Monday, February 27, 2006

Another Gunnie Weekend with No Shooting

Can you believe it? Bill (Yosemite Sam) and I’ve gone two weekends in a row now without shooting. Last weekend I whined about how cold it was here. Well, let me tell you Saturday and Sunday made the previous weekend seem balmy. A low of 5 degrees is nothing to sneeze at (cheap pun intended). Despite the weather, we still managed to engage in a little gun-nuttery.

Saturday we went to our favorite local gun shop, State Line Gun Shop located about 24.8 miles from where we live. The weather man predicted snow would start falling about 3:00pm. Being good transplanted New Englanders, we knew enough to beat the storm.

We drove about 7 miles when the snow began falling around noon (so much for weather men). We kept going to State Line and noticed the road was getting slick and snow was accumulating on the verge. No worry yet. We live in New England. Snow’s our friend. We got to State Line without problems and noticed a constant stream of customers—people here are hardy and most had thought they could beat the storm just like us.

We had a couple of gunnie goals for this visit. I wanted the guy at State Line to take a look at a Steyr-Hahn made in 1917 I recently won in an auction. It arrived the other day and I was overall delighted with it though it has one drawback. A previous owner thought that splotchy cold blue looks better than normal holster wear. Hmmm. Also, it takes an obsolete cartridge, 9mm Steyr. Guess who had a box of it? Yep, State Line.

The owner likes to pick up a few boxes of obsolete cartridges. He just happened to have 9mm Steyr made by Fiocchi. Of course, I snapped it up for the princely sum of $47.95 per box of 50 cartridges. I won’t be shooting my Steyr-Hahn much, not at almost $1.00 a round. Still, I’m lucky to have found any ammo for it at all.

Our second goal was to buy a shotgun for Bill. Spring is almost upon us and Bill needs a decent trap/skeet gun. His pump-action Winchester 1300 just doesn’t cut it. He’s now the proud owner of a very gently used 12 gauge Benelli Montefeltro semi-auto.

Well, I’m making a short story long here so I’ll finish up. By the time Bill passed the NICS check and we paid for Bill’s shotgun and my Steyr ammo, the road was well coated with slick snow. It’s a so-called road. I think it’s a cow path even if New Hampshire calls it a state highway. It’s a nice drive on most days. It runs along a picturesque stream, through thick woods and fields. Even though you might see it in a New England travel book, it’s still a two lane cow path with no shoulders and rough paving.

We inched our home in driving snow with about a quarter mile visibility. We dreaded that someone would rear end us and damage Bill’s new shotgun in the trunk (we must be gun nuts). We lucked out when we got behind a snow plow and it led the way to a wider road.

We wanted to go shooting Sunday, but the thought of going out in 15 degrees dissuaded us. We may be gun nuts, but we ain’t stupid. We’ll do a “One From the Vault” on my Steyr-Hahn before too long and we really want to get out and play with the new shotgun. Winter please end.

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