.270

ok, one more time, forget about "knockdown". it has little to do with anything, as far as north American game, except maybe coastal bears. their may be times with browns that bone crushing, sledghammer hits might be real beneficial. but not with anything else on this continent. unless you hit the spine or brain, animals bleed to death. you ain't gonna knock one off his feet. bullet performance has a lot to do with how quick an animal croaks too. you want to be able to shoot far enough into an animal in a good place to cause it to bleed to death. the better the hit, the sooner it dies. i've seen horrible results with all copper bullets. they tend to die, but from what i've seen, not very fast. i've seen horrible results from gut shots and hock shots, etc. don't matter what you hit em with, a gutshot is a gutshot. nothing will kill one where you can find it, other than looking for crows a week later, with a gutshot. spend your time worrying about your marksmanship, your abilities, your skill, accurate loads that fit your rifle and don't worry so much about numbers in a book. any good hit is lethal. most bad hits ain't. Lark.

if i don't pump gas on a reg'lar basis i'll 'splode. Lark.

the law is any centerfire rifle or pistol is legal for anything except spring turkey. Lark.

aw man, somebody slap me, but i don't much care for chummin' deer. get out and hunt. but if a buncha guys like it, i'll go along with keepin' it. sorta like tobacco i guess. i don't smoke and think folks that do are foolish, but i don't care if they do. and i really don't like to have any more rules and regulations. but i ain't a big fan o' deer chum. now fishin', that's a differnt story. ok, i'll vote however the rest of ya do. Lark.

oh boy, we got a game warden on here. here is a question i have along the same lines, but a different species. i noticed that the two u22 north late bull hunts are just about double in permit quantity over last year. and this was before ANY success reports from the hunts were complete or maybe even started, there dang sure wasn't any info published in the reg's. and it was before ANY of the winter fly around and look studies were done. what kinds bull/cow ratios and success ratios, etc, etc were used when these hunts were almost doubled? i'm curious as to how anything with any science to do with it could have been involved in this decision. how could there have been any kind of data compiled that would show that all the sudden there needed to be this huge increase in permits in this unit? i'm thinking that it has a lot to do with the amount of cash an elk permit brings in, especially the nonresident variety. but i could be wrong and i'm sure even if i'm right, nobody would ever admit it. i mean i really don't care that much, i'm all for reducing the heck out of the elk herd and paying more attention to deer herd. my kid drawn for one of those hunts and i'm sure he's gonna bust a big one and he probably wouldn't have got the tag if there wasn't a big increase in permits. i hunted with my cousin last year on that hunt. we saw a fair amount of bulls and he was successfull, but i sure didn't see many folks having much success. dang sure didn't see anything that said to double the permits. (it's a little less than double total, but the earlier of the 2 hunts is twice what it was last year) but that was just me lookin' around. but it seems to me, and i admit i'm REAL prejudiced, that the price of a permit has a lot to do with the amount of attention paid to certain species. i had a real interesting talk with a bunny cop, 'scuse me, i mean game warden, a few years ago about the lack of deer in unit 1 and the explosion of the elk herd in the same unit. he started off on this buck to doe ratio being just right and all this stuff, but when i stopped him and asked what the total number of deer were, forget the buck to doe ratio, he got all bumfuddled and decided he needed to be elsewhere. and i'm talkin' muleys here, the whitetail haven't suffered the encroachment from elk like muleys have. to me, the buck do ratio doesn't mean anything, if the total numbers are down and this feller seemed to feel that as long as there was a 5 to 1 ratio things were just fine, even if there were only 5 does and 1 buck left. just trying to get a little insight into how you degreed folks figger things out. enlighten me. enquiring minds wanna know. Lark.

the weatherby wouldn't be bad if they made it in something other than that rube goldberg lookin' weatherby rifle. safety looks like a kick starter on a cushman scooter. big clubby stock. finish so rough you can use the barrel for a file. once we were huntin' up in montanner and i used a guys weatherby for a splittin' maul for about 15 minutes before he noticed and started hollerin'. and it was an honest mistake. i never figgerd a gun'd be that ugly. and he said it never shot better after that. Lark. p.s. bullwidgeon, aka the talkin' javelina, has one too. he's the only guy that can make a weatherby look better just by holdin' it. go figger.

this buy broke probably 500 laws doing this. why does anyone think more laws will make it better? some woman was hollerin' about high capacity magazines. heck, he'd just pack more clips. this was a rotten deal done by trash who had no respect for life or laws. more laws and more restriction won't help. need to do some preventive maintenance on the human race. Lark.

