Work of Love, Work of Art

Paulo points a work of art

Last week I had the pleasure and honor to be invited by my friend Paulo Mattana to spend the weekend at this ranch in the municipality of São Francisco de Paula, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Paulo and his "cousin" Beto picked me up at my hotel on Friday afternoon and we started our trip taking the least traveled path, from Caxias do Sul to Ana Rech where we bought some fantastic home made bread among other treaties, then to Fazenda Souza and Vila Oliva, and after that by a mountainous unpaved road (that in the US could be described as a track) to steel bridge crossing a deep gorge or canyon over Rio dos Sinos over a ancienty Krupp steel bridge. After the bridge it was uphill again until we came to the touristic city of Canela, took the road to São Francisco de Paula, but left it well before town to cross the Salto dam on the Caí river to get to Paulo's ranch.

Along the way besides the beautiful sights we had good music and better conversation.

As we arrived late in the afternoon (my fault, I know it), there was little to be done besides greeting the ranch hand and his family, unload the supplies from the car, open a cold beer, not getting in the way of Beto while he prepared a "Caipira" (the typical Brazilian cocktail made of cachaça, sugar, limes and ice), which in typical Gaúcho fashion is shared by everyone, get out of Paulo's way while he served the cheese and egg-plant Caponnata, get some music on the i-Pad and talk about guns, hunting, ranching and other less pleasant subjects as politics. As you can see, really nothing to be done. Dinner was tomato and arugua salad, rice and Kung Pao chicken along a couple bottles of great red wine.

Of course, after so little to do the previous night Beto and I over slept, and by the time we woke up Paulo had breakfast well underway.

After breakfast Paulo released his German shorthaired pointers and we got into his Jeep so he could show me the property. The dogs will either run ahead or follow the Jeep and as we drove around the pastures they pointed and eventually flushed a perdiz (Nothura maculosa) and a perdigão (Rhynchotus rufescens), and in both cases I pointed an imaginary shotgun at the birds as they disappeared in the luxurious grasslands.

As Paulo drove me along the property he would tell me about his efforts to restore the land from a very degraded form of several years ago when it was void of almost any life to its present form where the soil is protect from erosion and the cattle and sheep live along the local wildlife. A true work of love.

When we arrived back at the ranch house the two boat mechanics that Paulo was waiting for were already at work on his boat, and after they finished their work we were forced to take the boat to water and test its engine. The lake formed by Barragem do Salto is realy beautiful and we took the boat several miles up river and saw several weekend camps along its shores.

As we came back to the boat launch Paulo and I decided to enjoy the misterious dark waters of the lake, and we floated for quite some time, enjoying cold beers and warm conversation.

Arriving back at the ranch house again we had two pleasant surprises: the lamb barbecue (Gaucho style over hot coals, off course) was almost ready and our friend Armando Rezende had just arrived. A good barbecue (my friends from Alabama will remember me that this is grilling) is food to both body and soul, and after feasting on copious amonts of lamb, fresh salads, tender home made bread, and some libations we had to retire, some to bed others to the veranda, and enjoy soft conversation while the first heavy rain pour of the afternoon washed the skies.

During the rain Paulo showed us one of his most prized possessions, a little .410 single shot hammerless shotgun that his father, Mr. Alfredo Mattana, made in the early 1950's while working at Eberle (Mr. Mattana eventually retired from Eberle after fifty four years of service!) The gun is an exact copy of a Beretta Model 412 single shot hammerless shotgun, and according to Paulo his father made three of them, one for himself and two for close friends.

Paulo shot his first perdiz with this gun, and after his father passed the gun went to one of his brothers, that embellished the gun with great taste. Eventually, after the premature passing of his brother, Paulo received the shotgun from his sister-in-law, and it is truly a work of art.

After the first rain (which was quite mild compared to the storm that came at night and made us think about the campers at the the lake shores) and before the impressive subtropical sunset, Armando and I had the pleasure and honor (I know that I good author should not repeat himself, but I am not a good author) to shoot Paulo's shotgun at some aerial targets. But that is another story...

Reflections, Man & Boy

A Touching Book

I believe that I need to apologize for not having written a new posting in about a month, but it has been so cold here in Northen Michigan Lower Peninsula that bits and electrons that are required to place messages in the internet told me that they did not want to leave the front of my fireplace, and being the kind person that I am, I just let them warm themselves and even provided a drop or two of good Brazilian cachaça to keep their spirits high.

