Kinda funny how the Caliber Dance and do-see-doe of Styles plays out. New comes and goes, and you get to appreciate a caliber's virtues and packages. Everytime I have a 'clearance of the gun closet', I'll stumble over another box of remnants, from one or another of the Passion De Jour items that smote me wallet. Eventually, it's come down to bigger bore-more compact weapon..for my particular occasions and circumstances. While it is really a fine thing to have precision sighted and sturdy machines for large pressures -- and large living targets; or to have a tuned "10X'r' that delivers freight trains at a distance, the means and ends are now focused more on handy portability and easy carry, Not any virtues being touted here in that fact, but that it seems to be where my fun and comfort zone is increasingly headed.

A lot of has to do with changing physical circumstances, but also with my willingness or not to organize a small gun-safari. Now, when visting my friend's country shooting venues, I'll probly round up the old Rodeo for lobbing dust busters, take a J-frame .38 for can chasing, and some manner of revolving .22. Simple logistics, perhaps complicated by a matching-caliber long gun, or two.

I'm pretty much past the need for serious bench-testing, or shooting tiny groups [as I can manage, anyway] at a distance. Loved doing that, BTW, with suitable woodchuck-spraying artillery, but the terrain and it's human occupants are fast filling the spaces, and the agriculture business has about wiped out wood lots and fence rows and variegated species. However, I miss it only in nostalgia, mostly. Now, I can actually carry everything I'm going to use, in one trip from the side-door to the vehicle. And said business takes place mostly behind and empty big wooden barn, down the old lane which was surrounded by variegated fields and pastures to a safe terminus in a logpile in what is left of the woods.

Health issues have been closing in again, and so it seems fitting that that one savor and remember the past, and still get in some resemblance of the Grand Days our generation has been able to enjoy. In fact, I picked up a single shot Remington bolt-gun, manual cocking piece, Model 33, with a nifty period peep and gold bead. Carries to the the hand in perfect balance, and is happy with the assorted CB, and low-powered quiet rounds now being produces. Sort of a full circle, I suppose, but the four and two footed 'posse' enjoy the rambles, and this fall the 'sqwills' have provided some trophy tails and hind-quarters, just to keep the meaning of hunting in view. Wishing y'all your own version of such activities.

BTW, when the hernia sugeon says "six weeks without lifting", tattoo that stat inside y'r eyeballs. I'm...um...gonna hafta 'splain how I didn't think -- that rolling a log over just a wee little bit -- had anything to do with 'lifting'. I don't think I'll be divorced, but I'm betting the spare bedroom will be a lot warmer, than one to which I have been accustomed. I blame it on Progressive Old Fartism, which has not yet found it's heading in the medical dictionary, but surely deserves one.