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When you choose a firearm, you choose it for a reason. Yes, I have some firearms that are in the safe because they followed me home. But there are many more that were picked for a reason.

We pick our firearms for looks, for the feel in the hand, the cool factor, the weight, and a multitude of different options.

We also pick for practical reasons. As an example, I have critters that get into the chicken house and into the feed and are sometimes on the porch. There are bears that roam the area. These are all targets at different times.

There is a display rack in the living room. It holds four lever action rifles. The blue haired fairie has them named, “bear”, “deer”, “raccoon”, and “squirrel”. In order, 45-70, 30-30 Winchester, .357 Magnum, .22 LR. Each has a different purpose, coming from different requirements.

Anybody who is anybody will tell you that those rifles really don’t have the ability to go the distance. They are all 100 yards, or less, rifles. The real truth is that I can ring steel at 100 yards with any of them. But getting a line of sight of 100 yards around here is difficult.

In the safe is a Remington 700 in 7.62×51. I’ve taken deer with it at around 600 yards. That rifle has great optics on it, and it was designed for taking shoots at that distance, or greater.
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My family use to watch Bing Crosby Christmas Specials every Christmas.

Hagar happened to mention that she truly enjoyed the David Bowie and Bing Crosby version of this song.

I will also note that she pointed out that if some kid showed up and started playing a drum around my baby, just as I got him to sleep, it would not be a joyful event.

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How to open a can of worms… There are people who have the recipe they swear by. Yet, they will admit that there are other recipes that function nearly as well as theirs does. Bullets, on the other hand, have much stronger feelings.

We’ll start by breaking bullets down into two categories, bullets that transfer as much energy as possible to the target, and those that don’t.

I just finished some reloading. Many of the rounds I loaded were 55gr .224, Full Metal Jacket Boat Tail. Some were 55gr Soft Point Boat Tail.

The difference being that one had a pointy noise covered in copper. The other had the very tip, exposing the lead of the core.

Given that the size of that tip was maybe 0.080 in diameter, I did not expect to see any difference. I was wrong.

Using the super scientific test media known as “pumpkin”, I placed two small pumpkins down range and put 10 rounds into it. All hit. Nice grouping. There was significant damage to the pumpkin. It was still obviously a pumpkin.

I changed magazines, made sure the soft points were going where I wanted (rang steel). Then I went to put the last 10 rounds into the other pumpkin. I was only able to put one round into the second pumpkin.

That “soft point” round caused the pumpkin to fly to pieces. I ended up with pumpkin pieces as much as 4 yards from the point of impact.

This has shown me just how much difference there can be.

History

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