Deer Like Meat!

Ok, I know that it was very bad of me to feed a deer at a campground. Bad, bad, bad. But it was all worthwhile in order to get this wonderful bit of video in which you will see a whitetail deer demonstrating its latent carnivorous tendencies.

Yes, this is a deer eating meat. Enjoy.

Eating Iguanas

Yesterday evening I returned from an 11 day trip to Florida to hunt invasive lizards, work on the new book, and film a 'sizzler' (that's a short version of a TV pilot) for the show in development that is based on the 'Eating Aliens' book. Aside from what was filmed for the pilot, I have loads of great video to edit into instructional videos to post here over the next few weeks.

Since I have two entire chapters to write about the species hunted on this trip, I'm not going to get as in depth right now as I will for the book. But I'd still like to give a general outline of the iguana situation.

The two species that we focused on during this trip were black spiny-tailed iguanas and green iguanas. Despite both being called 'iguanas,' the two species are very different and not especially closely related. I hunted the spiny-tails on Boca Grande island, off the Gulf coast of Florida, with George Cera. A professional hunter and wildlife specialist, George was personally responsible for killing over 16,000 spiny-tailed iguanas from Boca Grande under a contract with the town to do so.

These spiny-tails were wreaking havoc on Boca Grande's ecosystem. The once-common anoles had mostly been devoured by the omnivorous iguanas. These aren't like the green iguanas that people keep as pets. They eat meat at any opportunity. The young of endangered burrowing owls, eggs and young of endangered scrub jays, gopher tortoise eggs and hatchlings, etc. What possessed someone to release these things into the wild is incomprehensible to me.

For some reason, there are still people openly doubting whether adult spiny-tails act as predators. They believe that only juveniles eat insects and that as they get older they become exclusively herbivorous. This is a myth. I have personally witnessed a large adult spiny-tail iguana leaping to grab an anole and eat it. Examining their droppings I have found hair and fragments of the wing covers of beetles. The teeth of the adults make their purpose very clear. A set of wickedly sharp incisors up front are hooked backwards for the clear purpose of holding on to prey. They remind me of the front teeth of the long-extinct chasmatosaur.

Everything that I know about hunting iguanas, I learned from George Cera. I spent 3 days with George in Boca Grande, mostly cruising around in a golf cart as we looked for any shape that was out of place with the background and might have been an iguana. There are far fewer spiny-tails in Boca Grande than there used to be, but we still saw quite a few. In the process of knocking out 16,000 iguanas, George has gotten very good at what he does.

While George also does some trapping, we used .17 caliber air rifles for this hunt. A .22 LR or .22 magnum would have been the preferred tool for this work, but it is illegal to discharge a real firearm in Boca Grande. You don't get much in the way of hydrostatic shock from a .17 pellet, so shot placement is extremely important. The effective range is quite limited as well on all but the smallest of lizards, requiring the hunter to come in very close and risk spooking the prey.

There is only one type of shot that is fully effective on a big lizard. It is imperative to knock out the central nervous system at once or else the creature will escape before its body can be retrieved. I have personally witnessed the heart of a snake continue to beat for approximately an hour after being removed from the animal's body. Reptiles are just plain tough and their bodies can continue to function against all rational odds for a good long while after being seriously injured. Even after a perfect shot through the lungs of an iguana it could scurry off into a palm thicket or mangrove swamp to die 10 minutes later in some crevice or tree where you will never find it.

The brain shot is standard for this reason, although I once saw George deliberately put a raking shot through the upper spine from behind. Same thing, essentially.

We got some great video demonstrating how to butcher and skin iguanas in order to eat them. That will be posted here as soon as I'm able to (some of it was exclusively for the TV pilot and I'm not sure whether I'll be able to use it here). There will certainly be a full explanation in the book. The meat actually tasted pretty good. Yes, like chicken. We made tacos with the spiny-tails and later on in the trip when I was hunting alone in the Florida Keys I turned part of a large green iguana into a nice American-styled ragù sauce.

Up next for the Eating Aliens project during the month of October: An expedition to rural Georgia to hunt feral hogs and a trip to New York City to trap and snare European pigeons on roof-tops.

