An Ideal 22 Rifle

Stevens 414 Armory "Ideal" Rifle

Last Friday as I was driving home after a strenuous but short business trip to Mexico I stopped at Great Guns in Acme, just of M-72 as you are arriving in Traverse City. It has been a long time sinceI had visit this shop and as it is my habit I started browsing at the used gun rack.

The issue is that there are very few modern guns designs that atract my attention. Plastic, stainless steel and tactical designs just don't turn me on. I must confess that I love my Beretta A-400, a truly innovative autoloading shotgun, but when out hunting I carry one of my classic (and old) side-by-side guns, not the A-400.

Also, in the recent past I started gathering (I am not disciplined enough to be a "collector") .22 rimfire rifles, and I was really missing a traditional single shot falling block exemplar for a long time (or at least since my dear friend Stan Bell refused to trade with me one of the nicest Martini Cadets you can dream about. His lame justification is that he wants to keep the rifle for his grandson. What about my grandson?!)

Well, a hunk of walnut and steel with a deep and secular patina coating it immediately got my attention. It had a massive bull barrel with some tapper, a sizeable forend, an elegant under lever, globe front sight, miniscule peep sight and a Whelen shooting sling in great condition. As I handled the heavy but well balanced target rifle, or would it be a military trainer?, I quickly found the Stevens name and immediately the names IDEAL and FAVORITE came to mind.

While I waited for another customer to be helped I used my i-Phone (even I sucumb to modern technology on ocasion) to ckeck some information on the piece, including going price on the most popular on-line auction sites. But soon I was being tended to and negotiations started, and the price was more than reasonable. I used a snap cap to test all functionality and when satisified, done deal!

Later on the day I was able to continue my research the STEVENS 22 Rim Fire No. 414 ARMORY and a 1921 Stevens ads that I found surfing the internet reads the following:

Accuracy is the finest recommendation any rifle can have. It means everything.

Balance, sight adjustment, barrel alignment, easy trigger control, smooth action, "feel" - these are the qualities an accurate rifle must possess.

High prices do not  necessarily insure this accuracy, but the Trade Mark that has stood the acid test for 57 years does.

- And that was one of the principle reasons the U.S. Olympic Rifle Team selected STEVENS last year.

You can improve your shooting with a Stevens.

For all ages, for all needs, at all prices.

J. STEVENS ARMS COMPANY

By the way, the price in the 1920's was US$ 21.00!

Bill Ward's "WALNUT and STEEL - Vintage .22 Rifles" dedicates its Chapter Two to Stevens. It starts like this: "it seems only proper to begin a review of vintage .22 rifles with the originator of the most popular cartridge of all time. that man is Mr. Joshua Stevens, and the cartridge, of course, is the .22 long rifle." Mr. Ward talks about Mr. Stevens and the popular SCHUETZENFEST of a time gone by, the boy's rifle Stevens Favorite and its bigger and more serious brother the IDEAL or No. 44 Rifle.

Stevens at one time was the biggest firearm factory in the world, as "the Favorite became the most popular youth rifle of the early 20th century, while the 44 and its brethren would go to become the premier target rifle of the same era."

I was slightly disappointed to discover that my beloved Aguila 22 Super Colibri would not shoot through the heavy 26-inch long target barrel. As that is the only ammo that is safe to be used in my basement I had to make a trip to the Cedar Rod & Gun Club to test my "new" target rifle.

At a stepped through deep snow 50 feet distance I shot the rifle at NRA 10 Meter Air Rifle Targets, first off hand and then supported. The two targets on the picture clearly show that all shots hit the black bulls-eye and the groups could be covered by a quarter. The rifle probably can do better than that, but I have not shot a target rifle on paper in about a decade, so give him a break.

While in terms of pratical accuracy the Stevens 414 Armory does not have the ergonomics advancements or superb sights of modern target rifles, I doubt that it is far behind, if behind at all, in intrinsic accuracy.

I am completely in love with my almost century old new Stevens 414 Armory and I just need a more robust bullet trap to realize its full fun potential.

