Brown Recluse in Barn

[YellowHammer]

Good decision, you got to hit, and hit multiple targets, otherwise the "second bear" will get you.  It's what I tell my kids, and work on myself.

Recently, my brother had brought a relatively popular gun that deserved and got my derision and ridicule when he pulled it out.  This pistol AR looked cool, but jammed every second or third shot, had a pinned muzzle brake that wouldn't come off for a suppressor, and had a dead battery on the red dot when he pulled it out of the case (no battery saver or Shake Awake feature).  Instantly proven to fail the "reliability" criteria required as a self defense weapon, but OK if used as a short club.  To make matters worse, the repeated firings and thunderous overpressure concussions actually made may eyes hurt, standing behind him with Walkers on (to see how bad the concussion was). I told him of he were to shoot that, in a small room, he would be on the ground, blind and deaf, in the fetal position, blood oozing out of his ears after the first shot, so might as well throw out the 30 round mags he'd be unconscious well before then .   Here is a picture of the muzzle flash.  That one is now SOLD.  I think I still have flash burns on my retinas! 

[barbender]

Springfield Saint 308 pistol?


I have a PSA 300 BLK pistol, that's a nice shooting little gun and not loud. 

Also a full size PSA AR10 308. Fairly light for an AR10 (they are a copy of the DPMS gen 2 I think) and it shoots nice. I haven't shot either of them more than to sight the red dots in on pieces of firewood at 50 paces, so I don't know how accurate they actually are. 

That S&W 500...well you're not going to get a lot of practice in with that thing😁 Actually, if I had one I would get some light load recipes for it to be able to put enough rounds through it to get familiar with the gun to be proficient with it. I used to shoot light loads in the 45 in the competitions, Hodgon Clays powder and 185 grain wadcutters. 240 grain factory rounds definitely byck more and are harder to keep on target. 

 Certainly, you need to shoot enough full power loads to be proficient with those, too. I'm certain you wouldn't notice the recoil of even the S&W 500 if a Grizzly was charging you, though😬

Bear medicine is the only reason I can see having one of those. I'm really not into shooting high recoil firearms just for the heck of it. Welln, not most of the time😊

[customsawyer]

Yup, I've had one of those high recoil guns that would kick the shortening out of a biscuit. It's one of the few guns I have ever sent down the road. I'm great at buying guns, but suck at selling them.
Robert, I had a neighbor bring one of those short, loud, ARs over one day. I completely agree, there is no pleasure in shooting it.

[aigheadish]

would kick the shortening out of a biscuit

Thanks, from a northerner, for a beautiful phrase, never heard that one and I love it. 

[doc henderson]

I have a python and a judge.  They are heavy enough they are fun to shoot.  I guess you could conceal carry.  Might make you look like a heck of a man. 

[doc henderson]

Well, Bless your little heart Aig!  

[Old Greenhorn]

I don't enjoy shooting those lighter but heavy loaded guns, it's just not fun. I had a couple of buddies I would shoot with a lot in my 20's and we were at a sandpit at one point. My buddy liked hot loads, really HOT loads. He handed me his model 29 S&W collectors grade to try out on some bowling pins we were messing with. Well the twist on that thing would almost unscrew my wrist. Every time I fired it, it felt like getting hit in the face with a shovel. I even got a twingling in my chest. I shot one cylinder full and that was enough. One of the guys says to me "what's that stuff on your chest?" I looked down and my shirt was covered in copper jackets (hence the twingling). It seems the bullet would enter the pin, which would spin and the jacket would come out the other side about when the pin had spun 180°. That was not enjoyable.