[The photo depicts me about to skin the tail of an invasive green iguana in the kitchenette of my pop-up camper on Big Pine Key, Florida.]

Transcript of an Email Regarding Geese

[The following is an email sent this evening from myself to Paul Fritz regarding a hunting trip for Canada geese yesterday. Cut-and-pasted straight from Gmail to you]

Jackson Landers to Paul show details 9:33 PM (59 minutes ago) The Rivanna strategy was highly effective. I bagged 2 and if I'd figured out my strategy sooner I'd probably have 4. Floating down the river and jump shooting is the way to go. This is scads of fun and there are plenty of geese. The trick is to spot them right when you come around a bend and look for a place to pull off behind cover. The paddler stays back with the boat while the shooter sneaks ahead on foot to close the distance. Preferably over a sandbar around a bend, with tall grass and brush as cover. Creep in as close as possible. Keep moving in with the gun ready until they spook and flush and take to the air and shoot them right then. Following that, run/wade down the river as fast as possible to chase down the cripples while trying to keep the gun out of the water. When the water gets deeper, swim down the next set of rapids while using your trusty Mossberg model 500 as a barge pole to fend off of rocks. Surface with a face full of muck and algae and lunge at the nearest goose, who will hiss and peck at your face. Punching it in the snout, try to grab it by the neck with one hand while fumbling for a knife in the pocket of your bathing suit with the other. Realizing that you have lost said knife while swimming the rapids, attempt to break the goose's neck while holding it underwater. Repeat as necessary. -Jackson

Geese Wanted

To anyone reading this in the general area of Charlottesville, VA, I am in need of some Canada geese for a culinary event in support of Slow Food NYC next month. If you have a farm, estate, golf course or other property which is infested with Canada geese, I would be very happy to show up and safely take some of them off of your hands.

Hunting is legal on most properties in Albemarle County and I would be happy to look at your particular situation to advise you as to whether it is both legal and practical. Having spent 11 years as a high end personal lines insurance broker, I am well-versed in any concerns you might have about liability. As a licensed hunter, an instructor, author and hunting guide, I am well-versed in everything necessary to take the geese safely and with a minimum of suffering to the animal or disruption to you.

A DIY .35 Whelen Mauser

[Note: I have been terribly sick for days, with a high fever. I have all sorts of things I want to write about here and all sorts of email to catch up on, much of which is from readers of this blog and I apologize for my recent silence. Since I'm too out of it to think clearly enough to write new material, here's something very detailed that I wrote a few months ago about a .35 Whelen that Paul Fritz and I built during one of our classes. I had intended to see about submitting it to one of the trade magazines but not having gotten around to it yet, here it is.]

The .35 Whelen might be the most misunderstood rifle cartridge in America. American hunters and rifle enthusiasts have come to think of it as little more than a souped-up .30-'06 which is most appropriate for putting an especially big hole through a deer. It is true that the .35 Whelen is a necked-up .30-'06 and it is equally true that it will put a large hole through a deer but the cartridge was originally intended to do much more than that.

A deer and elk hunting mentality invites the frequent comparison of the .35 Whelen to the .30-'06 and .300 Winchester magnum. I believe that the more apt comparison would be with the .45-70 and the 9.3x62 Mauser. Each of these cartridges shoots a medium caliber bullet weighing between 200-300 grains at roughly similar velocities.

The 9.3x62 Mauser is widely thought of as a traditional cartridge for African hunting. This is for good reason, since the cartridge has been used since 1905 in Africa by knowledgeable hunters for everything from impala to cape buffalo. It is unquestionably a serious tool for hunting dangerous game.

Let us compare this dangerous game cartridge with the .35 Whelen. The 9.3 Mauser shoots a bullet that is 0.37" in diameter and weighing 250 grains from a 24" barrel at about 2,600 feet per second. The .35 Whelen pushes a bullet of 0.358" in diameter of the same 250 grain weight at 2,523 feet per second. Ballistically, these cartridges are more or less twins.

I believe that this demonstrates that the .35 Whelen is a serious all-around big game cartridge that, when properly loaded with the appropriate bullets, is suitable for everything from whitetails to buffalo.

