Arrivederci Torino

The author, Pino, Vito, Signora Luciana, Rosaria, Rocco

Since June last year I’ve been working in Europe, and due to that I kept an apartment in Torino, the fantastic piemontese city that was the first capital of unified Italy.

While working and spending a lot of time in Europe and having my family in the United States had its challenges and made me sick and tired of airplane food, not to mention all the time spent in airports and flying across the Atlantic, it also had many positive aspects.

I could tell stories about all the museums and gun clubs that I visited, restaurants known and unknown where I enjoyed fantastic meals, sometimes with good company, many times alone, and the moments of solitude that led me to start to write this blog.

Now, almost ten months since I started my assignment in Europe I am about to start a new chapter in my professional life, and due to that I no longer have an apartment in Torino, nor will I be going to Europe with the same frequency.

I hope to have the opportunity to spend a lot more time with my family, but this welcome change is bittersweet in at least one point. My father used to tell me that one of the most important aspects of life is that you should leave tracks by the places that you travel, and that you should always be able to go back to those places and be well received. My tracks are my friends.

In less than a year I had the privilege of establishing some fantastic friendships, and to celebrate that I had a farewell (in Italian “arrivederci”) dinner at my favorite restaurant in the world, “FRADIN DA VITO” in San Mauro Torinese, that belongs to my dear friend, superb chef and master hunter, Vito Benevelli and his gracious wife Signora Luciana.

To celebrate our friendship, my brave friend Pino Facchini, president of the Federazione Italiana Tiro a Volo (FITAV) – Comitato Regionale Piemonte, and my host in almost all my shooting experiences in Italy, along his son Rocco and Rocco’s wife Rosaria, joined me at Fradin for a fantastic meal.

From the Terrina di Pesce Persico, first of many antipasti to the last drop of Vito’s Genepi, a fantastic after dinner liqueur of Alpine flowers made by Vito himself, we spend several hours talking, remembering, eating, drinking, laughing or just enjoying life.

When we leave our tracks in the hearts of our friends, saying goodbye is just an excuse to meet again in the future. Even with tears in my eyes, I happily say:

Arrivederci Carissimi Amici, Arrivederci Torino, noi sentiamo a domani. Con grandissimo affetto, Rodrigo.

A Deer Story

I was raised in a farm in Brazil, “Fazenda Taboa”, located deep in the rich red soil of northern São Paulo state – the “Alta Mogiana” region. And, just like Scarlet O’Hara got her strength from Tara, I replenish my heart and soul when surrounded by family and friends in the cool veranda or shooting white winged doves that come to nest on the old mango and giant fig trees, in the few precious days I can visit Taboa each year.

When I was a child we knew about four deer species in Brazil, from the Labrador size “veado-mateiro” to the majestic “cervo-do-pantanal”, probably bigger than a mule-deer, and one of the largest mammals in South America. Nowadays biologists tell us there are eight deer species in Brazil, including one identified so recently that the poor animal only has a scientific name and the, common to Michiganders, white-tailed deer, known as Cariacu in Brazil and found in the savannahs of Roraima, north of the Amazon river.

My first contact with deer came when I was four or five years old. My father was driving my mother’s car, fast as usually, in the dirt roads we relied on, when we hit a doe of the small (under 60 pounds) “veado-catingueiro” (deer collision is not a privilege of Michigan). While still alive, the little doe could not be saved and her hide was my bed side rug for years.

In Brazil, the traditional way to hunt deer was “ridding the hounds”, in a similar fashion to fox hunting in Great Britain, although I can guarantee I never saw a single hunter with a red coat or even a tie. We enjoy a more relaxed life style in the tropics.

One day, when I was around seven, my father organized such a hunt and invited some friends. It was winter, sometime between June and August when the days are not too hot, the nights are cool and it is very dry. The expedition consisted of about ten hunters and equal number of horses, twice as many dogs, my mother with a large lunch to be served under old shade trees and a wild bunch of children. Sometime between main course and dessert the dogs found a deer, the hunters mounted and went after the “toque” as we call the sound and general action of dogs pursuing prey. We, children, stayed with my mother and the remaining of the lunch, spread over the white table cloth on the ground, and we did not even have time to be bored. Somehow the “toque” changed direction and that deer, followed by twenty frantic dogs came running right over the dishes while hunters and horses were kind enough to go around us.

