Armed and Safe Latest

(April 6, 1997)

Citizen Soldier You have reached the latest Armed and Safe(tm) column. This page will be published at least monthly, and more often, if we find stuff of particular interest to write about. Enjoy, and tell your friends about us.

EC Roberts

From the Publisher

It has been over a year since we last published. Going broke and moving have a way of interrupting even the most important of projects.

We will be publishing a little differently than we did during the '94 election year. Instead of printing a few thousand 4-page newsletters and spending three weeks of each month writing, publishing and distributing, we will post these missives to our web page. We had hoped to then offer versions which could be published by you and distributed, but that isn't going to happen.

OK! On to the more interesting stuff....

SOME HOMEY STUFF

We are beginning to get things in shape around the old homestead. The vegetable plot is growing nicely and the flower beds are doing well. The buckwheat did quite well, last year, but the fellow who was to get the contract, didn't. Our spring was very late and wet, so our plantings got frozen out a couple of times. The tomatoes are late and small, the mellons are late and small, the corn...you get the idea. About the only things doing really well is the hops vine and the wine.

The blackpowder range is in at 50 yards, with two target stands and a bench rest. Things are not perfect, yet, but we have been testing some charges. (insert a big grin here.) The big 50 Hawkins (replica) is getting into shape for this Fall's hunting season. We've been experimenting with some solid conicals, and finding that they are AWESOME. The standard round ball expands to about 3/4 inch in water, but this conical really opens up. We had some trouble setting up enough water to recover the slug, but finally got it figured out. I picked up 25 lbs of .490 swaged ball at the gun show last weekend for less than the cost of the lead. Now I have to figure out the patch, and see how it works for a rabbit gun. 50 cal for rabbit? I've shot Rock Chuck for dinner with the 30-06, so shouldn't be too much different. That's what it says on paper, anyway.

The little 36 squirrel rifle took game last fall and will again, when season opens. The cottontails are increasing nicely this year and feral dog population is down, in this area (grin again.). We had some neighbor's dogs try to take some of our chickens home for dinner, one night. I still have all my chickens. I'm going to start on the coyotes, soon. We started with 4 breeding pair of quail, last year. This year we have about 30 breeding pair and they are hatching about a dozen each.

We haven't had a chance to put the 12ga barrel on the Hawkins for game, yet, but paper tests indicate the load we are using is probably right for the rabbits and birds we have here. We'll keep you posted. One surprise for us was finding out that the 12ga insists on FFg and the .50 ball likes FFFg. Using FFFg in the 12ga blows a hole in the center of the pattern you could drive a small pony through.

In order to get this thing up on the web, we are going to push it on as is. As we get more stuff to add, we will just add it. Then we will change it out once a month, putting the old one in the archive and the new one here. We will probably not get the publishable version of Armed and Safe up again, for the forseeable future, as I am now editor of the Sentry, the newsletter for the Mountain Coalition. Mountain Coalition are fighting the gummint to keep the public forests and parks open to the public. Great fun. As soon as I get things worked out with the publishing shop, I'll include the Sentry on this web site.

Bob
ec Roberts
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