Posts Tagged → Filson
Flintlock season recap
- Gunmaker Mark Wheland with the gun of my dreams, a flintlock English Sporting Rifle made just for me
Writing a blog is a delicate walk, because as much as I want to write about the righteous boss daddy treatment President Trump gave to weasel rat dictator Zelensky the other day, I have to stay focused on what our audience of exactly One Person has requested. If I turn off my one reader, then I will literally be writing solely for the air and the stars.
For the record, just because you or I call Zelensky (Ukraine) the weasel rat dictator he is, does not mean that you or I automatically like or support dictator Putin (Russia). Both of these men are in power because they have subverted their nations’ elections, amassed wealth and power at the expense of their countrymen, etc. Yes, Putin is responsible for the war in Ukraine, and yes, Ukraine can and should negotiate a settlement that ends the bloodshed. And yes, Trump should demand and expect to receive rare earth metals in return for all of the taxpayer support Americans have given to Ukraine. This is all normal.
Wanting the war to go on and on with greater bloodshed and destruction on both sides and with more powerful rockets is not normal. That is warmongering.
Anyhow, the late hunting season here in Central Pennsylvania was exciting, but had no filled tags. I used to rabbit hunt a lot, but gave up when the rabbit populations showed signs of vaporizing due to abundant fishers and bobcats. For five or six years now I have hardly seen one rabbit in places where I have created the best habitat, and where rabbits should be swarming. So for many years I have just hunted the late flintlock season for deer, instead, just about daily.
And also trapped for predators, including fishers and bobcats. Not this season, however. On the December flight back from Florida, a man behind me kept coughing and sneezing. He never covered his mouth, and made no attempt to keep from infecting everyone around him. Sure enough, a week later I was showing signs of the same horrible illness half the country has now had, a persistent dry cough and a close brush with pneumonia. Lots of people are getting the pneumonia. So, I was sick as hell during the time I normally set traps, and my kit and steel just sat and sat.
Instead, just about every day after Christmas, I would go out for a couple hours and try to intercept a deer with the new flintlock, coughing quietly into my clothes to muffle the bark. I got off a lot of shots, collected blood and hair, but filled no tags. A new white checked Filson wool coat helped me blend in with the snowy woods.
Made for me by Mark Wheland, the new flintlock is a 62-caliber rifle based on the English Sporting Rifle design, which I have come to admire. It has a 28 inch decently swamped octagonal barrel by Getz from about 15 years ago, a beautiful patent breech made by Jason Schneider at Rice Barrels, a RE Davis late-flintlock era Manton-style waterproof lock, and a gorgeous stock of highly figured and irridescent English walnut. Wheland turned a perfect ebony ramrod, as well as its horn end and its threaded steel connector end.
The Manton-style lock has a roller frizzen, which is both very fast and also very touchy. Hunting in brush without bumping the heel of my hand up against the back of the frizzen would result in some blade of grass flicking it open and dumping the priming powder on the ground. So it requires some special handling, because it is so sensitive.
I also struggled with this gun’s sights all season long, probably also slowly acclimating to the short barrel. This barrel is ten inches shorter than that on my long-time go-to 54 caliber flintlock barrel, that is 38″ long, and my eyes have not yet made the transition. Moreover, the new gun has classic British rear sights, one standing and one folding leaf. The rear sites were conveyed to me with only the most rudimentary and shallow “V” filed in the standing sight, and the front sight was about a half inch high. It was up to me, in a short amount of time, to get this gun sighted in just days before bear season began, which is just days before deer season started.
So I just struggled to get the gun sighted in, and by the time actual flintlock season began, the day after Xmas, it was printing dead center and 2.5″ high at 50 yards. With 130 grains of FFG Swiss pushing the 335-grain lead round ball about 1500 feet per second, I reckoned it was probably dead-on at 100 yards. Or minute-of-deer chest within 100 yards.
I lost track of how many shots I took at deer. Mostly at does. One probably legal buck I let walk past me. Some deer I literally just walked right up to in the snow, and missed, maybe forty yards away. Others I ambushed from concealment on trail crossings, from fifty out to about 95 yards, while sitting. Each miss resulted in a little more blacking being put on the rear sight, a little more color added here or there, and by the end of the season the front sight was filed down to about 1/8″ high and painted bright neon orange. The rear sight has a bright neon yellow inverted V wedge under the V aperature, surrounded by black. I am thinking about scrapping the entire arrangement and going to front and rear fiber optic sights. Old eyes…
One doe was flattened by what seemed like a perfect broadside at 75 yards. I saw her go down through the cloud of smoke, and when I walked up I expected to find her stone cold dead. But while there was a perfect outline of her body in the snow, with plenty of blood, the actual deer was nowhere to be found. With dusk fast approaching, I used my headlamp to follow as far as I could in the snow and the thick brambles, and then went home. The next morning I returned and took up the trail, which resulted in three deer fleeing from fresh beds, one of which had some fresh drips of blood, but not much. Not even the coyotes would end up eating her.