Sewell was quite a guy. at one time he owned a ranch that had a section or 2 of patented land across the Blue, between the roads. i think it was part of the XX, the old Fritz ranch. above where old Fred's grave is. (Fred died from the wounds he recieved in a fight with a grizzly, he killed the griz but eventually died from infection from where the bear about skinned him) anyway, the forest circus really lusted after them sections and pulled all kindsa dirty tricks trying to get it, but Sewell was too slick for em and eventually they gave up. seems like they ended up buying the land from him, but it was his price and terms. it was an interesting joust at the time. he was probably about the last guy in Az. to catch and kill a jaguar with his hounds. well, legally anyway. Ted Ferguson, the guy they mention in this, was a helluva lion hunter too. he even took his hounds to africa. this is Sewell's obituary. Lark. http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2007/04/...ries/obit07.txt

featherweights ain't rare. super grades, westerners, africans, targets, bullguns, odd calibers and carbines are. as far as shooting, a featherweight won't hold a patch to a standard grade with the long barrel. doesn't matter what some book tells you a gun is worth, only thing that matters is what someone will give you for it. you have a real common rifle in a real common caliber of which tens of thousands were made. it's a dang fine rifle, but it ain't rare at all. sorry i tried to give you a little advice and insight into how sellin' a gun works. i won't bother you with experience again. Lark.

i have a buncha pre-64's. yours looks to be in fair shape, but i don't know if it's $1100 worth. and it's a featherweight. 22" pencil barrels ain't the greatest. i'd love to have the action for sure. i love them featherweight actions. last gun show i was at a guy had a westerner, in .264. the westerner is a fairly rare model of model 70. 26" barrell. only made it in .300 mag and .264 mag. it was in absolutely fantastic condition, he wanted $900 for it. if he has it this weekend, i might bring it home. there is a gunshow at the colliseum this weekend. take it and shop it around. the scope is worth $0 to anyone looking for a model 70. that's just the way it is. nice rifle for sure. don't know if it's $1100 nice. Lark.

arguin' with adhd, or chd or whatever the short peckerd punk calls hisself is like arguin' with any other idjit, they drag ya down to their level and beat ya with experience. this is one poor lonely jerk that has found the web as a place to play superman. we all know guys like him. always mouthin' off and gettin' their lights punched out as a kid cuz they couldn't back up their lips with fists. then along come the net and made em all badasses. ever guy i ever met like this had a real low opinion of hisself and tried to boost his ego by talkin' big and fast and drivin' jacked up trucks with fancy wheels and wearin' cowboy boots and combin' their hair up, high all to make em feel bigger. he probly spends a lotta time quick drawin' in the mirror too. there ain't nothin' tougher than a quiet guy that goes about his business, tips his hat to ladies and leaves folks be that need left be. we've all seen him cuss kids and every other real hunter around. and his nickname is whiskey somethin'? that oughta tell ya somethin' right there. he needs some jack to brave him up. he might be a male, but he ain't no man. Lark.

where'd you read that story? i knew Ted real well and got to hunt with him some. every time was a rodeo, circus, shootin' gallery and all around good time all wadded up together. he's been gone for many years now. lived right on the highway in central, Az. him and my grandad always made fun o' each other because my grandad trapped lions and Ted hounded em. when i was a boy scout Ted brought a buncha old home movies one night and showed us to em. old 8mm stuff from all over the southwest and africa. he had a horse he never got off of. that thing would get down on it's belly and crawl, and ol' Ted just set there. just knew Sewell to say howdy, never got to hunt with him. do know a lot of guys that did. for some reason, i figgerd he was a lot older than 76. i'll tell you one thing, he lived a lot in them 76 years. he was a real live cowboy and there ain't too many who can lay claim to that. his family will really miss him. i don't think i ever heard one person that i think is worth a dang that ever had anything but praise for him. Lark.

i'd hafta tie a spool of high test monofilament to it so you can find it when it flies outta my hands. i hate shooting my .45. that thing is nuts. i guess i ain't as tough as i used to be. Lark.

