Greetings from your (intermittently) off grid blogger. This is a post I wrote a few days ago.
Let’s start with a few responses to IRL (in real life) comments.
First, I applaud respectful disagreement but stand firm in my belief that Zima is gross. The Millennial Snowflake’s Powerlifting Contest of beers, Zima is for twerps who haven’t learned to put vodka in their ginger ale. Living in a dimension of time and space that includes Zima is unfortunate. It’s a wine cooler that’s more sugary than a wine cooler, beer that’s weaker than Bud Light, and water that’s less refreshing than water. Also, if you want clear alcohol, drink Vodka; as God intended. Of course, my tastes are mature. If I were an underaged pre-pubescent dipshit I might sip cotton candy, think I’m getting buzzed, and Zima-fy my world. Thank God those days (if they ever existed for me) are long past.
Second; Dr. Mingo, I see your point and will cogitate. Perhaps the shit really is hitting the fan there and it’s smoother sailing here. My mistake may be conflating here and there into a single whole. I’ll work on a “spectrum” theory next time I tell folks to chill out.
Now on to news which has most certainly been beaten to death before this post goes live (I told ya’ I was off grid!). The “most important mid-term election in human history until the next one” is over. My after action summary, with the added benefit of distance (fish cannot see the water in which they swim), is that the mid-term was pleasantly average. Sometimes boring is good!
I knew all along “blue wave” was propaganda. So did most of us. Ignoring blue wave blovations, I initially expected the usual mid-term result. The opposing party (regardless of which one) makes minor gains in both the House and the Senate. This the Democrats would gain a few dozen House seats and maybe the majority and surely squeak out a majority in the Senate. After a mathematically unimpressive performance they’d claim a “blue wave” victory of historic proportions; as if the most brutal, hard hitting, party in the nation was a frail underdog that bravely spoke truth to power and took out literally-Hitler/Goliath/Cheeto-Jesus with nothing but the power of love… love and shitloads of money. Bwa ha ha ha!
Counterintuitively, I bet in PredictIt on the longshot that the Dems would fail to gain the House (and in some markets) the Senate. I was lured in by the high payoff. A risky bet for high payoff sometimes makes sense; especially in a volatile market.
As the election drew near I traveled through America’s heartland and ignored the ‘net and TV. I tried to get a sense of things. Unlike 2016, where the writing was on the wall (or yard signs), all I could glean in 2018 was that Americans have become circumspect. Between the east coast and the left coast, where unabashedly socialist politics stew the populace in groupthink, everyone else has started playing their cards close to the vest. It makes sense. After all, retribution for any thoughts to the right of Lenin may steamroll you at work, job, or social media. The attacks are swift, unpredictable, one sided, and Soviet like. Everybody and their dog knows it and watching the internet reenact the French Revolution is a clue. Everyone acts accordingly. Even lefties are getting nervous; you can say the right things one day and be literally Hitler the next day. It’s a scary world out there.
Several places I traveled went unexpectedly red in the election but nobody was sayin’ nothing about anything. You could’ve heard a pin drop in the days before the vote.
Lesson learned? The secret ballot must be kept secret. I predict this will be a new line of attack. (When the fist set of personally identified votes is leaked you heard it here first. “Jim Smit voted Republican in 2020, you can’t hire a jerk like that!” Tell me that ‘aint a likely situation.)
Corollary lesson is that, in an evenly split nation, one side has driven the other not extinct but underground. There’s nothing I can do about it and I’m not in the business of shouldering responsibilities that aren’t mine so I only mention the observation in passing.
Meanwhile, America’s Pravda (NPR), had countless “stories” that explained polling was not an attempt to predict anything and Americans needed to understand that discussing future election scenarios was utterly unrelated to prognostication about future election results. What. The. Fuck?
This gold plated bullshit made think they expected a crushing defeat. Had their “blue wave” propaganda (and the Kavanaugh event) backfired that badly? Their insistence that “two plus two means we win even if we lose” made me wonder about a “red wave”.
I also noticed that “blue wave” (a phrase invented around February and uttered ad nauseam) had faded.”Red wave” (a phrase that appeared much closer to the election) began to seep into discussions.
I pulled off the road and used a truck stop’s wifi to double my bets from the initial pittance.
A few days later, I’d lost two pittances.
Damn!
