Well, pheasant season is almost upon us here in California (the season opens this Saturday), so once again I'll find myself slogging through muddy alfalfa fields chasing the cursed blue-headed chickens this weekend.
It's sort of an annual trip for our group, trudging mile after mile in wet boots, made twice as heavy by the clay clinging to them, as we hope to get a shot or two at the wily creatures. And we'll have to explain to our dogs -- for the umpteenth time -- why we don't shoot at the hens they work so hard to flush.
Ah, but we'll have some extra entertainment along on this trip. One of my buddies is bringing a couple of "pheasant rookies" along. We'll spend Friday night around the campfire trying to explain it all to them. Then the next morning we'll laugh like fools when the exploding racket and the blur of a red and blue and brown rocket turns them to jello. There is just no way to describe to a man how unnerving it is to have a pheasant flush from beneath his feet. Good times, for sure.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Ebay Still Hates Guns . . . Kind Of
A while back Ebay, in response to the carnage at Virginia Tech, made the boneheaded decision to cease the acceptance of any gun parts for auction on their site. Included were bullets and even empty shotgun hulls for reloading, torpedoing a little cottage industry of mine, as I was making a small fortune auctioning off, at obscene prices, the empty 28 gauge hulls I picked up for free at the local shooting range.
I recently sold my only 20 gauge shotgun, and in going through all the junk in my garage, found I had managed to accumulate a surprising amount of 20 gauge reloading materials. I began to wonder how I would dispose of them. At one time, I would have automatically thought: Ebay!, but with the ban I figured I'd have to put them on Craig's List or maybe Gunbroker.com.
What the hay, I decided to check out Ebay to see if maybe their ban had been reversed. What did I find? Empty hulls are, indeed, still banned. Much to my surprise, however, I found that shotshell wads are still being listed. So are bags of shot. Hell, even shotshell reloading presses are still being listed.
If guns are so immoral to the muckety mucks at Ebay, why do they allow the auction of wads, shot and even the machines used to make shotshells, but the empty hulls to finish the job are forbidden? Is this any way for them to take a moral stand, by only forbidding one component (a component that is perfectly legal to own and sell, by the way) out of the many needed to produce shotshells? Are they confused or just stupid? Or are they, maybe, really dumb like a fox?
Seems to me they have climbed on their soapbox to proclaim "We are anti gun," when what they really mean is they are only anti-gun when it can serve both their political and business purposes at once. After all, to be consistent they would have to prohibit all reloading components, but it would shave off some of their profits to do so. What hypocrites. Oh well, if anybody here reloads 20 gauge, there are some good deals right now on some discontinued Winchester wads over there right now.
I recently sold my only 20 gauge shotgun, and in going through all the junk in my garage, found I had managed to accumulate a surprising amount of 20 gauge reloading materials. I began to wonder how I would dispose of them. At one time, I would have automatically thought: Ebay!, but with the ban I figured I'd have to put them on Craig's List or maybe Gunbroker.com.
What the hay, I decided to check out Ebay to see if maybe their ban had been reversed. What did I find? Empty hulls are, indeed, still banned. Much to my surprise, however, I found that shotshell wads are still being listed. So are bags of shot. Hell, even shotshell reloading presses are still being listed.
If guns are so immoral to the muckety mucks at Ebay, why do they allow the auction of wads, shot and even the machines used to make shotshells, but the empty hulls to finish the job are forbidden? Is this any way for them to take a moral stand, by only forbidding one component (a component that is perfectly legal to own and sell, by the way) out of the many needed to produce shotshells? Are they confused or just stupid? Or are they, maybe, really dumb like a fox?
Seems to me they have climbed on their soapbox to proclaim "We are anti gun," when what they really mean is they are only anti-gun when it can serve both their political and business purposes at once. After all, to be consistent they would have to prohibit all reloading components, but it would shave off some of their profits to do so. What hypocrites. Oh well, if anybody here reloads 20 gauge, there are some good deals right now on some discontinued Winchester wads over there right now.
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