A Phreak of Sorts

Note to Female Readers: this installment may bore you to tears. If so, I am sorry. It is meant to educate.

A few of my friends and my wife understand this about me, but not many other folks have a clue of what a freak I am about guns. I've been around guns my whole life. Heck, when I lived in Sandy my friends and I would spend our Saturdays shooting our BB guns up on the hill between 1300 East and the Hidden Valley Golf Course. At the time, there were no houses around and it was just open sagebrush.

Then there was a 20-year dearth of guns in my life. When I met Garth Halter he made the mistake of telling me he was a licensed gunsmith. That was the end of it...or the beginning. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent in his cubicle at work asking him questions about firearms and ammunition. Just so you understand how freakish my habit is, here are a few little items of interest. Whenever I look at the clock and the time is any of the following, I make mention of it: 2:04, 2:23, 2:24, 2:43, 2:57, 3:08, 3:10, 3:12, 3:21, 3:23, 3:38, 3:57, 3:58, 4:10, 4:29, 4:51, 4:58. Why are those numbers significant, you ask? Well, they all either pertain to a caliber or specific cartridge. Weird? Yes, I suppose. I am writing this blog today, to teach and inform my readers about guns and cartridges in general.

This is Garth about a week before he died (April 1, 2007):

He's the guy next to me who's sitting down...the one that looks like my cousin Guido.

Anyhoo, I digress.

I spent the next 2 years poking and prodding Garth for any and all information about ballistics and firearms and such. He even loaned me some of his reloading equipment for a short time and taught me how to reload my own ammunition. He was a master. Very skillful. And all of his obsessive habits were absorbed by me.

To me, a gun is a tool. Like a hammer. Like a tape-measure. Do guns kill people? No, bad people kill people. If we took guns out of the hands of everyone, the bad guys would still find a way to obtain them, and then we'd just have an unarmed bunch of sheep, waiting for the wolves to slaughter them. That's my opinion.

Again, I digress.

Let's talk about a few terms we all hear now and then:

Bullet: the projectile that is ejected from a gun upon firing.
Cartridge: consists of 4 things: bullet, casing, gunpowder, primer.
Case/Casing: the brass component of a cartridge that holds the primer, bullet and gunpowder in place.
Primer: a small cup that is inserted into the bottom of a case which contains a small amount of explosive material. Once ignited, a primer will light the gunpowder of a cartridge on fire.
Gunpowder: a combination of sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal. In modern smokeless powders, nitrocellulose is also used.
Assault Rifle: not a term I am happy with, because it mostly applies to weapons generally used by the military which can be purchased and used by civilians. Which I have no problem with.
High-Powered Rifle: this is my opinion, but it generally refers to a rifle that might be used to hunt medium to large game with. A '30 ought six' or 30-06 might be considered a high-powered rifle.

Bullets and gunpowder are measured in 'grains'. I don't know why, or the history behind it, but 7,000 grains is equal to 1 pound. You might typically hear someone state that they shoot a '30 ought-six with 180 grain bullets and 57 grains of powder.' That would be something a typical big game hunter might use.

I, however, opt for something a little larger and more powerful than most of your typical hunters. I use a very old cartridge that has been around for over 100 years. It has been used to kill everything from deer, to buffalo, to the largest of African game.

This is a picture of the gun and cartridge:



Currently, I have a friend of mine reload my cartridges for me. Why? Price is the first reason. It is cheaper to reload your own ammunition. Also, because this cartridge has been around for 100 years, most manufacturers have to compensate for the fact that their cartridge MIGHT be used in a 100-year old gun. Thus, they make cartridges that are loaded to very low pressures that will not destroy older guns. Since I own a more modern gun, I am able to use loads that will generate MUCH higher pressures. My current load is a 300 grain bullet. This bullet and combination of powder is something that I could use on nearly anything in this world. The only animals I might hesitate to use this cartridge on would be elephants. The average size of a big game bullet (in my opinion) falls somewhere around 150 grains travelling around 3,000 feet-per-second. This cartridge would pack about 2,900 foot-pounds of energy. My 300 grain bullet travels around 2,300 feet per second, but because of the larger size, would pack about 4,000 foot-pounds of energy.

To prove the potency of this cartridge, my buddy Erik and I did our own penetration testing while we were out hunting last year. Penetration Testing, you ask? One school of thought states that it is very important for your cartridge to have enough energy to pass completely through the animal at which you are firing, causing as much internal damage as possible so that the animal has a quick and pain-free death.

Erik's cartridge: 270 Winchester, 150 grain bullet, travelling about 2,900 fps.
My cartridge: 45-70 Government, 300 grain bullet, travelling about 2,300 fps.

Our target was the largest aspen tree we could find...which was about 16 inches in diameter.

Erik's bullet entered the tree and penetrated a few inches and then stopped. How deeply did it penetrate? I don't know, because the bullet never left the tree. My bullet's performance was a different story. It entered the 16" aspen tree and then exited out the back side and entered the next tree behind it.

That's at least 18 inches of LIVING tree, as far as I could tell. Perhaps more.

WOW!!!

When you shoot a larger bullet, however, you have to sacrifice something else. Gravity has a greater influence on that 300 grain bullet than a 150 grain bullet. So if you shoot a 150 grain bullet at a target 400 yards distant, it might drop about 20 inches from when the bullet left the barrel. My bullet, however, would drop something like 30-40 inches. To say that my bullets have a "rainbow" trajectory would be an understatement. But I am OK with that. As long as I keep shots at big game within a reasonable distance (say 300 yards, MAX), I don't really need to be concerned about that trajectory.

But another reason for my interest in guns is my interest in hunting big game (i.e. deer and elk). Someday I would like to hunt a grizzly bear or a moose in Alaska. To date, this is the only big game animal I have ever shot at:


It was taken just east of Richfield, Utah in the fall of 2006. The meat was mighty tasty! And honestly, if I did not enjoy the meat, I would not hunt at all.

So there you have it. I am slightly freakish, but I enjoy firearms very much.