Waldo's Virginia Political Blogroll » Jack Landers

Geese Wanted

Jack Landers — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:32:00 +0000

To anyone reading this in the general area of Charlottesville, VA, I am in need of some Canada geese for a culinary event in support of Slow Food NYC next month. If you have a farm, estate, golf course or other property which is infested with Canada geese, I would be very happy to show up and safely take some of them off of your hands.

Hunting is legal on most properties in Albemarle County and I would be happy to look at your particular situation to advise you as to whether it is both legal and practical. Having spent 11 years as a high end personal lines insurance broker, I am well-versed in any concerns you might have about liability. As a licensed hunter, an instructor, author and hunting guide, I am well-versed in everything necessary to take the geese safely and with a minimum of suffering to the animal or disruption to you.

A DIY .35 Whelen Mauser

Jack Landers — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:38:00 +0000

[Note: I have been terribly sick for days, with a high fever. I have all sorts of things I want to write about here and all sorts of email to catch up on, much of which is from readers of this blog and I apologize for my recent silence. Since I'm too out of it to think clearly enough to write new material, here's something very detailed that I wrote a few months ago about a .35 Whelen that Paul Fritz and I built during one of our classes. I had intended to see about submitting it to one of the trade magazines but not having gotten around to it yet, here it is.]

The .35 Whelen might be the most misunderstood rifle cartridge in America. American hunters and rifle enthusiasts have come to think of it as little more than a souped-up .30-'06 which is most appropriate for putting an especially big hole through a deer. It is true that the .35 Whelen is a necked-up .30-'06 and it is equally true that it will put a large hole through a deer but the cartridge was originally intended to do much more than that.

A deer and elk hunting mentality invites the frequent comparison of the .35 Whelen to the .30-'06 and .300 Winchester magnum. I believe that the more apt comparison would be with the .45-70 and the 9.3x62 Mauser. Each of these cartridges shoots a medium caliber bullet weighing between 200-300 grains at roughly similar velocities.

The 9.3x62 Mauser is widely thought of as a traditional cartridge for African hunting. This is for good reason, since the cartridge has been used since 1905 in Africa by knowledgeable hunters for everything from impala to cape buffalo. It is unquestionably a serious tool for hunting dangerous game.

Let us compare this dangerous game cartridge with the .35 Whelen. The 9.3 Mauser shoots a bullet that is 0.37" in diameter and weighing 250 grains from a 24" barrel at about 2,600 feet per second. The .35 Whelen pushes a bullet of 0.358" in diameter of the same 250 grain weight at 2,523 feet per second. Ballistically, these cartridges are more or less twins.

I believe that this demonstrates that the .35 Whelen is a serious all-around big game cartridge that, when properly loaded with the appropriate bullets, is suitable for everything from whitetails to buffalo.

It is my hope to hunt feral, non-native water buffalo in Australia or Papua New Guinea at some point in the next few years as part of my ongoing 'Eating Aliens' project. Feral water buffalo tend to revert to a form and a disposition very similar to the wild Asiatic buffalo from which they are descended. They are big, hardy beasts that are capable of rearranging one's person into a sort of splintery paste if angered (though they are not so aggressive as the African cape buffalo). This led me to look at those three cartridges as candidates for my next rifle project. The .45-70, .35 Whelen and 9.3x62 Mauser. I settled on the .35 Whelen for several reasons.

The .35 beats out the .45-70 for my purposes because there are good factory loads available in the event that I have to purchase more ammunition while on a hunting trip. Most factory-loaded .45-70 is anemically under-loaded out of fear that someone will use it in an original trap door Springfield and find that they are detonating a pipe bomb in front of their face. It is also difficult to get .45-70 feeding properly through the Mauser actions that I intended to work with. The bolt face and extractor of a 98 Mauser action are too small for the .45-70's head. The thing can be done but it requires a lot of extra work.

Between the .35 Whelen and the 9.3x62 I broke the tie on the basis of the .35 Whelen being based on the .30-'06 case. I intend to hand load some ammunition for this rifle and it happens that I am awash in .30-'06 brass due to the high volume of that ammunition that my deer hunting classes tend to run through. That brass can be easily necked up and turned into .35 Whelen. 9.3x62 brass is a lot harder to come by in the US. Factory-loaded ammunition is also at least seasonally easier to find in the US versus 9.3x62. Remington produces it and their enormous distribution system is more likely to reach into your local gun store than that of either Norma or Prvi Partizan (which are the notable producers of 9.3x62 that have any distribution in the US).

The .35 Whelen requires nothing more than rebarrelling in order to work well in a k98 Mauser. Both the overall length and the case head measurements are almost identical to the 8mm and 7mm Mauser cartridges for which the k98 action was designed. The .35 Whelen was designed by Colonel Townsend Whelen and gunsmith James Howe at the Frankford arsenal in Pennsylvania in 1922 in order to meet a set of well-defined technical criteria. Col. Whelen wanted a cartridge that could push a bullet of at least 250 grains to around 2,500 feet per second in order to take most African game. At the same time, he and Howe wanted it to be based on the .30-'06 case that was widely available in America and he wanted it to fit easily in both Springfield and Mauser actions. Col. Whelen required that a very specific quantity of whoop ass be placed in just the right size can.

Working with blacksmith Paul Fritz (Paul is my co-instructor for range sessions for my deer hunting classes and also the primary instructor for the deer rifle building classes that we are now offering), we selected a 24" Adams and Bennett barrel with a 1:14 twist rate. The 1:14 twist rate is better than the 1:16 twist rate commonly found on Remington's rifles in .35 Whelen for stabilizing the heavier bullets of between 220-310 grains.

I am grateful for the fact that Remington brought the .35 Whelen mainstream in 1988 by turning what had been a wildcat into a factory round. However, I think that they are largely responsible for the myth that it is just a big deer cartridge by choosing that 1:16 twist rate and offering the rifles with typically a 22 inch barrel. This combination leads to the need for lighter bullets and lower velocities that tend to defeat the purpose of the cartridge.

We also selected a barrel in an F34 contour. This is a heavier and thicker barrel then would normally be found on a hunting rifle. I intend to shoot 310 grain bullets at times and I want the extra weight to help manage the heavy recoil that will be produced.

The donor action was a 'Russian capture' K98 carbine. This was made in Germany in 1938 and captured by the Russians somewhere on the Eastern front during the second world war. I've had the rifle sitting around for 4 or 5 years with the intent of sporterizing it eventually. The rifling at the muzzle of the original barrel was poor and it never shot well for me in the original configuration.

We stripped the rifle down and discarded everything except for the bolt, receiver and trigger guard/magazine. The receiver was prepared by re-cutting the barrel threads to match those of the US-made barrel and refacing it on a lathe. We drilled and tapped it for a scope and then started on the barrel. I reamed the chamber of the barrel to SAAMI specifications and screwed the receiver on.

The bolt-handle was reforged to clear the scope rather than cut off and replaced. We placed the bolt in a heat sink and Paul heated it up cherry red with an acetylene torch while I banged it into shape with a hammer.

Because this project needed to be completed inside of a single weekend, I went with a composite stock rather than the walnut that I prefer. Inletting goes much faster. However, I did not want to end up with one more black rifle in a black stock that looks identical to a million other rifles. What I decided to do was to dress up the stock by removing the distinctive steel stock discs from the original German stock and incorporating them into the new stock.

Nothing says 'Mauser' to me quite so readily as those shiny, raised circles that ornament many military Mausers. The purpose of the stock discs was to make it easier to reassemble the rifle's bolt if it needed to be taken down in the field. The steel ring provides a bearing surface against which to compress the firing pin spring while the pin is pushed down into the hole through the middle of the stock. I happen to find this feature handy and always thought it would be fun and useful to put a set of stock discs into an aftermarket stock.

I installed the discs by first measuring and marking carefully to make certain that my holes on each side would be perfectly lined up. Then I drilled a hole through each side of the hollow stock of the outside diameter of the ferrule.

This is the part where things got tricky. The bottoms of the discs are flat, while the sides of the stock are curved. This means that the discs must be slightly recessed into the plastic. Paul had the brilliant suggestion that we melt the discs in.

The stock was laid flat on its side and I placed a piece of brass tubing upright in the hole so that it stuck up an inch or two. I held a stock disc in a pair of blacksmith's tongs while Nick (our student who was building his own rifle with us on the same weekend) blasted it with a blow torch until it changed color and was on the cusp of glowing. Then I quickly dropped the hot disc over the brass tube. The tube ensured that the disc would be in perfect alignment over the hole. I used the end of a cut pipe to apply even pressure around the disc as it melted a recess into the stock.

