Pick a Common Caliber and a Dependable Rifle

 

 

 

As the 2013/2014 Texas deer season is just around the corner I wanted to cover some topics to help you have a better season. The following pearls of wisdom come from years of hunting, guiding others and being in hunting camps all over the country. When it comes to rifles, step up to the plate and buy quality. I am not talking about some exotic brand of rifle and an exotic caliber that cost a fortune just so everyone can "Ooh" and "Ahh" over it when you take it out of the case. I mean buy a top of the line rifle from a tried and proven company that you can carry to hell and back and it will shoot every time you pull the trigger. Don’t go out and buy the first ever released new special model for your depend-on-every-shot rifle. On the other hand don’t go out and buy some cheap rifle put out by a company that makes bargain firearms for your primary hunting rifle. I am talking about buying rifles like Remington, Savage, Winchester, Ruger and Weatherby that are solid proven designs.  Your depend-on-hunting rifle is a tool and must be a tool that will perform as needed no matter the conditions.  I only mention Weatherby for those that have them in normal calibers and not the special Weatherby designed cartridges. I know lots of you have this or that rifle made by so and so that is great, so do I, but when the rifle has to perform every time without a hiccup I carry a rifle I can depend on to fire when needed. If it is a rifle based on one of the solid designs and major companies, if that rifle has been slicked up by some custom gunsmith, so much the better, if you believe in the smith’s work. I have seen several shots-of-a-lifetime fumbled because some fancy rifle failed to feed properly or jammed in the heat of the moment. I have seen outstanding trophies missed because of flinching, caused by fear of magnum cartridge recoil.  Both of these things are so easy to prevent and it is sad they occur at all, but it happens to people every season.  When the shot of a lifetime occurs you must be able to depend on your rifle, your ammo and your ability to place the bullet where it will be the most efficient. 

I have a Remington model 700 ADL in .243 that my father bought for me at Gibson’s Discount Center in Abilene, Texas when I was nine years old. That rifle has been carried all over Texas, New Mexico and Colorado and you would be amazed at the game that little rifle has accounted for through all those years. I carried it often as a guide rifle when backing other hunters and it has put down game wounded by much more exotic and magnum calibers. I have traded it off for a shot to many a hunter that could not hit their game with a magnum rifle but made the shot with that little .243. That rifle has never failed to work and I shoot it still today. It has never been in the shop, nothing has ever broken and I will pass it on to one of my daughters to use and treasure. I can walk into any country store, box store or any place ammo is sold, and purchase ammo for that rifle. Try to buy ammo for some of the exotic magnum calibers in No-where, Texas or a country feed store in the mountains of Colorado or New Mexico. If you never had someone show up in camp without their ammo you have not hunted very long. If they have a common caliber someone can usually loan them some ammo or a trip to the nearest town solves the problem. Some of the Weatherby cartridges are great rounds but I never recommend them, as ammo can be impossible to find and the expense of a box of cartridges unreal.

I have a model 70 Winchester.270 that my grandfather shot all his life and passed to my father who passed it to me. I am proud that it continues on with no problems. My father shot a Remington model 700 in .264 Winchester Magnum most of his life and I still shoot it today while my brother shoots its twin, but ammo is now getting hard to find and very expensive to boot. I know some people need to have the latest, greatest magnum to validate their man card, but I can assure you it is much more important to be able to precisely place a bullet than to be able to stand the recoil. Someone in camp will always make the point of quoting one of the old big game hunters or authorities on caliber and power. Some will point out all the tests done by writers and ammo companies back in the early twentieth century. What they fail to realize is that these guys lived in a time where the modern bullets and powders we now have were not available. The optics for precision bullet placement were also not near as developed as the current optics we have today. I will take bullet placement with a sufficient caliber over misses or bad hits with a monster magnum any day. I will be hunting later this year and I will be carrying a Remington 700 tactical in .308. It has very little recoil and sufficient power to do the job with proper bullet placement on most any game in the lower forty eight. My wife will be hunting with my little .243 this year. Shoot whatever you do well with and feel comfortable shooting. Be honest with yourself about recoil. If your mind tells you this is going to hurt when you sit down at the bench to sight your rifle in each season; you need to get something that recoils less. If recoil prevents you from properly sighting in a rifle or shooting a good group, you need to get something that recoils less. If you are thinking about how bad this rifle is going to kick while trying to hold the crosshair steady on a big buck you have a real recoil problem. Get a rifle you can shoot well and that will not beat you up with recoil. You can validate you man card with game you hang on the meat pole. None of my hunting buddies laugh at my little rifles any more. Have a great season, Wild Ed

The 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium!