My last shot of the season was taken like a mortar, at the biggest buck I have ever seen in the wild. He was just a bit over 200 yards away, and had been spooked out of his hidey nook by my prowling. When I snuck back towards the anticipated cut-off, he was indeed standing right there, looking all around, on high alert. While down wind, I was as close as I could get without being seen. So I took some pictures of him, which of course did not come out well, and then took careful aim with plenty of “Kentucky elevation” and let ‘er rip. At the shot he flew away with wings, and on my follow up I found where the big lead ball had hit the ground at plane, leaving a 20-foot-long long streak through the snow and dirt directly in line with the buck’s shoulder, but about 20 yards too short. His tracks were among the biggest I have ever seen. Guessing a 200″ buck.
The doe was flattened, and leaked some hydraulic fluid, but was gone and lived on
I have a lot more practice to do with this gun.
What looks like a shallow white “W” is just the higher visibility part of the huge buck’s enormous rack
Overnight beds, tiny amount of blood, a mere flesh wound and a long-lived lucky deer
The long path cut by the 335-grain round ball on its way towards the big buck
Nice view down into the woods, perfect for a flintlock. Yes, the barrel key is loose, which accounted for two missed shots
Hunting around an enormous buck capable of leaving big rubs like this one is excitement enough. Actually seeing him and getting a shot…even the miss is the highlight of the season
Hunters Sharing the Harvest sets the Holiday Season tone
Pennsylvania is a long time big time hunting state, with such a great and famously known outdoors sports tradition that the iconic red and black “buffalo check plaid” wool coat made by Woolrich, Filson, and other long established wool clothing manufacturers was dubbed the “Pennsylvania Tuxedo” back in the 1920s.
Today our clothing may have improved since then, or may not have improved, depending upon whether you like your hunting pants to be flammable, or not, and I do not (which means I prefer wool in all outdoor clothing), but one thing remains steady: Pennsylvanians rightly love to hunt.
And just as much as we love to hunt, we are also generous with the fruits of our time afield. We have a long tradition of sharing the fruits of our hunting labors.
Well do I recall as a kid waking up in late November or early December to find some fresh venison left on our doorstep by one or two of our neighbors, all of whom had big farms and all of whom were big time hunters.
Back then in that area, kids brought fresh venison jerky to school to share and trade with other kids during and right after deer season; everyone had their own proprietary jerky recipe that they liked and were proud of. Sharing venison is a real longstanding Pennsylvania tradition.
Back in 1991, local hunter John Plowman had a vision to harness that generous spirit among Pennsylvania hunters and use it to provide for the needy. He started Hunters Sharing the Harvest, which today annually supplies well over a hundred thousand of pounds of fresh, free range, wholesome, lean, natural, organic meat to Pennsylvanians in need. That translates into about 667,000 annual “meals” for individuals and families in need.
Yesterday my son “harvested” his first Pennsylvania deer (see photo below), a young spike buck that junior hunters are allowed to take, as the rest of us are limited to bucks with at least three points to a side of the antler rack. As we had incredible good fortune yesterday, and took other deer, my son decided to donate his deer to Hunters Sharing the Harvest. My boy is enjoying the act of charity and contributing towards the basic welfare of his community.
Both Deimler (Cumberland County) and Sensenig (Dauphin County) are deer processors close by our home, so either one would be the logical place to drop off the young buck. But Deimler has the advantage of being right down the road from Johnson’s Furs, where we have our furs tanned and where we buy our trapping supplies, so that is where the critter has been dropped off. Mutli-tasking, ya know?
And that is the neatest thing about this Hunters Sharing the Harvest option: We get to share our cake, and eat it, too, in the charitable spirit of the Holiday Season.
Filson and Leupold, Two Great American Outdoor Firms
Time for a quick Thank You to two great outdoor products firms, Filson and Leupold.
Filson has been around since the 1890s Alaskan Gold Rush, providing rugged clothing to rugged men and women.
They use the best virgin wools, waxed cotton and canvas, brass fittings, bridle leather…this is super quality clothing that will never, ever wear out. Virgin wool is the washed wool right off the sheep, with super long fibers that hold warmth like a sheep would want, and it also wears like iron.