This process was repeated on the other side. Rather than using the original ferrule, I decided that the brass tube used for alignment would do the job better. I cut it off flush with one disk using a hacksaw. We held the stock up to the lathe and lined up the center on one disc and the chuck on the other. In this manner we flared the ends of the brass tube within the discs and press-fit it. All that remained was to clean up the extruded, melted plastic from around the edges of the discs using a sharp knife.

We were painting the rifles rather than bluing them, again on account of this project needing to be ready to shoot in a single weekend. In the past we have used black high-temperature paint of the same kind used for charcoal grills. As I said, I wanted this to look a little different. Paint is easy enough to strip off of metal if I don't like it. Paul happened to have a can of khaki paint on hand and I went for it. The barrel and receiver were done in khaki while the trigger guard/magazine, bolt, follower and other parts are black. I liked the two tone look right away and it has continued to grow on me.

The rifle was scoped using Leupold mounts and rings. Leupold makes a scope mount that fits the receiver of an unaltered military Mauser. This is a great option to have for a DIY project because you don't need to grind down the stripper clip hump. I had a Tasco 'World Class' 3-9x40 scope sitting around that we mounted on the rifle.

At the range that afternoon I was pleased with the rifle's performance. I was unable to fully assess accuracy because the stout recoil of the .35 Whelen shook the reticle of the scope loose and ruined it. I can say that it grouped about 1.5" at 100 yards, which is pretty good with a broken scope. This can only improve with new glass. The recoil from any one shot did not feel like much more than a .30-'06, although the cumulative effect of going through 20 rounds of 225 grain bullets left a more pronounced effect on my shoulder than any .30-'06 has.

The ballistic profile of the .35 Whelen is almost identical to that of the .30-'06 within the first 200 yards or so. I don't see myself taking field shots much longer than that.

I'm quite happy with how the rifle has turned out. It is powerful, accurate and eye-catching. I don't have the skills to turn out a custom Mauser with the detailed woodwork and metal engraving of a Suhl or Oberndorf gunsmith. That's ok because that level of craftsmanship isn't necessary to make an accurate hunting rifle. The basic idea of building something like this in a garage over the weekend as a non-professional is a very American sort of thing to do. Ditto for shrugging at a normal bluing job and painting the thing khaki. It is a very American sort of rifle (in spite of being built on a German action), chambered for a very American cartridge. I think that I could carry this rifle with confidence on an expedition for buffalo or even on a trip through lion country.

To be entirely honest with you, the first thing I'll probably use it for is a whitetail deer in my backyard.

Geese of NYC, We Will Eat You

Jack Landers — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:32:00 +0000

Remember a blog entry I wrote last month about culling Canada geese in the NYC area? The issue is back in the news. Of course it will be back in the news again and again for the next year or so.

The resident geese in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, have been replaced by 107 new geese that quickly moved into the area once the habitat was unoccupied. There will be more. They will round up these geese and it will happen again. This is not to say that the effort to reduce collisions with aircraft engines is not worth bothering with. Rather, I think it demonstrates the value that meat hunters can contribute to solving this.

New York City is not going to allow people to hunt geese for food in Prospect Park using any methods. Not going to happen. There is too much knee-jerk politicking to worry about. Somehow its more sanitary to have people in uniforms round them up in traps, gas them, and bury the bodies.

Outside of the city there are plenty of hunting opportunities. Resident geese move around -- they don't migrate per se, but they do fly from one place to another. Hunting Canada geese 20 miles outside of the city limits will help to reduce the number of geese that end up filling the void in Prospect Park and other urban bodies of water. A real solution to goose-related aviation accidents needs to involve reducing goose populations well outside of the immediate vicinity of the airport. While citizen hunters can't take geese out of NYC, they can still help by going outside of the city.

I've been in touch with Slow Food NYC about doing a new type of event for them. Some time in October I will be putting on an event to benefit Slow Food, at which we will be cooking geese several different ways and giving the public an opportunity to taste it. I will be working with a chef in NYC to develop some simple recipes for Canada goose that are less intimidating than the all-day effort to cook a whole goose in the oven (which is the only method of preparation most people are aware of). I will be speaking on the topic of geese and what is practically involved in hunting them, while the chef will explain how to prepare them as food.

The chef is still to be decided, as is the exact date while Slow Food works things out with their venue.

I want to be perfectly clear about the fact that I don't have anything against these geese as individuals. Obviously they aren't especially keen on being sucked into jet engines. They want to remain alive just as much so as every chicken on the grocery store shelves did, and just as much as any rat about to trigger a snap trap in a pantry. I don't hate Canada geese, but everyone has to eat something and this is arguably a more ethical way of putting calories into your body than buying grain-fed beef or eating a factory-farmed soy burger.

[Photo used courtesy of Jim Linwood under Creative Commons license]

The Great Floridian Alien Expedition

Jack Landers — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:39:00 +0000

If I have been a little quiet on this blog lately its because I've been spending a lot of time preparing for a hunting expedition to Florida in September. At long last, the serious alien hunting tour is going to start.

My father-in-law and I are going to be sharing the driving duties during the two day trip to Boca Grande. I'll be spending two days hunting green iguanas, black spiny-tailed iguanas and monitor lizards with George Ceras. George is a professional hunter who has removed over 16,000 invasive iguanas from Boca Grande. We will first be hunting the streets and backyards of Boca Grande, followed by a trip to a bird sanctuary where some of these invasive species represent a serious threat to native nesting birds.

We'll spend a day in the kitchen working with a professional chef on recipes for these lizards before driving down to the Florida Keys, where invasive salt water fish are on the menu. For three days I'm going to pursue lionfish and other ecologically disruptive fish with both rod and spear. We are still trying to get a good spearfishing guide lined up for the lionfish, so if anyone who wants to help out with that would send me an email then I would appreciate it.

Other fun stuff coming up in the next few months includes a wild boar hunt on a farm in Georgia, and a new event for Slow Food NYC in October where we're going to be introducing people to the idea of hunting Canada geese for food as an alternative to rounding them up and gassing them. I'll be working with a professional chef at that event to serve everyone simple, practical recipes for geese that prove their edibility.

If I return from Florida with sufficient iguana meat in the cooler then I am hoping to accept an offer to put on an iguana barbeque (Carolina style) event at a bookstore here in Charlottesville. If the event happens, it will involve a reading from 'Eating Aliens', a presentation on locavore hunting and iguana barbeque for everyone to try.

[Photo used courtesy of Papaija under Creative Commons license]

Small Game Hunting Instruction

Jack Landers — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:33:00 +0000

With September in Virginia comes an early taste of hunting season. Doves, squirrels and Canada geese are all in season during that month and there is plenty of good public land on which to hunt any of them. Having been an advocate for using all of these species as a food source, I want to encourage new and aspiring hunters to go out there and eat them.

While I am always happy to dispense information via email (and this blog) free of charge, many people don't feel comfortable going out and hunting by themselves for the first time, even after taking the free DGIF hunter's safety class. This is why I'm going to offer guided hunts for beginners on a limited basis during the month of September.

This is going to be a little bit different from most guided hunts, because the purpose here is not to put a trophy on your wall. It isn't even to fill your whole legal bag limit. The aim will be to teach you how to hunt and dress your own small game for food.

We will be hunting doves and squirrels on either public or private land, depending where I am seeing the prey in good numbers during scouting trips before your arrival. Dove hunting on wildlife management areas is only permitted on Wednesdays and Saturdays and all hunting is still (archaically) illegal in Virginia on Sundays. I will be available on both weekdays and weekends.

All students must hold a valid Virginia hunting license in order to participate. This can be either an apprentice license or a standard license. A rifle or shotgun can be provided if necessary. If you require basic instruction with a .22 rifle or a shotgun then this can be included, although that will either have to happen on another day or cut significantly into our hunting time.

The cost is $100 per day, per person. For safety reasons, no more than 2 hunters can be accommodated at a time. Students will need to be in good enough physical shape to walk several miles on woodland trails in unpredictable weather.

This will not be a canned hunt. I cannot guarantee for certain that you will end up taking any meat home, although I will certainly do my best. What I can promise is that you will come away from the experience with a good idea of how to go about hunting several species of small game and hopefully with the confidence to go out and do this on your own.

By the way, the deer hunting classes will be scheduled again once the weather cools down. Through the end of September I expect that it will still be too hot for us to transport a whole, un-gutted deer to the field-dressing site for the class to work on without serious risk of spoilage.

Interested people may contact me at jack.landers@gmail.com

Florida Hunters?

