GUNS!!!!!!!!

[exsparky]

I think the NRA is just as evil as Alan Dershowitz.

We just don't need to screw up the bill of rights, if we change the second, why not the fourth or oh wait we are already mucking up all those too.

[highangle]

I think the NRA is just as evil as Alan Dershowitz.

We just don't need to screw up the bill of rights, if we change the second, why not the fourth or oh wait we are already mucking up all those too.

Who's changing the 2A and the 4A? Are you forgetting the 10A?

Disclaimer: I don't like the NFA or the NRA, Obama didn't take my guns away, and that rich lawyer couple in St Louis should have to pay a $5000 fine each for poor firearm handling.

[John_B]

That's awesome! How was it?

App was in hours ago with 4 people who live in the zip code that spans the edge of the park.

ONP is still doing their aerial capture. The volunteer periods are from mid sept to mid oct.

[mangle]

Should be effortless for you.

I may have missed the ball on this, but are you talking about the 60% 4MOA shooting qualification or the ability to hike up 3k ish with gear every day for a week?

[highangle]

I may have missed the ball on this, but are you talking about the 60% 4MOA shooting qualification or the ability to hike up 3k ish with gear every day for a week?

Have you ever hunted goats or sheep? Because you sound just like someone who doesn't have a fucking clue.

[TBS]

OK random question for this collective
I have two boxes of .375 H&H cartridges. One box is 270 grain, the other is 300 grain. Original receipt included.
The gun they belonged to was sold 30 years ago. Just found these in the back of my safe
Anybody have any interest? If so, how do I go about shipping them?

[Toadman]

Goat, the other, other white meat.

[highangle]

OK random question for this collective
I have two boxes of .375 H&H cartridges. One box is 270 grain, the other is 300 grain. Original receipt included.
The gun they belonged to was sold 30 years ago. Just found these in the back of my safe
Anybody have any interest? If so, how do I go about shipping them?

Pretty sure your shipping options are UPS/Fedex Ground.


I still have a .375 Ruger* MkII stainless iron sights I bought for $200 off a crackhead guide, I guess because it has a ratty-looking rubber doughnut harmonic stabilizer and the rifle looks like it fell out of a truck on I-25.
It's the shiznit for Westside Kodiak deer, because it's wooly up in there, and you never know what you might jump up.


*[a completely different case than the belted H&H]

Goat, the other, other white meat.

About 80lbs. More if you have to pack bones and teeth and a rumen sample.
Add a few lbs for a rifle, binos, spotting scope and a few other odds & ends, you're packing over over 100lbs down the hill and them knees swell up real nice.

[mangle]

Have you ever hunted goats or sheep? Because you sound just like someone who doesn't have a fucking clue.

Have you?

I’ve never shot one, but I encounter them pretty regularly in the terrain in question.

[Jacques Strap]

Have you ever hunted goats or sheep?

Have you?

I haven't either... but every goat and sheep I've ever seen has been in a place I wouldn't want to be.

[highangle]

Have you?

Yes. Killed a few too - here in the Chugach, over in the Wrangells, up in the Brooks Range. It's hard.

I’ve never shot one, but I encounter them pretty regularly in the terrain in question.

Do you know any successful sheep/goat hunters besides me? Run that by them...


I srsly hope you win the draw and get the opportunity. You'll learn a lot. But beware, there's nothing like chasing goats & sheep in the high country. You can get hooked on it.

[highangle]

Here's what I can think to offer a new goat or sheep hunter in a general way:

Gear: Boots, pack, optics & tripods, first aid, raingear, bag... then think about what round and rifle you'll use and how you're going to sight it in. Then you think about what knife and steel you'll use, then think about what tent you'll use, then think about everything else, like snivel gear and bino slings and the 7-8000kcals/day you'll need to maintain your bodyweight.
Everything you do matters. That's one of the main reasons humans love to hunt.

You'll be humping heavy loads, both up and down. You look fit, but hunting is bushwhacking and routefinding, no one is fit enough to hunt mountain game like they'd like, and a blister, sprain, or a stone bruise can completely undo you. Fitness is why you can do this shit and 95% of big game hunters can't. Serious sheep/goat hunters are hard. It's a prerequisite.


