By David E. Petzal

Through the kindness of a friend, I came into a copy of a handbook called “Deer Hunting,” published in 1966 and written by Warren Page. There’s a lot of good advice in it--Lefty knew his business--and there are also some jarring reminders of how much things have changed.

Page spends a couple of paragraphs on rifle scopes, fragility of, how to avoid fogging, and I was shocked to realize I couldn’t remember the last time I saw a scope built in the last 20 years that had fogged. I’ve seen a number of them that were broken by recoil or poor treatment, but no fogging. That problem seems to be licked.

The same with wet feet. The last time I got wet feet from a pair of “waterproof” boots was in the late 1980s or early 1990s in Virginia, when I hiked through the hills and hollers in a pair of Gore-Tex-lined boots that leaked like sieves. The problem was not with the Gore-Tex itself, but with the fact that boot makers didn’t know how to use it. Since then, I can’t remember a Gore-Tex boot leaking.

By David E. Petzal

I’m indebted to John Blauvelt for this post, but first, a note from Mr. Jerry Wagoner of West Virginia, who informs me that New York’s disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner will shortly announce that he is running for President, and that his running mate will be Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Wagoner advises all of us to get our Weiner/Holder bumper stickers now before they’re all gone.

One of the most bizarre—and scariest—jobs to evolve in the Vietnam War was that of tunnel rat. Soldiers who drew that straw were small in stature and big in courage, as it was their job to crawl into the elaborate mazes that the Viet Cong called home and see what was what, and that frequently involved killing someone who had stayed behind to kill them, in the dark, from a couple of feet.

By Philip Bourjaily

Take a look at this picture of Jon Michael McGrath, one of Team USA’s best international skeet shooters. Note the intensity on his face and the eyes wide open behind the lenses of his glasses.

When the target emerges Jon Michael will focus his eyesight not just on the clay, but on the front edge of it. Chances are extremely high his shot will reduce the target to very small pieces. Shooters like McGrath have great eye-hand coordination, but they also develop the mental ability to focus hard on every target.

Precise focus on the bird solves most shotgun shooting problems on the range and in the field.

By Philip Bourjaily

Combo guns appeal to those who want to be ready to shoot whatever needs shooting, whether it requires a bullet or a shot pattern. Up until now, every combo gun I was aware of was a break action, usually a two-barreled O/U or a three-barreled drilling. Then I found this picture of the Russian-made MTs 28.

It’s a product of KBP Instrument Design Bureau in the arms town of Tula. A “state unitary enterprise,” KBP makes everything from sporting arms to air defense systems. KBP’s subsidiary TsKIB SOO (an abbreviation for the very Russian-named Central Design and Research Bureau of Sporting and Hunting Arms), produces guns, many of them custom, built to a much, much higher degree of fit and finish than the inexpensive Russian imports we are used to seeing here.