Jack Landers — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:10:00 +0000

At some point during either September or October, I need to make a trip down to Florida to hunt iguanas, Nile monitor lizards, and any other potentially edible invasive species that I can find. This will be work towards my second book, 'Eating Aliens.'

My problem is that the odds of success aren't too good if I just drive South and hope for the best. I could really use the help of a knowledgeable person to meet up with. Someone who can show me exactly where to go in order to hunt examples of these species (using whatever methods are legal and appropriate for that parcel of land).

Are there any readers here from Florida who can help me out? I'll buy you a beer and probably put you in the book.

My Interview on Versus

Jack Landers — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:56:00 +0000

I just got word from a producer of Deer & Deer Hunting TV that my interview is going to air on the Versus channel this Saturday, July 31st at 9 am ET.

Unfortunately I will not be able to watch, since I don't have cable or satellite at home.

This is an interesting moment to observe because as far as I know this will be the first time that the locavore hunting movement has been formally introduced to the traditional American deer hunting culture. These are two groups that seem very different, yet can be beneficial to each other. I am surprised that this is happening through a TV show rather than a piece in Field & Stream or a similar mainstream hunting publication.

There's no telling what the mainstream hunting culture is going to make of us. Some of them might be suspicious of us, others contemptuous of our odd methods. My hope is that we will be seen as complimentary to mainstream hunting. With our focus on meat-hunting, we tend to shoot does rather than bucks and we may take of some of the pressure off of trophy hunters to cull does while happily leaving the trophy bucks to them.

[The photo is me, speaking to a group of aspiring locavore hunters in NYC]

Deer Class Update

Jack Landers — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:05:00 +0000

I know that a whole lot of people are waiting for me to announce new dates for the 'Deer Hunting for Locavores' classes. Right now the weather is just too hot for us to be confident of getting a fresh, intact deer to the field dressing site before the meat spoils. This is such an important part of the class that I'm not willing to teach without it.

When the weather cools down, I will schedule the next weekend class. Look towards October for that. Meanwhile, I'll probably have the details up in the next 24 hours on small game hunting instruction and outings for September.

Small Game Hunting Instruction

Jack Landers — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:29:00 +0000

Skinning a Deer with Obsidian

Jack Landers — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:36:00 +0000

Fergus Clare, primitive skills expert, skinned this fallow deer a few weekends ago with a piece of obsidian. It hadn't even been turned into a proper tool. Just a broken shard of rock. You could also do this with a knife but it wouldn't be nearly as awesome.

I have skinned more deer than I can even remember using the more common modern technique of cutting the hide off with a skinning knife. Yet after watching Fergus use this method a few times I am fully sold on it. The old-fashioned hunter-gatherer method that Fergus favors is quicker, easier, carries less risk of injury and results in a hide that is easier to scrape and tan.

Please be aware that this is an extremely graphic and honest portrayal of cutting and pulling the hide off of an animal that had been alive only about 15 minutes earlier. If this is going to disturb or offend you then please do not watch the video.

I'm the guy holding the camera and assisting. We were in a serious hurry on account of the hot summer weather that risked spoilage of the meat. There was no time to set up the perfect shot but I think that this video will still give you a good idea of how to use this technique on your next deer. The video is in 3 parts. I wish I could edit it down into 6 or 7 minutes to tell the story more succinctly, but I have no software, talent or time for video editing.

Installing Mauser Discs in a Synthetic Stock

Jack Landers — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:13:00 +0000

Nothing says 'Mauser' to me like those classic silver discs of metal on the stocks of early K-98s. That design element is so distinctive that Hayao Miyazaki used them in the first ten minutes of his animated film, 'Howl's Moving Castle.'

Several people have asked how we installed the original Mauser stock discs in the synthetic stock used for a .35 Whelen that I built in one of our classes a few weeks ago. The best answer is a video of the process.

This is another .35 Whelen that Michael, one of our students this past weekend, was building. I did the stock discs but he did the vast majority of the other work himself. The reason for heating up the discs with a blow torch is that the bottoms of the discs are flat while the side of the rifle stock is curved. We are recessing the discs into the plastic in order avoid a raised edge. Letting the disc melt its own recess guarantees a perfect fit, unlike trying to carve out a recess by other means.

I apologize for the terrible camera work in the first 30 seconds. That is what I get for trying to hold the camera myself while working. After that, Paul Fritz and Michael take turns holding the camera for me.

The parts that are not shown and are not self-explanatory are the flaring of the brass pipe and the clean-up of the area surrounding the discs. After the discs have been melted into the plastic it is still necessary to press something into either end of the pipe to seal it tight into the rings. We used a lathe in this case but any pair of conical pieces of metal pushed hard into either side should work, given enough pressure. The bubbles of melted plastic around the edges were cleaned up easily with a a couple of sharp blades.

The stock discs are fully functional with the strength of the brass tube. I still need to put a video up here that shows how to use those discs to fully disassemble a Mauser bolt.

New York State’s Wanton Waste of Geese

Jack Landers — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:24:00 +0000

This piece of news about New York state's plans to wantonly waste the lives and bodies of 170,000 resident Canada geese infuriates me.

Following many months of discussions between the FAA, the Dept. of Agriculture and various state agencies, the goose population is being deliberately reduced in order to prevent the plane crashes that can result from the geese being sucked into the engines. I'm ok with this and such an effort is past due. These large populations of resident geese do not behave and migrate the way that their species traditionally has and they are out of synch with the environments that they find themselves in. In some areas of the US, they are arguably an invasive species.

What I'm not ok with is the way that they are planning to do this. Quoth the New York Times:

“The captured geese are placed alive in commercial turkey crates. The geese would be brought to a secure location and euthanized with methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Euthanized geese would be buried.”

If a hunter like myself engaged in this behavior, I would (justly) be prosecuted for wanton waste. All 50 states, including New York, have laws against wanton waste. The point of such laws is to ensure that birds and animals are not killed in waste and that they are used as food or for some other legitimate purpose. New York's statute is less restrictive than that of some other states but I think that it makes the point well.

This is the wrong way of doing it. Poisoning the geese to death by gas or injection and burying the corpses is a despicable and unethical waste of food. I think that it is also unnecessary. Hunters could be taking far more Canada geese if New York would change their hunting regulations into a body of law focused on hunting geese rather than playing a game.

I suggest that they do the following:

1. Eliminate the 3 shell capacity limit for shotguns used to hunt Canada geese. Federal regulations now allow states to do this.

2. Allow the use of electronic calls. Again, federal regulations changed to allow states to do this.

3. Not only allow, but actively encourage geese to be hunted with archery equipment. Work with targeted municipalities around airports to create urban archery seasons for resident Canada geese.

4. Allow the use of bait.

5. Allow the use of nets in designated urban and suburban areas.

These regulations that I suggest changing are things that have added up to a game rather than a sensible regulatory framework for hunting. If a hunter chooses to limit herself to a particular weapon or tactic, so be it. But prohibiting these hunting tactics by law is not in the public interest and is not necessary to prevent over-harvest, given that harvest totals are already regulated by bag limits. None of these items are safety issues, either.

The government of New York can't be especially concerned with hunting ethics or fair chase of Canada geese, given the fact that they are going to round 170,000 of them up in order to gas and bury them. So how can they say, with a straight face, that hunters shouldn't be using nets, crossbows or electronic calls in order to eat the geese?

They should be using some of this budget instead to offer goose-hunting workshops to potential new hunters, complete with lessons on shotgunning and archery. There are legions of locavores in the state of New York who would jump on such an opportunity.

You will be hearing about this issue again and again over the next few years as the FAA and the DOA work to reduce goose populations near airports all over America. This is a broad enough issue that we need to find a more ethical way of reducing resident goose populations. Something that doesn't involve killing animals without at least having the decency to use them as food.

Saturday Morning

Jack Landers — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:25:00 +0000

"Go with God now. Go with God."

Gail Rose closed her eyes and pressed her hand over the dying heart of a fallow deer which lay twitching on the bare dirt. I knelt behind her and watched a thick stream of dark, viscous arterial blood wind its way down the dusty slope and into a coagulating pool.

Cicadas trilled together in a rising and falling uniform drone. Chickens clucked and argued in the coop beside the deer enclosure. The 10 AM sun was already in my eyes, baking the ground and promising another day of drought.

The old woman was barefoot. She said we could take any of the deer except for the white one and except for the ones with orange tags. Fergus had steadied my rifle against his shoulder and chosen this one with a bullet through the head. It was as good a doe as any.