I’d wagered roughly a six pack’s worth of coin on an outlier election. But it was completely unremarkable and everything I tried to suss from media or the things they carefully wouldn’t discuss was irrelevant. I’d bet on accumulated election numbers and lost by 4 out of 435 House elections. As I type this (long before I post it) the Dems had flipped about 30 House seats. I bet on <= 22. Damn.
So, it was totally average. Google tells me the average “flip” for mid-term elections since WW2 is 26. 30 is right in the middle of the distribution. I’d overestimated volatility and in retrospect I know why. Clinton and Obama had 2 of the 3 worst mid-terms since WW2. (-54 House and -63 House respectively.) With Clinton’s beating in recent memory, it hadn’t sunk into my head that Obama’s “shellacking” was literally the worst performance in 70 years. It was so bad as to be unlikely to be repeated even in a century. (Regardless of direction, I like volatility in high risk bets.)
This year’s 30 seats ranks about 13th of 26 elections. Basically a mathematical median. Which, NPR explained, is math and therefore it’s too hard to worry our pretty little heads about it.
Note: I’m fairly unplugged from news. If there are 400+ elections I expect a few are very close. Whenever there are close elections there will be tainted recount after tainted recount until the “desired” (i.e. Dem) answer is obtained. (I call this “the Hanging Chad effect” and there’s no way in God’s green earth the recounts are sound if they almost always go one way.) Since biased endless recounts nearly always go Democratic and they happen maybe on 1% of all elections. I suppose there will be four more seats for the future Al Frankens of the Nation? So maybe the count of “Dems win 30” will be recounted Soviet style until it’s something like “Dems win 34”?
Yep, I lost that bet hard.
The Senate, last I knew, was something like 52 in favor of Republicans. Modest gains for the Orange menace but nothing too exciting. Unfortunately, I paired my House and Senate bets so it was a wash. I don’t know if the 1% “Recount Until We Win” effect is happening in the Senate. I sure hope not. Cheating is wrong and if the Evil party recounts until they change a majority(!) that’s bad juju. I wish the gutless Stupid party would grow a pair, take the gloves off, and stop playing Calvinball!
As far as I can tell, both sides declared victory and that’s pretty normal too. I like normal!
I think (?) it was a peaceful election. I didn’t hear reports of people wearing symbolic genitalia on their heads or riding pre-paid buses to DC to smash windows. Maybe it’s happening and I’m missing the “news”. Like I was saying to Dr. Mingo, I live in a America that’s somewhat less sanity-impaired than others. The squawking shittorms of Facebook and TV report things I’m not seeing with my own two eyes so, like many, I’ve tuned out the rage monkeys. It just doesn’t seem real.
For example, Godzilla could be skull fucking San Francisco into the ground and all I’d have was a vague interest in the odds of a cholera outbreak from people shitting in the streets. Would that be transmissible to where sane people live?
For that matter, DC has the feel of a zoo cage. Maybe that’s a silver lining? Every society needs a good place to warehouse incompetent and scheming whack jobs. Maybe Portland for the “earthy ones” and DC for the ones who shower and wear suits? What else do you do with people who can’t be trusted with important tasks?
Like this: “This new job hire is so dumb he/she/zim/zer/it couldn’t start the bulldozer. Then they walked into a telephone pole and blamed racism. Right now they’re painting their face green, wearing no shoes, and organizing a protest about straws in the break room. Lets send ’em to DC where they won’t be around sharp objects and heavy machinery.”
I could be wrong. That’s just how it feels. Pull out of the propaganda stream and things seem a little less heady. Good luck y’all.
A.C.
P.S. I’m vague on the details so help me out. Did someone who married her(?) brother(!) win an election(!!!)? Since when is incest (or would it be bigamy) legal? Regardless, how did a nation get the vapors over Roy Moore’s old school “courting” and subsequently elect someone who’s literally doing shit that’ll tie the gene pool in a knot? Have I misheard this?
P.S.2. Also did someone lose to a dead legal brothel owner? (That’s gotta’ be Nevada?) Did I mishear that too? Is it a “Weekend at Bernie’s” real life adventure. If so, is Ginsberg invited? (OK, I know… low blow. Sorry. But Robert Byrd is finally gone and someone has to fill his geriatric shoes as the geezer punchline du jour. Ask Keith Richards about it.) My radio is mostly NPR and they’ve clammed up; which tends to indicate those things really happened. Finally, how the hell am I to write satire if brother marrying, dead pimp, elections really happen?
