All About Pocket Knives

I picked up a couple guns last week while I take a purchasing hiatus from knives; I can't seem to afford them both at the same time so since it's hunting season guns are on the forefront.

One was a Ruger 22 hornet that I bought off a friend that will split a marble at a 100 yards, very sweet shooting gun. The other is a Thompson Center Encore single shot bull barrell in .204 Caliber. I have been fascinated with Thompson for some time and even though it's a single shot I liked the idea that changing barrells to another caliber takes about two minutes and makes this gun the all around gun to have.

This .204 Caliber is pretty new to the gun world and makes one heck of a varmint gun, it's even faster than my Ruger 22-250..I talked Mrs. Claus into asking Santa for a 7mm-08 barrell for Christmas so I can't wait to see if Santa was listening..



Does anyone else have experience with Thompson Center Firearms...? How about hunting has anybody had a good season this year...I took my son last weekend and we ran across four does a spike and 6 point but my 16 year old could not get a clear shot at any of the bucks. We did run across two groups of wild hogs while deer hunting but decided to hold out for venison.

We are going to go out tomorrow morning again to give it another shot..

Sunburst

I used to have Thompson Center single shot pistols, that was some time ago though. When using rifle rounds I always pulled the bullet, dumped the powder and sometimes punched out the primer. I lived in Napa at the time and it was just a couple hours drive to RCBS over in Oroville I think. I had a Rock Chucker and all the goodies.

Since the barrel of a contender is much shorter than that of a rifle I customized the rounds by buying pistol powders that would burn at a much faster rate the the factory powder in the rifle cartridge. This made a much more efficient round.

The most impressive round I got in to the Contender was a .444 Marlin. It was an expensive conversion and I used a half dozen powders that I thought would work. I made a 20 round box of each (4 different loads of each powder) and we checked the chamber pressures at the facilities All passed and we went to the chronograph. From the information we had on that trip we made a box of 4 each we wanted to look at and finally found an optimum load for accuracy without having excessive chamber pressure.

It was a fun project and even though .444 sounds like a hand cannon, it shot like a dream, about like a .44 magnum with twice the knock down power. The .460 and .500 Smith and Wessons are not pleasant to shoot, IMO. But that .444 Marlin round packed far more punch than those 2 S&W's.

The factory rifle rounds, on those most of the powder would burn outside the barrel, impressive flash at night. My goal was to get ALL the powder to burn in the length of the barrel, thereby increasing the guns performance.

I was in my Teens and had professional help next door. It would never have happened without the help of Bob M.

BTW, about 9 or 10 months, maybe a year later, Guns and Ammo came out with a Thompson Contender .444 Marlin and it was just about the same as mine, same powder, just about 1 grain more. They also used the RCBS facilities. What wildcatting is about I guess.

I haven't been yet sunburst, but 1 of my sons brought me a brand new Ruger 77 MKII in 300 WIN. MAG. with a Nikon scope that he wants to get sighted in. I've worked on a few ol' shotguns this fall and messed around with a 10-22 Ruger Target model rifle. Been driving nails with the 10-22 Ruger till it got boring to do. The rifle makes it too easy to shoot like that. I would like to go deer hunting this year though. That 204 Ruger round is a great varmit round. Lots of people been speaking highly of it for groundhogs and such. Let me know how it does and if you like it.

Hey Sunburst, you already know about my hunt trip! No meat..............

My brother and I spotted a couple guys making a drive on horseback, so we slipped out ahead of them a half mile or so. Within 10 minutes they drove no less than 20 cow elk right toward us that damn near ran us down! That was pretty exciting, but no cow tags!

I wouldn't call it hunting, I ride around on my quad, find a rock or stump to sit on and enjoy the scenery. I (in the old days) killed enough game to last a lifetime, now it's all about the trip! I take along a 300 Weatherby Mag. (German made) and a Mannlicher Schoenauer 30/06 1952 model.

I'll have to post a picture sometime of the 6X7 bull I took in Montana in 1976. I've never scored it, but it's up there on the B&C scale!

Good luck out there!

Gary

gmusic wrote:I'll have to post a picture sometime of the 6X7 bull I took in Montana in 1976. I've never scored it, but it's up there on the B&C scale!
Good luck out there!
Gary

All my big Bulls well, uh they sorta turned into other things, the antlers that is. My biggest scored 330 or so, real massive thick antlers. Guy's at Helms scored it for me at 1 year. Most of the tines were too big for my hands, so I made lot's of scales. That's my only big bruiser. I did shoot a cow with a much bigger body and more meat, Ah - well, can't eat the horn though. I'd like to see that 6 x 7!

I would love to see pics of both those big bulls...I've never been elk hunting but I will knock you down for an elk steak..

Mule deer, White tail and a train load of wild hogs are the extent of my big game animals...I don't think big lizards fall into that catagory..

