Posts Tagged → double
Bidenflation just killed a national publication gem
“Soaring prices of paper, shipping, ink, and printing have put us into the red, and we can no longer function,” reads the personal note I received on a fabulous custom Double Gun Journal card from DGJ proprietors Daniel and Joanna.
What a message: Disastrous loss, beautifully wrapped and delivered on a silver platter.
My first encounter with the DGJ was spring 1991, in Rockville, Maryland, on a Tower Records bookstore shelf, along with Grey’s Sporting Journal and other fancier field sports publications. But the DGJ was different than any other publication I had ever seen, and, therefore, every quarter thereafter I purchased the latest edition and learned about reloading for black powder firearms long believed to be “obsolete” or “dangerous!” or un-sexy enough to compete with modern mass produced plastic and stainless steel firearms lacking a soul, a heart, or even personal appeal.
Distinguished gun and outdoor writers like Ross Seyfried and Sherman Bell introduced modern shooters, antique gun enthusiasts, and financially or historically oriented gun collectors to actually making those beautiful historic firearms shoot once again. Seyfried and Bell, in particular, removed the mystique and veil from antique rifles, double rifles, and double barreled shotguns with Damascus or twist barrels.
It turns out that the beautifully hand crafted double barreled black powder rifles and shotguns of the 1800s, and the early nitro express rifles of the 1900-1930 period, did not just look good. They also shot with incredible precision.
Since the late 1990s I have been an annual subscriber to the DGJ, eagerly awaiting each quarterly installment. In 2017, 2018, and 2022 I published a number of technical articles about Charles Lancaster double rifles. Of particular focus has been the development of Lancaster’s most valuable trademark technology, their singular oval bore rifling. For those with any curiosity, the Lancaster oval bore rifling looks like a smooth shotgun barrel. But if you squint your eyes and look hard enough, you will eventually discern an egg-shaped bore that rotates on a central axis. Lancaster’s proprietary oval bore rifling was long ago, and remains today, one of the great mysteries of sporting arms ballistics, because it absolutely defies physics. And yet, it works incredibly well.
An 1888 Charles Lancaster black powder double rifle that I shoot regularly is capable of placing paper patched bullets from BOTH its barrels into a 1.5″ hole at 100 yards. Now THAT is the very definition of firearm accuracy.
Charles Lancaster oval bore double rifles were The Thing for wealthy sportsmen around the world from the 1850s into the 1920s. That I eventually became the probable “expert” on Charles Lancaster oval bore rifles is due to a simple mistake, or a weird act of Godly intervention, or Fate. Because when now deceased Maine forester extraordinaire Tim Scott asked me to buy his Charles Lancaster .450 BPE double rifle, I bit. And then Ross Seyfried walked me through the steps of making it shoot safely. After that I was hooked, and the rest is history (see also lancasterovalbore.com).
And so here we are, saying goodbye to one of the last, if not THE last artisanal publication in America. A family owned business for decades, a byword and watchword and often the final word on antique firearms technology and reloading, the DGJ is irreplaceable. And yet it too is now fallen victim to Joe Biden’s hyperinflation. Everything is so expensive now, so much more expensive than it was just a year ago.
I recognize that Biden’s purposefully destructive economic policies are aimed at re-setting America into a more communist China-type place. While most Americans oppose this needless, illegal, forced, and destructive change, I think the loss of the DGJ is like the proverbial canary in a coal mine: Its early demise warns of us of coming dangers that can be fatal to us, too.
If you are interested in contacting the DGJ to acquire back issues, binders, beautiful note cards and artwork, etc., they can be reached at 231-536-7439 in central Michigan.
Maybe some day younger Americans will encounter these treasures, and discover an appreciation for fine firearms
My final article in the Double Gun Journal, thanks to Joe Biden’s purposefully destructive economic policies
Do you drink wine from a human skull?
Jakob-Creutzfelt Disease in Europe was traced back to a self-styled secret society in Italy, where members filed solemnly down into ancient burial crypts and drank local wine from the skull of a deceased past master.
No lie. Look it up if you like. Yes, people do strange things.
Even hundreds of years later, after the past master had died, the JCD ‘bug’ was still infesting that old skull of his, and the wine swilled from it carried the bug down the gullets of the secret society members and into their bodies. A lot of these secret society members died bizarre, horrible deaths, prompting health officials to investigate what was going on.
To date this is likely the only investigation in Italy’s history that was both scientific and professional. And that is because it involved drinking wine.
JCD basically eats your brain and leaves you a drooling, deficient, dying husk of a human being. You die pretty quickly, and it is an ugly death.
“Spongiform disease” is also how this kind of prion-based attack is known, because the person’s brain looks like a sponge, riddled through with holes where brain matter ought to be. Survival is not an option.
There is no cure, and the cancer-like prions use their protein shells to fully resist fire, cold, desiccation, Hollywood, and high cholesterol. Once a prion is present, it cannot be destroyed by anything human. Prions seem to live forever in the dirt under your feet, and possibly in food grown in that dirt, like corn and soybeans.
JCD is known as Mad Cow Disease among bovines, Scrapie among sheep, and Chronic Wasting Disease among cervids, like deer, here in America. In other words, there is a prion out there for every mammal, though this is a new science we are just beginning to understand.
For a long time the guy who discovered prions was said to be a fake. And then his work was replicated, and he became a celebrated scientist. The politics of “climate change science” do not apply to prions and human health, thankfully.
One thing is clear: Prions develop most among wild animals that are new to being domesticated, like deer. It is their bodies’ reaction to being unnaturally cooped up. Something in the wild animals’ artificially confined body is misfiring, going haywire, and imploding.
