Maturity?

The grey ghost comes into the light

In my opinion the kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) is the greatest of Africa's "plains game" trophies, and after reading Ernest Hemingway's "Green Hills of Africa" and Robert Ruark's "The Horn of the Hunter" the desire to hunt kudu took me to Africa on my first safari in 2005.

I got a beautiful Southern Cape Kudu during that safari, and I vividly remember each moment of that trip, especially when my kudu materialized from the bush into the lens of my scope.

Last year I had the opportunity to once again hunt in Africa, even if it was for a very brief  weekend. My friend Fanie Venter made arrangements to have me invited to hunt at Falmouth, a private bow hunting preserve in the Limpopo. The goal was to hunt an impala or warthog, and I already told you that story before (see "The Best Blind I Ever Hunted From").

While hunting at Falmouth I saw a great amount and variety of game, which just served to remind me why Africa is the most desired hunting destination in the world, and early in the afternoon I noticed that a large shadow fluctuated inside a mopane bush, a short distance from the property's only water hole.

I focused at that shadow and tried to be even quieter than I had been before, and then, suddenly, the shadow came out in the clear and became a marvelous kudu bull. What a magnificent site!

The kudu is a very shy animal, and he stood still a long time, not trusting the apparent peace of the water hole. After what could have been an eternity he started to approach, danced around and before he started drinking he lowered and raised his head three times, always ready to bolt away in case of any danger.

When he finally relaxed, if kudus ever do that, and started drinking the tepid water he presented a perfect broadside shot, and I had a knocked arrow at a range of eighteen yards!

I just had to draw my bow and release the arrow. But I did not do that.

Although fully grow in body size, this kudu was not yet a mature trophy. Its horns did not have that last curve that make them "point forward", and the ivory tip was just beginning to show in one side.

I admired that wonderful animal for a long time and never even raised my bow. I had no desire to just kill such a gorgeous animal before he could become an unforgettable trophy that would forever live in the hunter's memory.

Yes, I will hunt kudu again. I will pursue them with all my energy and soul, but I have no intention of pulling the trigger unless I have earned that right. Have I matured as a hunter?

The Divided Fall

Your behavior will define your future

The book which cover is portrayed above, “O Coleira Preta” by Brazilian writer Francisco Marins has a story about a jaguar that wants to feed on the local capybaras but is not successful because they would keep vigilant and always supported each other. As time goes by the capybaras started to get tired of living in that state of alertness and vigilance, and the jaguar perceives that.

The jaguar being a smart predator finds a way to conquer the capybaras. He sends a message that he respects the capybaras and likes them, and that he is only interested in eating the ugly ones. And the capybaras get together and after much talking decide that no body would miss a few ugly capybaras.

Well, the capybaras are no longer vigilant, and many of them decide to relax because they don’t consider themselves ugly. And then the jaguar comes and eats several capybaras, and fear takes over them. But the jaguar sends them a message that they should not worry as he only had eaten the ugly ones.

Sometime later the jaguar announces that being hungry again he has decided to only eat the very fat capybaras. Again the capybaras get together and decide that nobody would miss some fat capybaras, and the jaguar once again has not problem eating those.

And the story goes on until the jaguar eats every single capybara in that part of the woods.

A similar story is going on right now, and the centerpiece of it is the private ownership of guns in the United States of America, a fundamental right bestowed upon us by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The current federal government administration is taking the same divisive tactics as the jaguar, saying that they do not oppose guns in general, but only certain evil guns like “military style assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines”. Those are ugly and fat capybaras, and you can image what comes later.

Many accuse the National Rifle Association of America of being radical and insensitive to changing times, and that America’s forefathers could never foresee that common people would have as powerful a firearm as an AR-15. However we must remember that the Minutemen were armed with rifles that were fair superior to the British Army smoothbore muskets during the War of Independence, and it just might be that were not for civilians armed with superior guns this great country could not have been.