 Speaking of S&W, I was working for a company looking to buy a couple of CMM's (Coordinate Measuring Machines) and it turned out that S&W had several of the models we were looking at so the salesman arranged a trip for us to go see them working and talk to the users. Talk about being a kid in a candy store!
 S&W is pretty tight on security. You have to empty all your pockets into a box that goes in a locked cubby, brief cases are not allowed either, nothing beyond a folder with papers in it at all, and you have to go through a metal detector. You had to be an American citizen and they ran quick drivers license checks. You are escorted 100% of the time and cannot touch ANYTHING. It is  HUGE plant, actually two, connected by an underground tunnel. LOTS of walking (or driving) to get around. We walked and walked and walked.
 Wow they had some neat stuff! I noticed as parts went through the manufacturing process at some point they became "controlled parts" meaning they were tracked and locked up when not being worked on. Also when they did begin working on them the work groups were in locked and fenced in areas. They had to get a supervisor to let them in and out. Every part was counted and inventoried going in and out of these areas, of which there were many. It seems they separated each assembly/fitting step into different groups. The further the process went along, the tighter the controls and security. They would not allow us anywhere near the final assembly areas.
 So we are walking down the aisle and I see a tray of revolver cylinders but they are HUGE and I stopped dead in my tracks. I asked our escort what these were for? I had assumed they were maybe making a bunch of oversize mockups or something. "OH" he says, "That's for our new 500 Magnum. You'll see it on the market shortly, we are just working through tooling and production methods." I was shooting a .357 K frame at the time and there was no way I'd wanna try to tuck something like that in a pancake holster.

 S&W was a fun tour and one most people will never see. They have a public range on the other side of the complex (takes about 10 minutes to drive around to it) where you can rent and try out most of their models as well as spend a lot of money for private lessons or on merch.

[TreefarmerNN]

Good decision, you got to hit, and hit multiple targets, otherwise the "second bear" will get you.  It's what I tell my kids, and work on myself.

Recently, my brother had brought a relatively popular gun that deserved and got my derision and ridicule when he pulled it out.  This pistol AR looked cool, but jammed every second or third shot, had a pinned muzzle brake that wouldn't come off for a suppressor, and had a dead battery on the red dot when he pulled it out of the case (no battery saver or Shake Awake feature).  Instantly proven to fail the "reliability" criteria required as a self defense weapon, but OK if used as a short club.  To make matters worse, the repeated firings and thunderous overpressure concussions actually made may eyes hurt, standing behind him with Walkers on (to see how bad the concussion was). I told him of he were to shoot that, in a small room, he would be on the ground, blind and deaf, in the fetal position, blood oozing out of his ears after the first shot, so might as well throw out the 30 round mags he'd be unconscious well before then .   Here is a picture of the muzzle flash.  That one is now SOLD.  I think I still have flash burns on my retinas! 

I have a .222 barrel for a Contender.  Not a bad bark or recoil but depending on the load there is some muzzle flash.  I wouldn't want to shoot it indoors though and of course, being a single shot means it's not really a good defensive option.

[barbender]

We shot some of those IDPA matches at a really nice indoor range that we used to have access to. We had a carbine side match after one. You have to remember, back then AR's weren't nearly as commonly owned as they are now. So when we had those matches, guys would bring a real menagerie of firearms. A few AR's, one guy had a lever action 44 mag that was cool (he was good with it too, and fast until he had to reload), a mec-tec carbine that used a pistol frame...all kinds of goodies. 

Well, any rifle round indoors is kinda brutal. Even a 223 has a good concussive affect indoors. But the guy that took the cake, showed up with an original Mosin-Nagant carbine. 7.62x54r. When that guy shot, everyone was bracing themselves😂 Ka-BOOM!! It had a flame at least 4' long and about the same diameter come out the barrel (I think it's safe to say that long action rifle caliber didn't burn all the powder in a carbine barrel)😂😂

 I've never experienced that kind of concussion except when we were shooting some Tannerite. A 223 makes tannerite go boom, but a 308 makes it go thum-POW! A few neighbors called during that episode😂😂 

[SawyerTed]

NEVER shoot a bull raccoon inside a tobacco barn with a REM 270!   Muzzle flash, concussion and ringing ears are the result.  

Didn't have a choice, it was him or me! He made me pay the price for winning...

[YellowHammer]

Those man eating raccoons are trouble!  They will charge with their head down, tail up, much like a Cape Buffalo!

We get a lot of rabid coons here, as well as one with distemper.  At first, the county would come out and test them when I shot them because they were acting "off", now they don't bother, they say if I see one that is acting rabid, shoot it.  I had one real bad experience when the dogs were barking like crazy, in the middle of the day, and a coon was climbing the fence to get at the dogs.

That's when you find out which gun you trust, because that's the one you come out with to kill a rabid coon about to bite your dogs. 