It is my hope to hunt feral, non-native water buffalo in Australia or Papua New Guinea at some point in the next few years as part of my ongoing 'Eating Aliens' project. Feral water buffalo tend to revert to a form and a disposition very similar to the wild Asiatic buffalo from which they are descended. They are big, hardy beasts that are capable of rearranging one's person into a sort of splintery paste if angered (though they are not so aggressive as the African cape buffalo). This led me to look at those three cartridges as candidates for my next rifle project. The .45-70, .35 Whelen and 9.3x62 Mauser. I settled on the .35 Whelen for several reasons.

The .35 beats out the .45-70 for my purposes because there are good factory loads available in the event that I have to purchase more ammunition while on a hunting trip. Most factory-loaded .45-70 is anemically under-loaded out of fear that someone will use it in an original trap door Springfield and find that they are detonating a pipe bomb in front of their face. It is also difficult to get .45-70 feeding properly through the Mauser actions that I intended to work with. The bolt face and extractor of a 98 Mauser action are too small for the .45-70's head. The thing can be done but it requires a lot of extra work.

Between the .35 Whelen and the 9.3x62 I broke the tie on the basis of the .35 Whelen being based on the .30-'06 case. I intend to hand load some ammunition for this rifle and it happens that I am awash in .30-'06 brass due to the high volume of that ammunition that my deer hunting classes tend to run through. That brass can be easily necked up and turned into .35 Whelen. 9.3x62 brass is a lot harder to come by in the US. Factory-loaded ammunition is also at least seasonally easier to find in the US versus 9.3x62. Remington produces it and their enormous distribution system is more likely to reach into your local gun store than that of either Norma or Prvi Partizan (which are the notable producers of 9.3x62 that have any distribution in the US).

The .35 Whelen requires nothing more than rebarrelling in order to work well in a k98 Mauser. Both the overall length and the case head measurements are almost identical to the 8mm and 7mm Mauser cartridges for which the k98 action was designed. The .35 Whelen was designed by Colonel Townsend Whelen and gunsmith James Howe at the Frankford arsenal in Pennsylvania in 1922 in order to meet a set of well-defined technical criteria. Col. Whelen wanted a cartridge that could push a bullet of at least 250 grains to around 2,500 feet per second in order to take most African game. At the same time, he and Howe wanted it to be based on the .30-'06 case that was widely available in America and he wanted it to fit easily in both Springfield and Mauser actions. Col. Whelen required that a very specific quantity of whoop ass be placed in just the right size can.

Working with blacksmith Paul Fritz (Paul is my co-instructor for range sessions for my deer hunting classes and also the primary instructor for the deer rifle building classes that we are now offering), we selected a 24" Adams and Bennett barrel with a 1:14 twist rate. The 1:14 twist rate is better than the 1:16 twist rate commonly found on Remington's rifles in .35 Whelen for stabilizing the heavier bullets of between 220-310 grains.

I am grateful for the fact that Remington brought the .35 Whelen mainstream in 1988 by turning what had been a wildcat into a factory round. However, I think that they are largely responsible for the myth that it is just a big deer cartridge by choosing that 1:16 twist rate and offering the rifles with typically a 22 inch barrel. This combination leads to the need for lighter bullets and lower velocities that tend to defeat the purpose of the cartridge.

We also selected a barrel in an F34 contour. This is a heavier and thicker barrel then would normally be found on a hunting rifle. I intend to shoot 310 grain bullets at times and I want the extra weight to help manage the heavy recoil that will be produced.

The donor action was a 'Russian capture' K98 carbine. This was made in Germany in 1938 and captured by the Russians somewhere on the Eastern front during the second world war. I've had the rifle sitting around for 4 or 5 years with the intent of sporterizing it eventually. The rifling at the muzzle of the original barrel was poor and it never shot well for me in the original configuration.

We stripped the rifle down and discarded everything except for the bolt, receiver and trigger guard/magazine. The receiver was prepared by re-cutting the barrel threads to match those of the US-made barrel and refacing it on a lathe. We drilled and tapped it for a scope and then started on the barrel. I reamed the chamber of the barrel to SAAMI specifications and screwed the receiver on.

The bolt-handle was reforged to clear the scope rather than cut off and replaced. We placed the bolt in a heat sink and Paul heated it up cherry red with an acetylene torch while I banged it into shape with a hammer.