At these challenging times we cannot behave like the capybaras of the story inside of “O Coleira Preta”! We must follow the words of Benjamin Franklin instead, “we must hang together, or we will be pretty sure to hang separately.”

Write your senators and representatives. Join the NRA. Speak up and defend your rights.

“I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." – Charlton Heston

A Blast From The Past

El Gamo Model 68

When I was a child in the 1970’s it was very common for boys to have air guns, but that was not my case. Although I got my first shotgun, a CBC 8 mm rim fire “Mini-Skeet” when I was around eight, my father would not allow us to have an air gun due to an accident that he had around the same age.

In Brazil air guns were almost always a break barrel spring-piston rifle, and my dad had a Diana .177 (4,5 mm) and one day when he was crossing a barbed wire fence it discharged accidently and the pellet hit him just outside of the left eye. He came home covered in blood and the family in shock started to pray for Santa Luzia, the saint protector of eyes and eyesight. My father carried that pellet deeply embedded in his skull for the rest of his life, and although he did not loose his vision, the trauma may have been responsible for an early cataract, which he had corrected by surgery before he was fifty.

Because of the importation restrictions in place at the time, only Brazilian made products were generally available. CBC, Rossi and Urko made quite traditional break barrel rifles with wood stocks, and were the most common, but there was one that stood apart of the lot, the El Gamo.

The El Gamo was coveted because it had a grip “like a machinegun”. Initially the El Gamo was produced by a whole owned subsidiary of the Spanish company, but the in the 1980’s Forjas Taurus bought the company. Initially there were two models available, a single shot and a repeater – the Gamatic, and after Taurus took over a third model was added. It used the same folding steel stock of the Beretta/Taurus MT-12 sub-machinegun.

Even in face of my father’s objections I would shoot an air gun whenever possible, and one occasion I was able to had my mother’s brother Rossi on a long-term loan, but it eventually had to be returned.

Believe it or not, it was not until after I got married that I was finally able to get my hands on a El Gamo, but it did not last long. I got it from a colleague at work, and it was functional but in real rough shape. The barrel was wrapped in electric tape, and the plastic panels on the stock were painted black.

Even in that shape I shot several air gun matches at the Helvetia Gun Club close to Indaiatuba (SP), until a certain day when a “very helpful gentleman” said that he could refurbish the El Gamo for me. It would not take long, nor would it cost much. I don’t think that I need to tell that the SOB disappeared with my gun and I never saw him again. Since this happened about twenty years ago and ten thousands miles south of Michigan, I do not have high hopes that he will bring the gun back.

Last Friday I stopped by On Target Guns & Gunsmithing, on M-43 just west of Kalamazoo, MI, to wish my friend Eric a happy new year, and when I saw an El Gamo on the air gun rack I just could not leave the store without it.

This gun is known in the US as a El Gamo Model 68, and I started to shoot it in my basement range I was surprised by its performance. First of all it is very quiet and has amazingly little vibration for a spring-piston air gun, and although I was shooting it at only about thirty feet, it is surprisingly accurate. Well, it is no on par with my Hammerli AR-50 or my Walther LGR, but it was never supposed to be a 10-meter match rifle.

I got started by shooting shotgun shells and silhouettes, and I just shot a 10-shot string on an air pistol target and except for the first two shots; every other one was inside or touching the nine-ring. This is not bad when you consider that I am shooting an original condition open sights rifle off-hand, and that I currently have an incurable eye condition called middle age.

But the little El Gamo shines when shooting the Gamo Running Deer target. Just swing the little Model 68 ahead of the self-resetting steel target and pull the trigger and it is hard to miss.

In order to get full use of the El Gamo capabilities I probably will have to scope it, but I will do it in the safety of my basement, and no “very helpful gentleman” will ever get his dirty hands on my precious “blast from the past”.