With the election approaching some folks are hyperventilating (particularly the press which thinks being one side’s fluffer is its job). I’m not worried. In fact I’m probably nowhere near “the grid” (this post should go live via the magic of scheduling).
In case you worry that there’s some level of weird and confusing that will exceed all bounds, become a tipping point, and plunge us into disaster I’ve linked to a few completely incomprehensible things. Take heart! America (and I) survived these things… it’ll make it through a mid-term election.
1970: AMC Gremlin.
Ugh! It’s like a dump truck took a shit and someone called it a compact car. This runty wheeled failure was first presented on April 1, 1970. It probably broke down in the parking lot that afternoon. If anything would cause God to despair for humanity and flood our asses off the planet it would be this. Yet the nation that inflicted this atrocity on the roads was also capable of lunar landings. That glorious era of proud exploration lasted until December 7, 1972 after which NASA crawled up its own ass and died. I’m not saying the Gremlin crushed the dream of space flight but I’m not discounting it either. Point is, we survived.
1984: Relax.
What the fuck is this? It’s so pointless that it turns in on itself and becomes its own gravity well. Yet I can’t help tapping my feet. WTF? It’s a song that’s nothing but hook. America survived this and the UK (it’s a British group) censored a video for it based on the reasoning that it was sexually suggestive so fucking dumb it could damage human minds. Six years later the Berlin wall fell without a shot fired. Coincidence. Who knows? (H/t to Ace of Spades.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=pEBXuhqVSws
1994: Zima.
Question: How much sugar can you cram into an alcoholic beverage before you’d rather stick your dick in a light socket than drink it?
Answer: Zima
This disgusting shit was excreted into stores in 1994. For some reason the people responsible were not guillotined. If there was ever a drink that would cause you to give up living and shove your head in an oven it was Zima. One year later, on June 27th, 1995 the US Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian Mir Space Station, symbolizing for all that the US and Russia were not necessarily going to vaporize each other and that NASA could still at least put people into orbit. There is no word how NASA overcame the tragedy of Zima but they persevered.
Update, Google searches indicate that there may be a relaunch of Zima. This proves that there is nothing so stupid and reprehensible that people won’t look at failure and try to repeat it.
2005: Lance Armstrong.
In 2005 Lance Armstrong won a record seventh straight Tours de France. This was a heroic comeback given that he’d had some sort of cancer that most men refer to as nut implosion syndrome; also called“ugh I don’t even want to think about it”.
Hm… ball issues and a sport where drugs might benefit a competitor. Sounds legit to me.
Seven years later an investigation concluded Armstrong was a ringleader of “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen”. They also concluded that having your ball fall off while dominating the living shit out of every other competitor in sight is what they termed “a clue”.
I’d give my left nut for another trophy. Oh wait…
The point is that America survived a wave of stupid on this one. Eleventy gazillion adoring press articles about the brave role model who kicked France’s cycling world one nut at a time and then later an equal number of articles where the press was shocked to discover what everyone who wasn’t freebasing their own ass had already guessed.
One year later the Nintendo Wii hit the market and all was forgiven. It was far less “uptight” than the other consoles and you didn’t have to go to France on a bicycle to enjoy it.
Marketers had forgotten there’s a place for games that are just for fun and the Wii reeled it in a bit. The Wii was a cute little console for playing games that are less serious. Not every game has to be a six part series called “Super Deathmatch Assassins Full Metal Hellscape of Doomageddon”. We can thank the Wii for reminding game programmers of whimsy.
See? We’ve lived through stupid and come through it. There’s no need to go full shitstorm when the votes come in. Regardless of who wins or how butthurt the losers feel, the sun will rise again and the sky is still blue. Keep steady y’all.
God bless Florida for being our national punchline.
If there’s one thing Dungeons and Dragons needs it’s more rednecks!
Here’s a break from politics. It’s always good to just enjoy art because it’s pleasing. (Yes, Virginia, there is non-political art.)
I love the theme, called Tank. It doesn’t just overcome my blues based distrust of jazz (or bebop); it kicks its butt and sends it packing! It would be an amazing song without the animation.