Killers in Africa

I just finished reading "KILLERS IN AFRICA, The Truth About Animals Lying in Wait and Hunters Lying in Print" by Alexander Lake, published in 1953, and while it is an absolutely entertaining book, it raised some questions about another book, from one of my favorite "non-serious" writers, Peter Hathaway Capstick. But more about that later.

Mr. Lake was born in Illinois and raised in Michigan, and moved to Africa with his father (or family) in his teenager years. He apprenticed under prominent hunter Nicobar Jones and made a life out of hunting and guiding during the first half of the twentieth century.

According to Mr. Lake there is very little real danger in hunting big-game (by big game we should understand as "the ones that bite back!"), but "Each man was mauled or killed through his own ignorance, or careless, or reckless, or a poor shot, or hysterical, ir dependent on native gunbearers for support." Or in the words of the great Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, "those that are not competent cannot get established."

Besides the Big Five (Leopard, Lion, Buffalo, Rhino and Elephant), the book covers Hippos, Crocodiles, Snakes, Baboons and Antelopes. Mr. Lake's closest calls came while hunting chacma baboons and that reminded me of a history that Ed, a professional hunter that I met during my first time hunting in Africa with Mankazana Safaris. Ed told about a Norvegian hunter that was a police sniper and that would come to Africa and spend most of his time hunting baboons, because it was so close to hunting people! Ed was very clear about how afraid he was of the viciously dangerous baboon, particularly when they had to enter thick bush after a wounded baboon, 12 gauge pump gun in hand.

Regarding animals that are called "plains game" nowadays (what a misnomer), Mr. Lake says that "There is satisfaction in African antelope hunting beyond anything the big-game hunter will ever know. There can violence, too, for wounded kudu, sable, or bushbuck can be ugly customers whose slashing hoofs and sweeping horns can kill as surely as lions' fangs and claws."

Mr. Lake rightly did not believe in "shock" killing power and did not favor big-bore or double Express rifles ("Don't kid yourself that you can hit a big-game beast just anywhere with a .600 Nitro-Express and drop him cold every time."). He advocated careful bullet placement, and preferred "a military Lee-Enfield .303. If deprived of my .303 I'd be perfectly happy with a 6,5 mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer and a 160 grain bullet; with a .270 Winchester and a 150 grained soft-nosed bullet; or, for that matter, i'd be satisfied with any good modern rifle of comparable size."

One of my favorite passages in the book is when he is teaching a young prospector named Sachse how to hunt and engages on a discussion with other members of the expedition and says: "True hunting is never butchery. It's almost one hundred per cent sportsmanship. A true hunter has a sympathetic bond with animals. He tries to kill quickly and cleanly and never permits a wounded animal to suffer for long. Just now Sachse spoke of an 'urge' to hunt. Shows he's normal. Hunting's an atavistic urge and usually a healthy one."

The other is his discussion about the proper diet for a person that wants to hunt in Africa. "Unless you've been on a good meat diet and eaton your food well salted, you'll find yourself strangely weak and listless when energy is most needed. If you're a man who lives exclusively on fruits, vegetables, and grains, chances are you won't be able to endure a prolonged African hunting trip." And for a couple pages he goes on about the importance of carnivorous diet. I apologize for my good vegetarian friends in India, but I just love it!

But back to Capstick! The structure of Capstick's "Death in the Long Grass" (1977) is REALLY similar to that of "Killers in Africa" (1953), but a quarter century later. And if you read the Snakes chapter in both books you will find frigthening similarities on the stories about a matting couple of black mambas, especially when both snakes' heads appear over the long grass! I really love and cherish Peter Hathaway Capstick books and the way he writes, but for a long time people have questioned if he wrote fact or faction, and of all the adventures that he wrote about happened to him or to someone else. Well, in this case, evidence is against him.

In any case, I will read again Capstick's books and will look for more Alexander Lake books as well! And I recommend you to do the same, as both have had significant more hunting experience and write much better than I.