Unhappily today, even with twice as many identified species as thirty years ago, any deer hunting (well almost any hunting at all) is outlawed in Brazil and the consequences are that it is very rare to see a deer or other mammals almost anywhere, unless you go far away from civilization. WARNING: Never allow the eco-terrorists to gain a position in this great country. The kind of damage they can do is unbearable for anyone of us who loves the outdoors.

B.S. Rifle Ammo

Complete buckshot handloading kit

Centerfire rifles are great guns, but their inherit power, loud report, heavy recoil and ammunition cost minimizes their potential use to big game hunting or the serious target shooter, leaving most us with a nice firearms that sits idle during most of the year.

I remember an article in the January 1987 issue of Guns & Ammo magazine where Ross Seyfried said that “if there is anything we could do to our favorite centerfire rifles and handguns that would make them more useful and enjoyable that they already are, it would be to reduce their power to almost zero.”

I have several air guns that shoot at 6 ft.lb, but they have different balance, trigger pulls and sights than my centerfire rifles, and may not be what I want to drag out in the woods. Additionally, good quality air guns may be expensive, so they may not be a solution for every body.

Currently, there are several reloading manuals that present information for “managed recoil” rifle loads, but most of them are quite powerful and noise, and use expensive bullets and reasonably large amounts of gun powder.

Sometime ago in conversations with my friends Stan Bell and Eric Weeldreyer we were discussing squirrel or basement loads for .30” caliber rifles. The long standing recipe requires a new primer, two or three grains of fast burning pistol or shotgun powder and a single buckshot (No. 1½ buckshot has a .310” diameter and performs well) or musket ball.

This load can be used in basically any .30” caliber centerfire rifle, and the brass does not need to be resized. Just de-prime, insert a new primer, pour the desired amount of powder and sit the “bullet” by hand.

Although I have a very nice CZ 550 rifle in .30-06, I wanted a inexpensive and robust nock around play rifle, and there is not a better deal today than a Mosin-Nagant, and in order to celebrate 2012 I bought one of these rugged battle rifles for around one hundred dollars.

At the same time I purchased a chamber insert that allows .32 pistol cartridges (.32 ACP, .32 S&W, .32 S&W Long and .32 H&R Magnum) to be shot in the 7,62 x 54R mm rifle (these inserts are also available for .30-06 and .308 Winchester) and for an additional ten dollars I bought fifty new .32 H&R Magnum empty cases and went home to play with my new toy. In order to keep the cost even lower you could just scavenge some empty .32 pistol shells at your local range.

I currently don’t have dies to reload .32 pistol ammo, but I did not think that they were required for what I was planning. I primed all cases and poured just over two grains of Universal shotgun powder. I had a bunch of .32 musket balls at hand and just set each bullet by hand and was ready for some action.

At the Southern Michigan Gun Club outdoors pistol range I place a target at 25 yards, loaded one round into the insert, chambered it in the rifle and fired. The results were surprising! One soft pop, a hole in the target and the range officer on duty asking me to check the bore as he thought that I had a squib load. I explained that I was shooting a very low power round and there was nothing to worry about and we had some great discussion about other “almost zero power” alternatives and their multiple uses.

I fired a ten shot string off-hand at 25 yards and had a group of around two inches. Not bad at all for an open sights rifle made in 1943 and with unrefined Russian-grip trigger pull.

I cronographed the load and the 46 grains “bullet” had an average speed of 620 f.p.s. resulting in a calculated muzzle energy of 39 ft.lb. Just for comparison, a typical .22 LR fires a 40 grains bullet at 1,200 f.p.s. for muzzle energy of 127 ft.lb, and the surplus military ammo fires a 150 grains bullet at 2,950 f.p.s. resulting in almost 2,900 ft.lb of energy. Even at this low energy, treat this load with the same care and safety precautions as any other, as it has enough speed and energy to cause serious injury or death.

An important note: never use jacketed bullets for reduced loads as they will probably get stuck in the barrel and are very hard to remove. If a lead bullet gets stuck in the barrel it is relatively easy to push it out, but a jacketed bullet will require an expensive trip to your local gunsmith.

An additional benefit of the reduced load is its reduced cost. One pound of pistol or shotgun powder sells for around twenty dollars, and by keeping the charge at around two grains a person can get over 3,300 shots per pound. I ordered an eight pound jar of No. 1½ buckshot for forty four dollars (delivered) and it contatins 1,840 “bullets”. Small pistol primers are around thirty dollars per thousand. While the surplus 7,62 x 54R ammo costs twenty three cents per round, my buckshot (or B.S.) reloads cost around six cents each, which is cheaper than many of the .22 rimfires available today, and just one or two cents more than the cheapest twenty-twos.