I have had the pleasure of owning many Filson sweaters, vests, socks, jackets, and canvas coats. They are made in America and of unsurpassed quality, especially in contrast to today’s mass produced Chinese junk.
Yes, they are more expensive than most clothing, but as soon as you wear them, you will agree they are worth every cent. Ten years later, when your garment has begun to show a bit of wear, you will be utterly amazed. In a world of built-in obsolescence, Filson’s is throwback, old-timey bomb-proof.
Just yesterday morning I was retrieving a live coyote I had trapped on a grapple (a drag that gets caught in brush). He had managed to go through a massive wall of brush made of multiflora rose, Japanese honeysuckle, Russian olive, Asian bittersweet vines, raspberry brambles, and other assorted sharp, pointy, and painful trash brush that is impossible for humans to get through.
At first I used a chainsaw to cut my way in close to the growling, barking, gnawing alpha male. Then, I went back to the truck and put on an old Filson “Tin Cloth” hunting jacket, turned my back to the brush, and began bulldozing my way backwards through it. The various sharp things just bounced off the coat and in seconds I was standing in front of the nest raider (I trap predators to save ground nesting birds and for no other purpose).
There isn’t a Carhartt or Dickey’s anywhere that can do that, nor a Barbour, either. The downside to Tin Cloth is that when it goes on cold, you feel like a medieval knight putting on his steel armor. It is pretty stiff. But as you move and it warms up from your body heat, it flexes easily, and is indestructible. The way around this is to put it near a stove, heating vent, or in a warm vehicle before putting in on.
Anyhow, Thank You to Filson’s for their incredible garments. Nothing else comes close.
Leupold is the other firm I have had such good fortune with.
Leupold has made scopes and binoculars in Washington State since the early 1900s, and to most hunters their scopes are a household name.
What is amazing about their firm is not just the high quality products, but the incredible customer service.
To wit, this past November I fell while bear hunting in Northcentral Pennsylvania. Falling flat on my face in the thick mountain laurel, my chest crashed into a bunch of laurel trunks. They stick up like pungi sticks. A pair of Leupold Mojave binoculars was harnessed to my chest, and they took the brunt of the fall.
The diopter setting control popped off, and although I was able to find it and more or less get it back on, it did not work.
So I sent it to Leupold and asked them to fix it.
Instead, Leupold sent me a brand new pair of their latest model, the Pro Guide HD. Shrink-wrapped in the box and all.
This new binocular is really just the culmination of a series of slight improvements and modifications to the now discontinued Cascades, Mojaves, and other mountain-name-themed models I cannot recall now. But think about that, a company takes something you broke and gives you a new one.
Buddy, THAT is customer service!
Yesterday while flintlock hunting in the afternoon at French Creek State Park with my friend George, we met another hunter who joined us. We ended up doing three-man deer drives through the western end of the park. This new fellow, Gary Yoder, had around his neck a nice pair of Leupold binoculars.
When I told him my story about the brand new Leupolds on my chest harness, he told me the same story! He, too, had broken his previous pair, sent them in for repair, and instead had received this upgraded new pair, new in the box.
Needless to say, we were both very impressed by Leupold’s dedication to their customers.
A note about the new Pro Guide HD 8x42s: These have high quality glass, excellent, really. Looking through Swarovski, Zeiss, Leica, I do not see much of an improvement over this Leupold glass. When you look at the price difference, there is no comparison at all, because the German glass is two to four times the price of the Leupold and only slightly, marginally better in terms of clarity and crispness.
As good as the clarity is, all Leupold binoculars come with the worst and strangest eyepiece covers of all binoculars. While hunting in Scotland last October, I did a belly crawl up a hill to take a shot at a distant red stag. On my chest harness was that prior pair of Leupold binoculars. Behind me lay a trail of Leupold eyepiece covers, all of which came off and lay in different places in the bog. There has to be a way for Leupold to improve this one odd, inconsistent anomaly. Otherwise, their products are quite perfect and their customer service is even better than that.
Kudos to Filson clothing
Filson is a clothing manufacturer in Seattle, making pretty much the most basic American clothing styles for the past 130 years.
Little has changed in their styles or fabrics. Boring? Maybe.
Flannel and wool shirts, wool and canvas coats and pants, wool long underwear, leather boots with wool insulation, tote and carry bags and purses, every item is made in America of virgin wool or different weights of canvas.
One short phrase describes Filson products: Brutally tough.
Or, “Last a lifetime.”
In an era of cheap Chinese crap and Asian sweatshop “designer” clothes, Filson stands alone, or probably alone. I am a consumer of top-quality outdoor clothing, and I cannot think of another manufacturer who makes anything like Filson’s clothing line.