ProTip: Sleeping at home and humping up 3 miles and 3k worthless feet every morning to start hunting is, as a strategy, for the birds. You need to eat your oatmeal and ibuprofen and be set up glassing and drinking coffee before they can see you move.
Then when you find one, the fun begins. When to move? How to get to him? He can smell you a mile off if the wind's right. He can see like an eagle, and pick out movement like his life depends on it. He sleeps with one eye open, and has bifocal vision so he can see the youngest grass at the end of his nose and see you skylined 2 miles away at the same time. Shoot one of his girls or buddies, and he ain't gonna let you walk up on him like it was the summer tourist trail...

You'll need a minimum 70L pack, unless you have a CF freighter frame you can strap a 50L to. You need a lot of gear to do this right. A goat needs to come off the hill in 1 trip. You have to be prepared to sleep up high, either in a spike camp, or wrapped in a tarp. You'll need a lot of water, which may dictate where you can camp...Rope, comealong... You won't believe how important the right pack is until you do this shit.

Goats typically inhabit steeper and wetter and craggier country than sheep, and they have less need for meadows. They typically flee straight up, and have zero qualms about throwing 10' hoolies in the No Fall. You ain't gonna keep close if they bug out. You just have to find some different goats...
They also like to eject off the cliff face after you shoot them, and tenderize themselves by rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling until they disappear in a shrund somewhere without a fucking trace. Bring a GPS and mark safe waypoints so you can find your anxious way back in the dark after looking for Houdini for hours... Even better, wait until you have a neck or withers shot that will dump him, leaving less possibility of a wicked plunge to some inaccessible place.

After your goats get shot at a couple times, they'll likely be harder to find than you can believe, maybe miles away. You may have airborne spotters and team tactics on a cull, but in general you can't have optics too good. I own a $4300 spotting scope on a $400 tripod, a pair of $2000 binos on another $400 tripod, a pair of $800 binos, and a $1500 rifle scope [and a $600 laser rangefinder that I haven't used hunting yet]. Why? Because diamonds are a girl's best friend, and mountain game hunters glass until our eyes bleed, and not always as a matter of choice.

Oh yeah...goats stink like strong piss. That's why they're sorta yellow on the hill but snow white when the taxidermy man calls you back. Butcher and pack out a couple goats, and all your gear will stink like Goatse. Whatever you do, don't break that bladder when you butcher them. Easier said than done if you have to leave "evidence of sex naturally attached to the meat" like you probably would during a fair chase hunt. If a borax soak doesn't get the stank out, try a vinegar douche. If that doesn't work, build a shed at least 40' away from your main dwelling to overwinter your xtraspendy purpose-built mountain hunting gear, because that funk in the house will run off women like Copenhagen. They'll never forgive you either.

Another thing: A surprising number of sheep hunters bring their dogs. Cliff-out goat country is not always the best, but dogs fkn love mountain hunting, and get serious about work when you strap a pack on them. All most really need to learn is to stay behind you or heel when the pack's on, and stay ground tied until you call them ahead. Some dogs can carry 10lbs of water, food, warm clothes all day, and only drink about a quart and eat about a pound.
A couple gallons of drinking water or a couple tarps you don't have to schlep can be meaningful...In bear country, dogs are early warning too. Esp at night.




Edit: Source of this rant? Saw 2 shooter rams running together while flying to Homer last Tuesday, in a General Hunt area [no tags required for residents]. Sheep season opens 0440hrs Monday, and some fuckers with a float plane are going to get them before I can break off a week to get dropped off out there within 10 miles of their drainage. God dammit. I can only hope they are out-of-state hunters, American combat veterans, paying $25k/head +tips to a KPB local outfitter... Myeah.

[mangle]

All understood. I come at this from a little different perspective. My day job is building toys that are used for shooting humans in similar environments, so I’m all set on firearms, optics, and signature reduction devices. Getting to use a bunch of this stuff in a relevant environment excites me.

I’m sure I’ll learn more at the orientation day if I’m selected, but from the available materials, we‘re not allowed to bring out anything but some meat, and only if we’re able to safely recover the animal. It seems that they’re more concerned with just having them killed. Tissue samples are secondary. I would guess the cliff edge shots aren’t ones you’d take in a normal hunt, and they’ll be encouraged here.

Re: goat behavior under fire - I’m well aware they’re going to see, smell, and hear us a long way off. What normally spooks them? The park service encourages the use of suppressors, so I’m wondering if that’s enough to make a difference and whether they’re worth humping around.