With everything going so well I wanted a “survivalist” reloading kit to carry with the Mosin-Nagant. My goal was that is should fit in one of the WWII vintage ammo pouches that came with the rifle.

I am blessed that I read a lot, keep all my books and most of my magazines, and generally can remember where to find information that I read in the past. The Gun Digest 2002 (56^th Annual Edition) has an article by Steven Hurst (The Family Colt) where he describes how a neighbor crafted him a reloading kit to reload .32 ACP using buckshot bullet, which his friends called “B.S. ammo.”

Following the same guidelines I built a reloading kit out of basically scrap items that I had at home. The picture that illustrates this article show the complete set up in the lower right corner. The broken drill is used to remove the used primer. You just sit the fired cartridge on top of the nut, center the drill over the flame hole and tap on it. You can use a hammer, a piece of wood or the bayonet supplied with the rifle (apart from grilling marshmallows or hot dogs, this is the only other practical use for the Mosin-Nagant bayonet).

Next step is to sit a new primer. Just put a primer in the pocket, sit the case over a flat surface, and using the Allen wrench (or any other suitable object) and tap gently (again, you could use the bayonet). I use the pencil on the photo to “eject” the pistol case from the insert, but it probably be used in place of the Allen wrench or vice-versa.

Since I could not find any wire at home, I glued a .22 Short case to a nail and use it as a powder measure. In my case it drops just over two grains of Universal gun powder. Last, place a No. 1½ buckshot or a .32 musket ball (both are .310” diameter) and sit it by hand.

The pressures developed by this load are so low that the cases don’t need to be resized, and they should last a very long time.

Some people may ask what the practical purpose of the B.S. Rifle Ammo is. First and foremost, they are fun, and second they are cheap. With virtually no recoil and as little noise as an air gun the B.S. loads are perfect to train new shooter, improve your riflemanship (sight alignment, trigger control, overall gun handling), and even hunt small game. In the last case, if more power is required you can work up the load by adding a bit more powder, but don’t overdo it or you will defeat their purpose.

Notes:

1.    This article was featured in the May/June 2012 issue of Backwoodsman Magazine.

2.    You can find different diameter (caliber) buckshot at Ballistic Products (www.ballisticproducts.com).

How I Got Started in Shotguns

An Unmatched Browning Pair

Lightning Sporting Clays Edition (12 gauge) and Model 12 (28 gauge)

We lived on a farm in Northern São Paulo state, Brazil, and money was then a very rare commodity, and factory ammo was expensive and difficult to come by, therefore reloading was not only an option but almost a necessity. My father would gather some of our decades long farm employees and his trusted hunt companions and reload several boxes of 28 gauge shells. The process was quite labor intensive, as was much of the farming activities in Brazil at the time. The first step was to use a punch and a hammer and cut felt and cardboard wads. Each shell required one felt and three cardboard wads, and each wad required at least one hammer blow, so there was probably as much noise in making a shell as in discharging it.

The next step was to de-prime and then re-prime the shells, and that also took some hammering, at least to remove the old primer. Then gun powder was poured in the hull. I remember clearly that we used “Pólvora Química Tupã” (Tupã Chemical Powder) and you may guess any connection or coincidence between that powder and my dog’s name. Tupã is the god of thunder for one of the major Brazilian Indian nations and is a very appropriate name for gun powder. Tupã powder came in a small light blue plastic bottle (100 grams or 3.5 ounces per bottle) with white lettering and the caricature of hunter stepping over a knocked out jaguar while holding its tail in one hand and having a large bowie knife in his belt.

And finally came the shot, an overshot wad and the hull received a roll crimp in a small hand powered tool.

When I was finally allowed to hunt by myself I used a small 310 (8 mm) rim fire shotgun (a single shot, exposed hammer CBC) to hunt doves, pigeons, and tinamous or using their proper names Juriti (Leptotila varreaux), Azulega (Columba cayennensis) and Inhanbú-chitã (Cryptellus parvirostris). I must confess that I was never an accomplished wing shooter during my early years and that I would stalk those birds just as I stalked big game in Africa many decades later. Locate the prey by sight or sound and sneak close enough for the diminutive load of number 11 shot to be effective. The 310 shell is about the same size as a .32 S&W Long revolver cartridge so there is not much payload there to play with.

While the seed of the blood sport was present in my hunt so was the basic instinct of the predator, and not one of those birds were ever spoiled, unless you consider bad cooking as spoiling good game birds.

