The One

I have a decent amount of firearms. I haven't bothered to count recently, but I'd say I have between 15 and 20. Today, I was thinking: if I could only keep one, which would it be? While I would have a hard time making a 100% call on this, it would probably be my Taurus.

When I was 16, me and a friend went to work on his aunt's ranch in Texas. We came back with tans, muscles, sore backs, and a $850 cash, which was a lot of money for a 16 year old. I decided I needed a good woods gun, and settled on a Taurus Tracker in .357 mag. It's a 4 inch, 7 shot revolver with a heavy underlug and a ported barrel.

It shoots full house magnum loads without torturing your hands, and is a great target gun with .38 wadcutters. With a hot .357 magnum load, you can drop the smallish whitetail that grow in my area- in fact, I would have once, when I was 17, if I hadn't got buck fever and started shaking like a leaf in a high wind. That buck had a HUGE rack.

It's a perfect woods gun, is highly versatile in what applications you can use it in, and takes a common round (or 2 common rounds, depending on how you look at it). It's matte stainless finish won't rust, even in sultry Louisiana summers. I have even carried it concealed during the winter with a shoulder rig.

I've pawned a few guns when times got tough, but I've never gotten rid of that Taurus. It was the second gun I ever bought, behind my old 20ga. Mossberg pump. I'll probably keep it forever, because while I have plenty of guns that are better for specific applications (hunting, concealed carry, target shooting) I don't have another one that is as versatile, and can do all of these things as easily.

Horse Racing

My wife loves horses. She works for a vet clinic, so she loves all animals, but she LOVES horses. We faithfully watch the triple crown every year, and this year, she told me she wanted to see horse races for her birthday. Grandma agreed to watch the boy-o last night, and we headed to a racetrack and casino, Evangline Downs, about an hour south of us. You can see my bride in the pink sleeveless top, to the right of the picture. We got there as the first race started, and watched about 7 races, sitting right across from the finish line. The races were about every 30 minutes, so between races, we enjoyed the evening and drank beer.

Plenty of familys were around, with fathers explaining to daughters the merits of this bloodline over that, and who the best trainers were. I'm a somewhat tall guy, so every time I saw a furtive pre-teen looking for a place to see the race, I'd step back and let them have my spot on the finish line. I watched the races mostly over the top of my wife's head.

We ate a wonderful prime-rib buffet in the casino and played penny-slots for about an hour, where I turned a dollar into 6, and lost it all.

We spent a grand total of 55 dollars and had a wonderful evening of food, drink, and gambling.

And we got to watch poetry in motion. We saw horses run.

Updates

So, if you look to the right, you'll notice that I have removed a few blogs that have not been updated in quite a while. I left Xavier, Breda, and Projects there because I like them, and can't bear to have them off my sidebar. I have updated the list to include a few of my daily reads, though. Tam, Chris Hernandez, Old NFO, and The Gun Blog Black List are all now in the sidebar. These are all daily reads for me... as are all the other links on the right... basically, that over there is a list of my wanderings on the 'net...

Enjoy, and happy reading.

Musings

-At the end of some days, bourbon and coke is just the ticket.

-Most drinks (sweet tea, alcoholic beverages, kool-aid, etc) taste better in a mason jar.

-I just might be a redneck.

Light

I bought a new flashlight yesterday. It's a Nebo Redline. I wanted a brighter flashlight for work than the one they issued me, so I've been looking.

For a strictly pocket EDC flashlight it's a little bulky, but for a duty light, it's a great size. It has a 10% setting, 50% setting, 100% setting, as well as strobe and sos functions. These are all accessed by a ring on the base, so you don't have to toggle through using the tail switch. You can operate the settings while keeping the beam pointed where you want it, and do this one handed easily. At highest output, it give 310 lumens, and man is it BRIGHT. You can also focus the beam to put bright, 1-foot illumination at 15 feet, or give a wide, spotlight effect. This can be accomplished 1 handed, but requires a shifted grip and a lot of dexterity. It is much easier to do with 2 hands. In the 2 pictures above, you see my shower curtain, one illuminated with the tight beam, and one with the wide-angle.  My bathroom has no windows, and the flash on my camera was turned off. Even these pictures don't justify how bright this light is.

It runs on 3 AAA batteries, and at 100% illumination, has a 2 hour run time. I haven't had it on for 2 hours yet, so I don't know the validity of that. It comes with a pocket clip, but as I said, it would be a bit bulky in jeans. In kakhis or tactical pants, this is no problem, though. It also comes with extra batteries and a lanyard, although it is a smallish lanyard, and seems to have little practical use.

