Made for You and Me

Who's the leader of the club? The first rule about gun club is that you do not talk about gun club. The second rule of gun club is that you do not talk about gun club. Nor clay pigeons, nor the mechanical thing that throws them, nor targets shaped like groundhogs, nor Cabelas which has good sales. Nor about getting this year's license and hunting for ducks, doves, turkeys in the Missouri River bottoms, and roasting 'em up, or if there is any firearm that can take a grizzly bear. As far as I have heard, the only thing that can stop a grizzly bear is a really riled-up wolverine. Nor do you talk about Sept. 11, 2001 and how firearm sales have soared since then.

New Rifle Range

Tore down the other -- its straw bales were soaked and moldy -- and chopped briars, baby cedars, and poison ivy down by hand to extend my meadow's rifle range by 12 feet, for a total of 100 feet, suggested shooting distance for .22s to minimize chance of ricochets. Forked the rotten straw over the weeds at the margins, hoping to put a damper on their regrowth. Bales of straw are expensive, $5 apiece, and really hard for me to carry -- so this time I brought home two rather than five. All bales are belted with twine around the middle, and this time I got smart and lay them on their sides so the binding wouldn't be cut by shots gone astray. I set the bales atop metal shelving that got fatigued and lay down and twisted itself until it was an inch or so high; this serves to raise the bottom bale a bit above the ground. The shelf was in the garage, as scrap.

Did this all by myself over about a week. Clearing twelve-plus feet of virgin brush and then mowing it was the sweatiest part.

The lower target is a "Dirty Bird" "splatter" target that makes hits easier to see at a distance of 100 feet. Note the bull's eye! The upper target is an "auto-reset" target, made of iron, cleverly designed, I bought from a store incongruously called Midwest Marine. The targets in a row, when hit, will fly backwards and upwards, sticking there until you hit the top target, which will release them all to the original position you see here. This target folds flat for storage, very cool.

Homemade Rifle Range

To build this I could use only what was in my garage, & only what I could lift. The foundation had to be weatherproof and windproof and require no digging. So I placed 4 concrete blocks on end. Over these I stuck five-gallon plastic paint buckets, jamming them tightly or less tightly to make their tops level. On top of these went a sheet of plastic, about ¼ inch thick, weighted with barbell weights, those chintzy ones with concrete centers. (Demetrius the Gardener became a health nut late in life, too late, and left them in my garage. But his spirit – “make do, or do without” -- helped guide me in this construction project.) More paint buckets on top of stacked weights brace the bale of straw which is the backstop. The photo shows one bale; I need another to bring the backstop to the best height. But that’s all I will need to buy. I used to buy 6 bales and build a pyramid of straw. Precip made them rot and collapse. I wanted something better.

Photos show the the finished version, the foundation (left), and the rear view. Tell me I did good!

Remington Nylon 66

A million Remington Nylon 66 .22 long rifles were sold, starting from 1959 until the mid-60s, but this one -- a legendary firearm -- is mine. It's got synthetic parts not of plastic but of nylon -- makes some of the bearings near greaseless. And it's very, very light. It's semi-automatic and holds 12 shells. "Revolutionary" in its time. What's it for? On the Divine property it's for target practice. Yowza. It has no scope, but what a great sight it has. Was shootin' out the spaces in "6" and "8" on old license plate.