I also used that 310 as an effective replacement for a fishing rod, and I didn’t even need line and hook. As you may have guessed by now I deeply enjoy hunting, the chase and the outsmarting of the prey, but it I am still working on refining my taste for fishing. The Rosário creek that cuts the farm I was raised in, at one point makes a pronounced “S” shaped curve where at an outer part of the curve the slow waters form a shallow beach. Touching the shallow waters there was a pig sty and the bagres (Bagre spp.), a kind of Brazilian catfish, would come to feed on pig manure. I would stay out of sight, under some shade tree with other kids, and when the foot long fish would come in the shallows waters I just had to shoot at it and one of us would wade in to retrieve our prize.

By late afternoon we would gather our daily bag of fish and fowl, find some discarded kitchen oil can - there were some rectangular peanut oil cans that made wonderful fry pans when opened properly - and hide among the banana trees where we would make a small fire from the huge dry leaves and cook and consume our wonderful harvest without having to share it with grown-ups.

Big game hunting is challenging and rewarding and I am blessed to have the opportunity to do it, but I can’t get no better enjoyment than scouting the woods and meadows for small game with a small gauge shotgun, be it for tinamou in Brazil or cotton tail rabbit in Michigan.

And talking about small gauge shotguns, as I grew up and wanted to hunt larger animals I graduated from the 310 to an old Rossi 28 gauge side-by-side shotgun with external hammers. Although technically a small gauge shotgun when I first started using the 28 I felt like I was ready for lion and elephant. The hulls were much bigger than the tiny 310 rim fire shells.

But if my father would allow me to use his old shotgun (he never really let me play with his nice Beretta double gun, also a 28 gauge), ammunition was my problem.

Factory ammo prices and availability had not improved any, and just like my father I had to resort to reloading or in my case, hand loading. Most of my father equipment was misplaced or lost when we moved to town, and I didn’t have the helpers or the patience to reload the aging paper hulls. So I bought some full brass shotgun shells, primers, shot and gun powder, which could be Elephant FFFg black powder or whatever smokeless powder was available or the lowest price one. Wads were made from old newspaper or even toilette paper, again whatever was handy.

My reloading, or better saying hand loading gear, was as simple as you can imagine. A pocket knife or a big nail to pull out fired primers, a pencil or other piece of wood to sit the over powder wad and a candle to seal the finished shell with some paraffin.

When I started to hunt capivara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris), or capybara as said in Spanish and English, I became very displeased with the performance of TTT shot, similar to No. 4 buckshot, and the largest shot then available in Brazil, and decided to use slugs. Although we could generally find some cast slugs, IDEAL brand, I saw no reason to pay hard cash for them, and the normal shooting distances inside a swamp or surrounding bush being short as they are; pinpoint accuracy was not really an issue. So, I just fished for some lead sinkers of about the proper diameter in the fishing box and loaded it in my shells instead of shot. The heavier oval sinkers performed much better than the round ones and these bullets stopped more than one capybara with definitive authority.

By the beginning of high school I finally had a “man’s gun” having taking possession of one of my father’s 12 gauge trap guns. I was back to a single shot but the 12 gauge was the most powerful firearm that could be legally owned in Brazil. What more could I ask? But bigger gun or not, the ammunition situation didn’t change and I continued with my proven hand loads, just bought new 12 gauge brass shells and looked for larger sinkers.

Not until after I got married I shot a couple rounds of trap and some friends allowed me to use their reloading presses to make some proper shells, plastics hulls and wads and 11/8 ounces of 7½ shot. If I remember one thing in particular is that those shells kicked much harder than the calves we had in the corral, but I was then a grown man, had a daughter, and had to handle a heavy trap load no matter what. By this time I was living with my new family in a big city and didn’t have much opportunity to hunt or shoot a shotgun and for several years I used pistols for much of my shooting, a lot of fun plinking and some less than serious competition.

But as the saying goes, the world is round, and in due time I went back to the 28 gauge. I had a Beretta 686 and a Remington 1100, both of which I traded for side-by-side shotguns, a Browining BSS 20 gauge and an AyA 4/53 16 gauge, but the 28 gauges are back. I have my dad's cherished Beretta 409 side-by-side, that doesn't get shot too much as it is too precious, and a great shooting Browning Model 12, that is asking to go to Uruguay on a perdiz (Notura maculosa) hunting.

By the way, I no longer hand load my 28 gauge shells, I used a MEC 9000 press instead.