We sometimes deal with edible birds in this space -- ducks, pheasants, crows, turkeys and so on – and today’s post has a Thanksgiving theme.  Some of you, I’m guessing, may be planning to fry turkeys you killed during the fall for your holiday dinner. In the interest of keeping you intact for the rest of hunting season, the Gun Nut brings you this cautionary yet highly entertaining video as a public service.

As the video makes clear, there lies within every turkey fryer the potential for a really big oil explosion, which is why frying should only be done outside, not in the garage and never on a wooden deck. Fryers hold up to five gallons of oil heated to 350 degrees or more.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, which hates turkey fryers:

“Cooking oil is combustible, and if it is heated beyond its cooking temperature, its vapors can ignite. This is a fire danger separate from the burn danger inherent in the hot oil. Overheating can occur if temperature controls, which are designed to shut off the fryer if the oil overheats, are defective, or if the appliance has no temperature controls.”

Overfill your fryer  and slosh some oil over the side when you add the turkey, as they do here in this (ahem) carefully controlled demonstration, and the result can be dramatic.

Obviously the oil has been heated far above 350 degrees to insure ignition  -- in fact, it’s already on fire -- so the demonstration is slightly rigged. However you only have to search “turkey fryer fires” on Youtube to find countless clips of genuine turkey fryer accidents.

This was done for a Florida morning radio show. Fester, the DJ in the blue t-shirt screaming about redemption, apparently tried the same demonstration in 2006 and failed miserably. Here he makes up for it with a very impressive fireball. Enjoy, be careful if you’re frying dinner, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Over the past summer, I’ve been wearing a line of trousers and shirts made by a new company called Eotac. It’s high-speed, low-drag stuff made for people who carry guns and (legally) shoot other people as a profession, which I do not do, but nonetheless I liked all of it very much. It’s well made, did not shrink over many washings, and is carefully thought out. Best of all, the trousers have elastic insets in the waist which allow you to stuff your massive guts inside and still be able to breathe.

Sleeping Indian specializes in top-end wool hunting gear, and is named after a mountain in Wyoming rather than after a somnolent aborigine. Its Mountain Hunter Jacket is about the best thing I’ve seen for cold-weather hunting. What Sleeping Indian can do, which no one else can, as far as I know, is make one to fit you. I take a 2XL in most things, but I’m 5’10” instead of the 6’4” I should be, so the sleeves on most coats and jackets extend way past my fingertips. I had a Mountain Hunter Jacket made for me, and the first time I put it I nearly created an unmanly scene. I could see my hands! It’s expensive, but unless you pick fistfights with mountain lions you won’t even be able to make a dent in it, much less wear it out.

King of the Mountain competes directly with Sleeping Indian and makes a wide variety of wool gear, but the most useful item is their Bushman Shirt (shown above), which is so heavy that it can double as a jacket. Concealed buttons for archers, extra-long tails that don’t pull out of your pants, and warm? Hooh boy! The Bushman costs money, but the first time you wear it in really cold weather you’ll forget all about what you paid.

With all due respect to the many great Marlins of the past, this rifle bears an uncanny resemblance not to them but to the cult favorite Winchester Model 71. Both rifles are lever guns that deliver Serious Thump—in fact, the ballistics for their respective cartridges are almost identical. The main loading for the 71’s cartridge, the .348 WCF, is a 200-grain bullet at 2,530 fps. The sole loading for the .338 Marlin Express (developed and loaded by Hornady) is 200 grains at 2,500 fps.

The rifle I got to try out is ...

... an all-stainless gun with a laminated stock and 24-inch barrel. You can get the same thing with a 22-inch barrel (I would go with this one) or a blue-steel and walnut model with a 22-inch barrel. The new cartridge is based loosely on the breathtakingly obscure .376 Steyr.  It’s a chubby little rascal with very little taper, a fairly sharp shoulder and, since it has to work through a lever gun, a pronounced rim.

Factory ballistics specify a 200-grain poly-tipped FTX bullet at 2,565 fps from a 24-inch barrel. However, my chronograph said 2,485. I say, who cares? For all its power, the Marlin kicks about like a .30/06 of the same weight; it should not pose a problem to anyone who is not a sissy.

The rifle weighs 8 pounds, 2 ounces with a 3X-9X scope in Weaver mounts. The trigger pulls 5 pounds even. It’s clean and consistent, but 5 pounds is too heavy for me; I would take it to a gunsmith and have it lose a pound or so.

The Winchester 71, for all its virtues, was not an accurate rifle by modern standards. You couldn’t mount a scope on it, and even with a good peep sight typical groups for the ones I’ve shot ran in the 2 ½- to 3-inch range. The Marlin test gun will shoot rings around that; the average group size was 1.135-inch, which is bolt-action accuracy, and pretty damn good bolt-action accuracy at that.

For some reason, Marlin continues to use the same old semi-buckhorn rear sight that has blighted its rifles for many decades. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it folds flat and out of the way of a scope. If you’d like iron sights as an option, get a ghost ring sight in the rear, a big bead up front, and a good QD mount.

If you’re interested in shooting at long range—which for this cartridge would be beyond 300 yards—find yourself a scope with a range-compensating rifle that is appropriate to its velocity and flatten things at 400. I would not push it beyond there. The .338 Marlin Express has plenty of power, the FTX bullet is good and tough, but 2,500 fps is good only up to a point.

MSRP for this gun is around $800, which is certainly fair. It is a powerful, accurate, versatile firearm that is also drop-dead reliable and fast-firing if you need that. If you want more, you’re just plain greedy. Marlinfirearms.com --DEP

Last week, while rooting through the used guns in a sporting-goods store upstate, I chanced upon a Winchester Model 71 in very nice shape. “That rifle,” said the store owner, "belonged to Floyd Patterson.” Patterson, who died in 2006, was heavyweight boxing champion from 1956 to 1962. He was one of the best men, and one of the worst fighters, ever to hold that title. In any event, he had fine taste in guns.

The Model 71 was a modification of Winchester’s Model 1886, which has my nomination as the finest rifle ever built in America. Technically, the 71 was ...

... a failure—it was built only from 1935 to 1957, and only 47, 254 were made. It was not a cheap rifle--in its last year of production a 71 cost $130, about twice the price of a Model 94—and it was chambered only for the .348 Winchester, a thumping big round that was too much for deer.

But it was a lovely piece of machinery, and it pointed better than any lever gun I’ve ever handled, and them as had them treasured them. I owned a nice one in the 1980s but of course I let it go. Posterity has been kind to the 71. A standard model in 90 percent condition is worth $2,000, and the deluxe version will bring twice that. The 71 is not particularly accurate, and you can’t mount a scope on it, but if you’re willing to accept its limitations and its recoil, there is still nothing better for deer and elk and bear. Floyd Patterson could tell you that.