Still Going

It's been a while I know but things have been busy.
I have decided to start a Facebook page (link below) under the same name mainly because it seems a little more user friendly and more people have Facebook pages now.
I will keep this blog as a link to my new page, please stop over and visit. 
The new page does not have "members" but you can hit the "like" button and of course there is the private message option as well. https://www.facebook.com/DownRangeReport

Under the Radar

Sorry I have been 'under the radar' lately, I have checked many of your blogs as I could but as I will explain I have not had good internet service.

In the past few weeks I have been working on a small mountain farm my wife and I purchased in the North Georgia mountains, it is about 9 miles from town and until recently I had to travel to town to receive a WI-fi service.

 The property was badly neglected and needed a lot of clean up. I have spent days on the tractor cutting hay and trying to make it workable.

I hope to be able to post more in the coming days as time allows. Right now I am living in two places at once and traveling over 400 miles back and forth to Florida every few weeks to take care of business.

It has been raining here fairly steady for 2 days now and is not expected to let up for a while so I am using the chance to catch up on my blog.


Hope you all have a good weekend and stay safe.

Government is Correct (sometimes)

I hate to admit it, I always thought the government had the wrong ideas about everything but sometimes they get it exactly right.

While doing some research about national parks I came across a policy that said "do not feed wildlife" it went on to say "feeding wildlife creates dependency and leads to overpopulation" 

Maybe the National Park Service should forward this policy to the Food Stamp Administration.

And you wonder why the welfare class is growing so much.

Sometimes even stupid people make a point.

I was listening to a news report regarding raising the minimum wage and some idiot being interviewed said "why should someone working for McDonalds in Denmark make $15 an hour and I can't here in the US" I admit sometimes ignorance makes me speechless but my first instinct was to say "because you don't live in Denmark you idiot" It did get me to thinking so I did some checking.
Most minimum wage people here in the US pay little or no income taxes after deductions and even if they did the lowest tax rate is 15% on the other hand if a McDonalds employee in Denmark makes $15 an hour their lowest tax rate is 45% so that $15 per hour turns into $8.25 take home. On top of that their overall their cost of living is higher, gasoline averages $8.55 a gallon, an average pair of Levis cost $145 and the average cost of a Big Mac meal in Denmark is $8.20 USD compared to about $5.75 here.
I guess ignorance is bliss, I am sure if wages go up here our businesses will just eat the expense for the good of the employee and I am equally sure government will waive the higher tax brackets to help out the struggling workers as well.

Mothers Day

Special days like this can be happy and sad. Mothers day for me is a mixture, I am happy I have my mom to share good memories with and she is in good health which is a blessing. I am also sad for all my children who lost their mother, for them it is a sad reminder.

I wish all mothers a happy mothers day and for those who are hurting I pray a special blessing for you today.

In Honor of Earth Day

Today is supposed to be earth day, I see things like this bumper sticker which get me thinking.
Maybe it is not right that we take so much from the earth and not give back so I had an idea, I have quite a few gallons of used motor oil I was hoping to recycle in some way but that would be selfish of me so I am giving it back to the earth, I will pour it all out on the ground and return it from wince it came. I can attest there is nothing which gives you a warm fuzzy feeling like doing good for the planet.

Good to see....

While traveling in Virginia  I saw one of these license plates, apparently there five other states Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas are also offering this design as well.

I hope other states follow suite, I would buy one if available to me.

A better idea...continued

I could tell from yesterdays post this is a sore subject with most, and I understand but my thoughts are this idea of Eric Holders has no chance of being implemented anytime in the near future and maybe not ever.

 Just take liberal NY (now I know not all New Yorkers are liberal but they do elect some of the most liberal politicians so apparently they are in the majority) anyway point being their Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill to require residents to register their 'assault' weapons and by many accounts about 90% of the gun owners have said they refuse and will not, even holding many demonstrations to burn their registration forms. All this over just a form to register guns, how do you think this would go over requiring folks to actually wear an ID bracelet ? I can't imagine. 