Because this project needed to be completed inside of a single weekend, I went with a composite stock rather than the walnut that I prefer. Inletting goes much faster. However, I did not want to end up with one more black rifle in a black stock that looks identical to a million other rifles. What I decided to do was to dress up the stock by removing the distinctive steel stock discs from the original German stock and incorporating them into the new stock.

Nothing says 'Mauser' to me quite so readily as those shiny, raised circles that ornament many military Mausers. The purpose of the stock discs was to make it easier to reassemble the rifle's bolt if it needed to be taken down in the field. The steel ring provides a bearing surface against which to compress the firing pin spring while the pin is pushed down into the hole through the middle of the stock. I happen to find this feature handy and always thought it would be fun and useful to put a set of stock discs into an aftermarket stock.

I installed the discs by first measuring and marking carefully to make certain that my holes on each side would be perfectly lined up. Then I drilled a hole through each side of the hollow stock of the outside diameter of the ferrule.

This is the part where things got tricky. The bottoms of the discs are flat, while the sides of the stock are curved. This means that the discs must be slightly recessed into the plastic. Paul had the brilliant suggestion that we melt the discs in.

The stock was laid flat on its side and I placed a piece of brass tubing upright in the hole so that it stuck up an inch or two. I held a stock disc in a pair of blacksmith's tongs while Nick (our student who was building his own rifle with us on the same weekend) blasted it with a blow torch until it changed color and was on the cusp of glowing. Then I quickly dropped the hot disc over the brass tube. The tube ensured that the disc would be in perfect alignment over the hole. I used the end of a cut pipe to apply even pressure around the disc as it melted a recess into the stock.

This process was repeated on the other side. Rather than using the original ferrule, I decided that the brass tube used for alignment would do the job better. I cut it off flush with one disk using a hacksaw. We held the stock up to the lathe and lined up the center on one disc and the chuck on the other. In this manner we flared the ends of the brass tube within the discs and press-fit it. All that remained was to clean up the extruded, melted plastic from around the edges of the discs using a sharp knife.

We were painting the rifles rather than bluing them, again on account of this project needing to be ready to shoot in a single weekend. In the past we have used black high-temperature paint of the same kind used for charcoal grills. As I said, I wanted this to look a little different. Paint is easy enough to strip off of metal if I don't like it. Paul happened to have a can of khaki paint on hand and I went for it. The barrel and receiver were done in khaki while the trigger guard/magazine, bolt, follower and other parts are black. I liked the two tone look right away and it has continued to grow on me.

The rifle was scoped using Leupold mounts and rings. Leupold makes a scope mount that fits the receiver of an unaltered military Mauser. This is a great option to have for a DIY project because you don't need to grind down the stripper clip hump. I had a Tasco 'World Class' 3-9x40 scope sitting around that we mounted on the rifle.

At the range that afternoon I was pleased with the rifle's performance. I was unable to fully assess accuracy because the stout recoil of the .35 Whelen shook the reticle of the scope loose and ruined it. I can say that it grouped about 1.5" at 100 yards, which is pretty good with a broken scope. This can only improve with new glass. The recoil from any one shot did not feel like much more than a .30-'06, although the cumulative effect of going through 20 rounds of 225 grain bullets left a more pronounced effect on my shoulder than any .30-'06 has.

The ballistic profile of the .35 Whelen is almost identical to that of the .30-'06 within the first 200 yards or so. I don't see myself taking field shots much longer than that.

I'm quite happy with how the rifle has turned out. It is powerful, accurate and eye-catching. I don't have the skills to turn out a custom Mauser with the detailed woodwork and metal engraving of a Suhl or Oberndorf gunsmith. That's ok because that level of craftsmanship isn't necessary to make an accurate hunting rifle. The basic idea of building something like this in a garage over the weekend as a non-professional is a very American sort of thing to do. Ditto for shrugging at a normal bluing job and painting the thing khaki. It is a very American sort of rifle (in spite of being built on a German action), chambered for a very American cartridge. I think that I could carry this rifle with confidence on an expedition for buffalo or even on a trip through lion country.

To be entirely honest with you, the first thing I'll probably use it for is a whitetail deer in my backyard.