I love the animation (which has nothing to do with tanks but goes with the very high quality series Cowboy Bebop). It would be amazing animation without the music.
The two combined is just perfect. It’s safe for work and less than 2 minutes long. You deserve a break. Enjoy:
[This post (like many) was written out of time sync. If all goes well, it will hit the ‘net with automagic scheduling while I’m nowhere near the grid. If something happened that is missing from my post (invaders from Mars?), it’s probably due to the time sync.]
It’s fall of an even numbered year. Therefore, electioneering fluffery is flooding the nation. It’s only a few days (when this post goes live) before the “most important mid-terms of human existence”, which is how virtually all elections are discussed now.
Isn’t it annoying how every election is a shitfest of epic importance? Want elections that aren’t so awful? The first step is not asking/expecting every damn thing to emanate from the power of DC. But I’m preachin’ to the choir here. Y’all know that.
The thing about the stupid season, is that evil folks scheme to rile up otherwise peaceful Americans. Peaceful people don’t vote nearly so “vociferously” as ones who’ve had a hornet shoved up their ass. This is bad, masses of upset people are always risky. So far it hasn’t gone too far off the rails and that’s why I’m writing now.
I’m going to offer a few things to be thankful for. (Remember, I’m writing this long before the posting so news in this post is somewhat conjecture.) Here goes:
So far most of the October surprises haven’t been surprising but they also haven’t been fatal. I’m thankful for that. Every shitstorm that doesn’t happen (or at least doesn’t go nuclear) is a good thing. Seriously, be thankful the shit hasn’t hit the fan… more.
After a short wait, my turn comes up but I’ve got the human equivalent of buck fever. I can stay cool as a cucumber when the hunt is on, but I’m jittery in front of a crowd.
I’m no longer used to ranges. I feel like everyone is judging me. I hunt alone (or occasionally with Dr. Mingo) and haven’t been seriously into marksmanship for a while. At least in this phase of my life, shooting in front of a crowd is weird. They’re watching! What if I look like an idiot? Will I have to deal with the “target of shame”?
They’ve got a bench vice, which I’m not used to using. And a bench, which is also something I don’t use. And there are six people lined up behind me; two Greybeards with something they got from the time of John Wayne, a woman who is precisely hot enough to distract me, and three dude bros with tacti-cool ARs that can probably boot an iPhone.
I drank a whole thermos of coffee driving here and my heart rate is up. Shit! Stage fright.
OK, breathe. Chill, remember all the shit you know. You ought to have been keeping up your skills. Dumbass…
“Lane six, is everything ok?”
“Yeah, just getting settled.”
“OK then, you’re on target four.”
Eventually I shove the sled aside. Too much crap to think about. I grab a small sandbag but it’s too short. I whip off my hat and cram it under the stock. (Is that not what hats are for?) That’s good.
The bench seat is giving me a wedgie…
“Lane six, you need anything?”
“Nope, thanks. “
Click.
Fuck, I forgot to load. Well at least I’m not flinching. Meanwhile, folks on the left of me and the right have come up, verified they can get “minute of deer”, and left. It’s like taking a leak in a crowded stadium where there are a dozen urinals and hundred people crowding them. I’d rather piss on a stump in the lonely wilderness…
Is that dude chuckling about me? Bastard!
Let it go. Breathe, don’t itch your nose, relax. Squeeze.
BAM.
I didn’t see the hit. Meh, it didn’t feel all that bad. Probably not embarrassing.
“Bullseye!”
What? I gotta’ verify that. “You’re sure?”
“Yep, nice. Can’t you see it?”
I eye the scope and find the hole. Damn! Very nice! “Can I shoot a few more?”
“Of course, but it’s only downhill from here.”
It seems to me that a bullseye could be luck. I don’t trust luck. The next shot is 2” high, which takes the shine off my bullseye. The next four are clustered very precisely at 1” high and all are +/- half an inch or less from center line.
In retrospect, I think I sighted this particular rifle 1” high at 100 yards with 150 grain bullets on the logic that I might take a longer shot. (I should write that down.) Thus, the first shot really was “luck”. I pulled it 1” low from point of aim. Not that I’m telling anyone that!
I’d like to dial the scope down 1”. Then again, this isn’t “uptight marksman sight in day”. I’m slowing up the works.