There was not the time for a long goodbye for the deer that was already dead even though its heart did not know it for a while. Tourists could come to the farm at any moment to pick their own beans and tomatoes and to buy eggs. We lifted the deer into the back of Fergus' truck and said goodbye to Gail.

In the heat of a Virginia summer we knew that the meat would spoil before the end of our 2 hour drive. Fergus knew of an old Confederate forge close by. Grant and Sherman couldn't find it so it kept making cannon balls and artillery pieces and it didn't get blown up or torn down. Grant's army couldn't find it but Fergus could.

We pulled off the road and parked the truck in front of a massive old chimney with a cracked lintel. I lifted the deer while Fergus tied it by the neck from the rafter tails of a spring house. Fergus produced a chip of obsidian and began skinning the deer as I filmed it. When he spoke I wasn't sure whether to film his face or his hands. I thought that people would probably like to watch a tall Irishman skinning a deer with a piece of stone so I had better get it all on camera.

I thought that every car that whizzed past would be a cop car. I imagined the sound of wheels crunching slowly on gravel and a car door slamming and then silence as the officer looked first at the blood and brains spattered in the back of Fergus' black Toyota pickup truck, then at the rifle on the back seat. Would he even question us before calling for backup?

A swarm of green flies grew. The temperature climbed and we worked more quickly, not bothering to gut it but desperate to quarter off the meat and put it in the cooler before it spoiled.

The square, spotted hide came off like a big wet sock and Fergus held it up in brief triumph. I handed him the camera and set to work at quartering the deer. Yellow jackets joined the flies. My knife grew dull and I stopped to sharpen it. The last rich, red backstrap finally fell off, leaving the absurd sight of a bare, upright spine suspended in mid-air with a teardrop-shaped sack of guts at the bottom of it. It looked as though H.R. Giger had been hired by Field and Stream.

I walked to the stream that trickled beside the forge and washed the blood and fat off of my hands and blades. A handful of wet sand to scour my skin. A bottle of water to rinse off the lid of the cooler.

The sloped stone walls of the forge beside the truck were enormous. Like a fortress. I could smell the horses that ignored us from across the street. Fergus strapped the cooler to the tailgate of the truck and we drove away.

[Photo used courtesy of Universal Pops under Creative Commons license]

NYT: Airbrushing Gun Violence

Jack Landers — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:43:00 +0000

I really like New York City a lot. I visit regularly, I have friends and family there. I also really like the New York Times, which I read every day. But New York, we need to talk.

I understand that you guys find guns scary and don't want them around. Given your negative experience with them and lack of opportunities to have positive experiences, this makes sense. I'm not mad at you for the way that you feel. What makes less sense is the constant barrage of imagery on the streets of NYC and the pages of the Times that glorifies the violent presentation of guns.

Right now I'm looking at the main page of the NYT and seeing an ad right there next to the name of the paper. It is a promotion for a TV show called 'Covert Affairs,' depicting an attractive woman looking seductively over her shoulder towards the viewer while pointing a pistol at an unseen target which is apparently on the ground, given the angle. This is the front page of the same paper that runs anti-2nd Amendment editorials like clockwork.

Walking the streets of the city that has banned and seized privately-owned semi-automatic weapons from the hands of law-abiding citizens, I see posters everywhere promoting various entertainment involving pistols and assault rifles pointed menacingly at passersby. Invariably in the hands of someone selected and primped and airbrushed to be as sexually appealing as possible.

Make up your damn minds, people. For a society that so readily condemns the private ownership of firearms by people who mostly just want to mind their own business, you guys seem disturbingly willing to glamorize not only gun ownership but the violent presentation of firearms.

This doesn't make you horrible human beings. Your food, theater, bands, literature and journalism are all still great. Keep up the good work in those departments. Just stop and think about this hypocrisy at work in the city and the paper as a whole. If you guys really deplore gun-related violence so much, then perhaps you'd better stop airbrushing it and packaging it in push-up bras.

"This Wallpaper is Killing Me…"

Jack Landers — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Work and hunting for food were interfering with each another so one of them had to go.

As of September 1st, I am going full-time. I am ending 11 years of happy employment at my comfortable job as a wholesale insurance broker in order to travel to the most God-forsaken corners of America that I can find in order to hunt, fish and forage for invasive species that I will be eating in the interest of producing the best book on the subject that I possibly can.

There are other books and other projects on the horizon as well. I intend to continue teaching classes and workshops at, hopefully, a greater pace. I'm looking to do some 1 day squirrel hunting workshops in September (groups of no more than 4 students going out on actual hunts).

If I've been a little quiet here lately it is on account of needing to have the final, polished draft of 'A Locavore's Guide to Deer Hunting' in my editor's hands by August 1st. Any spare time in front of a keyboard has been spent plugging away at that and I apologize for the relative lack of classes, events and correspondence during this push.

Come September, I am a free man on most days. Any readers who happen to have a population of invasive fish, birds, reptiles or mammals nearby that can be dependably hunted are invited to shoot me an email at jack.landers@gmail.com. I will be extra grateful to anyone who can accompany me in the field with their local knowledge. I'm willing to travel pretty much anywhere in the US for this, and potentially abroad if the opportunity is good enough and there is a couch to sleep on or field to camp in.

New Class Covered by the Daily Progress

Jack Landers — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:22:00 +0000

Our regional newspaper, The Daily Progress was kind enough to put us on the front page for the 4th of July. The story on our rifle building classes is well done and there is also video and an image gallery.

The reporter, Brian McNeill, was modest enough not to mention the fact that during his work on this article we discovered that he is a natural dead-eye. When he accompanied us to the shooting range to test the rifles we built, Paul Fritz offered to let him try out a 7mm Mauser. Brian had never fired a rifle before, yet the second time he ever pulled the trigger he nailed a 4" clay target at 150 yards.

He may even have been aiming for it.

DIY Mauser Class: The Black & Tan .35 Whelen

Jack Landers — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:40:00 +0000

The rifle in this photo is a custom K98 Mauser in .35 Whelen that was produced in our rifle-building class last weekend. This was built in a single weekend, with the exception of some additional painting that I did in the space of 45 minutes a few days later.

It wears 500 degree enamel engine paint that seems to be holding up pretty well. The distinctive black and tan color scheme blends well into the woods as camouflage.

The steel disks set into the synthetic stock are from the German K98 that also provided the donor action. Having seen some hundreds if not over a thousand sporterized Mausers in photographs and in person, this is the first time that I have ever seen the original stock disks used in a synthetic stock. They are completely functional, having been pressed by a lathe into a brass pipe running through the center of the stock which is strong enough to assist in take-down and reassembly of the bolt as originally intended.

Classes are limited to 2 students in order to provide one-on-one instruction. The cost is $800, which does not include the donor action (which we cannot legally sell or provide, since we are not firearms dealers). That cost includes all other parts, instruction and use of machinery necessary to build a custom deer rifle on a vintage Mauser action. Interested persons may contact me directly at jack.landers@gmail.com with any questions.

More photographs from a previous class can be found here.

Eating Kudzu for NPR

Jack Landers — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:35:00 +0000

WVTF, Central Virginia's NPR affiliate, did a two-part story recently on kudzu that I really should have posted here last week. In the spirit of my on-going 'Eating Aliens' project, I organized a small kudzu dinner and invited Sandy Hausman of WVTF.

Yeah, kudzu. The giant weed that is conquering the American south. We cooked it and ate it and it was good. Steve Friedman did the actual cooking while I prepped according to his instructions. We had kudzu pesto, kudzu quiche and several other courses that all turned out surprisingly well.

You can listen to part one and part two on WVTF's website.

My book in progress, 'Eating Aliens' is intended to be all hunting and fishing. But the kudzu thing still definitely fits into the spirit of the book and I could see doing a companion volume or sequel that focuses on invasive plants.

[Photo used courtesy of Martin LaBar under Creative Commons license]

State Fossils, Reviewed

Jack Landers — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:11:00 +0000

It has come to my attention that the state fossil of my home commonwealth of Virginia is a scallop. No, it didn't have fangs or anything. It was just a scallop. Oh, but it was named after Thomas Jefferson so we're supposed to think this thing is really cool.

I have collected examples of this fossil at the bases of cliffs by the Chesapeake Bay. They don't really look very different from any other scallop shell. I find it embarrassing that this is our state fossil.

Surprisingly, we aren't quite at the bottom of the state fossil barrel, thanks in part to Arizona's embrace of petrified wood as their fossil mascot. That ties for 'most pathetic' with Louisiana and their petrified palm wood. At least our scallops could move.