if you're gonna shoot long ranges, or short or intermediate ranges for that matter, you better spend a lot of time on a bench. you don't get to know your rifle shooting rocks. it's an excellent way to practice, after you know what your rifle will do, but the only way to get your gun dialed in is on a bench. with a bipod and a calibrated scope, there isn't much difference between shooting in the field and on a bench. shoot a bunch on the bench, get your gun zeroed then go to the hills and shoot some rocks. i learned to shoot running targets by shooting jackrabbits. till i started to feel sorry for the rabbits. poor lil flopears anyways. shooting off a bench isn't the same as shooting in the field, but it means a lot more than squat. that's where you learn to breath, learn the feel of your trigger, how to keep your eyes open, all the stuff that is real important. good shooting takes practice and lots of it. you can get your rifle zeroed to the point of perfection, but if you don't practice with it, you're just hurting yourself. Lark. p.s., i knew tha banjo boy would pick up on my poor mexican spelling.

he said he is shootin' deer, not chipmunks. ain't the .25/06 made for chipmunks? "knockdown" is a theoretical number that pertains to one moving object hitting another stationary object and the amount of force the weight and speed of the moving object exert on the stationary object. if it did what some folks seem to think it did, a .30/30 would knock a coues deer into the next unit. penetration and expansion are what kill animals with a bullet. unless you hit the spine, an animal bleeds to death after a good shot. the type of bullet you use has probably more ot do with the amount of shock transfered to the animal. when you're talking real long ranges, nothing hits real hard, and even if it does, it's still just numbers on a paper. if a bullet has say 2000 lbs/ft of "knockdown" at a given range here is way to correlate it. hang a 2000 lb weight from a rope. shoot it. the bullet should make the weight swing a foot. when you shoot an animal the bullet is entering it and slowing down drastically as it penetrates, scrubbing off the energy in the animal. it doesn't knock it down. it tears it up and it bleeds to death. basically the same thing an arrow does, only with some more capillary destruction. if "knockdown" was real, 2000 lbs/ft of energy would throw a nice coues buck 20 feet. well, maybe not quite that far because you have to calculate the continually slowing down of the object getting tossed by figuring in gravity, drag, etc. worry more about where you hit em, not what you hit em with. if you punch a .277 diameter hole in a coues deer's lungs, he dies. and fairly fast. doesn't matter if the bullet even expands. the more it expands, the more damage it does. but it still kills the deer. you can gutshoot a deer with a .270 and it will run off and probably get away. you can do the same thing with a .458. marksmanship, the ability to hit what you're shooting at in a good place is what puts stuff down. personally, i like to get close. track em down and jump shoot em. so i don't hafta worry about all them numbers. it's lotsa fun and i don't hafta remember as much. when i go huntin' i wanna hunt, not make a geometric calculation. that's too much like bein' back in school. Lark.

first off, take all your "knockdown energy" numbers and chunk em in the trash. a .270 at 2000 yards has more "knockdown" than a bow and arrow and folks kill coues with them all the time. "knockdown" really and truly doesn't have a lot of real use when you're trying to determine what gun to use. for anything. if you're hunting charging hippos or capes, you better use a real big gun and you better have some big wayvos to stand there and not get antsy. doesn't matter how hard it hits per calculations. it does matter where you hit it. by the same token, you don't need a really big gun to kill a coues buck. but again, it does matter where you hit it. if you wanna shoot a long way with a .270, the 150gr isn't the best choice, unless you want to invest in a calibrated scope. they're a couple grand. it will be real accurate, but it will drop like a dirt clod tossed by a girl. a 22 inch barrel will restrict you some too. 24 and 26 should be anyone's minimum, for any bolt action north american big game rifle, in my opinion. my kids have some amazing results with 100 gr bullets on coues in .270's. i use 140's for everything, cottontails to elk. and it's been so long since i changed to that weight that i can't even remember why. one bullet, one powder charge. i have one powder throw and one set of dies dedicated to just my rifle and i never change them. i really wish someone would make a 120 gr .277 diameter spitzer boattail. from my experience, coues are really hard to kill at long ranges because their vitals are so small and it's really easy to gutshoot one or hit a leg, and not get the lungs, heart or liver. bullet weight will have little effect on the end result. a gutshot is a gutshot. a lungshot is always fatal. doesn't matter how big the bullet is or what type it is, especially at long ragnes. you need to be able to shoot really accurately, i mean really accurately, if you want to kill one past 400 yards, consistantly and cleanly. there is no amount of talent, intelligence, gear, gizmos, calculations, experience, etc. that will overcome poor marksmanship. Lark.