The body is made of aircraft grade aluminum, and honestly seems a bit over-engineered. It seems as if it could withstand a drop from an airplane, but I'm reserving judgement until I've carried it for a few months. The packaging was heavy-duty as well, and also seemed a bit over engineered. Oh, yeah... the base is magnetic, too, so you can stick it to the underside of a car hood or whatnot while working on your engine. I cool feature, certainly, but maybe a bit excessive. The tail switch is luminous rubber, so you can see a faint green dot in a darkened room before you activate it.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this light. It is insanely bright, is generally easy to operate 1-handed, takes batteries that are common, and seems very solid. For $40, it seems like a great deal, and functions as advertised. I'll use it for a few months, and give an update.

As a side note, I bought it at a local sporting goods store, Security Sporting Goods, and they let me take several of their lights into a store room wit the lights turned off to test them. They also let me disassemble them on the counter, to look at the innards. It's hard to beat service like that.

Big brass ones....

After range practice today, we picked up all the brass. I got all of it together, and instead of customarily dumping it in the brass bucket, I asked the range officer if I could take it.

He winked at me and said 'hey, make sure all of that brass makes it to the bucket... and make sure no one sees you disposing of it.'

So I came home and sorted it. My son wandered over and wanted to help, and tired of it after about a half hour, but it all got done. There's approximately 2000 pieces of 9mm, 200 .40, a handful of .45 and .223, a double handful of .22 and mangled bits, and 2 live 9mm rounds there.

Also, it takes a good wife not to grumble about her husband sorting brass for 2 hours at the kitchen table. It takes an AMAZING wife to walk over, fondly smile and kiss her husband's lips as he's doing this, then wander off to read a book.

I spent the day on the range, have a great start for reloading 9mm, and have, hands down, the best wife ever!

It's been a good day.

Daisy

The wife got a new puppy...

Wants

In lieu of actual content, I'm posting a list of the guns/accessories I would buy tomorrow, if I had the funds on hand.

Glock G-19, gen4- I have one as my duty gun. 2 is one, one is none. ( plus, I already have a bunch of holsters/accessories that fit it)

AR-15- I don't care if it's a low-end one or not. This rifle would be my patrol rifle, and I'd probably mount it with a fixed 6x scope and a set of back-up iron sights. If it was reliable and delivered relatively good accuracy out to 200 yards, that's all i'd want it for.

Remington 870, LE model- wood stock, though. I read a post about self defense from Xavier once, and it could be summed up like this: If you did have to shoot someone to protect yourself or others, and you did have to go before a jury, would you want them displaying a tacticool, collapsible stocked, laser mounted shotgun, or one that resembled the juror's grandad's duck gun? Further, when I go to qualify every year, I bring my dad's wood-stocked 870. It makes me chuckle to outshoot most of the guys there with one of the most unassuming guns on the line.

Wood grips and a left handed SERPA holster for my Smith and Wesson 638. Wood grips, because the rubber ones constantly stick in my pocket, and a SERPA holster because on the days I'm in the office, I'd like to tote a lighter gun than my Glock 19.

Parkerized, ambi thumb safety and decent 3-dot sights ( possibly even tritium) for my Springfield 1911. If I got these two upgrades, I would feel comfortable carrying my 1911. As it stands, the sights are sub-par, and being left handed, I really need safetys I can operate easily on a carry gun.

A rail mount and a 3-6 inch bipod for my Savage. I have a 'ultimate sniper' stock on it, and it's a great stock. Unfortunately, they have a proprietary mounting system, so I need the adapter to properly mount a bipod. Further I have a 6-9 inch bipod, and it's just too tall for that setup.

Lastly, a .22 LR revolver. Really, I just want a 'plinking' gun, and a gun to introduce new shooters. I feel that revolvers are less intimidating to new shooters, which is why I want a revolver over a semi-auto.

There you have it!- my 'buy tomorrow if money fell out of my butt list'.

Leather

I posted a few weeks back about a possible new gun, a Diamondback 9mm. Well, I ended up not buying it, because I couldn't get reliable feeding from it. I made a pocket holster for it, which I sent back to my brother with the gun. I figured that when he found a buyer for it, a holster might help sweeten the deal.

I also made a belt mounted, left hand concealment holster for it, but I put the stitching just a bit too close, so it was too tight, and drawing it was more of a vicious, belt-misaligning jerking motion than a smooth tug. I threw it in my holster box and forgot about it.

My wife's parents are up from Florida this week to celebrate the Boy-o's birthday, and when Father-In-Law asked where he could store his gun, I remembered that he carried a mousegun and dug around in my holster box. Fits like it was made for his gun.

Happy accident.

Birthday Fun!

The Boy-o made his 5th trip around the sun today. He woke to presents from his Florida grandparents, and a new bicycle from me and his mom. We are on the road now to a science museum for children.

He's having a blast today.