My last close encounter with a goat was when I was climbing no shadows to ski it a few summers ago after the cornice had melted out. There was a ton of rockfall that I found super weird until I realized there was a goat on top kicking rocks at me. When I got a bit closer to the top, he took off across a steep scree field (across triple cliffs and four shadows) at a speed I never could have imagined.

I’m excited. I’m sure I’ll learn a ton. Fingers crossed I get picked. Hell, I’m anticipating that only one of my neighbors will follow through with this, so I may have four open spots for shooters.

[zion zig zag]

ProTip: Sleeping at home and humping up 3 miles and 3k worthless feet every morning to start hunting is, as a strategy, for the birds.

This was my point about being local not really mattering. If you have to hunt the high environs of Garnet canyon, you should probably stay as high as you can, the in and out to valley floor would kill you.

[zion zig zag]

I’m sure I’ll learn more at the orientation day if I’m selected, but from the available materials, we‘re not allowed to bring out anything but some meat, and only if we’re able to safely recover the animal. It seems that they’re more concerned with just having them killed. Tissue samples are secondary. I would guess the cliff edge shots aren’t ones you’d take in a normal hunt, and they’ll be encouraged here.

I'd have to bring the meat out. Otherwise it's just thrill killing and I've never been into that.

Re: goat behavior under fire - I’m well aware they’re going to see, smell, and hear us a long way off. What normally spooks them? The park service encourages the use of suppressors, so I’m wondering if that’s enough to make a difference and whether they’re worth humping around.

My guess is that the NPS is encouraging suppressors so as to not draw any more attention to this than needed.

[wendigo]

Sounds like some fun meat-aineering
If you have a predilection toward type-II fun then you will have a great time.

[The Reverend Floater]

Should be the vaunted Sig Cross waiting for me at my FFL when i get home next week. I'm admittedly intrigued.

The Weatherby Mark V Carbonmark is indeed up to the hype. Sub 1/2", beauty action and trigger, etc. Expensive but the quality is legitimate. With Zeiss Conquest 4 8x24x50mm on it, she weighs in at 8.4lbs.

[XXX-er]

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/08...s-and-prayers/

[mangle]

Should be the vaunted Sig Cross waiting for me at my FFL when i get home next week. I'm admittedly intrigued.
.

Sig cross in 277 fury? That should be fantastically interesting. I’m really excited to see how the whole high-pressure ammo thing works out. I’ve been impressed with it so far. We have a standing bet about how big a deal galvanic corrosion will be between the steel and brass parts of the case.

[Jacques Strap]

goat or sheep hunter

Thanks. That was worth the read. Sounds not unlike elk hunting; but more. More of everything.

[highangle]

All understood. I come at this from a little different perspective. My day job is building toys that are used for shooting humans in similar environments, so I’m all set on firearms, optics, and signature reduction devices. Getting to use a bunch of this stuff in a relevant environment excites me.

You're going to regret every grain of firearm weight over 7lbs. An 8lb Stoner with a 2lb suppressor and a pound of Swiss flouro glass scope is the sort of crushing fucking weight Jack O'Connor carried up his first sheep hunt - September in Estado Sonora, Mexico with a 10lb rifle with a peep sight. Having his balls busted on that hunt eventually defined for the entire world what the mountain rifle should and shouldn't be.
So yeah, it's your thing, do what you wanna do. Don't be skert to try anything you think will help get the drop on them, but be advised: You'll run out of legs before you run out of goats. The art of hunting is about making the hunt as easy as possible.

I’m sure I’ll learn more at the orientation day if I’m selected, but from the available materials, we‘re not allowed to bring out anything but some meat, and only if we’re able to safely recover the animal. It seems that they’re more concerned with just having them killed. Tissue samples are secondary. I would guess the cliff edge shots aren’t ones you’d take in a normal hunt, and they’ll be encouraged here.

Cliff edge shots are just goats. That's where they live. You want their heart stopped before they go tumbling, so they don't bruise. We have a November registration hunt some years in Day Harbor. Some billies get shot from the beach, the shooter wanting the goat to roll down just as faar as possible...

Re: goat behavior under fire - I’m well aware they’re going to see, smell, and hear us a long way off. What normally spooks them?

Seeing their buddies drop dead from snipers will do it every time. They're ungulates, ruminants like deer or elk, but a bit smarter and way more perceptive They freak the fuck out when they see others of their kind dropping dead, and smell their blood. They'll associate it with anything else peculiar, like the flutter of fletching, the whing of a supersonic bullet, the smell of your breath or the flash of a wolf's tail.
What will spook a stressed-out goat on Day 3 is typically a lot less than the low hanging fruit of Opening Day. The rule is that if he can see you moving tactically or smell you doing same, you ain't gonna get close.
"Duh", right? Sounds so simple...