Now mind you this uprising is from a state which already has some of the worst, most restrictive gun laws so it's not like this caught them off guard.
All this goes to prove Eric Holder is delusional or smoking some really bad stuff (or both)
Actually I wish so much he would really try this, I would love to watch the flack, it would be really entertaining to watch federal agents trying to enforce ID bracelets in Texas for example. Maybe it would make a really good reality TV show kind of like Moonshiners or Swamp People. TV crews could follow around ATF agents as they comb the back woods of the deep south searching for 'lawless' assault weapon owners and forcing to wear an ID tags, now THAT would be worth watching on Pay Per View.

A better idea

In the news I see Eric Holder has kicked out the idea that gun owners have a electronic bracelet which he says will make us safer and allow only the owner to fire the gun.
Apart from showing his total ignorance and the fact you will stand a better chance of shoving a snowball up a wild cat's butt with a hot poker than making this fly the real reason I am sure is to identify the gun owners to everyone including police. I have a better idea which will serve the same purpose to them, just open carry, this will clearly allow everyone to see who the gun owners are.
I don't want to hide anything.

Finally....

Came back from the mountains a few days ago, no rest for the weary though but it was good to get away. It was a refreshing break from the rat race, I knew I was in the country when I stopped at the local Huddle House for breakfast and saw a deer head hanging in the bathroom.
While waiting for my meal I read this headline in the local paper, "County to close on shotgun park this week" reading further I discover the county is buying land for a shooting range for the local High School to use. Now that is the way to operate a school. Washington DC take note.

Getting Away.

We are out of town for a few days, enjoying the mountains.
On another note, it never ceases to amaze me sometimes the way the media reports certain stories like no one would ever guess,  case in point, early this morning the news station reported about a motorcyclist who had a collision with a  dump truck,  the motorcyclist was killed and then they went on to say the dump truck driver was unharmed........OK I would never have guessed that.

You Think ?

Been real busy lately, it seems like projects come out of the wood work at times, of course

the big news is the missing Malaysia  airline. It is painfully obvious that there was some definite ill intentions involved in the disappearance, I do not think the intent was to crash the plane (even though it may have) I kind of hope it did crash because I hate to think what it may be used for if repainted and loaded with nuclear bombs or something like nerve gas. The focus is now on the pilots and the Malaysian government is handing out bad information every day.
Oh by the way, did you know the dominant religion in Malaysia is Islam, anyone see a problem here ?  
I did hear that since Russia invaded  the Ukraine 0bama told Vladimir Putin he was a bad boy and his travel was restricted so maybe the Malaysian airline was sold to Putin, you know kinda like his own version of Air Force One..... hey my theory is as good as anyone's. 
I think I need to go aggravate Stephen for a while.

Ultimate Survival Ammo?

My press set up to load 44 Special.

I stumbled across something the other day which surprised me. I like to shoot a lot and have done so even more in the past because of this I have saved a lot of spent brass over the years, I also like to shoot large caliber and therefore reload my own ammo to keep from going broke.
One of my favorite calibers is 45 ACP and I have been reloading from my brass stash for years. Recently I was at a public shooting range and policed up a bunch of fresh brass some of which was new Federal 45 ACP.  

 45 ACP, Top Small Primers, Bottom Large Primers.

While reloading 45 other day I realized some of the new brass had a small primer pocket (shown here at top of photo) At first I was put out, I mean 45 ACP has always had large primers (bottom of photo) and it almost seemed sac-religious to utilize the same primer as a 9mm. I did some research and come to find out more than one manufacturer (besides Federal) has gone this route and apparently police departments are buying this stuff up as well. Most re-loaders I read about were scraping the new stuff out to get rid of it therefore  avoiding confusion during reloading, others said they would reload it and use it at ranges or locations where it was not convenient to save brass.
I pondered all this and decided it makes it a unique survival ammo. I don't know of another caliber which you have the flexibility to use either small or large primers depending on what you have available.
In fact in a real crunch if you had a stash of both these types you could physically load for your 45 ACP with any large or small pistol primer or any large or small rifle primer. I believe rifle primers are a little harder to fire than pistol primers but nevertheless it could be done in a pinch.
What some see as a inconvenience I see as a benefit......just my opinion.   

Field Trip

Heading out this weekend for a much needed break with a few friends including Stephen and Senior. We plan to eat some big steaks, build a big fire, tell some big lies, shoot some big guns, dream some big dreams and leave a really big carbon footprint. Hope your weekend is as productive.

And further more........

Thousands gather to protest 'Global Warming'