While it was touted as a "car stopper" for Police work, it did duty as a game-getter from it's birth. Major Doug Wesson and Elmer Keith were the first notables to use it on game and write it up. Today it is fashionable to pooh-pooh it as a Big Game gun but these men did not see it that way.

There is some reason, however, to at least (in principle) agree with those who are hesitant about the use of the .357 on Big Game.

First, the factory loadings today are loaded to less pressure than the original loads and consequently have less power. The early .357's were loaded in cartridges that utilized a Large primer and heavy loads developed quite a bit of pressure above the established levels of today's factory offerings.

357 Magnum Testimonials from earlier days

1935
Major Douglas Wesson
Antelope - 200 yards (2 shots)
Elk - 130 yards (1 shot)
Moose - 100 yards (1 shot)
Grizzly Bear - 135 yards (1 shot)

The Antelope was hit the first time at 125 yards. It ran, stopped and was shot the second time at 200 yards. The second shot killed it.

The Bull Elk was killed with one shot through the lungs.

The Moose was shot in the chest near the base of the neck. It cut the 2nd rib, passed through both lungs, sheared the 8th rib on the off side and stopped just under the hide. No follow-up shot was required.

These animals were taken on a Fall hunt in Wyoming, near the West entrance of Yellowstone Park. The Grizzly was taken later in Canada.

The above game was taken using factory loads which were a 158 gr. bullet at 1515 fps from an 8 3/4" barreled S&W producing 812 ft. lbs of muzzle energy. (S&W later shortened the barrels to 8 3/8" as we have today)

To those who criticized, the Major replied that they "..had not the slightest conception of what we have accomplished in ballistics.." - a statement that still applies today.

1936
Elmer Keith
"When the new .357 cartridge and gun came out I gave it a very thorough tryout ... and found it had more actual knockdown killing power on all game that I shot with it than any other factory loaded, real revolver cartridge on the market.... (It) proved to have much more actual shock effect and killing power ...than any factory loaded revolver or auto pistol cartridge including the .44 Special and the .45 Colt..."
Sixgun Cartridges and Loads  pages 29 & 30

1938
Walter Sykes
Wildebeest - 100 yards - complete penetration, knockdown on the first shot.
His Guide, John Hunter (of "HUNTER" and "AFRICA AS I HAVE FOUND IT") wrote that the .357 was "the one and only hand-arm for African hunting"...

1938
Sasha Siemel - Professional Hunter in South America
6 Tigres - Amazon Jaguar's - using the S&W .357 Magnum
He wrote, "...It does all the work of a rifle and is light and easy to carry.."

WW II
General George Patton
He referred to his S&W .357 Magnum as his "killing machine"....

1980
Skeeter Skelton
"No automatic cartridge is as powerful as the .357 Magnum........Years ago I stated that if I could have only one gun, it would be a Model 27 S&W."
Skeeter Skelton on Handguns page 16

With the past weeks in mind, here is a message I received that I share with you …. this is from Ed Rush's newsletter Flight Brief. Ed is a decorated Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot. He was the #1 instructor in the Marine Corps for 1-against-1 dogfighting and was instrumental in the training development for the new F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. He has flown close to 2,000 tactical aircraft hours, with over 50 missions in combat.

Most people review their failures like this:
1. Mentally go through the highlight reel at 2 am (especially the embarrassing parts)
2. Wince in the dark.
3. Feel guilty.
4. Try to forget it ever happened.
5. Re-roll the highlight reel the next night (or at least once a week)

That’s not a debrief. That’s just self-inflicted psychological waterboarding.
In the Marine Corps, every single flight ends the same way, no matter how it went. You land the jet, you walk into a room, and you debrief.

This isn’t done to punish yourself, beat your chest, or anything in between. Instead, it’s done to answer one question: What can we do better next time?

So instead of relying on ego or excuses, or saying, “yeah but here’s why it wasn’t my fault,” we bring cold, honest clarity about what happened, and what you’re going to do differently.

But you don’t need to be in the Marine Corps to practice honest debriefing. In fact, that same habit, done right, might be one of the most powerful spiritual disciplines you've ever learned. Because most believers handle mistakes in one of two ways:
1. They beat themselves up for the mistakes (often ones they made years ago).
2. They brush it off and pretend it didn’t happen.

Neither one is faith. That’s fear in two different directions.

But a real debrief is different. You sit down with God—not to confess and sprint away—but to review. You ask honest questions. You listen for honest answers. And then you move forward with better information in mind.

David did this.
Peter did this.
Every cool cat in the Bible did this.