[Nebraska]

I have not seen a case of rabies in a Raccoon yet. Up here it's skunks and bats. If a raccoon is out acting odd during the daytime it's probably a distemper. I have dispatched a few. 

[hardtailjohn]

I definitely remember .22 shorts!!  That's about all I had to shoot until I was 12-13 years old! A single shot Winchester model 1902 bolt action was my gun. I still have it, even though it had it's stock broken by a grizzly bear when he raided our cache one year in camp. It'd handle shorts, long, and long rifle.
Like I said, I LOVE guns but I never got anything that wasn't a single shot until I was in about 8th grade. I've still got my .22, .410, .28, all the way up to the trapdoor Springfield carbine .45-70, and a handful of  others, along with a bunch of fun stuff that'll rattle off a few rounds faster and easier.  Weirdest ones are the Steyr M95 straight pull bolts. One of my best friends is an armorer for the movie industry, so he brings back a lot of "interesting" stuff to play with.
My wife's a natural good shot. She took a pistol course at a local range and got the first shot right in the middle...then pulled the second one and they thought she missed the whole target...nope, stacked it, and stacked another one on top of that. So if it's a tough shot, I don't have a problem letting her have a go at it, and she LOVES it too.  We do shoot a lot of gophers (ground squirrels)  here in the summer. It's a pretty easy bet to go through a couple thousand rounds of .17HMR in the summer. 
It's been a blast reading all the stories... I'm so glad to hear everyone else's experiences!

[Machinebuilder]

Now that Smith and Wesson has moved their headquarters to Maryville, The little I have heard is it is a difficult place to work and hard to get hired.

I would love to go on a tour like that. After working on machining environments for 30+ years it would be interesting to see how a different industry does things.

[Old Greenhorn]

Yes MB, since we share very similar backgrounds, I know you would have enjoyed it, but you likely also would have been a little surprised how they handled their work flow and in the internal security. I don't think I would have felt comfortable being locked inside a cage to do my work. 
 I was however, familiar with working in secure facilities. O worked in shops where all you work, partial parts, completed parts, and paperwork had to be locked in the company safe at the end of each day and signed out each morning. I also worked at Sperry's for some time and everyone had to pass muster for a "Secret" level federal security rating. The parts we made there were carefully tracked and the building entry points had armed security. The complex covered over 100 acres.. When parts got to the point of assembly they went to secured shops to that with access restricted to those who had been cleared to work in just that particular shop. We had two military 'bases' on the premises, which were generally procurement and inspection offices. One was the US Navy and the other rotated once in a while, but when I was there it was the Turkish Navy. Restricted access to both, of course.
 But I found S&W quite different. Some parts are very modern and some shop sections had equipment that had been there forever doing the same operations. The security 'procedures' seemed to date back many many decades. Mike Belben worked in that plant for years and could probably tell you a lot more.
 Since they are very close to you, I wonder if they also moved down their public shop/school and range? It might be worth looking into. Fun for a visit anyway if it's not too far.

[teakwood]

I guess we are not talking Spiders anymore???

[TroyC]

I have a python and a judge.  They are heavy enough they are fun to shoot.

Doc, I just recently picked up a new model Python, 5.5". You are right, a really nice day at the range. I've been running light .38 spl mostly so far and it is pleasant to shoot. I also have my grandfather's carry gun from the 1960's, a beautiful little stainless S&W Mod 60. Took it out last week and it brought back a lot of memories. 

The short barrel Judge with 3" .410 shells makes a statement but it doesn't get much use as I only see a rattle snake ever 3-4 years.

.22 shorts were nice back in the day for plinking, but I also remember BB and CB caps. The BB caps were less powerful than my old pellet rifle but were fun in a bolt action.

As far as the Ar's go, yeah, kind of wondering what a lot of people are thinking when you see some of the setups. My .300 BLK will almost touch holes at 50 yds on a simple rest. I think it is a 12" barrel. It is not terrible on muzzle blast and feeds reliably. On the other hand, I've have friends show up with their tricked out AR's with red dots and such and they couldn't hit a paper at 50 yards.

[Old saw fixer]

I think not, Teakwood. Our recent cold weather must have chilled them out...

[Peter Drouin]

Maybe there all dead now with the nook YH uses.