CWD has its genesis in the wildlife management equivalent of drinking wine from a human skull: In most states, including Pennsylvania, deer farms are not required to have two strands of metal fencing separating the confined deer from wild deer. Deer are not yet a domesticated species (if cows, sheep and goats are any indication, it will take another 3,000 years to domesticate deer), they are still wild, and they herd up for protection, as do all social animals.
As a result, wild deer approach the deer inside the deer farm enclosure, touch noses through the fence, exchange body fluids, and get CWD. The wild deer then leave and go off into the wild deer populations and spread CWD among otherwise healthy deer across the landscape.
As a result of this madness, CWD is spreading through Pennsylvania like wildfire, except no one is paying attention. Not really. Only the Pennsylvania Game Commission is trying to solve this crisis, and the agency is being stonewalled at every turn.
You know why?
Because the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is protecting a nascent $16 million annual deer farm business sector from having to install double fencing.
Do you know what hunting is worth annually in Pennsylvania? It is worth $1.6 BILLION, and a great deal of that is from deer hunting.
So here in Pennsylvania, we have a state agency, the PA Dept. of Agriculture, essentially preferring the complete shielding of deer farms from a necessary and responsible practice, and thereby sacrificing Pennsylvania’s wild deer herd and the huge sustainable, renewable economy built on managing those wild deer.
This poor policy from the PA Dept. of Ag is really bad government on display. This is Bad Government 101. Actually, this is failed government.
You cannot make this stuff up, and the CWD situation here highlights why political involvement in a democracy is so important. If you sit back and wait for someone else to solve problems, most often no one else will get involved. You have to lead the charge yourself, and thereby attract fellow supporters.
If you want to get involved, call the PA Dept. of Ag at this number, 717 -772-2853, and tell the nice person who answers the phone that you want DOUBLE FENCING at all deer farms. It is as simple as this.
And if you don’t give a whit about hunting or deer management, consider the impacts CWD will have on other wildlife beyond wild deer. It is an earthquake building under our feet, and we can stop it, if we want to.
Diary entry for a day in Central PA
With two business meetings up north and a pile of work to do even farther, the drive up the Susquehanna Valley the other day was enjoyable because so many of the trees still held color along the river banks and out on the islands. Yellows and oranges reflected in the water, and so did the blue sky. Quite peaceful and serene. Not a bad way to spend time driving. Especially when I consider how most Americans spend their time on the road — miserable gridlock, hideous urban concrete jungles, rude drivers. My driving is mostly a Zen experience. That is quintessential Central PA, after all.
Catawissa, PA, is not really on anyone’s destination planner, being snug between ragged coal country, fertile farm country, and pretty river bottom land, and well off the beaten path. To go to Catawissa, you really have to want to go, or have a real clear reason for going. The one horse there moved on long ago, and is now pulling some Amishman’s buggy across the river. Catawissa is daggone quiet in a countryside that is…well, really quiet.
But Catawissa is worth visiting for one simple reason: Ironmen Arms & Antiques is located there.
Jared and Tom have recently opened Ironmen Arms, what is and would have to be the nicest gun room in Pennsylvania (with apologies to Joel in Ligonier), filled with militaria, historic artifacts, and of course, fine firearms. The finest firearms, for the most discriminating collectors. Really high quality guns, like matching pairs (yes, pairs, not just one pair) of Parker shotguns, sequential pairs of high grade Parkers, and high grade LC Smiths, European double rifles, and on and on. For those of you bidding on the mint condition Remington 700 BDL in .223, I can tell you after holding it and inspecting it at length, it is every bit as perfect as it appears on line. If you are a serious collector, that gun is as good as it gets. The Remington BDL is becoming a collector’s item, oddly, because plastic stocks and stainless steel seem to be all the rage now, as soul-less and devoid of personality, art, and craftsmanship as those combinations are. I have no idea how someone hunts with these new guns, because I, myself, have deeply personal relationships with each of my firearms. To achieve that, they’ve got to look good as well as function properly. I’m not disgracing some wild animal by terminating it with anything but the highest combination of form and function. Aesthetics are necessary, because hunting isn’t just killing. It’s a statement about one’s values. Maybe I’m an “artiste.”
Or maybe it’s just a sign of my advancing age, or the arrival of The Age of China and All Things Plastic. I refuse to give in to sterile surgical steel and hard plastic, when I can hold the body of a beautiful tree in my hands. Apparently I am in good company with Jared and Tom, because they, too, like old wood and new steel, and old wood and old steel, too.
In this economic environment, entrepreneurs like Jared and Tom are brave. But they offer things that are not easy to get by any standard, and which are in high demand. And they are both nice men, interested in the fellow gun nerds of the world, and willing to share their bounty and knowledge with you.
So, if you find yourself traversing Pennsylvania on I-80, and you are passing by Bloomsburg, call ahead and set up an appointment with Ironmen Arms. Stop in and spend a half hour, or an hour, make some new friends, and buy an old Japanese sword, a rare bayonet, or a new rifle for that hunt of a lifetime. I know I will be back.
Ironmen Arms: 570 356-6126, jjvpo@verizon.net, 561 Numidia Drive, Catawissa, PA 17820. Their excellent website is at http://www.ironmenarms.com/
The War on Women
I dunno…Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Bob Filner, all three past or present elected officials still in office or running for office, and all three serial abusers/ users/ objectifiers/ harassers of women on the job and off….and all three are NOT Republicans.
We heard all about the supposed Republican war on women last year, and it didn’t make any sense to me, but here we have three public officials with lengthy records of using women, and…the silence is deafening.
Filner won’t resign from his mayor job, and both Spitzer and Weiner have no shame running again. If a Republican tried to get away with anything close to what any of these guys have done, he’d be lynched in the street.
Double standard, anyone?