And I believe that one 10-minute debrief with God—done consistently—will do more for your growth than years of guilt, vague intentions, and “I’ll do better next time” speeches. So tonight, before you fall asleep, try it.

Ask Him three questions:
1. What went well today?
2. What went wrong today?
3. What do I do differently tomorrow?
Then listen.
You might be surprised by what He says.

Mister R. Cronan who died in 2015 at the age of 92 was one of our local WWII veterans and was in the third wave on Omaha Beach and said in an interview,

"me and pappy, so far as we knew, were the only survivors of our boat. We called him pappy due to his age. He was at least 20 or 21. At some point up the beach the smoke was so thick that we were compelled to stoop under the smoke to see our way over the fallen wounded and dead and around obstacles. Under that smoke we saw forked rivulets of blood flowing back down the beach into the water."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M_ylKgyRy7A&pp=ygUXUm9sYW5kIGNyb25hbiBpbnRlcnZpZXc%3D

as if I had a good side

here is a good song for today...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPrPtDoaB3s

Then one day he found, in his mailbox a crudely reproduced flyer of orange construction paper announcing the coming of a traveling carnival of sorts. Elbert had little desire to be around crowds and noise but he could well imagine himself wandering about such a venue with a sack of popcorn and sipping a cooling beverage through a straw. One of his old buds down at the diner cinched the deal with an impertinent sharp elbow into the ribs and an insinuating wink stating that there was to be sideshow tents of a naughty nature included in the itinerary. It was said that there was a shameless hussy or hussies that could amazingly puff a cigar(s) and exhale smoke in an extremely unconventional manner. The latent hound-dog in Elbert awoke and stretched and yawned before lying back down to continue its nap.

Unknown to Elbert and all of the easy marks of Patona City and neighbouring hamlets, the Pavee were coming. The Pavee, Irish Travelers, Celtic Gypsies et al had been sending spies about the area to feel-out the Buffers as they termed everyone else but themselves and Patona City was ripe for the plucking.

The problem with this particular clan(s) of Travelers was the cost of living and the high overhead of their endeavours. Logistics was the dirty word. Getting to the Buffers and their gullibility and fat wallets from many hundred of miles from home-base severely cut into the bottom-line. They could, like their cousins, live "on the go" in recreational vehicles or caravan trailers but this particular branch liked to live like Buffers in real houses. So they came to Patona City and leased spaces at the old national guard armoury and the flea market/tradeday grounds for their business purposes. Every motel room and r.v. pad/camping site in and around their targets were reserved with credit cards physically lifted from Buffers at the atlantic north-south interstate rest-areas and chip information surreptitiously scanned at any busy convenience store enroute on their south-westward travels.

So by the time that they had all filtered into the area and had paid monies down, they were low of shekels. Their first main effort was the tool sale at the old armoury. The tools, both hand and electrical were of tolerable quality and functionality and competitively priced with an average mark-up of 15% after tempting loss-leaders were ciphered-in. This mostly covered the overhead with the profits coming in the form of the bait/switch dummy item(s) lying on the checkout counter near the cash register. Unknown to the tool-sale customers, they almost all paid for a pocket knife or keychain or cigarette lighter or beverage can insulator that unfortunately didn't make it into their shopping bag. This deceit was aided by the purposely, almost illegible faint print on the sales tickets. There also were a few select pockets picked there not to mention the hundreds of credit card numbers archived to finance the homeward trip east.

Then came the carnival complete with naughty sideshow(s). Old Elbert went and spent nigh-on a green franklin on parking, entrance fee, the minimum allowed number of individual event tickets, a sack of popped corn, a pint of mostly crushed ice and cola and the extra entry fee to the lewd show. His two regrets apart from parting with so many yankee greenbacks was that he chickened-out using the event tickets to ride at least one ride. He thought it undignified and it increased his restlessness & loneliness even thinking of riding alone without his late wife. The other regret was sitting even a brief few minutes in the "hootchiecoo" tent before exiting in disgust. There are somethings once seen, in reflection, were best left unseen. His only hope was that it had been dark enough in the spectators seats of the tent that none of his fellow elderly men sunday school class had recognized him.

Back to the larcenous Travelers. After the tool sale folk had filtered away with little scrutiny and the carnival had broken-up and headed northwest to the next small city or medium-sized town, the various driveway asphalt spraying and aluminum roof painting crews went to work. It was all about timing at this point. One unexpected thunderstorm in the midst of the summertime drought could be disastrous to the Gypsies. Getting as many driveways sprayed and roofs silvered before heavy weather exposed the fraudulent nature of the "asphalt" and "quick-drying" aluminum paint was essential.

