Well, most of this was yesterday but I'm gonna jumble it all together.

As I mentioned earlier, I recently bought a Ruger Blackhawk revolver in .30 Carbine. It's a nice gun, but I absolutely despise the black plastic grips that come on the Blackhawks; the textured surfaces just beats up soft, moist palms like mine when the revolver rotates under recoil. So I ordered a set of wood grips earlier in the week, and when they arrived I swapped 'em out:



And then it was off to the range with the ugliest carbine ammo I could find, 'cause you know, you don't want to shoot that shit through an actual M1 Carbine!



I finished sighting in the revolver, and I was just shooting for fun when all of a sudden the cylinder locked up after a shot. I peeked in there, and a primer had cratered, pushing back and preventing the cylinder from rotating. I did some cussing, twisting and turning and finally got the cylinder out, and the offending piece of brass came right out. Here it is leaning up against some of that sexy loaded ammo; see the crater?



I noticed something funky with the flash hole too, so today I figured it out, then went one-by-one through all of my M1 Carbine brass (I've never reloaded that caliber, but I'm getting ready to) to see what kind of junk was hiding in there. Sho nuff, I pulled out seven pieces of Berdan-primed brass, plus eight pieces of this mystery brass to match the five pieces from what I fired yesterday.

The "mystery brass" that had the primer crater is manufactured in the Dominican Republic, and I have a mix of 1961 and 1962 vintage. By some accounts, it's corrosive. Here's the headstamp, which is just "30 M1" on top and then the year (61 or 62) on the bottom:



And here's a shitty pic down inside:



See the flash holes? Each one has a single flash hole, but it is significantly offset from center. These aren't just "crappy brass, not-quite-centered" flash holes . . . these were obviously intended to be way off-center. I dunno why.

One of them has a depression in the side with three pinholes:



Good stuff, huh? Well, I've still got a handful left to shoot up . . . plus all the rest of that ugly ammo.

Gawd Steve yer an animal.

Beauty of a Ruger though and yes the black plastic grips suck. I have Esmerelda Cocabola on one, faux Ivory on the other.

Went to PB to shoot rifles with Duke and my Kid......

Never fired a shot through any rifle.



Kids Day at the Range

WHERE ARE THE DEER!? Hunted, hunted, hunted, hunted. Never head any shooting. I can honestly say I've never hunted this much in my life. I've been hunting deer since early archery season.

My kid says today @ PB..."I wanna go hunting"

I said.

"When Uncle Dana gets back....talk to him and be ready to do some scouting next summer/fall."

"He's a Huntingmotherf'er....He Been out seems like all month"

"Save up some money for food, fuel and ask nicely? We have camping gear."

Yes, indeed! When he's ready, I'm ready.

You hunted in the trees, I hunted out in the sagebrush. The ONLY bucks I saw this year during modern, were on private property. My hunting partner also heard no shots during modern. I watched him get within 50 yards of 3 bucks during early archery, but the winds were so bad, he didn't take the shot.

His wife works for the National Parks service, during the summer. The Rangers also reported scarce bucks this year. You're not alone. I was out for 12 days this year, and buck signs were rare.

Fiddled around with my new holster.
Going to have to try it for a while and see if it'll work.

I’ve been hunting deer since early archery all between here and the Colockum. Trees, sage, blackberry bushes... I finally saw legal deer there during the modern elk season. All I know is, a deer is going die between Nov 21st and Dec 31st by way of an arrow. I don’t care if it has horns or not. The first legal deer I can get range on is going to die.

Organized my range gear and ammo for the next shoot, organized a stack of misc content ammo cans with sharpie labeling and continued to process my AK mags by cleaning and dry lubing the latest used ones, and worked on AK mag base plates for black stovepipe paint and baking in my projects oven. I've run out of 40MM cans for mag storage and need to get a buddy to go in on a group can buy

I just figured out a new reason that I need to finish my 458 SOCOM pistol project and then realized that perhaps I need a .50 Beowulf pistol instead.

Oh we will watch you shoot.....

You know you'd want to!

Ghost Gunner is currently cutting a lower.

I like the pic

bad

ass