Rog's Rod & Nimrod

Around my home Wagner area, I did not hear any glowing reports about the pheasant opener on October 20th. I actually heard some miserable reports. Other than not seeing a good number of birds, two factors, or should I say three, contributed to our group not getting our usual 2-3 birds per hunter.

First, none of the crops were out (harvested), and we had every reason to believe that many of the birds were in the corn. Second, many of our favorite places to hunt were under water. The birds we did flush on higher ground were not hesitant to fly into these flooded fields. I would like to have had an air boat. A third and lesser factor were the high winds on the opener.

As the land we hunted was adjacent to the flooded Choteau Creek, perhaps we encountered more water problems than typical hunters. We did see lots of ducks. Our group of twelve hunters bagged 18 birds on the opener and 8 on the second day. Thoughts of hunting in December when the crops are out and the water hopefully frozen did much for our spirits.

I was very disappointed in my own shooting. I have a hard time accepting the fact that as I grow older, I do not do many things as well as I once did. With my neuropathy, I have trouble maintaining balance on my feet, but I was very fortunate. While blocking a food plot with another senior hunter who had two fine dogs, I doubled on a pair of roosters, but both went down very much alive. Those dogs were on both right now, and what might have been a disaster had a happy ending.

As the pheasant season progresses, I’ll keep you informed as the waters subside and the crops get harvested. I might even learn that pheasant numbers are indeed up.

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As you know, there’s a wee bit of gun writer in me. I marvel today at the growth of the firearms business. The number of firearms manufacturers has at least doubled in recent times, and many of their factories are going twenty-four/seven. We all know about Benelli, Beretta, Browning, Mossberg, Remington, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson, but names like American Tactical, Bushmaster, Christensen Arms, Ed Brown, Hi-Point, Rock River Arms, SAR, SCCY, and Standard Manufacturing are new to me, and I’m a gun guy! What’s going on?

Some of this has to do with the ”black gun” rage, most of these being the tactical semi-automatics the liberal left likes to call “assault rifles.” I’m not a “black gun” fan, but I’ll fight to protect our right to own them. I like old-fashioned walnut stocks and real bluing on my pistols, rifles, and shotguns.

Another part of this gun manufacturer boom has to do with handguns and self-protection. While I believe that most everyone who wants a handgun for home or self-protection already owns one, the boom continues.

To get to my main point of this discussion, I think that those who already have enough guns just keep on buying new ones. The gun and ammo manufacturers keep inventing new calibers, and advertising convinces us that we actually need these new calibers. With the .223 and .22-250 readily available, we need the .224 Valkyrie like Wagner needs another “dollar store.”

The 6.5 Creedmoor is another caliber that every guns and ammo magazine publisher has tried to force-feed us. In recent years, I have dropped on the spot four elk, a moose, six red stag, a gemsbok, and a blue wildebeest with the old reliable .308 Winchester or the .30-06 Springfield. I need a 6.5 Creedmoor like I need ten more pounds hanging over my belt.

When I became a South Dakotan, I was shocked when I first heard a popular expression about something being as useless as mammary glands on a boar pig. I guarantee you won’t hear that in Chicago. Anyway, Ruger’s new creation, their popular Single-Six in .17 HMR caliber, fits that boar expression. The .17 HMR is a popular rim-fire rifle caliber for varmint hunting. The .17 HMR coming out of a handgun with a 6.5” barrel is as useless as our boar friend’s added accessories.

See you next week.