From September 19 to 22, many hundreds of bird watchers converged on Lakeside, Ohio for the 2013 Midwest Birding Symposium, hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest, The Ohio Ornithological Society, and The Lakeside Chautauqua. 

The speakers were incredible, the Birder's Marketplace was brimming with vendors, the birding was excellent, and the weather was mostly cooperative.

  

 The MBS started off on Thursday evening with a Lake Erie Sunset Boat Cruise around the region's many beautiful islands. The sunset also made an appearance.

MBS attendees embark on the Goodtime II for the Sunset Boat Cruise.

We had an army of volunteers helping us with MBS, including more than a dozen members of the Ohio Ornithological Society and more than 100 members of the Lakeside Chautauqua community.

The MBS was held just following the summer programming season at Lakeside Chautauqua. If you haven't experienced Lakeside during their summer season, it's quite a wonderful thing. You can learn more here.

 Attendees picked up their goodie bags and name tags at MBS registration in Hoover Auditorium.

 

 

 

During the event, attendees strolled the charming Lakeside Chautuaqua campus from venue to venue.

 Friday and Saturday mornings were reserved for birding at one of our five birding spots staffed with guides. Two species of phalaropes, red knot, golden plover, and golden-winged warbler were among the species of note spotted during the two mornings of birding.

 The MBS is called "the world's friendliest birding event," and judging from the smiling faces of attendees, it lived up to its reputation.

 

Many of our speakers are also authors of important books on birds and nature. On Saturday we held an authors' book signing in South Auditorium. Here, British author Mark Cocker sings a copy of his epic new book Birds and People. 

It's hard to put into words (or electrons in the case of this blog post) just how wonderfully enriching and engaging it is to be a part of The Midwest Birding Symposium. Those of us at BWD have hosted it five (!) times here in Ohio—each time at Lakeside. But this every-other-year event needs to visit other parts of the Midwest, so in 2015 we'll be taking it to Bay City, Michigan. I'll share more details about that in a future post.

The next post here on Bill of the Birds is going to be part two of my MBS 2013 recap.

Sight In That Rifle Before Deer Season

As deer season is right around the corner I am going to post a couple of articles in the next weeks about sighting in a rifle and using enough gun for the game you're hunting.  In my years of guiding hunters two of the most common reasons for missing shots at game are rifles that are not sighted in properly and using a rifle with too much recoil.  Many believe they can have a gunsmith boresight a rifle and go hunting, that is not properly sighting a rifle.  The other group think they have to have the latest super magnum to be accepted by the group at the deer lease.  I shoot a .243 most of the time and the game on the pole along with the shots I make prove it up year after year.  Above all be safe with your firearms, don't mix alcohol and guns, take a kid with you hunting and have fun. I hope you enjoy the following article on sighting in your rifle and just maybe learn a little. Wild Ed


A gentleman sent me an email asking if there was an easy way to sight in a rifle. He said he had gone through several boxes of ammo to sight in his rifle. I have heard this many times and always wonder what is wrong to take so many shots. Remember the scope must be mounted correctly and all must be tight in order to sight in properly. I won’t go into that here. If you do not know how to mount a scope correctly have someone that does help you the first couple of times or have a professional gunsmith do it for you. Do not let some kid in a box store mount your scope. I have had to remount lots of scopes for clients through the years. Bore sighting a firearm means it might be on the paper, It does not mean you have a firearm that is sighted in properly. Bore sighting will usually get the shots on the paper but not always. I have seen lots of people miss with a gun that has been bore sighted, if I had known that they had not sighted in the rifle properly I would not have been hunting with them. Every barrel and different ammo will impact differently and must be shot in properly on a target.
 Remember that if your rifle barrel has been cleaned since firing or it is a brand new rifle to fire a couple of fouling shots before sighting in. Many rifles will not shoot to the same point of impact with a clean oiled barrel as they will with a fouled barrel.

Here is the fastest and simplest way I know to sight in a rifle. I usually start at 25 yards so I will be on the paper. Even a bore sighted rifle may not be on the paper at long range. I get a solid gun vice or some way to hold the rifle in place where it will not move. A cardboard box with two v cutouts to rest the rifle across can be used in a pinch. I fire one shot at the bullseye and then make sure the cross hair is lined up on the center of the bullseye. Making sure not to move the rifle adjust the elevation and windage until the crosshair is exactly centered on the bullet hole where the shot you just fired hit. This means move the center of the reticle to the actual center of the bullet hole of your shot. Next carefully fire a second shot at the bullseye. If you did not move the rifle while adjusting the scope and you can shoot, the second shot should be in the bullseye. In reality most will need a few more shots for small adjustments to get into the center of the bull, but this is a lot faster that most other methods and uses a lot less ammo.

