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Posted on 09/25/2008 6:43:34 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
I've put this off for far too long. Gotta go mow the lawn, and pick up leaves as I go along. At least it's not bitter cold!
I think everyone is still contemplating fighting a Grizzly with a knife.
Evening LCS - well, if that was all I had, and there weren’t any climbable trees, I’d give it a try if I couldn’t out run bear and I was faster than at least one of the accompaying hikers.
“Don’t have to out run the bear, just the slowest one in your party”
Read about that one, that was a truly an incredible feat.
I read somewhere that Grizzlies climb trees much faster than humans.
Well, the young ones can, generally the mature ones don’t. Course, in nature, the exception is the rule.
Well, the trip could inspire you besides, a trip to the beach has been the begining point for more than one story..
Kudos to Luke, missed the posting earlier.
Evening OT - the day was a great one for turning the Adams Family landscaping into a Leave It To Beaver masterpiece. :-)
Dang! I certainly don’t have a June Cleaver house but it does look better now.
Is it just me, or is the NaNo website all kinds of useless again this year? *sigh*
Is a bright clear cold (20-degree) morning after a six-inch snow good hunting weather? Good riding weather? Am I the only person who likes to be outside in weather like that? <smile>
My two hunters have shot various game --- several braces of quail and rabbit (taken with a "dog" of sorts) and a buck antelope (90 pounds or so field-dressed). The hunters are on horseback. Would it be practical for them to have a pack animal along to carry the game?
It was slow earlier, trying it again now.
Yep. I think every year they upgrade the hardware a bit, and every year there are so many *new* participants that it all gets bogged down all over again.
I’m hand-writing so far. It should help with the creativity a bit, which is a must considering I started this morning with no characters, about a sentence of plot, and nothing else. Now I have two scientists and a chick, which seems promising. I think.
I probably have about 1000 words, which means I should be able to get in the day’s word count today. But what I *really* want for this month is to come up with something worth keeping. If I don’t reach 50k, that’s fine. I’ve ended up with too many NaNo stories that are utter rubbish...this year I want more.
Someone remind me of this statement of mine if I end the month with 30k or so....
I haven't done any hunting from horseback, but I can take my best shot.
The snow should be dry and fluffy enough that it won't cage up on a dog's paws, or a horse's hooves. It should be fairly easy to move through it. Of course after a couple of days the snow would start to pack down and stick more.
It sounds like they intended to go after some bigger game, and would bag some birds if the opportunity arose. Nobody wants to share their seat on a horse with 90 pounds of dead antelope for a long ride back home, so they probably had a pack horse or pony just for that. They'd be wise to bring along some food for people, dogs, and horses, since it's cold out, and everyone uses more fuel.
A big danger in "perfect" weather like that is dehydration, which can sneak up on you much easier in cold weather than hot. An insulated jug of hot coffee might be good for humans, but the animals would appreciate some clean snow melted down and heated to near body temperature. So a kerosene camp stove and a bucket or pot would be something for the pack horse to carry on the way out.
And I love that kind of weather, too. My fondest memories are of my father and me, .22s slung over our shoulders, enjoying the bright sun, fluffy snow, and absolute quiet of my grandparents' woods after a light snow the night before. It can't be surpassed for peace and tranquility.
And, here's some references that might help:
Winchester 1886 takedown rifle in 45-90. This particular model looks like it's ultra-deluxe with every possible posh feature other than gold inlays:
To cover the birds-and-antelope situation, here's a typical German drilling (triplet) in 16x16x7.8mm:
The business end looks like this:
These are not items available at the usual Texas small town gunsmith/hardware store. They'd either be brought back from a trip back east, or special ordered. The same things apply for British shotguns and double rifles. Anything that was special-ordered probably had at least a one-year wait on it, even in those days.
I'd not considered it, but I think they'd planned for an overnight stay --- ride out from the main settlement to a hunting cottage, spend the night, ride back the next morning. They come across a problem that causes them to cut their trip short.
These rifles and shotguns are beautiful, especially the drilling. I looked it up, and found that there are four-barrel (vierling) and five-barrel (fünfling) combination guns ... wow!
If the Winchester or drilling had been made in the mid-1890s, and regularly used and properly cared for, would it still be usable a hundred years later? How often would it need to visit a gunsmith? What kind of ammunition would a drilling have taken back then, and would it still be available in 1993?
If the Winchester or drilling had been made in the mid-1890s, and regularly used and properly cared for, would it still be usable a hundred years later? How often would it need to visit a gunsmith? What kind of ammunition would a drilling have taken back then, and would it still be available in 1993?
Theoretically, both could still be in perfect mechanical shape, even a hundred years later, as long as routine care was given. The biggest consideration would be the shotgun barrels. By the time of your story, quality shotguns had barrels drilled out of solid bar stock, and not the "damascus" twist-weld barrels used on earlier, and cheaper, shotguns. They might be chambered for a shotshell shorter than the standard 2-3/4" or 3" of today, but you could always reload a shorter shell with a less-than-maximum charge to take it easy on the barrels. Or if practical, open up the chamber for the modern length shell. For the sake of the story, don't sweat it. You'd be shooting modern shells, but just not magnum loads. Today's 16ga shotshells will work just fine. They may be made of materials undreamed-of then, but they still work.
The oddball 8.9mm rimmed rifle round was typical of German drillings. There were several used in hunting rifles (the Kaiser frowned on folks using military calibers), and some of the rounds are still made today in Germany. You could also handload, and there are sources for dies and all the components. You wouldn't find it at Wally World, but it wouldn't be too hard to track some down for shooting purposes.
People don't realize it, but quality firearms are probably the only machines that could be perfectly functional for 500 years or more. Aside from corrosion, metal fatigue of the springs is the biggest risk. The mainspring on my own Winchester 1886, made in 1898, has been under partial tension for 110 years now. I just bought a new mainspring, milled from a block of modern steel, and heat-treated in high-tech ovens unavailable in the old days, just to be on the safe side.
The danger in old leaf springs is metal fatigue resulting in a fracture. Coil springs usually fail by "taking a set", so they do not have the power to function through the full range of compression that they normally would. Coil springs are almost a "no brainer", and there are companies that make new ones for old guns as well as new. Or a decent gunsmith can modify some other coil spring if needed. Leaf springs are trickier, but again a good gunsmith can adapt something to keep the gun working.
Oh, WinMag, thank you so much for putting up with my questions! It settles me, creatively speaking, to know that I have the details right, and these exchanges with gunfolk always seem to inspire me.
One more question ... have you ever used yellow lenses in sunglasses when you hunt or shoot?
(Yeah, I do come up with doozies, don't I?)
I'm looking forward to more Gun Pron! I didn't know there was more to come!
yer on a roll... go man go!!!
As winmag, my fondest memories, and favorite hunting conditions, are right after a snow... heck, I love huntin’ in the snowfall...
I was out hunting in the snowstorm that turned into the IceStorm of ‘06, not to ge confused with the Great IceStorm of ‘07... I was covered with ice before I knew it... made fer an interestin’ trek home on foot...
pack animals would be pretty standard on an extended hunting trip... a horse don’t have a trunk...
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