I'm still standin....

Wow, it's been months and months since I posted something here.

Folks, it's been a long, hard summer and the latter half of the month of August sucked like two things that suck a lot. I won't go into too much detail and I apologize for the lack of content, but I had to tend to my own house before coming here and sharing cool things and news stories that make my hairs stand on end.

Mama Bear and I DID manage our first woodlands trip yesterday, we drove out into the mountains and scouted out the area I've identified as a likely place to find elk come the middle of October. Boots on the ground, it looks exactly like the world-class-elk-hunting area from the Old Country. With just a bit of luck, I'll connect with my first elk that WASN'T felled with a 1970 Ford F-100 California pickup truck.

Took a few guns out, Mama Bear had her Single Six (Jayne) and Remington 518 (Vera) to play with. I took Papa's Remington 1100 shotgun and 760 .30-06 deer rifle. I had the box of handloads for the 760 and intended to do a good ladder test - but I didn't bring stuff to make a stable shooting rest. I tried using the bipod against the rear hatch frame of the van and that would have been functional for an elk shot, but not for something like a ladder test. Also, the lightest loads seemed to perform the best (all of them hit within a 5" circle) while the heaviest loads missed the target box ENTIRELY.

Had a lot of fun with the Rem 1100 - I'd never shot it before and after teaching Mama Bear how to throw clay pigeons, I managed to tag the VERY FIST THROW.

Then I missed the next 5

Hit one.

Missed three more and we called it a day, we had to head back.

All in all, it was a fun time and it looks like elk camp's going to be a success.