Opening Grouses

Dell Whitman, author and two grouses

Finally the best time of the year has arrived! Gone are the dog days of summer, after some great storms and days of rain the air is cool, the leaves are just starting to change colors and some of the ferns are starting to die.

And believe it or not, today was a great Monday! Well, I left home early enough to think that I was about to go deer hunting instead of being on the way of the joys and challenges of grouse hunting in the luxuriant (and really wet) forests of lower northern Michigan.

I was a Del's by 7:00 AM and after loading Zap and Gena in their crates we drove in a mostly southwestern direction. You don't really expect details on how to find grouse cover, do you?

During the first hour and half we only hunted Gena, and we had eleven woodcock flushes, mostly carefully pointed, plus a large amount of wild mushrooms. As we already knew where we will be at the opening of woodcock season next weekend and did not locate any grouse, we packed up and drove to Matt's home for the second hunt of the morning.

While we waited for Matt to arrive Del provided us with a crackers and goose liver patet and some mildly hot hunter's sausage, and I thanked him in the usual way, by pestering him any way that I can imagine, especially his choice of using an ugly "automatic", when anyone that any sense knows that only a side-by-side gun should be used in such a gentle sport!

After Matt got ready, Del released both Zap and Gena, but before doing so he attached a couple of brand new bells to their collars. I can't say that I like the electronic bippers, but contrary to some better writers opinions there is no poetry in those bells dinging and donging while the dogs crisscrossed the woods after birds. The bells just annoyed us.

Anyhow, on this second hunt we busted through some thick and heavy cover, getting wet to the bone in the process. The balance was another five woodcock flushed, one deer spotted in the distance, a rabbit that was pointed but not shot, and some grouse.

There were two wild flushes, Del shot a young bird pointed at the edge of a two track and I shot a not so young bird pointed by Gena under a tree that made a bee line to my left and was brought down by a 1 1/8 ounces of number eights from the right barrel of my old Laurona shotgun.

A bit latter Gena had a seizure, probably due to hypoglicemia according the vet, and thus the first morning of the 2014 hunting season ended.

I had to be out all afternoon, but tomorrow I will grill my grouse and sauté the mushrooms in butter as a side dish.

Gough Thomas's Gun Book

An original (shot)gun guru

I am not going to apologize again for not writing in over a month, but should say that I've been relatively busy during these weeks, including doing a small amount of shooting around beautiful Traverse City in this somewhat mild summer and trying to catch up on my reading, since i had the opportunity to acquire a large number of books on hunting and shooting and now have a backlog of around twenty titles.

The pleasant surprise for the season's shooting was that my son Daniel and son-in-law Zak have joined me in a lot of it and both demonstrated good improvement in their form and their scores. Daniel decided to move from his Beretta A-3901 to my Browning Lightining Sporting Clays and Zak is using his Remington 1100, while except for the side-by-side shotgun event decided for once to sitck to one gun, my Caesar Guerini Summit Limited. As bird season approaches I will have to change guns, and it will either be my Browning BSS 20 gauge that I sho very well last year or a Beretta A-400 Xplor Light that has been much neglected.

But let's get back to books and the subject of this posting. Just minutes ago I finished reading Gough Thomas's GUN BOOK which I acquired along some other titles at Landmark Books, a fantastic used book shop here in Traverse City.

I believe that I was first "introduced" to Mr. Gough Thomas Garwood reading Michael McIntosh, especially while discussing the subject of shotgun chokes as both authors believed that with modern shot shells almost any choke was too much, with Mr. Garwood being a stronf advocate of the "true cylinder" bore for almost all shotgunning conditions, except Trap and waterfowl under certain conditions.

"Gough Thomas's GUN BOOK: Shotgun lore for the sportsman" is a collection of articles published in the Shooting Times and Country Magazine during the 1960's discussing shotgun design and its use and presenting conclusions based on both his experience and testing, and his discussion on maximum shotgun range is particular interesting, presenting sensible argument and data to justify the conclusions, considering both pattern density to ensure required number of hits and minimum pellet energy to ensure proper penetration.

