Sunday, September 20, 2009

Nippy Up Here...

...at the Secret Hidden Bunker in the Rocky Mountains...hard to believe that it's still the tail end of summer. Coming home from the match yesterday along Peak To Peak Highway, all the huge stands of aspen were at peak color...it's honest-to-goodness breathtaking, hundreds of acres of gold scattered among the evergreens. Lots of tourists taking pictures, too.

My Sweetie is suffering from my last week's head cold (even though she shot superbly at yesterday's cowboy match), so I went out this AM first thing and got her homemade donuts from a coffee shop built into 3 beautifully restored rail cars from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The Old West is never that far away here in Nowheresville, CO, which is one of the many reasons I live up here.

BTW, I was pleased with yesterday's match...I had my fastest match ever and shot it clean — no misses — to boot. Of course, since I shot it clean I was probably going too slow. I was running .38s (actually .357 cowboy loads from Black Hills) out of my two 50th Anniversary Ruger Blackhawks (C&S tuned) and 1873 Cimmarron Texas Brush Popper from Long Hunter. BTW BTW, my partner Marshal Halloway was in Texas the last few days filming a Long Hunter cowboy action shooting training video, for which I am honored to say Long Hunter, Jim Finch, has asked me to provide an introduction.

At yesterday's match one of the regulars, Onray, has a pair of guns he'd got in a sweet trade...2 Ruger Vaqueros in 38-40, one of my favorite calibers, with a second cylinder in .40 S&W. The one gun I handled at the match was clearly a custom piece — bead-blasted stainless finish and a really slick trigger job. I know there was at least one run of 38-40/.10mm dual cylinder Ruger single actions through Buckeye distributors, but I thought they were based on Blackhawks, not Vaqueros. But Lee Martin, who knows everything about single action anythings, references a very limited run of 38-40 Vaqueros for Davidsons back in 2002/2003.

I told Onray that now he's on the hook for a 38-40 rifle so he can shoot the guns in competition. "Already looking," he said.
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3 comments:

  1. paso tom11:41 AM

    Hi;
    Ruger made 1500 38-40 40S&W conversions 1498 stainless 2 blue . Both 5 1/2 & 4 5/8 were offered . Btw the 40 S&W is one of the finest bp rounds invented in the 1990s . I have 4 of them one pair stock The others with full action jobs . Would not trade ether set .
    Paso Tom

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  2. Anonymous5:20 AM

    I thought you were going to shoot your 44 specials? Or was it your 45 Colts?

    Or did you shoot them in one match and then go back to the lighter caliber?

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  3. Michael Bane9:50 AM

    I shot the .44s last week. I kinda wanted to wrap up the main shooting season with a fast, clean match, so I went back to the guns I've been shooting all year.

    So much of competition shooting is in one's head...back when I was a serious IPSC competitor I learned that it was sometimes handy to "trick" myself into shooting at a different level...a week of shooting the .44s with their increased recoil gave me a little burst of increased speed when I went back to the .357s. Yeah, that's gamey as hell...

    mb

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