By David Maccar

When I was told the folks at Vision Research were willing to let us use two of their very expensive, very high-speed cameras, I knew immediately what had to be done.
Shoot stuff.

So many questions could be answered. How, say, does PowerBait trout goop react to a .223 round at 19,300 frames per second? (Television, by comparison, runs around 30 frames per second.) What happens when you shoot a basketball with an expandable broadhead or a can of tomato soup with a .308?

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By Phil Bourjaily

The pheasant in the picture has a 29 ¼-inch tailfeather, by far the longest I have ever seen attached to a pheasant I shot. While I subscribe to the “every bird is a trophy” school (especially in these days of low populations), this feather is so ridiculously much longer than a normal pheasant tailfeather that I’m very excited about it. It towers over the others in my tailfeather jar as a reminder that a day that starts badly can get much better. First, on my way to the field near Riverside, Iowa, (which calls itself “The Future Birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.”) the grain truck ahead of me on the highway shot a rock into my Jeep’s windshield, cracking it to the tune of a $304.85 replacement.

Then, not long into the hunt, I learned that my vest lacks pockets deep enough to hold an e-collar transmitter if you are trying to keep up with a dog on the trail of running pheasants. My transmitter bounced out of the pocket somewhere in the middle of 80 acres of CRP grasses. I’m sure it will turn up next spring as a pool of melted plastic when the landowner burns the field.

With one windshield and one transmitter to replace I seriously thought about turning around and going home before I broke a gunstock, Jed got hurt, or we lost a cripple. I am not very superstitious, but I do believe misfortune comes in threes so I feared something else bad was about to befall me.

What happened instead was that Jed caught a whiff of this rooster, who was too old and ornery to sit and let himself be pointed solidly. He slunk off. Jed stayed with him, pointing, breaking, creeping and relocating along the hillside until he finally pointed the bird from a distance. The pheasant flushed and flew straight away, so I wasn’t aware of how long the tail was until I put the bird in my vest and realized the feathers sticking out of the gamebag kept going and going.

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By David E. Petzal

A little while back I spent an hour at the range helping a friend of mine mount a scope and get a rifle sighted in for his young son. Everything worked, and dad took the boy to Pennsylvania to hunt deer. As it turned out, they didn’t get one, but the father was nice enough to send me a photo of the kid in his stand, and the expression of joy on his face is unmistakable. I e-mailed my friend that whether or not his son goes on to be a serious hunter, that deer hunt will be pure gold for the rest of the boy’s life.

Small contributions like this can make a very big difference. If you are a hunter/shooter with some experience, there is a beginning hunter/shooter out there who can use your help. These are not easy sports to break into; there is an immense amount to learn. Questions lead to other questions, and the number of people who have the answers is shrinking.
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Happy Holidays from the Gun Nuts!

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