Oh, sure, there are plastic and Gore Tex outdoor clothes galore. Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, Mountain Hard Wear, and others make some pretty good ones, which our family wears. Fleece coats, mountaineering parkas, super-sophisticated PhD plastic fiber clothes for the outdoor lifestyle. Some are married to goose down, which is genuinely warm.
But all of these synthetics catch on fire and turn the wearer into a large, running, screaming torch when exposed to flame. Or at the least they wilt, melt, smell very bad, and cease being useful when exposed to a camp fire hot enough to dry your damp undies and wet socks. In other words, the newfangled modern synthetics may weigh next to nothing and stop wind faster than a speeding bullet and locomotive, but they lack certain basic physical properties necessary to truly enjoy or survive the outdoors.
Wool and waxed heavy cotton canvas are nearly fireproof and can withstand tremendous force before tearing. Wool keeps the wearer warm even when wet. Yes, it is heavy compared to synthetics, but it is a lot quieter, actually it is silent, whereas even the best of synthetic fleece hunting clothes will leave a telltale “zip” sound when dragged across a sharp branch.
Filson forms a big part of my winter clothing selection. Mackinaw vests and coats of different colors and patterns form the core of the selection, and the double mackinaw coat in “Pennsylvania Tuxedo” red-and-black buffalo check plaid has kept me toasty warm in sub-zero temperatures day after day. This past week I wore the double mackinaw coat while flintlock hunting, and I never got cold. It was sub-zero every day.
Other wool clothes I wear are heavy camouflage Columbia hunting pants, Bass Pro Redhead heavy wool socks, Danner wool socks, knee-high SmartWool ski and hunting socks, and SmartWool long underwear. Yes, once in a while I break out the Eddie Bauer and Woolrich Adirondock plaid pants, jackets, and so on. They are real testaments to a world long gone, which dinosaurs like me cling to in misty eyed memories.
David Petzal is the gun writer for Field and Stream Magazine, and among many other witticisms and pithy one-liners, years ago he noted that all synthetic long underwear makes you smell like someone slaughtered a cow after a day, but wool long underwear can be worn for days without you or them being cleaned, and yet you don’t smell…too badly.
That’s the thing. Wool is natural. Like leather and fur, it is natural and fits the human body perfectly. We can sweat into wool for days on a hunt, and it just doesn’t smell bad. Oh, it may not smell fresh, but compared to the polypropylene synthetics, it does.
My Filson Mackinaw coat accompanies me on all my Adirondack wilderness hunts, serving as a blanket at night when the temperature inside the tent dips to 18 degrees. And yet after many years of being worn through thorn patches and rugged mountain brush, it shows zero signs of wear. That says it all.
Other favorites include the now discontinued styles of Tin Cloth logging jacket and Double Tin field coat, both of which I wear when hunting for small game in January and February, when thorns are a big part of the day. Some of these discontinued tin cloth coats have become collector’s items. Each one will last you your entire lifetime, and if you wax it at the end of the season, it will serve your kids, too.
So, kudos to Filson for making Best-quality, “old fashioned” clothing for a tech-happy generation. www.filson.com
Seasonal weather changes are natural, welcome
Seasonal changes are natural tick-tocks on the world’s clock.
Following a natural cycle keeps us in tune with nature, even if the conditions aren’t always to our liking.
Cold arrived today.
Driving north on Friday, I photographed the “polar vortex” front as it closed in on central Pennsylvania. It was a dramatic sight, indeed, and heralded the coming of winter.
Right away, I spoke out loud to myself about the need to buy new knobby tires for the truck. A long, cold, snowy winter is ahead, and I need to be as prepared as possible. Winter isn’t too challenging, if I’ve prepared for it.
Tonight we got our first wood fire going, after cleaning out the wood stove and adding new fire bricks. About a cord of last year’s split oak remains before we begin burning the oak that Viv, Isaac and I split this past spring. By the time we burn through the left over wood, the new wood should be completely dry. We will burn between three and four-and-a-half cords this winter at home.
Wood is a natural, sustainable, renewable heat source whose carbon is part of the planet’s natural cycle. We plant a lot of trees, and they absorb carbon to grow big. It’s a closed loop, which is appealing.
Living life according to the planet’s rhythms is natural and healthy. Will you get cold? Sure. That’s part of living. And if you think it’s cold here, check out Minnesota or Wisconsin or Idaho. Not to mention Alaska.
Just put on long undies and get some Filson wool jackets and vests. You might end up enjoying the cold weather. I certainly do.