Of course that this is true for I would never allow work and work related travel to interfere with my writting!

Anyhow, today I finished reading a fantastic book by Australian writer and outdoorsman Ron Forsyth. "Reflections, Man & Boy" is a superb collection of life long stories and memories that spam from the Great Depression when his father emigrated to Australia to our rather stupid modern times when do-gooders and uninformed outsiders try to change our way of life in a completely misguided and ignorant way.

The book starts and end with stories about rabbit hunting, which apparently was of great relevance to the Australian farming comunities, but there is also a lot of upland birds and waterfowl hunting, as well as tales about life itself. Some of the stories are fun, others are sad, some are poetic, others are shocking, but every single one is superbly written.

The tale "Make Me a Fox Whistle" even made me feel that my childhood was somehow connected to a small farming community in Australia, as the fox whistle made by a certain Mr. Porter is exactly the same whistle we used to make out of bottle caps to call capybaras when stand hunting at night in the swamps that cut our farm in Brazil.

I am unable to select the single best chapter or story in the book, but there are two that surprised me in such a way that I must point out. The first is "Clarrie's Tree" which has several twists that really throw the reader the proverbial curve ball, and the other is a story of overcoming one's most difficult challenges, "Squarring Up".

Although I have being in Australia a couple times, I have not had the opportunity to shoot or hunt there, but I hope that in a not so distant future my mate Anthony Spence-Fletcher can arrange some primitive outdoors activities for us to go on a walk about down under, and that at least part of it involves a shotgun. In the mean time I will make a list of all the other things to be done, from barramundi to buffalo!

The Measure of a Trophy

A Monster Trophy

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure to hunt whitetail deer with my friend Foy Tatum at his property close to Union Springs, Alabama. We met close to Montgomery and drove from there to the property through some beautiful country roads, which included several angus cattle ranchs and long-leaf pine plantations, which probably double up as perfect Bob-white quail preserves.

The former 750 acres cattle ranch is intensively and carefuly managed for deer hunting, and it is formed by a healthy mix of food plots (at least several acres each), long-leaf pines which are regularly harvested for timber and harwoods which are religiously preserved. There are some twenty-six elevated shooting platforms and blinds, many that will sit two people so Foy can hunt with his grandchildren, and several more ladder and tripod stands.

In the heart of the property there is an almost 80 acres lake from which Foy and his friends pull at least one thousand trophy bass every year in order to keep the growing population in check. He told me that local matting pairs of Canada geese seldom see their hatches grow as more often that not the ten-pound bass will feed on the goslings while they swim.

Since the property has no fences, the hunt is completely fair chase, and in order to stay the deer must fell comfortable. Somewhere inside it, there is a one hundred acre deer sanctuary of swamps and harwoods, where no human is allowed to enter, and from February through September high protein pelletized food is offered to the herd at a rate of a ton every ten days.

For the year round efforts, the harvest consists of around twenty-five does and two trophy bucks per year, plus a truck load of memories, quality family time and good friends.

Before going out on the first afternoon I asked Foy what were "the rules of engagement" and which animals the guest hunters were allowed to shoot. Would an eight-point be the minimum antler size?

Foy answer surprized me. He said that hunters could take any deer in the property, either buck or doe, but that any buck taken must be mounted and rang in the main lodge for one year, and the hunter that took the animal would have to come back for a dinner in order to take his trophy home.

During the two afternoons and one morning that I hunted I saw between twenty and twenty-five deer, mostly does, buttom bucks and other yearlings, but there were also two bucks that I will talk more about.

On the first afternnon I passed on several healthy does and watched some buttom bucks play in front of my elevated blind, but on the following morning around 8:45 a buck came from behhind me and walked right under my tree stand. I shot the little five-point, that I also would gladly shot back home, several times. I put the cross-hairs of the clear Zeiss scope mounted on the Steyr Mannlicher 270 Winchester on the deer heart, the when it moved I shot it again at the back of the head, and after a while I shot it again thought the eye, and a couple minutes later I made a broadside lung shot. After several more minutes the young buck wandered away following the sent of three or four does that had come by earlier.

Later that day Foy dropped me at a big "condo" blind. An elevated insulated "cabin" overlooking the a food plot on the clearing formed by a powerline that bisects the property. It was a grey drizzling afternoon that reminded me of the Netherlands, and completely different from the bright sunny, almost warm, previous day. Close to dusk a buck crossed the field at a brisky pace, but not running. As I brought the rifle up on what I knew to be a shooter I started sneezing and just never could steady the cross-hairs on that animal. Was it a case of buck-fever or buck allergy?

