assuming that it is in safe condition and is a K-98 variant which is compatible with the parts and tools that are a part of this program. While we are going to be re-barreling for 7mm Mauser at this price, other cartridge options may be available on request for an additional fee.

Because class sizes are limited to 2 students each, we will not be announcing a list of dates with rosters to fill. Rather, we encourage interested parties to contact us and we will work with you to set dates that are convenient for all concerned. I can be emailed at jack.landers@gmail.com.


*Note that while the bulk of the work was completed during memorial day weekend, the rebarreling was done in a few hours on the following Sunday since we hadn't determined going into it that new barrels would be required. I have streamlined my description of the process for the purpose of illustrating the order in which the work will be done during future classes.

[Photo used courtesy of Paul Fritz]