Kentucky phoned it in big time with their designation in 1986 of the 'brachiopod' as the state fossil. Which brachiopod, out of the 5,000-odd extinct varieties? Oh, nothing in particular. The whole damned phylum, apparently. It reminds me of the story about Mikhail Gorbachev having a brother who is also named Mikhail Gorbachev on account of their father, Mikhail Gorbachev, being too drunk at the time of signing their birth certificates to remember any name except for his own.

I'm picturing the Kentucky state legislature being on a 12 month bender in 1986. It was time to name the state fossil and someone blurted out 'brachiopods!' and scrawled it onto a bourbon-stained napkin which was passed as legislation in a voice vote before anyone got sober enough to realize what they had done.

Georgia tried to get much more specific than Kentucky did. Their state fossil is the shark tooth. Not the whole shark, mind. The rest of the cartilaginous skeleton is apparently verboten. No particular species is named, which was half-assed of them but you have to at least give them credit for trying to come up with something cool.

Utah went balls-out and claimed the allosaurus. If I was Utah I would be putting that shit on the state quarters and the flag and pass a bill that requires the Utah Jazz to be re-named 'the Utah Allosaurus.'

There must have been a contest in special ed classrooms in Vermont to come up with their state fossil because they seem to think its the beluga whale. Which is not even extinct. This is like it might as well be 'hamsters' or 'peanut butter.' Try harder.

South Dakota has it under control with the triceratops. A solid choice which will also encourage investment and tourism from the important 5-year-old boy demographic.

North Dakota must have looked south and thought 'we cannot even compete with this.' They went with 'shipworm-bored petrified wood.' Its like they thought about Arizona and asked, 'how can we be even lamer than petrified wood? What if worms put holes in it?' Choosing 'ship-bored petrified wood' may well have been an act of what amounts to hipster irony.

Alaska, Michigan and Washington have each chosen the woolly mammoth, the American mastadon and the Columbian mammoth, respectively. Which I think we all can agree are practically the same thing for these purposes. Whoever did it first made a great choice. The other two need to go back to the textbooks and come up with their own damn fossils.

New Jersey picked a hadrosaur. These ones in the wikipedia entry look like they're maybe taking a dump. At least its a dinosaur instead of a scallop or pocket lint or whatever North Carolina and Iowa will finally come up with.

[Illustration by Charles R. Knight, public domain]

Deer Rifles for Kids

Jack Landers — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:12:00 +0000

It would be a bad idea to hand a deer rifle to your typical kid these days. Weaned on toy guns and video games, the first instinct is so often to point anything gun-shaped at the nearest human target and pull the trigger. Yet for children who were raised in hunting households, this can be less of a problem. In my own home, toy guns are forbidden with a resolve matched only by our expectation that the children accompany me once a week or so for practice at shooting targets and stalking deer in the woods and fields.

Since the age of 3, my daughter has accompanied me on these types of outings and at the age of 6 she is more ready to hunt deer this fall than many people 3 times her age. Gun and hunter safety are first nature to her and she spots deer from the corner of her eye in places where most people only see grass and trees. Handy with both rifle and pistol and competent with a knife at skinning and butchering, she is entirely capable of hunting under my direct supervision.

The great difficulty is finding a hunting rifle that will properly fit a 6 year old. A 6 year old girl who is on the small side for her age, at that.

I have put a great deal of thought and research into this matter. There are two key issues: recoil and ergonomics.

My daughter, Ida, has shot her mother's 7mm-08 with no great concern for recoil. But the length of pull on that Remington 700 was too great for any accuracy finer than what was needed for blowing up shampoo bottles full of water at 10 yards (yes, it was fun).

'Length of pull' refers to the distance between the trigger and the top edge of the recoil pad at the butt of the rifle or shotgun. When the length of pull is too far you will find that not only is it difficult or impossible to align the eye properly with the sights or scope, but recoil will also feel more intense due to the improper fit against the shoulder.

Anyone shorter than about 5'5" is pretty well out of luck in the LOP department. For small children or adults of small stature it is very difficult to find a deer rifle with a stock that will properly fit. Even most 'youth' rifles are a bit too long for most kids under the age of 12.

This necessitates cutting down a stock in order to fit the hunter. Right away, this eliminates a huge swath of deer rifles currently on the market because of the impracticality of cutting down most synthetic stocks. Most of them are either hollow or filled with a sort of foam that will not hold a screw when you need to reattach a butt plate or pad. There are typically bulges on the inside of the material with pre-molded screw holes which will be wholly gone after you have cut 4 inches off of the end. Note that a majority of youth rifles on the market have synthetic stocks.

A wooden stock is essential if your hunter will not fit any of the synthetic stocks off the shelf. Its easy to shorten the length of pull yourself if you do the job carefully and follow Larry Potterfield's instructions in this video. Midway USA has many other videos available for free that explain how to do related tasks, such as installing a new recoil pad.

If you intend to buy a youth rifle with a synthetic stock and replace it with a cut-down wooden one until the kid grows into the synthetic one, do make certain that there is a source for such a wooden stock. I made the mistake of buying my daughter a Rossi 'Matched Pair' with barrels for .22 LR and .410 shotgun with that in mind. As it turned out, there is no source anywhere or anyhow for a wooden Rossi stock unless you buy the rifle with one in the first place. Rossi does not seem to answer their phone and none of my emails were ever returned. We've been stuck with an ill-fitting pink plastic stock ever since. A Crickett would probably have been a better choice for a .22 for that reason.

Another major criterion is the cartridge. A .30-'06 is obviously out of the question, yet one doesn't want to go too light for risk of failing to kill the deer even with a good shot. Cartridges to consider would include the 7mm-08, 7.62x39, various 6mms and the more earnest revolver cartridges. Handgun cartridges like the .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum and .45 Long Colt can all be found as factory chamberings in certain single shot and lever action rifles. With the added length of a rifle barrel, those cartridges can achieve velocities higher than they do in handguns and with a stock against the shoulder their recoil is much milder than in the hand alone. They can all serve as reasonable whitetail cartridges provided that appropriate bullets are used and ranges are kept to no more than about 100 yards.

The short lengths of those handgun cartridges can allow for a shorter, lighter rifle that better fits a very small hunter than a full-length rifle cartridge. Recoil is mild and ammunition is inexpensive.

Unfortunately, there are few bolt action rifles available for any of those handgun chamberings. The Ruger model 77-44 comes in .44 Magnum and is the only bolt action option I am aware of. Marlin makes a lever action .357 that could answer very well as a youth rifle after being cut down to size and all of these cartridges can be found in single-shot offerings from Rossi and NEF at reasonable prices, or from Ruger if you care to spend about $1,000 on a Number One.

The Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP seems like a possibility at first glance, but a look around for factory loads with whitetail-appropriate bullets will quickly rule this out as a serious option for all but the more gonzo reloaders. You will not find hunting ammunition for the .45 ACP.

If you want a bolt action for your young hunter, you are pretty much looking at the .308 family of cartridges. The .308 its self is not so heavy on recoil in the first place and can be lighter through the use of either Remington's Managed Recoil loads or judicious handloading. The 7mm-08 is lighter in recoil than the .308 by design and can be lightened even farther by the same line of reduced recoil ammunition.

If you insist on using the .243 then I certainly can't stop you but I will state that I have never been impressed by the tendency of those slight bullets travelling at such high speed to go absolutely to pieces. When impacting a deer at within 80 yards or so, even a high quality bullet can shatter into a shallow, ugly shoulder wound that does not penetrate into the lungs. The difference in recoil between the .243 and the 7mm-08 is minor while I've found that the performance of the bullets on deer is anecdotally very different.

Barrel length is another issue worth considering in a deer rifle for a child or a very small adult. Every given cartridge has a barrel length which is optimal for it. The reason is that a given volume of a particular type of smokeless gunpowder burns at a particular rate and if the barrel is too short then some of that powder is blasted out of the muzzle before it has finished igniting, which means a waste of potential velocity. Once all of the powder has burned, further barrel length is actually counter-productive since it becomes merely a source of friction against the bullet. Normally we want to choose a barrel length which is just enough for all of the powder to burn and no longer. In a 7mm Remington Magnum, this would be 26 inches while a .308 is probably closer to around 23 inches.

Its ok to throw this out of the window sometimes when choosing a rifle for a small person. Better to lose 150 feet per second of velocity than to have a rifle that is awkward, heavy, and prone to catching on every bit of brush. The minimum legal length for a rifle barrel without a special federal dispensation under a 'class 3' permit is 16 inches. I suggest always keeping it at least a quarter inch over that, in case you eventually need to re-crown the muzzle and find that you have gone a hair under the threshold for a visit from the party van.