My Friend Sandor Hauser

One of Mr. Hauser's many creations

 

I first met Sandor Hauser around 1992 or at the latest 1993 at that time ACTA (Associação Campineira de Tiro ao Alvo) on a Saturday afternoon when I was trying to get started into shooting, not an easy undertaking for someone with very little money in Brazil, where everything connected with guns and shooting is brutally regulated and expensive.

Through a number of deals I became the owner of a Caramuru 32 S&W Long revolver, a virtual copy of a Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector of outstanding quality. I had but a handful of shells and store bought ammunition was out of my reach, so after I fired no more than a cylinder full I had to put it away and just hang around at the ACTA “back shooting aisle” where all the informal shooters congregated to look at guns and people using them.

Then this older gentleman approached me and asked me why I was not shooting, and I explained my situation. He told me to go ahead and shoot and give him my empty shells and that he would reload them for me. He gave me his address and said that I could come Monday evening to his home if I wanted to learn how to reload ammunition.

Let’s say that that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

What I found was a paradise for an engineer-to-be and gun lover. On the back of his home Mr. Hauser had a “bunker” by his own definition, and besides all the machinery, reloading equipment, ammunition and guns I found a heart of pure gold, endless patience and a willingness to share his knowledge, time and personal history that is extremely rare.

Rather than reload my ammo, Mr. Hauser made me take sit by the press, and guided me through each careful step. When we finished he told me to come to the club again next Saturday and shoot with him, and I told him that although his price for ammo was much less than at the local gun shops, it was still expensive and I could not shoot every weekend. Again his kindness came to play and he told me that rather than charge me for the ammo, he would sell me the components in quantities that I could afford (100 cast lead bullets, 100 primers and an amount of smokeless powder to suit, plus some extra shells so I could have at least one full box of 32’s).

I remember coming home with a small bundle that contained all my ammunition and supplies like it was a treasure, and thinking back twenty years, it was.

Sometime later, Mr. Hauser decided to build some reloading presses, one of which is shown above. The process was heavily labor intense, and I eagerly awaited the final product. The price was one hundred and twenty US dollars, and I paid him in six monthly installments. This is arguably the best single stage press I ever used.

My son was born on January 31^st 1995 and I graduated a couple weeks after that. Mr. Hauser and his wife, Mrs. Therezinha, were the first couple to come visit, and we drank the “baby’s pee”, in this particular case part of the content of a bottle of Ballantine’s Gold Seal.

Another piece of equipment that Mr. Hauser designed and built was a shell tumbler and washer. Mine was made using a plastic milk jug and powered by a discarded IBM typewriter and a baby cart wheel.

When we “graduated” from handgun to high power rifle we both had 7x57 mm rifles, and ammunition was even harder to come by. I don’t know exactly how, but Mr. Hauser was able to acquire a large quantity of World War II vintage Brazilian Army ammo, made at Fábrica do Realengo and market 1942. The small problem was that most, if not all primers, were dead due to poor storage.

But that was no problem at all to Mr. Hauser. He patiently disassembled each of the 4,000 plus cartridges, put the beautiful 173 grain spitzer bullets aside, collected every grain of powder for future reuse, and then started the even more labor intense process of reconditioning each shell.

The problem was that the old military ammo used corrosive Berdan large rifle primers, so each shell had to be inspected and grade good or not, then as Berdan primers are slightly larger than the boxer primers we would use to reload, he developed a die and tool to reform and close the primer pocket to the proper dimension. After the operation each shell would be good to three or four reloads if we used lower pressure lead bullets, or two or three if would use the military specification.

There were many other projects. The least successful one was our attempt to use three 7 mm bullets as a “flechette” for 12 gun shotguns. We never could hit anything with it. The more successful ones were to convert available cartridges to unavailable one. Cutting down 38 Special and 32 S&W Long to 38 S&W and 32 S&W was easy and straightforward. Much more complex was reforming 38 Super cases to fit Dr. Nivaldo’s 30 Luger pistol.