While Foy's property is strictly managed according to Quality Deer Management principles, I beleive that the way he defines a trophy buck is a lot simpler and much more effective on its enforcement, for before the hunter pulls the trigger he must carefully consider wether he wants his mount to go in the wall of fame or in the wall of shame!

Sylas Slingshot

Sylas Slingshot (bottle cap for scale)

In general my blogs have no logical sequence and I just write about whatever I want or like, but it appears that events sometimes provides us eventual links.

My wife gave me a Savage Model 99 rifle for Christmas, and then I finished reading Jeff Cooper's Commentaires and found that he had great consideration for this rifle. Then, one of the quotes from Jeff Cooper that caught my attention was about the hunting instinct that can be demonstrated by a boy and his slingshot.

Well, last Saturday my mother arrived from Brazil to visit us here in Traverse City, and she brought a gift from my dear friend Nilson Araújo to my grandson Sylas. Nilson is an avid bird hunter, dedicated shotgunner, and renowned English Pointer breeder. If I am not mistaken, Nilson is now in the 27th generation of the same dog strain and has the records for all the lineage.

Nilson made a bespoken slingshot for Sylas, and as you can see from the photo above, it is just the right size for a very young hunter to be. He even sent a dozen hand selected pebbles to assure that Sylas would have premium ammunition for his initial outings.

As Sylas is already four months old, I hope that in less than a year he will be using his new primitive skills and survival weapon. I hope that Sylas practices enough in order to be able to hit both clay pigeons and live birds on the wing as Bob-white quail guide Melvin showed to me last year in Alabama. (See "Young at Heart in the Old South", April 2013)

A good slingshot is an asset almost as important as a good folding knife to any boy, and an important tool to help the hunter instinct to flourish.

Jeff Cooper's Commentaries

Jeff Cooper, 1920 - 2006

During the Christmas holidays I engaged on the mission to read Jeff Cooper's Commentaires which were publish at least monthly from 1993 until his death in September of 2006.

A Stanford University graduate in political science, Cooper received a commission in the United States Marine Corps in 1941 and served both in WWII in the Pacific and in Korean War when he was involved in irregular warfare, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. In the 1960's he received a master's degree in history from the University of California, Riverside.

Jeff Cooper wrote nine books, was an editor for Guns & Ammo magazine where he wrote a monthly column, "Cooper's Corner", and served both as a director and a member of the Executive Council of the National Rifle Association, but he is probably best remembered by establishing the "Modern Technique" for the pragmatical use of the pistol for personal protection, which eventually led to the foundation of IPSC, an the creation and development of "Scout Rifle" concept. Other key contributions by Mr. Cooper were th codification of the "Combat Mindset", the "Cooper Color Code" and the "Rules of Firearm Safety".

But upon reading the "Commentaries" we can perceive that Jeff Cooper interests were much broader than firearms, their uses for sport, defense or warfare and hunting. He had very conservative political views with which I concur in most, but not all cases, had a deep concern with the emasculation taking place in society (which unhappily continues today), was a strong promoter of a "classical education", an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, a great preocupation with semantics, and a true lover of good literature and "touching poetry", and we both share the taste for Kipling's If and Henley's Invictus. Although not mentioned in Commentaires, I believe that Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade would complement the list of greatest poems.

My observations regarding Mr. Cooper's views in firearms and ammunition are:

• The Colt model 1911 pistol and the 45 ACP cartridge form the quintessential defensive sidearm.
• The Glock was recognized as an acceptable alternative, certainly much better than the double action pistol.
• The 30-06 loaded with 180 grain bullet is the best and most usefell cartridge in world. Who could argue with this?
• The 223 (5,56x45 mm) cartridge is inadequate for anything bigger than varmints, therefore the designation of the Ar-15/M-16 as "poodle-shooter" (and I believe that he was refering to a "toy" poodle).
• During the late part of the XX century and until his death there were only three interesing rifles: the Steyr Scout (308), the Blaser R93 (30-06) and Jim West's CoPilot (45-70).
• The Savage Model 99 in 300 Savage was considered an excellent general purpose rifle that could rival any middle bore centerfire rifle.

In some parts of the Commentaries Jeff Cooper proposed what today would be called a Bucket List of achievements that every man should try to accomplish and towards the last years he recommended good measures for any young man full education, which were much broader than a college degree and could be summarized by "to ride, shoot straight and speak the truth".