Then, of course, there were widow's houses with whole nests of rattlesnakes living unknown to them in the home's crawlspace. Not to mention the numerous doorbells ringing with the ubiquitous grift & flummeries of skilled actors & actresses including variations of : "flat-tire", "broke-down", "out of petrol", "sick baby", "out of diapers/baby formula until payday". Some Buffers voluntarily if not reluctantly paid as much as a double sawbuck at the door. Others paid involuntarily under the ruse of, "can you hold the baby here while I use the landline to call or take a wiz in the potty.", only to later find cash or jewelry or soporific meds. missing.

Then the last hurrah of looting opportunity..... The novelty comedic jackass basketball game at the nearby rural Coloma High School gymnasium. The team's colours were grey and blue with the costumes draped over the backs of the burros that were shoed with sneakers on all four trotters to protect the hardwood floor's glossy varnished finish. The game was a hit ! There were plenty of volunteers of all ages, so many indeed that there were multiple games of shortened playtime and low-score limits in order to placate the numerous entrants. Both the folk attending in the bleachers (a packed house) who paid a lincoln per and the contestants who bought their billet with a sawbuck each had a blast. As for the Gypsies undercover in amongst the locals, there were quite a few pockets and purses successfully & profitably picked.

Old Elbert was deemed the most valuable player in grey in the third game, making three good blocks and scoring two hoops. As he was helped off the back of his burro, Elbert, thinking of his truck-patch, sought to buy the beast but the Pavee proved to play "hard to get" as they say. His initial offer was $350 but as he met disappointment after disappointment going up the Travellers chain of command he finally offered $750 and was accepted. The Travellers having already asked his address, and unknown to Elbert, the former owners of the donkeys had a scheme to retrieve their property. They had long ago lost count of just which beast and how many times that it had been sold.

The Travellers kept the "jersey" and sneakers much to Old Elbert's disappointment. He had hoped to display the grey sheet with the number "11" on his den wall as a trophy of sorts and you never knew when the sneakers might prove necessary. A local cattleman to the school's community there at the game who was also one of Elbert's early morning diner coffee swilling peers offered the use of a small livestock trailer.

In less than two hours from the cessation of the jackass basketball games, Elbert was at his three acre truck-patch trying to hitch the burro to the tack of a long-handled tilling implement that he had borrowed. One of the Traveller's basketball team trainers had adamantly assured Elbert that the burros, one and all, were retired from agriculture service where they had been trained to be harnessed & hitched to plows & carts/wagons & the booms of machinery such as sorghum cane queezers. After several hours of failure, Elbert dropped the reins and left the stubborn beast sitting on its butt like a dog and braying most annoyingly. He calmly and slowly walked to the tractor shed and returned with a bright red can. He then began to gather last harvest's spent cornstalks and stack them on and against the burro like he was raising teepee poles until the braying beast was mostly covered by stalks. Without haste, he began pouring a circular stream of petrol from the red can around the stalks when he heard the distinctive crunch on the chert drive of approaching tires. He recognized his pastor as the man lowered the driver's-side car-door window.

"Brother Elbert, I was just heading up to visit your sister Lily. Is there anything I can do to help you with here in your garden ?"

Old Elbert spat a stream of brown juice, more in disgust than in necessity as he pulled a matchbook from a shirt pocket.

"No Reverend, I'm fine. I'm just about to teach this here jackass how to plow !" he replied as he struck a match.

Murphy

There I was in my kayak and drum fishing.....that is to say angling for aplodinotus grunniens. With one hand I was holding onto (for dear life) a rusty mooring stanchion set into the electrical authority's concrete on a wing wall below Wilson Dam. The other hand was busy trying to land at least a twenty pounder. How I managed to hold on to both the iron ring and my fishing rod and be able to turn the reel handle is still a mystery. But in fullness of time I unhooked and released the slimey, scaley beast to finally ken just what was causing the perilous (or do i mean treacherous?) swells of green water that threatened me. A self-propelled dredging barge on a bigger barge was exiting the westbound lock and I guess the lock gates opening had caused the sudden current.

Everything had almost settled down when the tugboat pushing the barge(s) engaged its props or screws or jets and my kayak dropped just enough in a trough that I lost hold of the ring and had to resort to the paddle. Then I just as quickly rose about five feet on a crest. Thankfully, that ridge of water was wide enough that I could paddle thus riding it out instead of being swamped by the chop. So there I was sort of involuntarily following in the wake of the tugboat. With many grunts and much farting, I managed to paddle away from the pull and reach water that was slack enough to finally veer southward to where my truck waited.