At one time when there was no or very limited choice of jacketed pistol bullets, Mr. Hauser made a lot of .357 jacketed hollow points using old TV antenna aluminum tubes.

Another of his pet projects was to recondition once fired bullets that were recovered from the club dirt trap. He would wash and sort them and then swage and calibrate each one. The reconditioned 9 mm 115 grains made great reloads for my 2 inch 38 snubby revolver due to the very low recoil.

I couldn’t ever repay what Mr. Hauser has done for me. My feeble attempt is to try to bring new people to shooting and hunting. If a new shooter shows up at the club (and I mostly shoot shotguns nowadays), I will always volunteer a gun and box of shells so this person can cut his or her teeth at a couple clay birds.

 

Even leaving outside of Brazil for over 13 years I visited Mr. Hauser at least annually, but about two years ago, due to age and health issues, Mr. Hauser and Mrs. Therezinha moved in with their only daughter, and since that time I was unable to contact him. I am still trying.

To Think About

Are we facing the gathering storm?

This week I received a signed copy of "Histórias do João Grande", by Carlos Henrique Menke, MD (ISBN 978-85-7497-578-8).The book brings a collection of chronicles written over almost fifty years by Doctor Menke, a passionate hunter, fisherman, conservationist, medical doctor and professor, and the background is the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

In the 238 pages of this beautifully written book, Dr. Menke tells the sad story of how a vibrant nature friendly hunting culture was overthrown by a noise minority of Eco-radicals and how all legal hunting in a state that was once a reference in environmental stewardship, came to an end due to a court order. No discussion, no debate, just misguided emotions. But "Histórias do João Grande" is a lot mo than that. It is a vibrant book about the passion that burns deep inside of us hunters.

At its final chapter, Dr. Menke provides us with a gift in the form a quote from the renowned American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and writer Thomas Sowell: "Freedom means, in the end, the right of people to do things that we do not like."

As the year, but not the world, comes to an end, and it is already very clear that we will have  a very challenging 2013, we should ponder about freedom and the world we want to build and leave to our children.

May you all have a Christmas of renewal and rebirth and be the architects that build us all a better future.

The Best Tool Ever Created

The Hunter and the Huntsman

Excellence is the only word that could describe or be attributed to the iconic Swiss Army Knife.

When I was a child growing up in Brazil most of the men I knew carried at least one pocketknife, but only a fortunate few had a Swiss Army knife. The Brazilian economy was very “protected” against imported products, and basically the only way to acquire one of these magnificent tools was to travel abroad or have someone that traveled to bring you one.

I remember when I was ten or eleven years old that one of my father’s friends traveled to Europe and brought him a Swiss Army knife. I am quite sure that it was a Mountaineer. He immediately took it to Seo Lavezzo, the local saddle maker to have a pouch made, and my father carried that knife for years, until I liberated it. Eventually my dad got a SwissChamp, a thirty-two-tool monster that is almost impractical in my personal view.

Personally I have been carrying Swiss Army knives on an almost daily basis in one form or another for the last quarter of a century, give or take a couple years. The only reason that I don’t carry them everyday is because of the existing air travel restrictions on carry-on luggage that were put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. My current strategy is to have spares knifes in the facilities that I visit most often.

When I started my professional life after college I still carried my knife on a belt pouch, and that was immediately noticed by some of my colleagues, to the point that I received a copy of a fantastic chronic by Brazilian writer Fernando Sabino “Homens de Canivete” that I will include without permission at the end of this blog.

Currently I use a belt clip and carry my Huntsman in the right back pocket of my trousers. I consider the Huntsman the perfect balance between size and usefulness and this is one tool I would take with me to a desert island.

My wife continuously complains that this is an expensive habit and it wears down on the same particular spot therefore reducing the useful life of my clothes, but I just can’t go around without my trusted companion. However, she did not complain when my knife had the only can opener around our new house a couple weeks ago, and saved the day by allowing her to cook an excellent sweet potato casserole.