The spotter is enthused. He has little marks on a dry erase board/target to mimic the target out there. “If you drop that flier”, he points at the one 2” high, “you’ve got a group of just over 1-inch.” He’s beaming.
I’m pleased but a student of science. You don’t get to “drop” a “flier” any more than an elk gets a Mulligan if I put a hollow point into its chest. Hunting is for keeps. You get what you got.
Then again, it’s plenty good enough. “Ah heck, I deserve that ‘flier’. But I’ll take 2-inch groups too. It’ll work.” The spotter nods. Meanwhile, my mind is racing. The first shot was low and the second high, but the last four were very good. I wish I’d been practicing all summer. I could tighten that group. I have to force myself not to go down the rabbit hole of super precision. Everyone else is getting much larger groups and firing much fewer shots. I shrug. How big is a deer’s heart, or an elk? Gotta’ be bigger than 2”. It’s good enough.
“Thanks, guys.” I grab my shit and go.
Driving home I ponder the significance of 2” versus a likely quite obtainable 1”. I’ll probably never take a shot where 2 MOA wasn’t plenty good enough.
Last year I faced that very concept. I had a chance to thread a bullet through brush to drop a small doe. It was pretty close but I had only a 4” circle to shoot through. I’m 99% sure I could have made the shot but, like I said, I’m a wuss about tracking. I aimed at a larger opening two feet ahead and prayed the deer would step forward. It did, briefly. I had a split second to shoot but I was already aimed and waiting. I felt the risk of waiting for the deer to step was worth it. YMMV.
Well that’s the story of site in day. It’s likely something most of you do every year too. But I thought I’d describe it for non-hunters.
A.C.
P.S. If you’re a non-hunter, my description of the terminal ballistics on big game can sound a bit harsh. Sorry, but it is what it is. Wondering about organ placement and bullet accuracy is a messy unforgiving business but that’s my natural approach. To me, it’s unavoidable. I dutifully master the messy realities of logistics and effective killing and earn the beautiful cyclic oneness of hunting as reward. You don’t get one without the other.
One interesting facet of sight in day is that it’s for hunters. Ranges are usually awash with super marksmen competitive shooters; this is not their day. Sight in day is the day when “minute of deer” is what most people want and they usually get it easily.
This makes me nervous. I’m not a big fan of aim small, miss small.
I’m probably overly obsessed with the “perfect shot”. I’ve spent a lot of time watching animals through rifle scopes trying to pick out the particulars of skeletal structures and remembering precisely where organs are arranged. I pass up far too many totally reasonable shots. Sometime the shot is perfect and any idiot would make it and I’ll still pass it up. Why? Doesn’t feel right. No particular reason. Yes, I’ve “Casey At Batted” myself out of meat a few times. No regrets.
I keep trying to get better. Every time I field dress game it’s an autopsy. Any time an animal runs I replay in my mind the shot; could I have hit it harder? Deer, in particular, amaze me in that I can take out two lungs and a shoulder with a hit that would fell an Ox and they’ll still run 50 yards. How do they do that? Other times I’ll nail ‘em so perfectly they’re dead before they hit the ground. Can I get good enough to do that every time?
But that’s me and I’m too uptight. Most folks will line up, take a handful of shots, declare things “good enough”, and be walking off the range in the time it takes me to open my rifle case and get my head on straight. I think three holes in an 8” circle at 100 yards is scandalous. But then again lots of freezers get filled by dudes who can just about pin a paper plate at field goal distance. They shoot to hunt, I’m disappointed with a shot that’s not practically an assassination. So, it is me that’s unrealistic. Who am I to judge?
Also, I have a huge loathing of tracking. I don’t want to deal with it. Obviously, it’s a great skill to have but I’ll pass up anything that’s less than perfect because tracking sucks donkey balls. YMMV. It has worked for me. I’ve never tracked anything further than a few hundred yards.
Sight in days are also social affairs. Everyone knows everyone (except me.) Hunters arrive in groups (except me). There will be 3-5 men, and increasingly women, carpooling in anything from an F-150 to an SUV.