An important fact about goats is that they live in a maternal society, the males are subdominant to old nannies outside the rut. Most males stay banished to the fringes, but they'll still keep track of the herd.
Look up "Valerius Geist", one of the foremost and most prolific sheep and goat biologists ever. Also a hunter, he has written volumes on how to hunt goats and sheep.

Jack O' talks about finding sheep before his group was ready, and after the sheep had made them out. They set up the glass and watched the sheep watching them, and couldn't even move to start their hunt.
The Mexican guide got smart and tied bandanas and trash to the trees, and they hobbled the burros and set out before first light to get around the ridge on them so they could climb above them and get the drop.
When they finally snuk a look over the bowl, those rams were still sitting there, watching the bandannas and burros like they had the day before...And that's how Jack O'Connor shot his first ram.

My last close encounter with a goat was when I was climbing no shadows to ski it a few summers ago after the cornice had melted out. There was a ton of rockfall that I found super weird until I realized there was a goat on top kicking rocks at me. When I got a bit closer to the top, he took off across a steep scree field (across triple cliffs and four shadows) at a speed I never could have imagined.

My last encounter with a goat was on Exit Glacier Road. He just looked at me, and I had to drive around him. Srsly, we have more goats in the KPB [Units 7 & 15] than all the Lower 48 put together. 99% lottery Draw hunts though. Goat management is none too easy, and you don't want to overharvest nannies if you want a strong herd...So they're real careful with the harvest here.

I’m excited. I’m sure I’ll learn a ton. Fingers crossed I get picked. Hell, I’m anticipating that only one of my neighbors will follow through with this, so I may have four open spots for shooters.

SportinBilly Maggot Elert! Positronics. Pulling 4!

But this typa shit...It's hard. That's high high country for goat hunts, and the whole thing will prob get tougher as it goes. You'll be able to write a book full of the things you learn, esp if you reach out to ppl for their thoughts, and arrange with a charity or vets or similar group for excess meat, which like ZZZ says, you [and friends] will really want to recover if possible. Dry-aged for 40 days @ 34-36F, Oreamnos americanus straps will melt in your mouth, and packing out a quarter off a goat you've gutted and geotagged might be easier for friends to do than an entire hunt.

I wonder if they'll get all you shooters together for a briefing at some point? It might be interesting to meet the other culler people...

[highangle]

Thanks. That was worth the read. Sounds not unlike elk hunting; but more. More of everything.

With sheep & goats, you usually get a lot more acquainted with a specific animal. You got to watch that billy pee before you know he's a billy, and count rings on a sheep horn if he doesn't obviously look like an argali with a flare wider than his ass. Then it's like sight casting to big tarpon - consequences and stakes and motivation and errors go way up when you see them and the clock's ticking...

But add some "Been glassing for 11 hours straight on Day 7 and have yet to see shit the whole hunt [happens]... when a shaft of sunlight reveals what may well be legal rams...7 miles away down a broad valley choked with 8' willows and shintangle and a creek too deep to cross in the afternoon. The plane's coming to pick you up day after tomorrow, 4 miles in the other direction. Wat do?"
...If you plunked down $20k for a guided Dall sheep hunt, plus a new rig and another $5-$10k in gear, plus months trying to get in shape...You got a long long day ahead of you tomorrow, if you got the sand. And you may be forever haunted by those possibly shooter rams [more precisely your own behavior, or your mental limits under stress] if you don't.... It's a lot like mountaineering. Real pressure.



Yeah, more. Louder. Almost always way harder. More consequential. Usually way more time to think about it too.
The goal is there, in sight. Find a way to do it right, or find a way to fuck it up. "You must choose now"


Hunting [or even just shooting] goats at 10,000' would fucking waste me quick. I'd need a month to make red blood cells.

I'm not ready to throw down a hunt here under 5k summits, something I'm not proud of and yet another reason surprise spotting those rams the week before hunting season is chapping my ass so bad.

I guess I have a sharply defined fitness goal for between now and next year, don't I?