Even having a nice collection of custom knifes I only took with me on safari my inseparable Swiss Army knife and a custom-made single blade friction folder that my father gave me. Make sure that your knife has scissors, tweezers, corkscrew, and bottle opener. Good beer doesn’t have twist caps, South African wine is very good and the scissors and tweezers are very useful for end of the day surgeries like picking thorns or rounding toenails.

As a final notice I must say that only a Victorinox rides my belt. I can’t even get used to Wenger, even if the same company owns them. As for any copy, forget about them, they are not worth the trouble.

Homens de Canivete

Fernando Sabino

"Os homens, incidentemente, se dividem também em duas categorias: os que são e os que não são de canivete.

Eu, por mim, confesso que sou homem de canivete. Meu pai também era: tinha na gaveta da escrivaninha um canivete sempre à mão, um canivetinho alemão com inscriçõesd e propaganda da Bayer. Não se tratava de arma de agressão, mas, ao contrário, destinava-se, como todo canivete, aos fins mais pacíficos que se pode imaginar: fazer ponta num lápis, descascar ma laranja, limpar as unhas.

É, aliás, o que sucede com todos os homens arrolados nesta categoria a que honrosamente me incluo – os homens de canivete: são pessoas de boa paz e que só lançariam mão dele como arma defensiva quando se fizesse absolutamente necessário.

Alegria de criança que não abandona o homem feito: a de ter um canivete. Era de se ver a excitação de com que meu filho de dez anos me pediu que não deixasse de lhe comprar um na Alemanha. È perigoso – advertem os mais velhos, cautelosos – cautela que não resiste à minha convicção de que o menino saberá lidar com ele como é mister, pois tudo faz crer que virá a ser, como o pai, um homem de canivete.

Os mineiros geralmente são. Quem descobriu isso, penso, foi o Otto, que não deixa de sâ-lo, ainda que de chaveiro e, certamente, por atavismo – pois me lembro da primeira pergunta qe lhe fez seu pai ao chegar um dia ao Rio:

- Você sabe onde fica uma boa cutelaria?

Sempre fui um grande freqüentador de cutelarias. Quando o poeta Emílio Moura aparece pelo Rio, não deixo de acompanhá-lo a uma dessas casas para olhar uns canivetes – pois se trata de um dos mais autênticos homens de canivete que eu conheço, e dos de fumo-de-rolo. Entre meus amigos mais chegados, embora nem todos o confessem, muitos fazem parte dessa estranha confraria. Paulo Mendes Campos não esqueceu de recomendar-me determinada marcad e canivete ao saber de minha viagem – e, se bem me lembro, seu pai é um dos infalíveis portadores de canivete que se tem notícia. Rubem Braga também deixou-se denunciar numa esplêndida crônica, “A Herança”, que pode ser lida em Borboleta Amarela, a respeito de um irmão que abria mão de tudo, mas reclamava do outro a posse de um canivete.

Alguns continuam sendo homens de canivete, mesmo que hajam perdido o seu ainda na infância. Aliás, os homens de canivete vivem a perdê-lo, não sei se pelo prazer de adquirir outro. Para identificá-lo, basta estender a mão e pedir: me empresta aí o seu canivete. Se se tratar de alguém que o seja, logo levará naturalmente a mão ao bolso e retirará o seu canivete. Foi o que fez Murilo Rubião, por exemplo, que é outro: ao chegar da Espanha, a primeira coisa que me exibiu foi seu belo canivete, adquirido em Sevilha.

Para terminar, digo que não há desdouro algum em não ser homem de canivete. Há homens de ferramenta, de isqueiro, de chaveiro e até de tesourinha. Graciliano Ramos não era homem de navalha? Homens de revólver é que não são uma categoria das que mais admiro: até parece que não são homens, para precisar de uma proteção que lhes poderia propiciar, em caso de necessidade, um simples canivete."