Ogling the machinery is fun too. Usually there are a few Greybeards, who’ll sight in a wood stocked something or other that predates push digital watches. Depending on the location, slug guns might show up. AR-15 types are more common every year. Most interesting are younger folks who gravitate toward firearms that look like they were specifically designed to make politicians break out in hives. Some are ridiculous assemblages of bolt-on fluffery but others are excellent rifles with harmonious selections of parts. These I watch carefully, in case I can learn something. (Gadgets don’t usually buy shooting any better or worse than a Greybeard’s lever action cowboy gun. But you never know…)
The outlier, as often happens, is me. I’m a bit of a loner. I show up alone, I don’t know anybody, and (despite previous experiments with a firebreathing M44) have a rifle that’s “modern” but bland.
Last post comes tomorrow…
I’m a firm believer in two pieces of wisdom:
Aim small, miss small.
And
We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.
Both of those are stenciled in my head. Regrettably, I’ve been lazy. All year, when I should have been hitting my range (the backyard) and honing my marksmanship, I’ve been doing other things. As a proper redneck I’ll sometimes saunter out there and make some noise, terrify tin cans, toast a raccoon that’s harassing my hens, etc… But I’ve been weak on serious “practice”.
Big game season is afoot and it’s time to put up or shut up. I take hunting seriously; though not as serious as some. For example, I don’t hunt trophies, I’m happy with a doe or cow (elk) in the freezer. Also, I’ll sometimes sleep in; too many successive pre-dawn mornings make for a very cranky Curmudgeon. (Ask Dr. Mingo, he’s seen me in moods that’ll kill grass and make birds fall from the sky. Sleeping in fixes this.) But when it comes to the actual shot, I’m very uptight.
As punishment for my transgression, I chose to go to a nearby range at the public sight in day.
Folks who yammer about gun control should see sight in day. This is the day (or more often days) when ranges (which have plenty of shooters on their own) open their doors for the general hunting public. “Non-joiners” like me show up en masse with every kind of deer and elk rifle imaginable. Each “guest” drops a few bucks on a “donation” to the range’s maintenance fund (and most, like me, are happy to do it). Then we queue up for our turn at the firing line. The range provides safety officers, targets, and spotters. If you’re lucky, they’ll provide shitty coffee and cheap donuts too!
It’s a friendly gathering of armed happy Americans that benefits everyone. The range gets to show off its facilities and troll for new members. Casual shooters get to use a nice range. The mood is festive; everyone is looking forward to the hunt and nothing is more fun than shooting. Men, women, youths, families, and even loners like me… everyone has a fine time while waiting for their turn at the firing line. Sometimes there’s a warming fire (depending on the weather) and everyone is happily dreaming of the hunt. It’s a community that gathers, performs a simple mechanical task with their favorite machines, and then disperses; smiling all the while. It’s a low key localized mini-Sturgis for hunters.
The firing line goes something like this:
Safety officer: “Line is hot, you’re on target 3.”
Shooter’s rifle: BAM
Spotter: “Three inches high and 2 to the left.”
Then the shooter adjusts his or her scope (or the occasional iron sights) and makes the usual excuses. “Huh, musta’ been the cheap ammo. Let me try again.”
“Go ahead. I’m watching target 3.”
BAM
“An inch and a half low, two to the right.”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I like sight in day because a real range is an almost unimaginable luxury. Some ranges have a roof so you don’t get rained or snowed on!
I also like the nearby accumulated knowledge of all those friendly folks running the range. This is their favorite hobby! They’ll offer lots of encouragement and if my scope’s out of whack (which it never is), they’ll gather around like it’s the most interesting thing in creation. They’re dying to help out and they’ll invariably have little toolboxes with all the right tiny screwdrivers. They’ll also have benchrest vices for those who like ‘em and a sandbag or two for dinosaurs like me. They’re usually charitable with the struggling guy who’s trying to make due with a junk Tasco he got at a garage sale and a mount he “repaired” with broken bits and JB Weld.
For that poor fellow, they’ll have targets up close to “get on the paper”. They’ll lavish encouragement as he tweaks his scope wildly and they back him away from the close target to realistic distances. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks of the close target as “the target of shame” and is glad they’re not the focus of attention.
I once showed up at an event like this with a shitty scope on a sporterized Mosin-Nagant M44 and box of untested handloads… why do you ask?
While I have no regrets over dalliances with Russian junk I now hunt with a trusted rifle and an exceptional scope. The only reason to test the rifle’s point of aim (which is always spot on) is to prove to myself the scope hasn’t been battered. Also, since I’ve been ignoring my shooting skills lately, a dry run is always good.
More in next post…