Bust a gut or die as they used to say, I surely wanted to know where that dredging barge was bound and what it was about when it got there. But as obtuse as I can oftentimes be, for once I had the sense not to follow in/on the kayak. So it was just happenstance I guess that about an hour later I spied from the highway the same barge and tug but the barge was now empty. That barge must have been of the floodable variety with a bow drop-ramp and the smaller dredging barge had to be loose, presumably back upstream a distance.

After some thinking, I made a u-turn and luckily found both an adequate place to park the truck and a safe place to get the kayak back into the river. In just under a half-hour of more grunting and farting assisted paddling upstream, I rounded a bend and spied what I took to be the dredging barge ahead. As I neared enough to get a better view I exclaimed aloud to no one in particular but myself, "There's a 'shurnuff' yellow submarine !" Kid you not ! Just aft of the dredge cab/turret and attached boom -arm and two-part clawed bucket-pincer lay a bright shiny efficient looking mini-sub.

After the surprise and wonder at encountering the unexpected I remembered back, after the barge had first cleared the lock gates, seeing something rectangular hidden somewhat under silvery tarps. The tarps and the underlying framework that had draped them had obviously been now removed, revealing the submersible contraption.

The river current here was not too bad and I soon got near enough to see and hear activity onboard the barge. It appeared to be anchored to the river's bottom with a substantial bow-chain and there were 5/8 or 3/4 inch lines, aft and starboard, limb-hooked to trees ashore. The barge was just large enough and of an age to have an internal engine as there were no visible outboard motors. Nor could I see any sort of bridge or helm or coxain's console. I assumed that the throttle and rudder steering controls must have been self-contained in the cab/turret and amongst the boom and claw/bucket levers and pedals.

No matter, there was at least a crew of four rough and sun-browned fellows on deck and another visible inside the dredge cab who seemed to be in charge of the operation. The whole turret swiftly swiveled 180°s and the boom deftly dangled the bucket some distance above the submarine as two of the crew hooked chains to both the bucket above and the submarine beneath. Those chains tightened as the submarine rose and was swung outboard free of the barge and lowered to float on river with the two brave souls who had chained it gracefully riding down with the thing.

Just enough slack was given the chains to facilitate unhooking the sub but not quite enough to pinch the men's fingers as the chains retightened and the two men were raised aloft and swung safely back aboard the barge, riding the chain's lower hooks on the arches of each one's right foot. Best I could tell, the submersible operator must have been already onboard it as a face could be seen behind its clear bubble and an equally clear hatch with quick-acting dogging wheels internal and external was raised open.

To be continued.....

Here is the update from her on his condition:

Finally saw Doctor. Basically his spine is pretty messed up. C2 vertebrae is bad but c6 and c7 - the ligaments are disrupted all around them. He also has chronic/narrowing (old age) in portions of his back. So they have to make a plan how to proceed with surgery (surgery is likely - unless Jesus gives us a miracle). Multiple areas - different issues - may require different access points? Brain bleed is minimal and they aren’t worried about it. Neck bleed should resolve on its own.

* we deeply appreciate all the prayers and love. I know dad is “one of God’s Favorites” - I’m sure many of you have heard dad say that to you.

I’ll try to post major updates as I get them.

For those who did not know - he also has 2 broken ribs and a broken clavicle. Those are clean breaks and look like they will heal well. Please pray for his neck and back. Thank you.

Praying earnestly.....

Dave

Is there any reason for me to look past the classic "fill up the case with 4350" load, say 57.0 grains? Or should I just load that and forget it?

-AaronB

I particularly like the last line.
"I ain't slow,..... I just ain't in a hurry no more."

This so-called artificial intelligence is at the very least annoying. Case in point : the confounded auto fill/correct.....most aggravating.

Then there is the legion / myriad of social media videos that are suspect.....supposedly rife with malevolent subliminal messages.

Now there is no attempting to hide those evil messages. Many videos, including otherwise benign outdoor activities such as sport fishing have what is referred to as "a.s.m.r."

Also, many public school systems that use electronic tablets and laptops with online learning and homework feature "a.s.m.r." time for students that need "safe-spaces".

Maybe just me but all of this seems concerning. The times remind of when I was just a wee pup and Larry Norman's controversial "left behind" songs and Hal Lindsay's "late great" paperback hit the shelves. Scared the snot out of little ray !