Good post! On BOTH guns and food--my two favorite topics. We have all kinds of nopal down here in Sou Cal, from the little low-growing kind that grows even in Northern Washington State (the dry side) and seems mainly meant to give bird dogs a hard time, to really tall "forests" of the larg...

This is a common and complacated problem involving some hard personal decisions, including what gun to buy. You are limited by the remaining--and available--guns made in your birth year, so you may not have a huge choice. Wiser heads than mine can advise you what to ultimately do with the gun you DO...

Thanks, everybody! LOTS of info here! I do like the Barnes XPB bullet; have used it in .357 Magnum handguns with good results (meaning a big hole).

Think I'll try the MAX! Let y'all know how it works, although it'll take me a while to get the bbl. made and get started reloading .357 Maximum, cause I doubt that my .38/.357 dies will work. Getting brass might take a while, too.

I guess my other realistic option is to just get a .357 Magnum and load it hot when I WANT hot. For pigs I'd like a 200 gr bullet, but since I live in The Golden State and hunt in the coast ranges mainly, I HAVE to use non-lead bullets. Why? To save the California Condor, of course! Now, I HAVE seen...

Marc, thanks for the quail info. I'm told by CA Fish and Game (OH, excuse me, I of course mean Fish and Wildlife; gotta be politically correct at all times....) that OUR coastal deer are "Desert Mule Deer." Blacktails start up where it rains, Monterey County and north. But they say that th...

My considerable experience with "corporate America" leaves me with this maxim: ALWAYS have a "Plan B."

I asked this question on another forum and didn't get much of an answer, so here goes. I am thinking of ordering a .357 barrel for my T-C G2 carbine (Come on, now--it DOES have a lever!). Wondering if I can get a .357 Maximum chamber even though most of the shooting will be with the same .357 Magnum...

I believe that those HPs are the old WHV loading intended for Winchester 1892s and similarly strong rifles, NOT revolvers except perhaps the .38-40 Ruger Blackhawks and custom Contenders. They will also have lighter bullets than ordinary factory .38-40s, I think. The only time I've ever fired anythi...

Congratulations; those CA bucks aren't easy! If you're huntin' anywhere near Ventura, especially in the coast ranges, you NEED to be in shape! When I was in college at UCSB in the early 1960s, we used to hunt deer in several canyons behind the Gaviota Pass that we called "The Deer Factory."...

I don't know Gilkey, but a good place to ask if you don't get an answer here is the "Custom and Classic Single Barrel Rifles" forum on www.doublegunshop.com/BBS. I think it's the fourth or fifth forum in their forum list. There is an Alaskan author named Michael Petrov who regularly posts ...

Have a look at the .38-40 for rifles chapter in Ken Waters' "Pet Loads." I killed two whitetails (neither real large--forkhorn meat buck and big dry doe) with my own .38-40, an original Winchester 1885 single shot. For one, I used a stiff handload of Trail Boss under a .40 S&W 180 gr. ...

.35-30 is a great round, isn't it! I had one made from a walnut-stocked Savage 340 that had a truly screwed up chamber and leade (some genius tried to remove a stuck casing with a hardened screw driver....) I had it rebarreled with a .35 blank, chambered to the .35-30 and it was also a tack driver. ...

My problem with USPS is that they do ZERO education of their employees about shipping firearms or ammo. You have to shop around for somebody who won't give you an automatic "We don't ship guns" and then you have to take the time to teach them the laws. UPS usually has somebody who is in th...

Informative thread! Barnes, the California condor, Gov. Jerry Brown, and The Anaconda Corporation want to thank you for using copper slugs! See how many people you are makin' happy? (Just funnin' ya, but nice to see some serious experimentation w/copper bullets since so many of us Golden Staters HAV...

I'd think anybody that spent much time hunting big game or any other pursuit that required being out in the boonies for any length of time WOULD have a serious "camp" knife (say "survival" if you like) in camp, a hunting knife to carry, and a pocket knife. I prefer a short machet...

Never killed a blacktail with a handgun but killed a number of whitetails with a Ruger Bisley .357 with a 7 1/2" barrel (Now THAT is one sturdy--and heavy--revolver). Longest shot was 55 of my short paces, probably about 45 yards, and that's about as far as I'd shoot a deer with a handgun, due ...

I've also seen El Tigre Spanish clones of the Winchester '92 chambered/barreled in .45 ACP. They had the barrels cut to about 16". Was told that these were done in South America for a law enforcement agency that had worn out the original .44-40 barrels and wanted their carbines to chamber the s...

I've got a couple of Helle's; like them very much. The first one my brother brought back from NATO maneuvers in northern Norway back in the 1970s. I've since got several from an American distributor, Ragweed Forge; great guy to deal with.

Great pic and I'd be grinnin' too if I had a day like that! I remember those guys from hitchhiking around GB in the summer of 1968 and occasionally sleeping rough when I got stuck between towns and couldn't find a widow to take me in. BIG, noisy, and looked good enough to eat. (Some of the widows we...

+1 on relining. One big advantage is you can keep the original barrel markings. And making a barrel for a '92 involves a lot of work....expensive work. Not as simple as a bolt action or a single shot, for sure. I've had a .25-20 relined as well as a .38-40, and they came back perfect. I used Mark Be...

There are so many of us that 1) don't much like scopes on traditional rifles, but 2) can't see the irons on traditional rifles any more so that 3) some enterprising manufacturer should start making some low-power straight-tube traditional scopes again. Burris made some recently, but I don't see them...

Oh yeah, those are what makes the "Gopher" in "Gopher State"!

Turtle, I got my 28-bore used from Ed's. Good people. I'll check on his .25-35 to see if it's what I'm looking for--since I've waited a while for this, I'm gonna be picky, picky....right profile, right length, right twist, TIGHT chamber, yadda, yadda, yadda. One thing I liked about MGM was that I wa...

Shotgun massacree! Good on her! Probably "Richardson's Ground Squirrels" or a close relative. Most of the Western part of the country calls this kind of critter a "gopher," a "squeak," or a "picket pin." Generically they are called "Spermophiles" mea...

The Puma "White Hunter" was a style called a "Fahrenmesser." I think that translates roughly as "traveler's knife" or "voyager's knife". Meant as a "do-all" camp knife, so not perfect for any single task, but OK for most, including defending yourself...

Thanks for the welcome, guys! I used to yap on this forum quite a bit back in the day when I lived in upstate NYS and actually worked for a living, but lost all contact, along with my computer, when I moved to CA to retire. From one anti-gun state to another, for sure, but I'm good at getting along ...

I gotta mention Match Grade Machine (MGM). Not a gun mfr. per se but a St George, Utah firm that makes TC single shots one heck of a lot more useful. They make custom barrels for TC break action single shots, both sizes, and both pistols and rifles. And shotguns, as it happens, at least the used 28 ...

2ndovc, I love that Arisaka sporter! Always preferred a plain, straight grained walnut stock without any doo-dads or checkering, I guess because the first sporters I had, a Savage 23 and a Remington 722, were plain like that. Never noticed that ebony forend tips or checkering helped when hunting.......

I also like Roy Dunlap's book, although it is kinda "Old School:" you may also want look for a more modern book with some of the present materials and tools that he didn't have. Have a look at some of the gunsmithing videos that are available, too. Many are listed on the online catalog of ...