Finally, the scope is worthy of special consideration. The ergonomics of most rifles, even youth rifles, are set up with the intent of putting the eye of someone with a 'normal' adult head and neck up to the center of a 40mm scope reticle. A very small person will find themselves craning their necks trying to get proper scope alignment. It will be a little easier to get comfortable and shoot accurately if the rifle wears a 32 mm scope rather than the more common 40 mm variety. Because a .32 mm objective is a smaller circle than a 40mm, the center of that circle is lower to the barrel and receiver. Combine this with a set of low rings and a child will have a much easier time seeing the target.

I wish that there was one rifle or list of rifles that I could recommend above all others for children and small adults, but there is really nothing perfect out there right now. Nobody seems to be making a centerfire, deer-capable equivalent of the Crickett .22 bolt action. A bolt action .357 magnum with a 16.5 inch barrel and a wooden stock with about 9 or 10 inches of pull wearing a 32 mm scope would be perfect. Sorry, nobody is making one. But if any rifle manufacturers would like to approach my 6 year old daughter about an endorsement for a new product then I am sure she will be most willing to discuss trigger weights, television and in-store appearances with you.

[The photo is my own. It's Ida.]

Tactics for Spring Squirrels

Jack Landers — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:52:00 +0000

We are fortunate enough in Virginia to have a spring squirrel season that runs from June 5th-19th. I have hunted this brief spring season every year since it was first created only about 3 or 4 years ago. While the opportunity to hunt for food in June is a welcome one, this is a much harder season to hunt than the fall and winter.

The biggest difference is the amount of cover. Having leaves on the trees dramatically lowers visibility. The woods behind my house are such a jungle right now that I have completely given up hunting squirrels there this spring, save for an occasional patrol of the edge. Even in the more open deciduous hardwood forest around my brother's place down the road I find that visibility is poor. There is a decent view of the forest floor out to as far as 100 yards but 5 yards off the ground it gets pretty patchy.

This has forced a reassessment of tactics and equipment. I prefer to hunt squirrels with a scoped .22 but I find that under these circumstances there are few shot opportunities for a rifle. With so much cover in the trees, every glimpse of a squirrel is brief and there is a real need to get a shot off more quickly than I can bring the rifle to bear, find the target in my scope and get steady. Moving targets are the rule. Its not that they don't ever hold still; its just that the odds of having a clear view of the squirrel at that particular moment are low. When I go out to hunt again after work today I will be carrying a shotgun instead of a rifle.

Schedules in the forest are also a little different in mid June versus December. In cold weather I find that squirrels will be out of the nest as soon as there is some direct sunlight available to warm up in. They will be active on the ground all morning before taking a siesta between noon and around 3 or 4 pm. Then they will be back at it for a few hours.

I have observed very different timing in the spring season. They seem to mostly be concerned with staying out of the heat. The only time of day that I can absolutely count on activity is the last hour before dark. In the heat of the middle of the day, there may be the odd squirrel that finds an errand to run but those will be few. From between roughly 10 am to 7 pm most of the squirrels are out of sight when the temperature is 80 degrees Farenheit or higher.

Right about when I am starting to think that it is time to pack up and go home is when movement will pick up. This is when it gets frustrating. Squirrels can be heard all around but none of them are visible. It is tempting to pick up and move in order to get a better view of what I can hear but unless there has been a recent rain to silence the leaves, this is inadvisable. They will hear the crunching of leaves and will clear out by the time I get into position.

In the fall I sometimes like to walk around in the woods and look for shots of opportunity as the squirrels run from the sound of my approach. This only works when the trees are bare and you can see the squirrels on the trunks and branches. During the spring season I've found that the only consistently fruitful method is to find one good spot and keep still.

The necessary tactics are not unlike traditional turkey hunting. Sitting very still in a carefully chosen spot with a shotgun in hand and pretty much waiting for the food to come to you. Like turkey hunting, it is possible to call a squirrel in. I expect that a decoy would also be worth experimenting with.

Squirrels that live very close to humans exhibit different behavior compared to the truly wild ones. In a semi-suburban backyard you might be able to simply walk outside and pot them with a pellet gun. Set up an ambush by the bird feeder if you like. If the meat is there then you might as well eat it. If on the other hand you happen to be hunting in a truly rural situation then you will find that bagging squirrels in June is much more challenging than the fall season.

[Photo used courtesy of Aftab, licensed under Creative Commons]

Elk Reintroduction Debate on NPR

Jack Landers — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:14:00 +0000

This morning I had a commentary aired on public radio about elk reintroduction. Anyone interested can hear it through this link.

My commentary was in response to something I heard on the air a week previously. This was a commentary against elk reintroduction that really rubbed me the wrong way. While there are logical arguments to be made against elk reintroduction in Virginia, Andrea Brunais did not make them in her piece.

Specifically, there is a laundry list of facts that she got flat wrong.

1. The elk are or would become 'captive.' These are wild elk and nobody is proposing that they be domesticated. I have no idea why she would open her piece with such a false statement.

2. That Virginia is 'considering laying claim to the elk' that are currently in Virginia. Those animals are already unambiguously within the jurisdiction of our Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. We have already been regulating the hunting of those elk for most of the last decade.

3. That the plan is to start hunting them. The fact is that they are already being hunted. Hunting them is the status quo. The proposed plan is to stop hunting them in order to allow the population to grow to a self-sustaining level. If Ms. Brunais does not understand this fact then the entire issue went way over her head.

4. She stated that elk wandered over to Kentucky from the Rockies. That is false. Kentucky's elk were deliberately stocked by the state of Kentucky. That original stock was captured in the wild in Arizona.

5. That tax-payer dollars were used to pay for looking into this. DGIF is funded wholly by hunting, fishing and boating licenses. No tax money is involved. That is how wildlife protection and habitat restoration gets paid for in Virginia.

Those are just the things she said that were empirically wrong. I could spend all day railing against the stuff that was simply disingenuous, like pooh-poohing the idea that anyone would want to travel to Wise County to look at elk. Or pretending that anyone is claiming that this will solve our budget problems.

I don't have a problem with someone disagreeing with me on elk reintroduction or any other issue. And I am sure that Ms. Brunais is otherwise a very nice and intelligent person. But if you don't know anything about the history and practice of elk reintroduction in eastern states or how wildlife programs are funded in Virginia then kindly stop trying to lecture the rest of us about those issues.

Build Your Own Mauser Class: Photos Are Up

Jack Landers — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:24:00 +0000

The photos from the first Mauser class are up, thanks to John Athayde. Most of these photos were taken by me with his camera, although anything with me in it was taken by John.

Anyone paying very close attention will notice that there are a lot of photos of us re-working the original military barrels but then later we are rebarreling the rifles. This was because the original barrels did not shoot well at the range, prompting us to replace them. Barrel replacement is now a standard part of the class for every rifle built.

A majority of the work done on each rifle will be done by the student. You will go home with a deer rifle that you personally put together.

We still have one spot open for our next 2 day class on the weekend of June 26th. Other classes are being scheduled throughout the summer. Anyone interested can email me at jack.landers@gmail.com

Squirrel Meat: Chicken of The Tree

Jack Landers — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:05:00 +0000

The beauty of the fact that everything tastes like chicken is that you already know how to cook it. One would hope that this would encourage people to eat more readily outside of their usual repertoire. In practice, that stereotyped declaration, 'it tastes like chicken,' is never especially reassuring.

An omnivorous locavore will do well to overcome this natural resistance to the 'tastes like chicken' category of strange meat. You will probably find a lot of wild squirrels in your own immediate area and relatively few wild chickens. If you want to eat free-range, hormone-free and relatively cruelty-free meat then you ought to get comfortable with eating what is actually around you.

Most of the Eastern United States is thick with squirrels of various species. They do in fact taste like chicken, though I would describe the texture as similar to snake. Three or four smallish squirrels will yield a volume of meat similar to 1 grocery store chicken. The meat is simple to make use of once the squirrels have been skinned and gutted.

If you are going for easy then they can be butterflied, slathered in whatever spices are handy, pan-seared and finished in the oven. Or a few minutes with a paring knife are all it takes to strip the meat completely off of the bone. Then you've got yourself a dish of shredded squirrel meat that you can use in a straight substitution for chicken in recipes that you are already comfortable with. Soak it in a lime juice marinade for a few hours to tenderize it and use it in tacos or chimichangas. Or fry it briefly in olive oil with minced garlic and carmelized onion and build it into a pasta sauce.

I've been meaning for ages to try frying the whole, battered quarters like fried chicken but keep ending up doing something easier with my squirrels.