Two aspects of Jeff Cooper that are apparent throughout his works and heritage, and that are really admirable and must be used as examples by us are that he lived his life in full, writing, traveling, shooting and defending his believes to very end of his life, and his view that man should have dash, and that was represented by the way he wore his hat!

I recommend that you read Jeff Cooper's complete works, and would like to close this small commentarie with a quote from Comentaries, Vol. 3, No. 14 (November 1995):

"Whether we admit it or not, man is a carnivorous predator, as his teeth will attest. This animal is programmed to hunt and kill his prey for food, and the instict to kill things is rooted way down in his genetic program. One has only to watch little boys and see them grow up to discover this. Hand a 6-year-old a slingshot and he will immediately want to sock a bord with it. You may tell him he should not, but that does not eliminate the instict."

A Professional Small Boy Christmas Gifts

My not so impractical Christmas gifts

While I may be a bit older than nine-year-old Ralphie Parker, who wanted only one thing for Christmas: "a Red Rider Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time," I am still enough of a Professional Small Boy (as coined by the great late Peter Hathaway Capstick) to not only want, but truly desire impractical things for Christmas.

As I've been married long enough to be a grandpa, my wife already gave up any attempt to make me grow up a long time ago, and we both understand that if I need something I will just go to a store and buy it, and that special ocasions like birthday and Christmas are for gifts so impractical that they may approach being useless.

But the truth is that the world is round and if you push too much into one direction you will come around the other extreme, and end up in the other end of scale, and that is what may have happened this Christmas, since my gifts may not be so impractical after all.

Our new "Up North" life in Traverse City is presenting us with a large amount of snow and somewhat colder temperatures than in in southern Michigan, and while I have enough coats and jackets, the ones that are not camouflage are a tone of green or brown, olive drab best describing the color, and so my wife used the opportunity to change my wardrobe with a very warm Cabela's red & black plaid coat. While it may be a big step away from my traditional hunter's colors, the red & black plaid is a traditional up north team, and I guess at during next hunting season I will be able to dress like Elmer Fudd.

Next comes a fantastic Helle Skala folding knife. I bought my first Helle during a long family weekend in Luxembourg, and soon learned to appreciate the clean design, excellent manufacturing and fantastic laminated blade, where a hard high carbon core is swanduiched between two layers of tough stainless stell. The laminating process is not too different from the technology used in classic Samurai swords, and when the blade is sharpened the harder high carbon core always make the cutting edge. The Skala is a beautiful folder and its only potentially impractical aspect is that I already have one hundred and fifty other blades or so. Well, one never knows when there will be a lot of butchering or whittling to be done.

And finally we come to my Christmas alternative to Ralphie's BB-gun, the Savage Model 99 lever action rifle. In my opinion, the best word to describe the Savage Model 99 is elegant, and I believe that the brainchild of Mr. Arthur William Savage is the quintessential lever rifle. 

While Winchester undisputedly built "the gun that won the West" following the pattern laid down by the Volcanic and Henry firearms, their success at the end was a hindrance for innovation and it took an outsider in the form of Kingston, Jamaica, native Mr. Savage to recreate the lever rifle and make it a relevant hunting rifle for the twentieth century.

The main differences between the Savage Model 99 and other lever rifles at the time that it was created are its ability to fire high-intensity cartridges with spire-point bullets (something that the Winchester 1895 can also do) with greater precision due to a much faster lock-time made possible by a very well built hamerless action. Additionally, the elegant rifle is highly ergonomic, and it can be equaly well used by either right hand or left hand shooter, a scope can be easily mounted due to angle ejection, and the quality of manufacturing is really good.

My particular rifle is chambered for the 300 Savage, a cartridge designed in 1920 to basically offer 30-06 performance level in a package that would fit the Model 99, and is available both with 150 and 180 grain bullets. Later on, the 300 Savage was used as the basis for the design of the 308 Winchester or 7,62x51 mm NATO. 

The Savage Model 99 in 300 caliber is an effective 300 yard rifle for deer-sized animal, and very few lever action rifles can claim that. A short time ago I was reading Jeff Cooper's Commentaires and while that he considered that there were only three modern interesting rifles, the Steyr Scout (308 Winchester), the Blaser R93 (30-06) and Jim West's Alaskan CoPilot (45-70), in several passages he mentioned the Savage Model 99 (in 300 Savage) as one rifle that could fit the role of the Scout, especially for left hand shooters. Knowing how calous Mr. Cooper could be, this is a great compliment to this old rifle.