[2FUNKY]

I’ve assisted on 6 goat and 4 sheep hunts in Wyoming for friends who were lucky enough to draw.
You’re fooling yourself if you think you’re hiking in and out each day.
Once you’re in, you stay there, at elevation until you tag out or come out to recover for a few days before heading back in. Once you’re in and at elevation it’s really not to bad. I’ll take hiking above tree line any day over bush whacking in N. Idaho, where crawling through the jungle is a must.
This hunt/cull doesn’t intrigue me in the least, considering you can’t keep any part of the meat and head/hide.

[highangle]

Should be the vaunted Sig Cross waiting for me at my FFL when i get home next week. I'm admittedly intrigued.

The Weatherby Mark V Carbonmark is indeed up to the hype. Sub 1/2", beauty action and trigger, etc. Expensive but the quality is legitimate. With Zeiss Conquest 4 8x24x50mm on it, she weighs in at 8.4lbs.

Sig cross in 277 fury? That should be fantastically interesting. I’m really excited to see how the whole high-pressure ammo thing works out. I’ve been impressed with it so far. We have a standing bet about how big a deal galvanic corrosion will be between the steel and brass parts of the case.

Sig Cross .277 Fury, Mark V Carbon with a Zeiss... Is it ok to admit I got a little bit of a crush on Floaty and write his name on my sneakers?


Before I read you guys' posts, I thought the 28 Nosler was hawt [30 Nosler too]..Still do, kinda...

Maybe Sig puts some zincs in the .277 Fury case? Lead can be used as a sacrificial anode, BTW. So the lead inside the bullet jacket should corrode at the copper/lead interface first, no? But there's no air in there to make lead dioxide so... Need a dentist with a voltage calculator for that one?

I’ve assisted on 6 goat and 4 sheep hunts in Wyoming for friends who were lucky enough to draw.
You’re fooling yourself if you think you’re hiking in and out each day.
Once you’re in, you stay there, at elevation until you tag out or come out to recover for a few days before heading back in. Once you’re in and at elevation it’s really not to bad. I’ll take hiking above tree line any day over bush whacking in N. Idaho, where crawling through the jungle is a must.
This hunt/cull doesn’t intrigue me in the least, considering you can’t keep any part of the meat and head/hide.

But if you had never hunted them and didn't cherish certain aspects of it... it might be a good introduction that you'd otherwise have to be lucky or pay for. And a bitchin workout.

But still...Who's running this thing and why fatten up the wolves going into winter if they want to protect the bighorn that lays the golden eggs? I can see dis-incentivizing the wholesale slaughter of a big game species, but come on, resist the military urge to chickenshit the fun out of every damn thing. They're the ones prescribing the kill, and the effective selective kill of the goats for the prevention of sheep diseases is the goal, not leaving tons of good food to rot and desiccate and impact ecological balances way more than a 10-day Wyoming Turkey Shoot.

Protip: Broke-off goat horns make cool knife handles.


.

[mangle]

Sig Cross .277 Fury, Mark V Carbon with a Zeiss... Is it ok to admit I got a little bit of a crush on Floaty and write his name on my sneakers?

Before I read you guys' posts, I thought the 28 Nosler was hawt [30 Nosler too]..Still do, kinda...

Maybe Sig puts some zincs in the .277 Fury case? Lead can be used as a sacrificial anode, BTW. So the lead inside the bullet jacket should corrode at the copper/lead interface first, no? But there's no air in there to make lead dioxide so... Need a dentist with a voltage calculator for that one?

They have to do something - The back half is stainless (I'm not sure what grade), but it would be hard to eliminate the whole issue. Toss it in salt fog and I'm not sure there's anything you're going to do at the interface. We have major issues with stainless fasteners on polymer items in salt fog tests.

Just in case people don't follow this religiously, 277 fury is Sig's entrant to the Next Gen Squad Weapon program. They need to stainless case to stand up to the increased pressures in the unsupported area of the chamber and to extract it. Their entry is an awful lot like an AR10 with some tweaks and a pretty standard suppressor. General Dynamics/Beretta is a normal pressure polymer cased round out of a 24"ish barrel in a bullpup configuration with one of the DeltaP suppressors. Textron has that nifty cased telescoped ammo and a crazy complicated rotating breech block. I wouldn't want to try to make that stuff accurate - imprinting seems nearly impossible to do consistently with that setup.

On the Sig Cross rifle, 140 grains at 3000+ fps out of a 16" barrel is one hell of a punch from a lightweight setup. Gas guns are obnoxious to carry in such an environment. So is a ton of ammo. I think some of the more fun optics will be worth it.