As expected the book revolves around the British Game Gun ("The normal gun is fairly represented by a side-by-side hammerless ejector, boref improved cylinder in the right barrel and half to three-quarters choke in the left. It has 2 1/2 inch chambers an 28-inch barrels, and weights, say 6 lb. 6 oz. to 6lb. 8 oz." - and who could argue the point?), but especially in the opening chapters there is good discussion on "repeaters, both recoil and gas-operated as well as the pump-gun" the later being described to my surprise as "one of the best, if you can handle it."

Repeaters or semi-automatic shotguns surface again during the discussion on recoil, bot as the ultimate solution, but as an alternative. However, the author deeply objects their mechanical noises as really disturbing and conductive to "recoil headache."

Other interesting points are the discussions on damascus barrels, gun-fitting (which in Mr. Garwood's opinion should not be used as a solution for improper shooter form), and the quality and affordability of "best" Spanish guns.

A brief search showed that most of Mr. Garwood's books are available at on-line book sellers at affordable prices, but on-line shoping is not nearly as interesting as visiting real book stores and uncovering lost treasures.

Death by Perdiz

Dead Tired

Last Saturday I returned home from a great week of perdiz (Nothura maculosa) hunting with JP Cacerias in Trinidad, province of Flores, Uruguay. As always João Paulo da Costa and his beautiful family welcomed us in a delightful way and we felt truly at home at El Solar del Cazador.


This was a week to renew and strength some friendships, create others, exchange experiences, stories and lies, commune around good food, common memories, a glass of local red wine or just the right amount of a long traveled Macallan.

In his fantastically provincial speech my friend Eloir superbly describes some highlights of our latest hunt in his own blog “Contos de Caçada”, and I talked briefly about it on the previous post “An Exercise in Self Control”, but I do feel that there is more to talk about.

The first great surprise is that I finally found a great airport restaurant! At Montevideo’s Carrasco International Airport surprised us with a refined black olive and honey tapenade, a delicious Bife Ancho (Rib Eye) accompanied by a refined chimichurri and papas al libro, an oven roasted potato that is thinly sliced, but not all way through, so it reminds a book. The desert, a crêpe with local dulce de leche was also freshly prepared. A bottle of Don Pascual merlot highlighted the excellent and reasonably priced meal.

The second surprise that I also already talked about was the increase in the number of perdigões or martinetas (Rhyncofus rufensis). By the end of the week I would have had the opportunity to shoot at ten of the Queen of Upland Birds, but of course no shots were taken, and we can only hope that in the near future we shall be allowed to hunt these great game birds.

There is also a substantial increase in the local duck population which had been seriously impacted by years of draught, and it is recovering to levels that may justify the re-opening of duck season in the region.

Although not a surprise, the bad news is that, like in other parts of the world, changing in agricultural practices are the real danger for sustainable perdiz populations. Perdiz needs native grasslands, and although it can adapt certain other covers and agricultural crops like millet, sorghum, corn and wheat, its two worth enemies are encroaching the Uruguayan landscape in a seemingly unstoppable way, soybeans and eucalyptus.

Soybeans and eucalyptus create green deserts that bisect the pampas. The chemicals required by soybeans kills not only weeds and insects, but also the perdiz and other wildlife, and nothing in South America eats eucalyptus, except fire ants.

On the positive side, João Paulo tells us that the recent rains that made our walking the Uruguayan fields so much more difficult will also boost the coming perdiz hatch, and we should expect a very health population next season.

Talking about rain and difficult walking I really missed my Muck boots in this hunt, by my chaps saved the days. And walking was the price to pay for every bird we collected. It may not be the mile a flush for ruffed grouse during the bottom of the cycle, but it was close. And a lot of the places we found birds this year was on e edge of water, with the perdiz only moving to drier higher fields during the warm hours of the day.

At the end of a long day at Durazno, which included a parrilada with more than one bottle of Don Pascual, I was so tired as to almost consider death by perdiz!

After this great week in a distant and pleasant country I brought home memories and sore feet, and an ardent desire to do it again.