And what will I do with my rifle? Well, right now I will play with it indoors, at least until my doctor releases me to shoot again. Then I just may load some Buck Shot rounds for it and take it squirrel or rabbit hunting in the Old Mission State Park, at which time I will be wearing a heavy red & black plaid coat and will be carrying a Helle Skala folding knife to help me skin any game I may eventually shoot.

Doesn't that sound like the kind of thing that a professional small boy would do in order to run away from the world?

Sasha Siemel and the Pantanal

Jaguar, Zagaia, 357 S&W Magnum and Mr. Siemel

The first time that I ever heard about Sasha Siemel was on an article at Guns & Ammo HANDGUNS 1990 ANNUAL titled "The First Magnum", by Roy Jinks. The article tells the story of the development and launch of the Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum cartridge and revolver, but in the lower left corner of a page it presents the picture above with the following legend: "Sasha Siemel hunted the big cats of the Amazon with a spear. His backup was a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, wearing registration #10."

Later on in the article, a table informs that revolver S&W 357 Magnum registration No. 10, barrel lenght 8 3/4 inches was delivered to Sasha A. Siemel, Big-Game Hunter From South America, on April 26 1935.

I must say that at that time I was more focused on firearms than on hunting, and it would be some more years before I would learn about Mr. Siemel and his fantastic adventures in the Brazilian hinterlands and how imprecise Mr. Jinks was about where Sasha Siemel hunted.

Almost a decade later I had the pleasure and privilege of proof reading my friend's John Coningham Netto fantastic and epic book, "BODOQUENA - Uma Odisséia no Pantanal" where the main character, Jari Carreiro, or Mr. John himself, is quite saddened by the news of the passing of the famous professional jaguar hunter Sasha Siemel in cold Pennsylvania, a half world and another half century away from the Pantanal do Mato Grosso where he made his fame.

The Pantanal is located aproximately in the geographocal center of South America, and is one of the world's largest tropical wetlands areas, and is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay. It sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 square kilometers (54,000 and 75,000 square miles). To the south and west the Brazilian Pantanal morphs into the Paraguayan and Bolivian Chaco. About 80% of the Pantanal floodplains are submerged during the rainey season, nurturing an astonishing biologically diverse collection of acquatic plants and helping support a dense array of animal species.

In the early XX century cattle ranch and fur trading were the cornerstones of Matto Grosso state (before 1977 Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul were a single state and it was spelled Matto Grosso) and the Pantanal was the heart of these industries. The rich floodplains provided fantastic and extensive grazing during the winter (which is the dry season) and the cattle industry flourished after the Paraguayan War, rivaling that of the southern Pampas.

But there was one element that intimately linked the cattle industry and the fur trade, the big cats: Jaguar or Onça-Pintada (Panthera onca), the world's third largest cat, and the its smaller relative the Suçuarana, Onça-Parda, Cougar or Mountain Lion (Puma concolor).

And once the cattle herd proliferated to great numbers it did not take long for the smart cats to realize that cattle provides a much easier meal than the fleeting cervo-do-pantanal, the dangerous queixada, the crusty cayman, the somewhat ugly capybara or the invasive porco-monteiro.

And once again, as the jaguar and the cougar started to charge the ranchers a steep price for the use of their original habitat, nothing more natural that these ranchers should rebel and fight back, and in order to do so they hired Zagaieros or Zagayeros, brave hunters that used a heavy lance, similar to the European boar spears and packs of hounds to pursue and kill cattle killing cats.

After several adventures in unhealthy Brazilian diamond boom towns Sasha Siemel changed his focus to the more exciting, but probably less dangerous, pursuit of the onça-pintada and suçuarana, and that made him a larger than life person in his own time. Just to give an idea of how famous Mr. Siemel was, Smith & Wesson shipped 357 Magnum revolver serial No. 1 to FBI's J. Edgar Hoover on April 17, 1935, and nine days later, shipped serial No. 10 to Sasha A. Siemel, big-bame hunter from South America.

"Tigrero", published in 1953, is Sasha Siemel's fascinating recounting of his life and adventures in Brazil, and besides dangerous big-game encounters it also provides a picture of life in the Brazilian frontier in the first half of the XX century, and it appeared to be a lot more wild than the United Stated Old West.