Sunburst

picked up an older marlin .22 mag bolt action takedown a while back, trigger was horrible but accuracy seemed to be there, finally got around to ordering a rifle basix trigger for it and wow! what a difference, down to 14 oz and ragged hole groups. Crows better wtach out now . Also picked up a marlin 981T, they are great guns to shoot CB's from the long heavy barrel all you can hear is the hammer falling and the bullet impacting the target. I got it scoped up and sighted in, can kock the brass of 12 ga hulls at 25 yards as fast as I can work the bolt, squirrels better stay in thier holes

Ruger makes a great gun Sunny, I've got 3 of thier 10/22's in different configuartions, great shooters. Had a T/C contender for a hwile with a .22 and 45/70 barrels in 16" in carbine form, really accurate, but price of the barrels I wanted drove me to sell it, the thing was the most unfortable gun to carry in the woods i've ever held, but i've never had one in pistol form, so I can't speak for them. good luck, and lets see some pics!

some day I'll get around to going on a hog hunt. some escaped from a game ranch up here and they are scarce but starting to take off, never seen one in the woods myself, but some buddies have seen them running around. Ideally I'd like to hunt with a dog and get a close quarters shot with a recurve bow.

I am not sure what this means ? "can kock the brass of 12 ga hulls at 25 yards"...

I know when I was young and dumber...

I stuck a 12 gage shot gun shell in the ground with the primer up.

And shot my BB gun at it.

Dang that shell came flying out of the ground fast and loud.

I was like only 2 feet away from it. So I never did that again...

I can tell you one that's really dumb. I have 4 brothers and when we were young kids we would take .22LR ammo and lay it on a concrete sidewalk and take turns hitting them with a claw hammer . God had to be looking out for us kids. The most fun I ever had with any ammo was at deer camp one year. There was about 10 or 12 of us sitting around the camp fire (everyone there knew I was into reloading ammo), and it was good and dark and almost impossible to see once you got away frome the light of the camp fire. Well I just shoved my hand into my coat pocket and brung out a hand full of empty high powered rifle cases (no one else knew they were empty) and yelled like I was mad THESE DAG BULLETS AREN"T WORTH USING, while at the same time I threw them in the camp fire with every eye there on them as they landed in the middle of the hot coals and flames. All of the sudden there were men running under trucks, behind trees, and one man even jumped into the creek that was about 20 yars away. I stood there laughing. When they seen that the ammo wasn't going to go off, I was the one that was going to get run off or thrown into the creek. We all still laugh about that to this day.

Good one Duffy !

I used to belong to a small hunting club that rotated meetings in the members homes. One guy smoked big stinky stogies, so I gave him an ash tray that had some " ashes " in it.

When he stuck that cigar in that pile of black powder I think his heart stopped for a good 15 seconds. Made the house smell better too !

Fran

I like that one Fran. You've just helped me get them again at deer camp . They may make me sleep in the bed of the truck this time though if I do that .

Has any one ever taped any ammo to a Rail-Road track and waited for the train ? Do the go off when the train rides over them ?

I did but never stayed long enought for the train.

No Ken, but when I was young and even dumber than now, I held an empty .50 cal. machine gun round in Dad's vise, and hit the primer with a nail set and a clawhammer.

Darn grateful I didn't have an artillery shell. Didn't sit for a couple of days as it was.

No wonder the girls claim we never grow up, we're still looking for new ideas !

Fran

BTW, Anyone ever make bicycle spoke guns ?

My Dad tells me how he and his brothers would get a big hex nut and put a bolt on one side of the nut and then put gun powder in the center and tighten it down with another bolt over the gunpowder.

Then they would throw it up in the air and run. When the nut/bolt combination would hit the ground it would send it flying in whatever direction it wanted to...

I always wanted to try that as a youngster just to see if it actually worked... Duh!!!

I sure am glad that Dad was not into reloading and didn't have gunpowder laying around the house...

Sunburst

Had a T/C contender for a hwile with a .22 and 45/70 barrels in 16" in carbine form, really accurate, but price of the barrels I wanted drove me to sell it, the thing was the most unfortable gun to carry in the woods i've ever held, but i've never had one in pistol form, so I can't speak for them. good luck, and lets see some pics!

Hey MM,

The fellow at Bass Pro Shops where I purchased the Thompson Center rifle told me of a site out of Spain that made barrells for Thompson rifles for about a $100 less than what was on the market currently. They go for around $194 per barrell. He said the quality was first class.

Here's the site.. http://www.bergarabarrels.com/index.html

Uh-yeah. A misguided former teenage "friend" asked me what one of the fastest burning powders was around 1973. I told him Hercules Bullseye had a fast burn rate. Make a long story short, he ended up in juvinile hall for tossing a galvinized pipe bomb into a creek. Apparently there were steelhead in the creek.

Later I heard that he used a waterproof cannon fuse, scewed the cap on tight and had the entire 1 LB can in that pipe. Last I saw of him, he told me that the the entire pool of water got blown out of that part of the creek and big rocks were flying out.

Never saw it, just heard and I told him how STUPID he was. He could have blown up the garage assembling his device, then he throws it in a creek and STANDS there and watches it as debris and rocks fly all around him.

God must protect the stupid sometimes, I never saw him again, don't need to hang around kids like that.