you can control the heck outta anything with a rifle. elk numbers are high because the azgfd gets more for an elk tag than they do a deer tag. elk are now livestock. pure and simple. they go where they are allowed and take over if they are left to it. to say we can't control them or that it is survival of the fittest is not a realistic statement. everything wild can be, and is to some extent, controlled. the yellowstne elk was introduced here, not re-introduced. what we had before was merriam's. i like to hunt elk. really look forward to it. never turn down a chance to hunt em. in fact, i'm a helluva elk hunter. mainly because i'm a good deer hunter and elk are a lot easier to hunt. but they are on the verge of being out of control in a lot of areas. they should be severely eliminated or restricted in non-traditional elk areas. as far as the increase in the u22 north tags tho, the herd didnt' all the sudden increase 2x overnight. there are a good number of elk there and the azgfd sees an opportunity to make some bucks. but it is a really small unit and both hunts will be really tough to get away from people on. the second hunt will really tough. after gettin' blasted to heck the first hunt, what bulls are left will be wild for sure and really hard to find. i'm glad my kid got the first hunt. Lark.

the goal of the wolfers ain't for the wolves to ever be self sufficient. or to even be somewhat prolific. the goal is to use the failure of the wolf program as a tool to pry everyone, other than huggers, off the land. hunters, loggers, ranchers, farmers, miners, etc. "well, sorry guys, but there just ain't enough game to feed the wolves and still allow hunting". "dang cowboys, we tried hard to teach the wolves to not eat cows, but they just won't learn". the real goal is get everyone off the land that uses it and the failure of the program is built in, to insure that. Lark.

the mexican wolf is extinct. it does not exist on this earth anymore. what has been "introduced" (not re-introduced) are wolf/dog crosses. they never had any pure bred wolves to start with and that's a fact. look how real live wild wolves took off in the yellowstone country. they're thick as fleas now because they were real wolves and didn't need some smelly hippy to teach em how to hunt. they have also decimated the other wildlife in yellowstone to the point that folks are getting worried. this entire mexican wolf deal is a buncha crap. Lark.

i wish it was my tag too, but you can't convince me that there was any science involved in increasing the permits. Lark.

bendehos? it's pindayhos, if yer gonna live here, learn the language. a friend of mine found a rock out north of st johns that has 3 complete petrified cat tracks on it. tracks are about as big as the end of a coke can. the rock is about the size of a sheet of paper and maybe an inch thick. only cat track i ever seen that my hounds wouldn't bawl on. i tried hard to talk him out of it but he's pretty tough for a short guy. Lark.

my oldest son got the earlier of the 2 late hunts. it will probably be a good hunt. the later one will be a fiasco. elk will really be wild. like i've said for years, the azgfd has turned our elk herd into livestock. it's where they make the bulk of their money. they've destroyed the deer herd all over the state by letting the elk take over, even in land that never had elk and all the way down into the desert. there are ways to take care of the problem, but when they get 4X a deer tag for every elk tag, plus a lot of nonresident interest, they go where the money is. u22 has become a haven for uso. they had a huge camp there last year. it will be bigger this year. the more tags they let out, the more nonresidents get their "guaranteed" 10%. taulman probably gets more tags now than he ever did. it's a rotten deal. last year there were 350 permits in u22 north on the 2 late hunts. this year there are 620. musta been a helluva calf crop. that or the azgfd isn't paying any attention to harvest reports or winter game counts. gee, i wonder what it was? this is a prime example of what i've been harpin' on for years. look at it close and do some serious pondering. we gotta have a new director and some decent commissioners. all the toadys and lackeys need to go too. Lark.

anybuddy but me who says it's their's is a stinkin' liar. it's mine. what kind of a gun did i lose? Lark.

i've always said that there is no problem that can't be solved with the proper use of high explosives. guess i was wrong. Lark.

wonder if they make deer chow like dog food. i saw a dogfood add the other day that said it made smaller stools. Lark.