An Exercise in Self Control

Rhynchotus rufenses

Yesterday we had our first field day on a new hunting expedition in Uruguay. We have many of the usual suspects, Bill, Jim, Eloir and myself, and a couple new friends that joined the group, Pedrinho from Caxias do Sul and José from Americana.

As usual, we come to Uruguay for the fantastic upland hunting, and Perdiz (Nothura maculosa) is our main goal, along with a couple half days of dove shooting and the odd invasive European hare (Lepus europaeus) that hides among the rock outcrops in the fields.

Last Friday and Saturday we had a lot of rain and the hunting and walk has been hard as there water just about everywhere taking a heavy toll from our (or mine) sedentary legs, but that does not stop the birds from flying hard. The brutal wind is a different thing and challenges the best dogs in locating and flushing our birds.

However, rather than the shots we made, what made the first day memorable were the shots we did not make!

The field that Pedro and I hunted had a small stream bissecting it, and prety heavy cover, which besides perdiz is also home for the Perdigão or Martineta (Rhynchotus rufenses), a protect bird in Uruguay, which is the true "Queen of the Upland Birds."

As the German Shorthair, Uma, got in her first point the cover looked a bit suspect to us, and after some great dog work a perdigão flushed with the same subtleness of a Huey helicopter. I held my shot and told Pedrinho not to shoot. Perdigão generally live in pairs, and a couple minutes later another heavy bird took to the air, this time at Pedrinho's point. Again, no shot was taken.

We started hunting in some higher drying ground and shot several perdiz, and decided to cross the stream to the other side of the field, and of course as we walked through the heavy cover Uma went on point again and a third perdigão flushed from almost under Pedrinho's feet. Not five minutes later, another perdigão took the air, right in front of Uma's nose.

All four birds presented perfect shooting opportunities and although we were both disheartened from not being able to bring home the greatest game bird of South America, we were both equally proud of our painful exercise in self control.

Pigeon Safari

Patagioenas picazuro and the Cricket

Meanwhile, in an undisclosed South American country, I was reacquainted with the joys and challenges of long range air gun hunting.

My friend Aluísio took young Gustavo and me on a brief late afternoon outing for one of my favorite game animals in the world, Patagioenas picazuro, also known as White Winged Pigeon, in an almost urban environment.

We parked the car under a shade tree to avoid detection from the ever watchful eyes of the incoming pigeons and we started scouting to find a suitable bird concentration that would soon provide us with some outstanding memories.

The pigeons were in the center of a large field, clearly visible over the short grass, but keeping quite a safe distance from any potentially dangerous predators, including us. We started walking on a more or less parallel path in order to avoid spooking our prey, and assumed a prone position almost without cover, but about seventy meters from the group of pigeons.

Resting the forearm of the Kalibr Cricket Tactical 22 on the edge of a wooden plank and ranging the target at 75 meters I selected the first target and put the proper Mil-Dot where the wing joins the body. The shot departed almost noiseless and after flapping the wings for a couple times the pigeon rested not to move again. The surrounding birds showed almost no reaction and continued to pick in the recently watered grass.

In the next several minutes we had unstoppable action and the downed birds acted as decoys attracting other passing pigeons.

Gustavo was then introduced to the gorgeous Cricket and on his first shot connected with a pigeon at around sixty meters. Quite a feat!

But pigeons exist in large numbers because they are not fools and apart from the downed birds, no other would come in range. But eventually I located one lonely bird almost across the field, quartering away from us, form right to left, at a pigeon's pace.

I adjusted the scope to have a sharp view of the unsuspecting pigeon and picked the lowest Mil-Dot to give maximum elevation, and put it just ahead of the top of the breast and gently pressed the trigger. After what I felt was half of an eternity, the 18 grains JSB pellet struck home, and the pigeon was quiet with no more an a flap.

Aluísio and Gustavo walked to pick up this last pigeon and using a laser range finder clicked me from my shooting position at exact one hundred and thirty meters!

The following photo session helped us preserve the memories of a fantastic afternoon, the first blood bath of a new hunter, and celebration of friendship and the love of the chase.