Squirrel meat is at least as flexible as chicken. It is easy to butcher and easy to cook. It is also probably available for free some place close to where you are sitting right now. All you need is a hunting weapon and a hunting license.

If you already have a .22 rifle or handgun then that will probably work just fine. In very flat terrain a .22 may not be ideal, because squirrels are often to be found up in the branches of trees and one doesn't want to risk having a bullet go flying off in space to come down some place potentially dangerous. I prefer to hunt squirrels with a scoped .22 rifle, favoring ground in this mountainous area (the foothills of the Blue Ridge) where hillsides will act as safe backstops.

A shotgun will also work quite well. I find that I like to carry a 20 or 12 gauge when I intend to walk around a lot. Moving around, I tend to surprise a lot of squirrels that will run off right away as they hear me approach. A shotgun is a tool designed to hit a moving target and they will by definition be moving in this situation.

I like the .22 better if I'm expecting to sit in one place for a long while, listening and watching. In that situation the squirrels that I see will either be unaware that I am present or will have become comfortable with my presence. There should be opportunities for shots on stationary prey and the .22 will allow me to reach out to about 80 yards or so, which is farther than I would shoot with any shotgun.

Both a .22 and a 12 gauge shotgun are generalist tools that any locavore hunter should have at his or her disposal anyway. A .22 is essential for target practice and can also be used for rabbits, groundhogs, and the like. A 12 gauge is good for geese, ducks, doves, turkeys and pheasant. With solid slugs it can do double duty for deer or wild pigs if strange local regulations prohibit the use of a rifle.

The hunting will usually be a little harder than one would expect. Our ideas about squirrel behavior are typically based on the behavior of urban and suburban squirrels, which get comfortable with close proximity to humans and live their whole lives in the relative absence of predation. Rural, non-backyard squirrels are more wary and will be harder to get within range of.

Once it knows that something is there, squirrels have a maddening tendency to stick to the opposite side of a tree trunk from the position of the observer. Hunting with someone else can provide a simple counter-measure. Have your friend circle around to the other side of the tree and make some noise while you hang back a little ways and shoot the squirrel when it moves to your side. Do be careful not to shoot your hunting companion.

Processing the deceased into something edible is not complicated. Start by chopping off all four feet and then make a single incision through the hide across the backs of the legs, passing just underneath the tail. Starting at this opening you will find that you can peel the hide back like a banana peel from the back legs and then keep going until the whole thing is off. You can either cut the head off before beginning or pull really hard right at the end and it will come off with the hide. I advise gutting it after the hide has come off, rather than the other way around. Gutting is fairly self-explanatory and you will find that it is little different from gutting a fish.

With these things done, you will find yourself holding something not unlike a long, skinny chicken. Cook the squirrel with the chicken comparison in mind and you will be most satisfied with the results.

Yesterday afternoon I took my friend, Fergus Clare, on his first squirrel hunt. After a ridiculously involved ambush, a stalk to within range, and joint gunnery tactics, we succeeded in taking a single fox squirrel. The following is Fergus' excellent recipe for fox squirrel that he came up with on the fly.

Fergus Clare's Zombie Squirrel recipe
(serves one with one small squirrel).
All ingredients are organic unless noted otherwise.

Ingredients:
Six Cloves of Garlic
Half a stick of butter (unsalted)
One teaspoon of Salt (to taste)
One teaspoon of Pepper (to taste)
10 to 14 leaves of fresh Sage
One quarter Red Onion (diced)

Recipe:
-Clean squirrel thoroughly and cut into two halves lengthwise, removing the spinal cord.
-Turn on cooktop to med/high, add quarter cup of butter and quarter of diced red onions (for mirepois) to cast iron skillet & begin to brown butter (stir occasionally).
-Take three cloves of garlic and grind through planer.
-Rub half teaspoon of salt & pepper & 8-9 leaves of diced sage leaf onto squirrel halves
-Rub garlic all over squirrel halves (and spine if you want to eat backstraps)
-When butter has browned, place seasoned squirrel halves into skillet and sear both sides.
-Turn heat down to medium/low and let sit for 3-5 minutes or until done (turning occasionally: add dash of high heat safflower oil to prevent burning).
-Add remaining three cloves of diced garlic and diced sage.
-Take squirrel off of heat, plate and add salt/pepper to taste.

Alternates:
-Use white wine after searing and add small amount of chicken broth with sliced carrots and reduce to increase moisture of finished squirrel.
-Consider seasoning squirrel meat overnight in brine to soften.

[Photo used courtesy of John-Morgan under Creative Commons license.]

Fighting the Zombie Menace, 3 Years Later

Jack Landers — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:38:00 +0000

I would like to point out that 3 years since I wrote the initial blog entry, I continue to see new comments added to my discussion of what the best off-the-shelf zombie rifle would be.

Probably my opinions of the SKS have changed since I wrote that article (I kind of hate mine a little bit, following a few years of trunk gun duty), but the fact that people keep feeling the need to weigh in on this important issue warms my heart. My pledge to the good people of this planet is that at some time in the next month I will revisit this topic and provide yet another dead serious analysis of the zombie rifle issue with a dispassionate consideration of what off-the-shelf technology would best be suited to fighting your way to safety though the zombie hordes, according to the doctrine of World War Z.

I really and truly appreciate the seriousness with which readers have been willing to take this absurd premise. It is not clear to me what it was about this article that captured readers' imaginations as opposed to, say, my piece on preferred sasquatch guns. But whatever it was, thank you all so much for having this much fun with it.

Incidentally, if you are even slightly concerned about a possible zombie menace, I highly recommend World War Z as the book to read. No, I'm not getting a kick-back from Amazon to recommend it. The book is just that awesome.

Who Can Help Me Contact the NSSF?

Jack Landers — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:43:00 +0000

For the past month or so I have been trying to get in touch with a human being at the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Their web site has been useless and nobody has responded to the emails I have sent to the email address supplied there. I have been hoping to enlist their help in identifying a qualified person to speak to a group of budding deer hunters in New York City about how to navigate the process of legally acquiring a hunting rifle in that city and how to go about finding a place to practice shooting.

Is there any kind reader of this blog who can put me in touch with someone at the NSSF? My overall mission of teaching a whole new demographic of people how to hunt should be very much in line with their goals.

Range Report on the Mauser Project

Jack Landers — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:36:00 +0000

Sent to me from Paul Fritz just a few minutes ago:

"I took the Mauser out to the range today. It took two, two shots to zero at 100 yards. Very nice.

"After my zero, I shot for groups and to break in the barrel. My position wasn't comfortable for some reason (I suspect the seat was the wrong height), which resulted in some errors in my shooting that expanded the groups to 1.5 MOA. The weird part was that after cleaning the barrel, the first three bullets would cluster around 1.5 MOA, then the last two would kiss each other in the middle of the cluster. I did this three times.

"After shooting four groups of 5 (one at 50 yards & three at 100 yards) and cleaning between groups, I stopped cleaning to see what it would do. The next five were tighter at less than 1MOA. Not bad.

"Since I had only ten rounds left, I walked down to the 300 yard range to see if I could hit the 4 inch gong at 300 yard. Since I was zeroed at 1.5 inches high at 100 yards, I held about 1 mil high and the first (and only) shot impacted dead center sending the gong flying off of its chain. Which meant I was done.

"I'm very pleased considering that this rifle is not fully floated and has not been bedded yet. I am shooting sub MOA out to 300 yards with a rifle that has had only 25 bullets through it. Very happy.

"Oh, the chamber is tight. I'm glad we sized it for the 8mm brass as the factory brass resisted slightly on insertion. The fired brass looked like it had no stretch at all. Superb. I also had several people comment on the rifle. It looks great and shoots great."

We are looking at a sub-MOA rifle here. With just a little more work, I have little doubt that Paul will be getting even better groups out of it. These are the exact same parts and methods that we will be using in the upcoming 'build your own deer rifle' classes.

For those reading this whose eyes glaze over at any detailed discussion of rifles, bear in mind that some amount of this is necessary in order to hunt for food. I'm getting a little geekier than most people really need to, but an understanding of and interest in the tools required to harvest wild meat is a good idea if you want to consistently put dinner on the table. Accuracy counts.

‘Build Your Own Mauser’ Class – Beta Testing is Complete

Jack Landers — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:32:00 +0000

The memorial day weekend* Mauser challenge was a success. What you see here is a photo of one of the two hunting rifles that we built from stripped K-98 receivers. More and better pictures of the process, rifles and accuracy tests will be up as soon as they have been uploaded and sorted through.