Now move to the one-hundred yard target and finish sighting in with whatever small adjustments are needed to get you where you want to be on the target. Have a great season,Wild Ed

Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today, on September 11 (years before that date became associated with something less happy) I got married to Julie Zickefoose here in Marietta, Ohio at St. Luke's Lutheran Church.

We had a light-hearted wedding with music on guitar and piano and fiddle—and got hitched on the upswing of the clock for good luck. Afterwards we repaired (with 200 of our closest family and friends) to the Whipple, Ohio farm Julie and I already owned and we had more music and a pig roast, or as we called it (to sound "more fancier" a rôti de cochon)

It was an incredible, life-changing day.

We were standing on the precipice of our lives, looking into the future...

 

Here we are (below) two years after the wedding, birding at Ding Darling NWR in Florida. I'll spare you the Then and Now comparison.

(photo by our dear friend, the late Dr. Hugh P. Smith). 

 

It's been a wonderful two decades—not always easy, of course. Then again, what is? One thing that sticks with me is just how fascinating and fascinated Julie really is. I'm fortunate to have shared this journey with her.

And now we are four.

Today I am thinking about happy things and beloved family and friends, and feeling lucky as heck to be right here, right now.

Jeanine's West Texas Pear Bread

My in-laws used to have a big pear tree in their backyard which produced a lot of pears. The tree was so loaded with pears that each year they would have to shake the limbs and remove a large number of pears just so the remaining pears would not break the tree limbs from their weight as they grew. I have never been a fan of pears and did not eat many of them. My mother in law came up with a recipe to use all those pears that made me a fan. It is a wonderful tasting bread or cake that is as good for breakfast with coffee as it is with ice cream for dessert. It is simple to mix up and bake and fills the house with a nice cinnamon smell kind of like homemade apple pie. I had to bake one to take the picture for this article and I am enjoying a fresh slice as I post this for you. This is good stuff and you need to try it. I hope to make it with apples sometime and see how that turns out.

Jeanine's West Texas Pear Bread

3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon of soda

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

1 Tablespoon of cinnamon

1 cup chopped pecans

Mix all of the above and add the following

3/4 cup of oil

2 cups of sugar

3 eggs

2 cups of peeled and chopped pears

2 teaspoons of vanilla

Stir all together well and put in oiled bread pans or a cake pan.

Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.

This recipe always makes me think of my mother in law.  We miss you, Wild Ed

Dorper Sheep "It's What's for Dinner"

I grew up in West Texas where beef was king.  Both of my grandparents ranched and raised cattle.  My father raised cattle, and beef was on the table nearly every meal.  A few times in my life I had mutton or lamb and it was alright but had a taste I really did not care for compared to beef.  The sheep the meat came from were wool sheep.  To make a long story short we have not been a sheep eating family and only ate it if served somewhere we had to be or as a guest.

Here in Central Texas many ranches have been diversifying from just cattle to meat sheep and goats as a new livestock.  Most of the sheep are a hair breed of sheep known as Dorpers that were developed in South Africa and brought to Texas in the 1990s.  They were developed to forage and thrive on a broad range of grazing conditions.  Dorpers have tender mild meat and can put on weight in arid conditions while being able to breed year round.  Dorpers are a hair sheep and shed the winter coat so there is no need to shear them each year.  They come in a black headed variety or all white, many flocks are mixed with both colors.  This meat type breed is doing very well in Texas and is here to stay. 

 

We have decided to raise Dorper sheep on our little place in Lampasas and I have been looking forward to trying some Dorper meat to see if it would be one we produce for our own table or just to sale off what we raise.  Over the Labor Day weekend I was invited to a Barbecue at KOBO Ranch west of Lampasas.  My host Karl Oestreich was cooking meat on a large barbecue pit fueled with oak coals.  Along with brisket, jalapeno dove poppers, sausage and the trimmings Karl was cooking some homegrown grass-fed Dorper lamb.  At the table I was amazed at the taste of the lamb.  It had none of the strong sheep taste I was use to tasting in lamb.  It had a mild flavor I would compare to prime beef and was very tender.  I can assure you that Dorper sheep will be on my menu in the future.  Give it a try you might just find it will be in your future.  Wild Ed

 

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