There are five rifles on the wall. Four lever action and “Mrs. Pink”, an AR-15 platform with pink furniture. Don’t ask.
They are known as “Bear”, “Deer”, “Raccoon”, “Squirrel”, and “Mrs. Pink.”
Bear is a Henry Big Boy in 45-70. Deer is a Winchester model 94 in 30-30. Squirrel is a Henry Golden Boy in .22LR.
We do have bear around here, and I know that Bear has enough stopping power, with rapid follow-ups.
Deer has taken a couple of deer. She does a fine job with iron sights for me out to around 150 yards.
Squirrel isn’t used for squirrel hunting, but damn he’s fun to shoot.
That leave’s Raccoon. Raccoon is a Rossi R-95 in .357 Magnum. She eats .38 special just fine. She is a little loose where the stock attaches to the receiver, but she will put rounds on target out to 100 yards with no problem.
The lever action in .357 is a nice, mid-weight, rifle. I’ve used it for taken fat raccoon and opossums. One shot and they are down.
She is easy to reload for, and it is easy to police up all the brass. I cast hollow point bullets for her and have some commercial bullets for her as well.
All in all, she is a great rifle.
There is a matching wheel gun in .357 magnum. I don’t have enough time with that revolver. It is more than capable of putting rounds on target, I’m not. It doesn’t shoot like my Sig nor my 1911s.
Would I recommend an R-95 for a first-time gun buyer? No.
They don’t have a great reputation. The loading gate is nasty sharp, it needs a little care to get it to function easily. I found that finding ammo for it was a bit of a pain. With reloading, it is a joy.
Mrs. Pink as a red dot on her. She belongs to my wife. We run the manual of arms every so often, but I figure she has 30 rounds before she needs an assist to load the next magazine. But I know that those 30 rounds are going exactly where she wants them to go.
The iron sights on the four lever guns work fine for me today. I have another 30-30 that has a scope mounted on it. I need to spend a few dollars to replace the scope with something modern and then sight everything in.
All in all, those rifles make up the “go to” when needed now.
The other part of this are the LBV that are available for use. Each vest has 6 30 round mags of 5.56, at least 2 spare mags for the pistol that goes with the LBV, and a first aid kit.
Past Plans
When I was considering buying my first firearms, I was looking at “what happens if…” My thought process was based on the concept of availability of ammo after the fall.
That lead me to an AR-15 in 5.56, an AK type rifle in 7.62×39, a 9mm Glock, a bolt action in 7.62×51, a black powder revolver, and a black powder rifle.
The firearm I have the most fun with, to this day, are the AR’s. They are gentle on the shoulder, the ammo isn’t too expensive, they are easy to carry and are just plain fun.
Though I will note that they eat ammo rapidly. It isn’t an unusual range day when I won’t send 300+ rounds down range.
I still have .308 from the original ammo buy. I’ve augmented it with reloads, but I don’t feed much through that rifle.
Of course, once I started buying firearms, it hasn’t really stopped.
Regardless, as more than one person has said, when the SHTF, the best firearm is the one you have.
Comments
3 responses to “On the wall…”
Let me preface this by saying I am not a “doomsday prepper”. I prep for Tuesday. The odds of any of the true doomsday scenarios are astronomically low, and I find it implausible that the surviving humans would be thrown permanently back to hunter/gatherer or primitive subsistence farming lifestyles. Enough books along with technology would survive to enable rapid advancement. Maybe not in the first year, but certainly in the first decade.
Having said all that, it’s a fun and interesting intellectual exercise to explore the implications. So that’s where this is coming from.
If you truly believe that technological society is going to permanent be gone, you want a smoothbore flintlock in your doomsday arsenal.
My reasoning is this: eventually you’ll run out of modern ammunition, as will everyone else, even if you reload. The key to that is primers. You can reload primers with the tips of strike anywhere matches, but those will eventually run out also.
However, there will always be material you can use to make flints. Ceramic dinnerware, porcelain toilets and sinks, power line insulators, and yes, natural flint and chert.
Bullets can of course be cast from scrap lead that you can scavenge.
Making black powder is tougher: saltpeter you can make, same with charcoal, but sulfur is tougher for people in most areas. Luckily you can buy bags of the stuff at your local garden store. And it has other uses.
Why a flintlock? After all frizzens do eventually wear, though you can case harden the face to restore the ability to spark (tough to do in primitive conditions but possible). But let’s say for sake of argument the lock completely breaks. You can still easily convert the gun into a matchlock or even fire it like a hand gonne.
Why a smoothbore instead of a rifle? You can use it with a single round ball or buckshot (or both!) for hunting large game and for social purposes. You can use shot for small game. You can make shot like Joseph Plumb Martin did during his service in the Revolutionary War. You flatten a musket ball with the poll of a hatchet (or a hammer), then cut that flat lead sheet into thin strips with the sharp edge of your hatchet or tomahawk, then cut the strips into small cubes. It’s effective against squirrels and rabbits out to 15 or 20 yards. My father actually hunted squirrels that way in the course of researching an article he was writing about Joseph Plumb Martin. It worked well.
In the end, the most valuable part on a gun is the barrel, and even if all the other bits break, you can hack out a primitive stock from wood and keep using that smoothbore barrel.
Good points on flintlocks. Then again, making your own primers is definitely possible, including the charge inside. I ran into a reference (online) about making primer charges. You do need some chemical skills, though not a whole lot more than what it takes to make powder for some of the options. I once made mercury fulminate way back in college following the procedure listed in a German textbook I had read (Die Explosivstoffe by H. Brunswig, you can find it online). Not an optimal choice but easy and it would do the job.
On “technology would return quickly”, maybe so, but I wonder about that. A month or two ago on a list I follow someone posed the question “what is your book list for the books to save if civilization were to collapse?” I tried to make a list of 3, a list of a dozen, and the outline of a list of 100. Even with 100 it’s not so easy.
Suppose you have to start over with basic hand tools and a stock of metal. Can you make things? It would help to have a lathe. Can you make a lathe? A basic one (wood turning style) is not too hard. What about a screw cutting lathe? Maudsley figured out how to make a lead screw without a screw cutting lathe. How? Chase it? I suppose that must be the answer, but I haven’t seen the procedure documented.
And this is just one example. You’ll probably want nitric acid. Can you make that?
Do you want to communicate? Can you find Morse code, or semaphore code? Do you want a radio, and how would you make the parts? Even a first generation radio (spark transmitter, crystal receiver) takes electric power and headphones and other stuff you would have to learn to make.
If you decide that Squirrel needs a running buddy, consider a modern air rifle that shoots at least .22 cal pellets but you can get them in a wide variety of calibers and actions.
In normal times, they are as fun as plinking with a 22LR with the advantages of being hearing safe, cheaper to shoot, and, depending on the model, allows the use of a variety of optics, sound moderators, bipods, and other accessories.
From single-shot to semi-auto with magazines with 10+ pellets, pump-action to carbon fiber cylinders, the available choices are more than enough to make for a really deep rabbit hole.