We started with a pair of military K-98s with worn-out barrels and stripped them down to the bare receivers, which were thoroughly cleaned and worked over with a wire brush. Those receivers and their soon-to-be reforged bolts were the only original parts included in the final product.

When I say 'we,' I don't just mean myself and Paul Fritz. Our guinea pig student, John Athayde, participated in every step along the way. John had experience with basic tools and knew the fundamentals of riflery but had never done this type of gunsmithing before. He proved that an intelligent person with the right instruction and tools can quickly build their own custom hunting and target rifle.

The bolt of each rifle was placed into a heat sink and blasted with an acetylene torch until it was hot enough to re-shape into a new contour that would clear a scope. Paul and John took turns at holding the torch and shaping the bolt.

Because of the extreme throat erosion discovered in one of the rifles, we made the decision to re-barrel not only these rifles but all Mausers used in the class going forward. The rifle with the eroded throat would not produce groups of shots less than 2 feet wide at 100 yards. We simply cannot take the risk of finding that a surplus barrel will not hold a group and end up sending students home with useless rifles.

After careful consideration we decided to re-barrel both guns for the 7mm Mauser cartridge. This cartridge was chosen for several reasons:

1. 7mm cartridges in general tend to shoot quite flat and are easy to be accurate with.

2. The 7mm Mauser cartridge was one of the first cartridges that this action was designed to handle and as such the rest of the rifle requires zero alteration for perfect function.

3. Among the various 7mm cartridges, the 7mm Mauser has far less recoil than the 7mm Remington Magnum and a wider array of possible bullet weights than the 7mm-08. While the 7mm-08 is easier to find ammo for in stores, Paul is teaching the basics of hand-loading to every student. This way, the greater flexibility of the 7mm Mauser can be realized in practical terms. The 7mm-08 cartridge has such a short neck that one is limited to 140 grain bullets, making it ideal for whitetails but marginal for anything larger. Whereas the hand-loader can easily load up to 188 grain bullets in the 7mm Mauser and credibly use it to hunt elk-sized prey.

4. The 7mm Mauser has a fascinating history that I won't get into just now, but suffice to say that the sort of person who favors a 7mm Mauser will find approving nods from the right sort of people. Its like driving a car powered by a straight six engine or listening to Dave Brubeck albums on vinyl.

But back to the rifle. The replacement barrels have slightly different thread patterns than the originals did, so the threads on the receiver were re-cut on Paul's vintage 1898 metal lathe (built the same year that the K-98 Mauser was designed). We used short-chambered Adams and Bennett barrels and clamped them into wooden blocks in a 6 ton shop press. Paul demonstrated proper technique with a chamber reamer which shaved away precisely the right amount of metal to produce a chamber shaped like the 7mm Mauser cartridge. John reamed the chamber in his own rifle, checking it every few turns with a head space gauge to make sure he hadn't removed too much metal.

Holes were drilled and tapped for screws in the tops of the receivers so that scopes could be mounted. One receiver had a face that wasn't quite squared enough to meet the sporter barrel properly, so that one was chucked up on the lathe and re-faced.

At this point, the metal work was complete and it was time to protect the raw steel from the elements. As much as we all appreciate the look of blued steel, it is not practical to cram a decent bluing job into a course that has to be finished in two days. Nor does bluing hold up well to the elements in wet weather. For these reasons we opted to finished the metal with black, high-temperature paint and rub it with oil after curing. The paint is dry enough to handle within about 20 minutes and will have fully cured by the following morning. Trust me, it really does look good. The photos demonstrate that. I would say that it looks about the same as the finish on a brand new Remington Model 700 BDL (which I have bought one a few years ago and feel qualified to say this). If chipped or damaged, a spray can of this paint costs about $3 at any hardware store and it is very easy to touch up on your own.

The composite stocks, chosen for the relative speed of fitting them as opposed to working with wood, were inletted using a Dremel Moto-tool and various hand tools. Adjustable, sporting triggers with built-in safeties were installed on the receivers. The rifles were fully assembled, scopes, bases and rings were centered, leveled and installed. After cleaning out any remaining metal shavings from the chamber and barrel, they were ready to shoot.

Now that we've done the tests to prove to ourselves that we can take someone through this process in a single weekend, we are ready to begin offering the course on a limited basis. While we would like to work our way up to groups of 4 students, we are going to start with classes of only 2 at a time in order to have as much one-on-one supervision and instruction as possible. The class will cost $1,000 per student. This price includes all parts, tools, instruction, trip to a shooting range, a set of gunsmithing screwdrivers and a gun vise to keep, etc. You will go home with a cased rifle that you built and in which you will have pride of workmanship for the rest of your life. You will probably be able to take down a Mauser action in your sleep at that point; you will have the tools and knowledge to install and zero scopes and you will be capable of inletting stocks and doing some basic metal work.

Included in that figure is the estimated price of purchasing a donor rifle to begin with (we are not firearms dealers and therefore we can only direct you to a suggested source for a Mauser action and we cannot sell it to you per se).

If you already have a 98 action to use, we are happy to work with that assuming that it is in safe condition and is a K-98 variant which is compatible with the parts and tools that are a part of this program. While we are going to be re-barreling for 7mm Mauser at this price, other cartridge options may be available on request for an additional fee.

Because class sizes are limited to 2 students each, we will not be announcing a list of dates with rosters to fill. Rather, we encourage interested parties to contact us and we will work with you to set dates that are convenient for all concerned. I can be emailed at jack.landers@gmail.com.

*Note that while the bulk of the work was completed during memorial day weekend, the rebarreling was done in a few hours on the following Sunday since we hadn't determined going into it that new barrels would be required. I have streamlined my description of the process for the purpose of illustrating the order in which the work will be done during future classes.

[Photo used courtesy of Paul Fritz]

Memorial Day Weekend Mauser Challenge

Jack Landers — Thu, 27 May 2010 15:55:00 +0000

On Saturday morning, blacksmith Paul Fritz and myself are starting the dry run for our new Mauser class with John Athayde as our guinea pig. Can we teach someone with no previous gunsmithing experience how to build a custom Mauser deer rifle in only two days, and then scale it up for a class of 4 students? The clock starts ticking at 9 am with a stripped action, boxes of parts and Paul's welding rig ready to go. The rifle needs to be not only working but also shooting accurately at 150 yards by Sunday evening.

I think it is fitting that we are doing this on Memorial Day weekend, since the practice of building American deer rifles out of old Mauser military actions dates back to the end of WWI, when returning American GIs brought home German Mausers they had picked up off the battlefield and stuffed into their dufflebags. Bolt action rifles were new-ish technology at the time and few hunters could afford to buy one. But if they had a battlefield pick-up, a little work and ingenuity could turn that prize into a hunting rifle.

Over time, many people came to prefer the Mauser action over commercial bolt actions. Especially in the late 20th century as more parts of new rifles were stamped out of sheet metal or molded from plastic. The smooth, strong function of the traditional Mauser dating back to 1898 is unrivaled among all but the most expensive of modern rifles. You can now buy a perfectly good, new deer rifle for less than what it costs to convert a Mauser, but will it be as smooth and satisfying as working the bolt on a vintage European Mauser? I really don't think so.

It is in that spirit that we commence this dry run. If all goes well this weekend then we will be offering the course on a limited basis to 4 students per class and everyone will go home with a custom Mauser that they have the pride of having built.

Book Announcement

Jack Landers — Tue, 25 May 2010 02:25:00 +0000

Now that the contract is actually signed and done, I think that I am probably safe to announce the fact that I have signed as an author with Storey Publishing. They will be bringing my first book, 'A Locavore's Guide to Deer Hunting' to print in the near future. Its not clear yet as to exactly when the book will be launched, but I have high hopes of getting onto the fall schedule.

Actually, it might not even go to print with that title. They have the right to rename it anything they want, which is fine with me.

As we approach the launch date, I will be scheduling a series of workshops and butchering demonstrations in various cities. These will be more or less along the lines of the workshops I have recently done in support of Slow Food NYC. If anyone reading this is part of an organization with goals aligned somehow with what I'm doing, please feel free to get in touch with me about visiting your area as I approach the launch of the book. Slow Food convivia, locavore groups, etc. Shoot me an email at Jack dot Landers at gmail dot com.

Meanwhile, I've got all sorts of other cool stuff in the works that I can't wait to formally announce. This includes TV projects, new courses on advanced topics like rifle-building and hide-tanning, and a 150 acre property in the Blue Ridge Mountains where my co-instructors and I will be offering various fun weekends involving primitive skills, a 150 yard shooting range that we are hacking out of a mountain side, waterfalls, and a unique retreat that sleeps 10.

Fun stuff is in the works.